|
Arthur Evans
From Outcyclopedia, the free and queer encyclopedia. Arthur Evans is a writer, gay historian, mythologist, philosopher, and activist. Evans is best known for his works, Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture, The God of Ecstasy, and Critique of Patriarchal Reason. He was born in York, Pennsylvania, in 1942. In 1960 Evans entered Brown University on a chemistry scholarship, and while there founded a chapter of the Freethinkers Society, a student group of "militant atheists" oppossed to organized religion and its effects on society. The group picketed the mandatory Sunday chapels at the University. When the national media picked up the story, Evans' scholarship was almost cancelled, but then reinstated after Evans enlisted the help of Joseph Lewis, president of the National Freethinkers Society, who threatened to sue Evans' sponsor if the scholarship were revoked. Evans later participated in a civil-rights march in his hometown of York during a summer recess. Still closeted about his sexuality, Evans dropped out of Brown in his third year and moved to Greenwich Village after reading an article about the homosexual community there. The following year he met and became lovers with Arthur Bell, who later became a Village Voice columnist and activist in his own right. In 1966 Evans enrolled in the City College of New York, first as a political science major, then philosophy, and joined the anti-war movement, partcicpating in a sit-in which was featured in the New York Times. He graduated in 1967 with a B.A. in philosophy and joined the doctoral program at Columbia University. Evans continued to partcipate in anti-war protests, including those at the 1968 Democratic Convention. In 1969 he joined the Student Homophile League at Columbia, though he was still not out as a gay man. Following the Stonewall Riots, Evans and Arthur Bell joined a new group, the Gay Liberation Front, a radical organization which proudly proclaimed its members to be gay and politically active. He formed the Radical Study Group within the organization to study the historical roots of sexism and homophobia. Dissatisfied with the lack of direction within the GLF, Evans and twelve other members formed the Gay Activists Alliance, a group which pioneered the use of zaps, non-violent, in-your-face confrontations with homophobic authority figures. Many times members of the GAA, including Evans, were arrested for using zaps to disrupt activities ranging from local television programs to performances at the Metropolitan Opera. In 1970, Evans joined fellow GAA member Marty Robinson as the first gay activists to appear on a national television program, The Dick Cavette Show. It was on this broadcast that Evans came out to the nation, including his family, who had been told to watch the show, but not why. Separating from Arthur Bell in 1971, Evans withdrew from the GAA and also from Columbia, having completed all his Ph.D. requirements except his dissertation. He left New York in 1972 with his new lover, Jacob Schraeter, and settled in Seattle, where he formed the Weird Sisters Partnership and founded a small commune, New Sodom, in the Washington state forests. He continued his studies into the historical origins of homophobia, and contributed articles on this and zapping to the original Out Magazine, Fag Rag, and The Advocate. In 1974, after attempts to make New Sodom into a viable community failed, Evans and Schraeter moved to San Francisco. A year after moving to San Francisco, Evans formed the Faery Circle, a group which blended the sensibilities of the neo-pagan and gay communities together with ritual plays. This, coupled with his lectures on his historical research into the gay counter-culture, was one of the major germs of the Radical Faerie movement. Evans also helped form Bay Area Gay Liberation (BAGL) and the San Francisco Gay Democratic Club, the launching platform for Harvey Milk's entry into city office. He was also co-owner of "The Buggery," a Volkswagen repair shop. Arthur Evans' studies into the origins of the gay-counterculture, sexism, and homophobia were formally published in 1978 as Witchcraft and the Gay Counter-Culture. In this book, he showed how homosexuals were not only accepted, but even revered among the old pagan societies, and also exposed how the witch-hunts of the Middle Ages were not only an attempt to eradicate latent pagan practices and beliefs in Europe, but also as a means for those in the Church to act out their own fear and hatred of women and homosexuals, and for the State to intimidate the lower classes into submission. Evans also demonstrated how homophobia was also used in the eradication and assimilation of Native American and African cultures which also accepted and even revered homosexuals and had much more libertarian attitudes about sex, sexuality, and individualism then did their European conquerors. Evans went even further, attacking the gay community itself for its own inner homophobia, chastising the National Gay Task Force and The Advocate for encouraging gays to adopt more mainstream lifestyles and middle-class values and appear more "normal" and "acceptable" to straights. In this and his other writings, Evans helped popularize the terms STIFF ("Straight-Identified-Faggot") and "clone" to describe those who went to extremes to appear "straight-acting." In 1984, Evans directed his own translation of Euripides' The Bacchae at the Valencia Rose Cabaret, based on an image of the Greek god Dionysus as a sexually ambiguous, playful, joyful, egalitarian, life-affirming deity. Played by a member of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, Dionysus is opposed in the play by men portrayed as closeted, conservative, homophobic and sexist suit-and-tie politicians and businessmen. Together with his explorations into the symbolism of Dionysus and the other gay gods and heroes of Greek myth, as well as his further insights into gay culture and homophobia, Evan's translation was published as The God of Ecstasy in 1988. In 1986, Evans began work on a trilogy of works on what he presented as a new gay philosophy on life, claiming that much of today's rationalism has flaws which largely derive from a patriarchal bias. The first volume, Critique of Patriarchal Reason, was published in 1997. Evans continues to be active in the gay rights movement, and has been active for many years in AIDS activism, though he himself is HIV negative. Two of his lovers and nearly a hundred friends have died from the disease. Most recently, he was arrested in several protests against Burroughs-Wellcome, charging that the company was gouging its prices on AZT and other drugs. He continues to work on the next two books in his philosophy trilogy, and also makes contributions to numerous publications, especailly The White Crane Journal. External links: Gay Today: Review - Critique of Patriarchal Reason Knitting Circle Rowse History Centre Arthur Evans - Critique Of Patriarchal Reason Entry revised 5 January, 2005. All text is available for use under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (see Copyrights for details). DISCLAIMER: This is not an adult site, and does not contain any pornographic images or material. Any references to sex or other adult material or behavior is made from a purely academic standpoint. Images used on this site are credited whenever possible, and any whose copyright status is in dispute will be gladly removed or credited upon request. Not all persons listed on this site are or were openly homosexual, but reasonable conclusions about their sexuality may and has been made from diaries, letters, and other writings and accounts made by them and/or those who knew them. Several others are heterosexual and are included here for the impact, whether positive or negative, they have made on queer culture and history. |
