Except, of course, it leads to easy rebuttal: You want a “grown man . . . prepared for conflict and provide for his wife and family”? OK, buddy, here you go; one be-sandaled, world-dominating Roman centurion coming up.
We have frequently been puzzled at the complete lack of historical awareness among modern “conservatives,” who keep mistaking their current fashion phobias for timeless truths about manhood.
Consider the portrait by Anthony van Dyck (no jokes, please) of Lord John and Lord Bernard Stuart ca. 1638. These two long-haired, be-rouged poofters died fighting to restore Charles I to the throne. A lot harder work, and more usefully “conservative,” than blogging about the “feminizing” attire of Winter (i.e., Nordic) Olympic athletes, eh, Steve Sailer?
Faced with such indisputable historical evidence, the “conservative” will usually respond: “So what? Times change, fashions change. We must be modern, etc.”
So, the acceptance of anything that modernity throws up, the acceptance of the dictates of fashion, the imperative of modernity, makes you a “conservative,” or perhaps even “manly,” how, exactly?
The more sophisticated, or at least better read, “conservative” will cite Chesterton on the Medievalism (or Mediaevalism, as we were taught at the Pontifical Institute) of “William Morris and His School”:
When he was denouncing the dresses of modern ladies, “upholstered like arm-chairs instead of being draped like women,” as he forcibly expressed it, he would hold up for practical imitation the costumes and handicrafts of the Middle Ages. Further than this retrogressive and imitative movement he never seemed to go. Now, the men of the time of Chaucer had many evil qualities, but there was at least one exhibition of moral weakness they did not give. They would have laughed at the idea of dressing themselves in the manner of the bowmen at the battle of Senlac, or painting themselves an aesthetic blue, after the custom of the ancient Britons. They would not have called that a movement at all. Whatever was beautiful in their dress or manners sprang honestly and naturally out of the life they led and preferred to lead. And it may surely be maintained that any real advance in the beauty of modern dress must spring honestly and naturally out of the life we lead and prefer to lead.147
Indeed. But if one were to dress “honestly and naturally out of the life we lead and prefer to lead,” then what would be more honest and natural than the bare-chested, shrunk skintight, wild-haired working class teens of the MC5’s White Panther Party? Or their spandex-clad musical idols?
No, TakiMag prefers our White Youth to emulate the hangdog faces of the latest round up of redneck “militias” infiltrated or instigated by the FBI.
That’s the “conservative” movement, for yah. No metrosexuals, no homo, just a bunch of pasty, overweight patsies. You know, “Real Americans.”
III.
STEVE SAILER’S FEAR OF SPANDEX
It might be helpful to remind, or inform, those living in the almost totally judeo-negrified world of America Today (Post Obama) what was once (in Pre-Obama America) considered perfectly normal, indeed, expected, attire for proud young Aryan males.
Consider three young performers, at the peak of their popularity, in three related genres of what was known as “rock” music, then the most popular form of, well, popular music. (Of course, it still is, but this fact is hidden by the deliberate promotion of judeo-negroid [c]Rap music). There’s Jim Dandy, Black Oak Arkansas, “Southern Rock”; Rod Stewart, “FM Rock”; Leif Garrett, “Teen Idol” (remember the hair on that guy on American Idol that time?); and of course, more generally, the Rock God himself, Robert Plant.
The preachers were righter than they knew; this wasn’t merely “jungle music” but a pagan rite (a modern mystery religion, as we have explained on several occasions), and this is how proud Aryan youth celebrate their shameless bodies with long, flowing blond hair, bare chests, and tight, often leather or spandex, pants.
Today, such men would be considered “fags,” and Jim Dandy would be a “redneck” as well; his presence here suggests that “NASCAR America” is not that alien from that other form of “implicit whiteness,” Heavy Metal.
Of course, even “da fags” are Judaic these days, so the first squeal of the gay gang on Queer Eye is always “His hair is so long! Cut it!” What’s with the Judaic obsession with cutting off male parts?
Anyway, one similarity with today is that stage attire is only an exaggeration of the fans’ street attire. Growing up in Detroit, spandex pants would have been a bit outré, unless you were Iggy; however, the standard uniform was long hair, bare chest, impossibly tight jeans shrunk by wearing them in a bathtub, no underwear, and what we still called “gym shoes.”
The MC5’s “we are the people” ideology meant that they looked like their fans, which looked like one of Steve Sailer’s “feminized” Olympians, such as Shaun (note the surname) White.148
The point of all this is not (entirely) to take a nostalgic trip down Plum Street to the Grande Ballroom, but rather this: the idealization of the male form is a function of the broader instinct for excellence in general that, nurtured by the Männerbünde that were the primitive forms of the modern “rock band” and its fans, produced the heights of Western, White, culture.
When not under the thumb of the judeo-protestant—for even the Roman Church, as Roman, is scandalous for its beautiful boys and attire—the Aryan seeks excellence in all areas of culture—and that includes manly adornment—and does not sink to the baggy-panted depths of the primitive Negro.
As the latter has increasingly been promoted as our new “ideal,” so all forms of excellence have been stigmatized as first “acting White,” and ultimately “being a fag.” No homo!
The results—America negrified—are all around us, and the “white nationalists” or “cultural conservatives” who decry the results are all too usually in the forefront of enforcing the cultural prejudices—viz., “masculine” means stupid, ugly, and dirty; hence, Shaun White is a fag, while Fitty is “manly”—that make them possible
IV.
THE DANCE CLUB AS WHITE AUTONOMOUS ZONE
Rather than relying on historically uninformed, covertly pro-Negroid guesses as the only alternative to the poisonous suggestions of the MSM, the Right would be well advised to acknowledge the gratuitous and symbolic—not utilitarian—role of dress, and use it to further its avowed aims.
They might, in fact, do well to consult the legendary weekly dress codes of the equally legendary New York nightclub, Jackie 60.149
During the last great period of NYC nightlife (i.e., mine) the immortal Jackie 60 not only had a theme that changed weekly150 but also a corresponding “dress code” that supplemented its standing code, prominently displayed at the door by a Victorian-typeface sign, listing, among other peeves, “No Baseball Caps: Jackie is not a team sport.”
Not only did these themes display a casual but intense grasp of modern intellectual movements as well as the news of the day,151 far beyond what one might expect at, say, a Libertarian Party fundraiser, thus exemplifying the White Spirit at its most intense; by demanding creativity and demonizing the easy and “popular”—“Jackie is not a team sport”; “No banjy clichés and as always, no ski wear!”—they created a White-only Temporary Autonomous Zone, as neatly and legally as the price of a place in the Hamptons.
Forget Occupy Wall Street clichés. Think how much more effective Tea Party rallies would be, if they adopted the “Bleak House Night” code:
Dickensian beggar-wear, gruel bowls and utensils, Cruikshank glamour, bonnets, shawls, black cockney caps, Vivienne Westwood urchin looks, ragged short pants and ill-fitting short jackets, grime smudges, top hats, period tight-lacing (1840s), Fagin cloaks, stolen wallets, cravats.
Or a meeting of the Latin Mass Society attired in the spirit of the “Night of a 1000 Stevies”:
Fringed shawls, velvet hooded cloaks, baby’s breath with ribbons, ruched boot covers, Victorian coke spoons, tambourines, best hair in rock and roll, seventies
gypsy, pre-Raphaelite, handkerchief hems, Lindsey Buckingham drag, Edwardian bustiers, leather and lace.
Although classically, suits and ties were also forbidden (except on women) if Jackie were still around “Mad Man Realness” would no doubt be given its own night.
Which is not even to say there were no Negroes at all; a handful were to be found, even on the event staff, but these were of the advanced, Michael Jackson’s Queer Eye152 sort, rather than the Michael Jordan, or Michael Thomas, sort.153
See, it’s not at all about “skin color,” as the straw-man-making Liberal would have it. At Jackie 60 you were not judged by the color of your skin, but by the contents of your closet.
THIS OLD GAY HOUSE
Will Fellows
A Passion to Preserve: Gay Men as Keepers of Culture
Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2004
“Ever wonder who was the first guy to put pineapple on pizza? I bet he was gay. No straight guy is gonna say: ‘You know what this pizza could use? A pineapple ring!’ But God bless ’im, it’s good!”154
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet. . . .
I’d better get right down to the job.
It’s true I don’t want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts factories, I’m nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.155
Everyone knows about the role of homosexuals in the creation as well as preservation of culture, especially that of the Aryan race. Well, maybe not. Other than James Neill’s vast survey The Origin and Role of Same-Sex Relationships in Human Societies,156 most people with any positive interest in the topic are content to just compile lists of “famous queers.” Then there are snarky works with titles like How Homosexuals Saved Civilization. Even Louis Cramford’s magisterial survey Homosexuality and Civilization157 is just an erudite variation, showing the interaction of its two titular topics without exploring the connection or interconnection.
It’s common enough on the Right to somewhat grudgingly acknowledge their role in the re-homesteading and revitalizing of blighted (usually by blacks) urban areas. The Right ruefully admits that for some reason, these limp-wristed sissies are able to resist the Black Undertow that drove out all those manly Olde Tyme White families.
As the writer Alan Gurganus is quoted in the work under review, “You can always tell an urban158 neighborhood in transition by that harbinger of change—the corner Art Deco shop opened by two gentlemen friends.”
Indeed, one need only spend an idle weekend or two viewing the plethora of cable channels devoted to house-hunting or home-improvement to notice the “over-representation”—as the Steve Sailerites like to say—of male couples, to the extent that the introduction of “my partner” is less likely to reveal a business partner than what the Times used to call a “life partner.”159
One might dismiss this as another example of PC-casting, as in the even more obvious and unlikely number of intact black families with enough cash flow to buy a big new house or need help purging and organizing all their stuff.
On the other hand, if it reflects reality, the Sailerites are ready with a slew of easy explanations, revolving around “high net worth” and “no kids.” Here, they prefer amateur sociology to their favored biological explanations.
Our author, Will Fellows, confronts this meme right at the start, and dismisses it as a best inadequate. His research “provided me with so much—admittedly anecdotal—evidence to help dismiss some of the rather clichéd explanations as to why gay men are extraordinarily involved in the preservation arena.”
There are arguments along the lines of ‘no children, so they don’t have to live in safe neighborhoods with good schools,’160 or ‘no children so they have more income’. And even an argument that I heard that gay men are marginal creatures in the culture, or have been historically, and so they are inclined to take on marginal enterprises like preservation.161
In his Conclusion, Fellows gives his “answer”:
Gay men make extraordinary contributions in historic preservation, an arena well populated by straight women, because the mix of things that preservation is about strike many of the same psychologic chords in gay males as in straight females. These chords cluster around a number of themes: domophilia, romanticism, aestheticism, and connection- and continuity-mindedness.
Making things a bit more concrete, these “themes” are explicated as a “cluster of concerns” such as:
Creating and keeping attractive and safe dwelling spaces; restoring and preserving wholeness and design integrity; valuing heritage and identity; nurturing community relationships; fostering continuity in the midst of incessant change.
In short, the basic values of the New Right. In fact, Fellows later provides a quote from Jung (the Aryan Freud) which is very interesting in this context:
Since a “mother-complex” is a concept borrowed from [Judaic] psychopathology, it is always associated with the idea of injury and illness. But if we take the concept out of its narrow psychopathological setting and give it a wider connotation, we can see that it has positive effects as well. Thus a man with a mother-complex . . . is likely to have a feeling for history, and to be conservative in the best sense and cherish the values of the past.162
Even further, Fellows insists historic preservation is far from “marginal work” fit only for people on the sidelines of “real work,” but is “a job that is at the very center of their society’s life, akin to religious work.” As he explains elsewhere:
In a certain sense I see historic preservation as a religious act, religious in the original meaning of that word, having to do with putting back together something that is broken.
There’s this whole phenomenon growing out of the human soul that resonates more powerfully for some people than for others that has to do with identifying things that are in need, things that are broken, things that are not whole, not complete, and restoring them to a state of wholeness. So in a certain sense I do see historic preservation as a religious act, religious in the original meaning of that word, having to do with putting back together something that is broken.163
We’ll return to those religious dimensions, but first, let’s go back to those “themes,” which are not entirely self-explanatory. Domophilia is a “neologism” and rather unfortunate, as it sounds like a sexual aberration. In fact, it’s nothing scarier than “an exceptional love of houses and things homey, this deep domesticity, which often emerges in childhood.”
Romanticism is not a neologism but is also unfortunate, being so polyvalent. Fellows calls it “romanticism with a small r, the exceptionally romantic and emotional ways in which many gay men relate to the past, to old buildings and the places, and to the lives and possessions of their previous occupants.” In short, what New Rightists will recognize as what we call “hauntology.”164
Rightists might also think of H. P. Lovecraft as a non-homosexual, but distinctly odd, example of this trait—“I am Providence” and all that—but Fellows throws us a wonderful curveball here; Lovecraft is never mentioned in the book at all, but Romanticism is immediately exemplified by August Derleth, Lovecraft’s executor and posthumous collaborator, who set up Arkham House (note the name!) to preserve Lovecraft’s weird oeuvre. Lovecraftians, led by S. T. Joshi, have long given Derleth a hard time, but here he’s lauded for his “quintessentially queer romanticism” as exemplified in such novels as The Atmosphere of Houses.165
By contrast, Aestheticism is fairly straightforward, having for a long time “served as a code word for gay.” It refers to “the emergence in childhood of [an] artistic eye and aptitude, [an] extraordinary visual understanding of the world, [a] design-mindedness.” In short, to refer to the cable metaphor again, a “queer eye.”
Connection- and Continuity-mindedness is perhaps the most self-explanatory, but it’s also the most ironic, since it presents gay men as more conservative than most so-called “conserv
atives.”166 Fellows delineates them thus:
As a connection with the past is central to the definition of culture, so is a concern with connection and continuity vital to culture keeping. . . . Like [E. M.] Forster, these men cherish tradition, family, community, a feeling for place, a sense of flowing history. They are enchanted not by the modern but by “something older, something slightly mysterious yet powerful,” as Nicholas Fox describes it.
Fellows then quotes the marvelously named James Van Trump, who seems to be a closet Heideggerian or archeofuturist: “We live in a kind of cultural continuum, like a chain . . . We need a constant going back and forth from the present to the past. We have to have the past from which to move on.”
The bulk of Fellows’ book is both a history of historical preservation and an oral history of the gay men involved in it—to the extent that one can separate the two.167 Some men are well known in their professions, some are not. Some places are obvious—Provincetown, New Orleans—others are outliers—Red Cloud, Nebraska, or Cooksville, Wisconsin. As you can tell from the quotes I’ve sprinkled here and there, they’re a fascinating group, well worth your time to visit.
After all this Fellows has to face up to the meta-issue: how come? Here Fellows is boldly un-PC, driven by the data, anecdotal though it may be: “‘Artistic,’ ‘musical,’ ‘nervous,’ ‘sensitive,’ ‘sophisticated,’ and ‘temperamental’ have served as euphemism or code words for gay. They are all based in the reality of gay men’s lives.” Score one for the Sailerites—some stereotypes are based on reality! In this case, “based on the reality of gay men’s lives.”
The Homo and the Negro Page 9
