Pitching A Tent
"...one of the reasons the club was formed was to get away on weekends"
The intention of gay motorcycle clubs was from the very beginning both threatening and benign. "half-goat half-man Satyr from Greek mythology was always…(seen in cartoons with this flushed look on his face, rosy cheeks and all this,) carrying a very voluptuous woman off into the woods and so forth…well, we were doing the same thing but…it was fellows we were carrying into the woods, and we went camping (Laird)” [CHECK THE SYNTAX ON THIS QUOTE]This section, Pitching a Tent, will focus on space. Leading with a theoretical framework provided by Foucault, we analyze spaces historically claimed by, and denied to, gay MCs in Los Angeles. We will also interrogate notions of “straight invasion” and “gay flight” so that we might better understand the complex interactions of criminality and legality with regards to gay expression in urban or rural environments. The writing of Dick Hebdige and David Halperin will nuance our understandings of what “gay culture” or “gay subculture” are. So what is subculture, exactly? Who are the Satyrs MC, and what relationship do they have to queer space in Los Angeles?
The Satyrs Motorcycle Club was founded on November 5, 1954 at the home of Chapin "Smitty" Smith along with seven founding members. The MC held its first official club meeting that night, with over 30 men in attendance. According to Satyrs folklore expert John Laird, the club's inception came about at a pool-party a few weeks earlier after a night of heavy drinking, partying, and sex. The Satyrs continue to be the oldest continuously operating gay organization in the United States. It was the first gay organization with a set of Bylaws and a Club Constitution. This fact is important for many reasons, but the most notable is that the Satyrs MC did not choose to use the Mattachine Society's "cell structure" (developed by Harry Hay) to avoid the homophobic, anti-communist "Lavender Scare" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavender_scare] between 1947 and 1957. The organization continues to sponsor motorcycling and leather activities including the Labor Day “Badger Flats Run,” one of their most well known activities, plus charity fundraising activities, community involvement, and motorcycle relevant events year-round.
One of the most important events for many Satyrs was the monthly camp-outs hosted in one of many natural parks surrounding the Los Angeles area. After arriving on their motorcycles, attendees would meet up with friends and family [?] to set up a massive camping ground for entertainment activities, food, and dancing (Satyrs Archive CAN THIS CITATION BE MORE SPECIFIC?). While these were originally held near Paso Robles, police intervention demanded that the event be moved to its current location at Badger Flats, some miles further from the city. There is even a rumor, overheard [BY YOU?] at the ONE Archive, that the relocation occurred after a group of unsuspecting Boy Scouts stumbled into a secluded glen being used by the Satyrs for an S&M “training day.” While it may seem like an isolated event, the forcible relocation of the Satyrs MC reveals something more about the climate and legal position queer organizations occupied during the [HOW DID WE GET TO THE 80S?] 1980s. [SOMETHING ABOUT LEGALITY OF QUEERNESS]
[TRANSITION NEEDED] David Halperin helps shed some light on the matter of subcultural formation in his well-known book, How to be Gay. Halperin argues that important elements of culture and subculture can be found in what we understand to be “gay culture.” Gay subculture, at least in Halperin’s formulation of it, usually takes an aesthetic form through drag and/or camp aesthetics. [WHY LINK TO THIS PICTURE?] Drag performance establishes its own conditions, creating itself as it goes along. The term "drag" itself is used for any performance carrying symbolic significance but usually referring to the actions or aesthetics associated with one gender role being worn by a person of another gender. The origins of the word are debated, but "drag" has appeared in print as early as 1870 (Oxford Dictionary). Unlike drag, camp appropriates from the heteronormative mainstream, taking both feminine and masculine aspects of society and transforms them. Selective adherence to, and mastery of, the dominant cultural fashions allowed for both passing as straight and disidentification from heteronormativity in the same breath. As Leo Bersani writes, “...in rescuing us from penile tyranny, from sexual machismo, these practices also bracket what may be- and here I can speak only of male sexuality- a man’s most intense experience of his body’s vulnerability (Bersani 102).” [WHY THIS QUOTE? HE'S TAKING ABOUT ANAL SEX!]
The subcultural aspects of gay culture arise “insofar as they are in a dependent, secondary relation to the preexisting non-gay cultural forms to which they respond and to which they owe their very existence” (Halperin 422). In the case of Gay MCs, the “non-gay cultural form” in question is the denim-and-leather aesthetic and its associated fetishes and trinkets [NOT FOLLOWING -- ONE COULD ARGUE THAT ALL MOTORCYCLE RIDERS SHARE THIS AESTHETIC FOR PRAGMATIC REASONS]. Halperin also attributes features of resistance and defiance to subculture. He argues that subculture is always an act of resistance in that it finds itself “in an oppositional (if not adversarial) relationship to an already existing set of authoritative cultural value” (423). Writing about punk well before Halperin, Dick Hebdige has also articulated subculture in the following terms: “spectacular subcultures express forbidden contents (consciousness of class, consciousness of difference) in forbidden forms (transgressions of sartorial and behavioral codes, law breaking, etc.)” (354). [CAN YOU FIND ANOTHER QUOTE? THE SWISS ALPS GROUP GOT TO IT BEFORE YOU]. In the appropriation of heteronormative aesthetics, queer people are able to forge a new, resistive identity. And while many queer theorists are hesitant to ascribe positivist understandings of subculture to BDSM, especially those who believe sex and aesthetics to be separate things, it can hardly be argued that “By singing the praises of enslavement and torture, S/M self-sacrificingly warns us of their profound appeal... S/M in a manner consistent with its most profound dynamic, couples its aggressive social posture with a hard logic aimed at its own immolation (Bersani 90).” [THIS SECTION DOES NOT SAY MUCH ABOUT SPACE AT ALL AND SKIPS FOUCAULT ENTIRELY, DO YOU WANT TOT SAVE THESE LAST TWO PARAGRAPHS FOR THE 3RD SECTION? ALSO, WHAT HAPPENED TO THE OFF PATH THING ABOUT MOVIES? I CAN SEE WHERE THAT SIDE BAR COULD JUSTIFY THESE LAST PARAGRAPHS. MAKE IT WORK]
