Hells.angels gay bashing
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They also have a surprising history of fluid sexuality and homoerotic behavior. Kenneth Anger’s 1961 art film Scorpio Rising, featuring a gay biker orgy, enraging the Hells Angels and prompting the American Nazi Party to threaten legal action.
Meanwhile, in Europe, the artist Tom of Finland was paying close attention. And, if you think about it, what’s more, manly than gay sex?
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defining what it means and knowing where to start.Glenn Hughes was the Village People’s leatherman for twenty years, his glorious horseshoe mustache becoming a key part of the look as the group became globally famous. “Because these men participate in very aggressive, physical and masculine behavior they can participate in other behaviors that are not typically viewed as masculine, or in some cases heterosexual.
‘[Kissing] is a guaranteed square-jolter, and the Angels are gleefully aware of the reaction it gets,” he wrote. Gold Coast in Chicago, the Tool Box in San Francisco, and New York City’s Mineshaft further solidified it, turning the look from an outfit into a phenomenon known as leather culture.
The Hell’s Angels, the world’s most famous biker gang, are known for their hyper-masculine image.
When asked what a Hell’s Angel would say to someone who asked if kissing a fellow biker counted as a gay kiss, Winterhalder said, “They would probably knock the guy out. As much of a casual hobby or fully-fledged lifestyle as one wished, being part of such an organization resonated with a great many men. “The sight of a photographer invariably whips the Angels into a kissing frenzy.”
Life photographer Bill Ray witnessed the Angels’ attention grabbing display.
In 1977, another key figure arrived after responding to an ad reading "Macho Types Wanted: Must Dance And Have A Moustache”. When Hughes died in 2001, he was buried in his leatherman outfit. “Being in an outlaw motorcycle club, the biker lifestyle back then, was definitely counterculture,” says Ed Winterhalder, a former Bandido, author, and producer of several television shows about biking.
“The line dividing heterosexual from homosexual became more rigid after WWII, but it didn’t happen overnight and it varied by class, race and ethnicity,” McBee says. “If you look at the last century and a half, all-male subcultures that were particularly hypermasculine are often the subcultures that also allow men more flexibility in their gender behavior,” says Randy McBee, a professor at Texas Tech and author of Born to Be Wild: The Rise of the American Motorcyclist.
There was, of course, an overlap between motorcycle clubs and leather culture. However, most biker clubs operated on a straight white men-only policy, the exceptions being the specifically gay ones like the Satyrs.
“Do what you want to do.”
What links the Hells Angels and the Village People?
How The All-American Biker Birthed A Gay Subculture.
The stereotypes of bikers are so ingrained in the culture that it’s rare to stop and think about how odd it is—on the one hand, you have the Sons Of Anarchy style outlaw biker, and on the other, the leather-capped big-mustached Village People one.
Having witnessed and experienced unspeakable horrors, many found it difficult to get back to the relative mundanity of the nine-to-five and pleasant weekends in America’s newly sprawling suburbs. One of the groups involved, the Pissed Off Bastards, then birthed the most famous motorcycle club in the world, the Hells Angels.
This idea was taken further by cinema.
The romanticism and ultra-masculinity, the freedom and camaraderie, and the overlap with BDSM of tight fits, straps, and buckles really struck a chord, and gay leather bars began opening, becoming regional centers of gay culture. The Angels viewed themselves and their aggressive behavior as so hyper-masculine that no behavior, no matter how homoerotic, could erase their inherent heterosexuality.
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The Hell’s Angels would probably agree with Ward’s assertions.