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Three Gay Male Archetypes:
Drag Queen, Leatherman, Teacher/Priest
By Ivo Dominguez, Jr.
Copyrighted || All Rights Reserved || An Excerpt From My Book:
Beneath The Skins: The New Spirit & Politics Of The Kink Community
Visit My Publisher- Daedalus Publishing Co || Get a copy of this book through Amazon.com
A number of years ago I attended a ritual that touched a deep part of my psyche, and stirred something in me that had been slumbering. The ritual, in the fashion of so many open circles offered at Neo-Pagan gatherings, had been hastily cobbled together with the roles and parts doled out to whomever was willing and available. Despite all the rough edges, and all the nervous tittering, there was a raw sincerity shining through the ritual, obscuring the defects and warming the soul. Though, I knew I was at a very mundane camp ground was used for high school band camps, motorcycle club runs, weight loss camps, and now witches, I also knew that I stood on sacred ground. I stood, holding hands in a circle with about 40 people, women, men, and teenagers of various sexual orientations, all gathered together to experience something of the mysteries of gay male sexuality.
This is not an essay on ritual or magic so I'll not elaborate on all the details of the ceremony. The culmination involved the calling of the triune form of the Gay God as the Drag Queen, the Leatherman, and the Teacher/Priest into the bodies of three Gay men in the circle. The shift I observed in their poise and bearing was unmistakable. They each addressed the group, explaining something of their attributes and their essences as aspects of the Shining Ones. After speaking, they each passed a symbol representative of their being around the circle so that we could feel their energy. The Drag Queen took off his wig, the Leatherman took a chain from his boot, and the Teacher/Priest offered a wand fresh cut from a tree, still bearing leaves. These three objects were passed from person to person in the circle with the deliberate reverence you'd associate with a tea ceremony.
Then the real magic happened. Throughout the circle people were sighing, laughing, gasping, some close to tears as they allowed themselves to capture a sense of the beauty, the wisdom, the poignancy, and the mirth of three powerful archetypes. Most of the Gay men in the group were having compelling recognitions and remembrances of different faces, different facets of their lives. Many of the women and the men of other orientations were experiencing sexual otherness in a way that was intimate, and safe. There were a few people for whom the merest touch of each object was an ordeal. To the credit of these participants, every one of them held each object. The wig, the chain, and the wand were returned the Drag Queen, the Leatherman, and the Teacher/Priest, who then thanked the three archetypes and bid them adieu. The quality of light and sound had changed in the circle, the three presences were gone, and the three men were no longer larger than life. The circle was opened, the ceremony ended, and amidst the post-ritual hugs and merry making, the leatherman was wearing the wig, the teacher/priest was wearing the chain, and the drag queen was playing fairy godmother with the wand. Afterwards the participants discussed the ritual and had a very lively, but friendly, dialogue about the full range of human sexuality.
What awakened in me that day was a change as subtle, as sure, and as irrevocable as puberty. As with the turning of the seasons, there were not specific days that I could say were the boundaries between one awareness and another any more that you can say that yesterday was Spring and tomorrow is Summer. More exactly, you can say it but the weather will prove you foolish and arbitrary. The change that was wrought in me was the gift of seeing the divine within the men that I played with, loved with, fought with. Indeed, as a Wiccan the teachings I held as true said that all humans are God and Goddess incarnate, but having seen three faces of the Queer God, I could recognize this truth in the faces of my brethren. As with all core beliefs, this change in awareness began to cause corollary changes in my perceptions and my actions that permeated many areas of my life. Having studied my responses to this awakening, I am led to believe that a recognition of the archetypes specific to your identity stimulates profound healing. How this recognition is to be accomplished will be different for each individual as it will have to mesh with whatever configuration their religion, spirituality, and philosophy have taken. If you are not a religious or a spiritual person, I believe that you may find that the psychological and the sociological impact of archetypes is well worth your study.
Sadly, oppression exists on every level, not just the physical or the social. For many minority groups, sexual minorities in particular, the archetypes have been driven deep underground. Knowledge of these archetypes has been all but obliterated from common knowledge. In addition to reclaiming or rediscovering the old archetypes, we are called to explorations of the present. There are new archetypes, or modifications of old ones, that are just now achieving strength and focus with the flowering of new tribes, new communities, new peoples. I'd like to share some of my observations of three of the Gay male archetypes. For Gay men these ideas may have immediate personal utility, and I suspect for Bi men much will be applicable with some adjustment or amplification. For all my other sisters and brothers, the telling of this story may act as an impetus to seek your own lost archetypes, and may provide useful clues.
Drag Queen
He is a divine Androgyne, a blending of male and female energies, but also a trickster, a being that plucks truth and beauty from the jaws of chaos through guile and humor. He shows us that reality and illusion are siblings. He weaves a spiral dance through the veils of truth and fiction, flirting with both. On the surface he is a woman, one layer deeper he is physically a man, deeper still are layers upon layers of alternating polarities surrounding a center that is the mother and father of both realities and illusions. The power of the mask, of the role, is both exalted and ridiculed. He can be unearthly beauty without compare, and ugliness without measure. The Drag Queen is both the Bright Mother and the Dark Mother wielding the sword of High Camp. He is the anger of the oppressed, expressed through wit and charm and a slashing ferocity that knows where it hurts. He is also glamour tripping the light fantastic, dancing on the bright, thin, interface between male and female. He knows about somewhere over the rainbow, and he can be the witches of North and South or East and West. He awaits us at the Gate of Dreaming with sand and fairy dust in his hand.
In life, embodied within the many, the Drag Queen provides Gay men with the knowledge that the fads, the fashions, and the foibles of society are ephemeral and false. With that knowledge comes the freedom to play and to create, like a Goddess before the wide canvas of the universe. But a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, if the Drag Queen's whispered truth is not fully accepted or understood then it is possible to become trapped in the images and in the glitter that is then mistaken for gold. The Drag Queen, whose highest form bears the heart of Alchemical gold may become blinkered by the leaden limits of society's oppressive weight. He/she may in a moment of despair pawn the heart of gold for some defense, some refuge, from the ugliness of society. It is no wonder that the Drag Queen can be a love goddess bearing the nectar of joy or a harpy armed with venomous stings. There are many quests, many a story lines the archetype of the Drag Queen can put into motion, but I believe the chief one is about the union of male and female essences that lie beyond and beneath the fabric of daily life.
Leatherman
He is the wild man, the animal powers course through his being. He is both the hunter and the hunted, honoring the cost of life. He wears their skins as a shaman, as a lycanthrope. He marks his territory with piss, with cum, with the red welt of his whip. He locks horns in struggles as filled with strength as with frailty. He is the irrepressible force of Eros and the sour sweat stink of panic offered as incense to a universe too vast to be comprehended. He is the dark joys and the absolute necessities of nature. He is a Lord of air and darkness calling forth the dreams and desires that lurk and fly in the deepest chasms of the soul. He is also the flame that draws the moths to transcendence then returns them to the mortal coil of bondage. He too is a paradox, both slave and master to desire, to authority, and to responsibility. With his strop, he hones the knife's edge that free will dances upon. In cycles more erratic, but as real as moon cycles, he bleeds a sacrifice of his life force to his lovers and his tribe. He is also the Greenman, John Barleycorn, who dies to feed the people who in turn vouchsafe his rebirth. He sits at the feet of the dragons, guarding the gate to the Underworld, a thorny rose clenched in his fist.
In life, embodied within the many, the Leatherman provides Gay men with the mystery of power, death and rebirth. Desire, and its objects, are born from the unfathomed depths within and rise to the light of day to seek satiety which is destruction. The death of desire is followed by the rebirth of desire and the cycle of the raw power of life continues. For the Leatherman who sees this cycle as the spiral of evolution gaining insight and depth with each turn of this wheel, there is an expansion of the self that can delve deeper and fly higher. For the Leatherman that is lost in the materialism of the mainstream culture, the cycle is not the love play of spirit and matter, the cycle is a vicious circle, a ball and chain, and a collapse of values resulting in spiritual sterility. Those that are lost become the demonic stereotype of cruelty, violence, self-abasement, and jealousy that is not the Sex Magick of SM , but the sadomasochism of pathology. There is a grandeur in nature that cannot be described by pleasure or pain but only be their union. The Leatherman in his highest form achieves the ecstasy that reconciles the mercy and the severity of existence wherein chaos, order, grace, and entropy are honored equals at the round table of eternity.
Teacher/Priest
Father to no one so father to all, he lives for the life of his people. He is gentle comfort, reassurance, and conscience to all his people. He barters the little love of the individual for the large love of the whole. The stories, the songs, the codes of law, the codes of the heart, and the gossip flow through him and from him. He guides the toddling first steps and upholds the doddering last steps. He joins the hands of the lovers and lights the lamp of wonder in the student's eye. He calls upon the great powers that spring from the vasty deeps to oversee and overlight the passages of life. He is the steward of the many colors, the many skeins, that are woven into the rough homespun of daily life and the treasured silk of the perfect moment. He remembers so that what was does not become tangled with what will be. He remembers so that the members of his community will not forget their body politic. Always and always, he makes his sacrifice of himself to himself for the greater good, for the group soul. Bearing a torch, he lifts the veil to reveal the Gate to the Upperworld, knowing he may not pass while holding the Gate for others.
In life, embodied within the many, the Teacher/Priest provides Gay men with grounding and purpose in the weave of community. He is freed from the fetters of of lineage, of the family tree, but bound tight to the fate of his people and to his children of the heart. He is the friend that listens, holds up the mirror of personal truth, and offers true counsel regardless of the temporal consequences. The Teacher/Priest recognizes the value of the individual within the context of the collective. From the lofty heights of the mountains of faith in religion, philosophy, or ideology the Teacher/Priest can see the lay of the land and the flow of the river of time. When healthy and balanced, he is the messenger and the bridge between the personal and the collective, he is an aspect of the rainbow bridge and Hermes. In the thin air of the heights, of continual consciousness raising, he may become giddy, delusional, intoxicated with the vision. From the heights the promised land can be seen but not reached. From the heights the individual is reduced to an ant, insignificant in the landscape. The Teacher/Priest can become the ensnarer, the hound of dogma that nips at the heels of all who stray from the herd. Unbalanced, he can be the shepherd so entranced by the distant vision of the promised land that he leads the herd over the cliffs to destruction. In his truest form he is the bridge and the principle of agency.
These descriptions are just pale indications of the three archetypes with about as much detail as quick sketches on a mist clouded bathroom mirror. But like those sketches, the gist is communicated and when the mist clears, the eyes reflected in the mirror will show a fuller story. Archetypes are neither words nor individuals but like them, they can be brought together in many ways to create new things. Like words and like people archetypes change and are changed by interaction with and exposure to the world through changing denotations and connotations. Several archetypes may be in play, having an impact, on a situation or a personality at any given time. Although each of these archetypes is worthy of a deep and exhaustive exploration, I will narrow the focus primarily to the Leatherman and to the personal response to this archetype.
At the sight of your beloved, perhaps you have felt your heart tremble as if they held it in their hand. Or possibly you've found your thoughts circling round and round a vision of lust, binding you so fully that in days past they would have said you were bespelled. During an especially good sexual encounter, you may have found that all of reality shrank to just the realm of your senses and that time held no sway over your consciousness. Once in a great while, my partners have become more than themselves, they have been the God or at least were the instruments of a higher force. I believe that when conditions are right, whether by design, accident, or fate, the archetypes are summoned into our presence and they imbue our actions and experiences with numinous power. I grant that much of the richness of love and lust arises from the body, the mind, and the heart-- but the spirit must not be forgotten. When the archetypes, the Gods and Goddesses come into the bedroom or the dungeon, we should take note because we are changed by the meeting in the ways that only spirit can accomplish. The changes are like those that awakened in me the day of the ritual of the Drag Queen, Leatherman, and Teacher/Priest. The changes are as subtle, as sure, and as irrevocable as puberty, as aging, as coming out.
The bright flare of sex is not the only light that awakens the archetypes within us. There have been moments filled with a dreamy warmth like a lover's embrace when I have looked upon a throng of leathermen at a bar, or a meeting, or a run and I have seen each of them glowing with an inner light. On rarer occasions it has been less an inner light and more like a cloak that magnified what was present in the individual. During these moments, these reveries, people that I don't like, don't find attractive, or don't even have a shred of patience for become lovable, respected, and at times awe inspiring. Seeing the Leatherman archetype embodied in the men of my community has on several occasions served me as an antidote to toxic thoughts and attitudes. Negativity, pessimism, despair, and plain old garden variety disgust are among the poisons that respond well to spiritual medicine.
A number of religions and philosophies teach that the divine is present in each person and it could be argued that recognition of this truth should be enough, but in my experience it is not enough. On a psychological and emotional level it is important for the divine, or for the spiritual to be clothed in a manner fitting to the individual and the situation. I believe that for Kinky people, having access to images of Kinky archetypes or Kinky deity forms is almost indispensable in order to integrate their sexuality with their spirituality. To acknowledge the divine within the self, to acknowledge a family resemblance to the Great Ones, requires that there be substantial points of commonality and connection between the individual and the archetype. In principle this realization and its corresponding actions are akin to the movement in the Women's community to reclaim and revive the Goddess. It is also akin to the efforts among People of Color to remind the world that divinity comes in all colors, and that many if not most of the founders of the major world religions were People of Color, white-washed icons and stained glass notwithstanding.
It is important that this be realized because it is essential to the formulation of an identity politics of the spirit. The archetype of the Leatherman, has the potential to become a foundation for building purpose and self-worth for Kinky Gay men. Our writers, photographers, and artists play a very important role in developing the archetype, and I believe that it is no coincidence that they are under attack by the conservative forces that serve spiritual fascism. It was no coincidence that the story tellers, the shamans, and the keepers of the arts of native peoples have always been sought out and destroyed first by the conquerors. We have been discovered by the mainstream, I hope we do not allow history to repeat itself in our community. The seminal potential of the archetype can only develop if combined with the outer world through recognition, story-telling, the visual arts, inclusion in pop culture and through the feedback loop of the dreams, fantasies, and the subconscious. In that feedback loop, the archetype is delineated by the contributions of the community which in turn delineates the parameters of the community, in a process resembling more than anything else Escher's image of a hand with a pen drawing a hand with a pen. It also resembles the Ouroboros, the serpent swallowing its own tail, forever making and unmaking itself.
On a personal level it is becoming more fully the aspect of the archetype that you embody. For some time now, the mythology and the folklore of Kinky Gay men has told the tale of questing for a fantasy man with admirable qualities and finding at the end of the quest that the seeker has become the fantasy. Herein the Leatherman archetype is echoed in several ways. The hunter becomes the hunted, desire reaches its culmination and dies to be reborn again, and the Leatherman greets the next seeker, bloody rose in hand. Or, he may also await inspiration for his next deep fantasy, his next teacher. The often complex and tumultuous interplay between desires and drives to be top/bottom, daddy/son, master/slave, switch, mutual combatants, comrades in intensity, and the dizzying array of possibilities and probabilities reflect myth and archetype as much as they do personality and cultural context. Our fantasies and our dreams are partly our own and partly the common property of the identity groups that we belong to.
Self-knowledge is considered the crux, the crossroads for personal growth, but is it possible without the inclusion of those things that are larger than ourselves-- I don't think so. I believe that until the spiritual, and in particular the archetypes, are honored and incorporated into the life of the individuals and of the community that attempts at understanding and analysis through ideologies, philosophies, and psychologies are doomed to failure. We will be replaying the story of the seven academicians caught by a sand storm while trekking through the desert. The seven hold onto each other, eyes clenched shut against the sand, until they run into something that they hope will be refuge from the storm. They find that it is refuge, but their descriptions of their refuge are wildly different. One says that it is like a broad wall, another says that it is like a tree trunk, another says that it is like a stout vine, and four others give equally unlikely reports. When the storm dissipates they find that a kindly elephant has given them shelter, a being to large to be grasped by the reach of their hands.
The archetypes and their mythic stories also clarify the linkages between individuals and communities. The parts of the elephant only make sense when the whole is grasped. The archetype of the Leatherman for Gay men is a part of a collection of archetypes and mythic stories that describe the numinous truths of being Kinky. An understanding of the family or the ecology of images and myths that spring from the various subsets of the Kink community could possibly result in a more grounded and more practical understanding of the parts and the whole of our community. We need to rediscover, to reclaim, or to create our pantheons, our cycles of stories, our lore. If we do undertake this task, more mythic force will become evident in our erotica, our art, and in the jargon and folkways of the Kink community. With that infusion of magic, of the spiritual, into the daily life of the community, the vitality of the life as a Kinky person will increase. There are many other benefits as well. Experiencing the archetypes, the myths, can be a powerful revelation that can span differences of gender, orientation, race, and culture. I have seen it. I am not suggesting that the ritual I attended many years ago is the only to bridge this gap, it is merely one. I am suggesting that the archetypes are a common language, an answer to the Babel of our age, and essential to true dialogue.
A special thanks to Charles R. Butler, III for his inspiration in this matter.
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