Why I Despise the Old Gard
Author: Chuck and Donna Cosimano
Filed in: old guard
Because they're a waste of skin? Ok, this is going to be a very difficult article for me to write because I'm going to try to be somewhat objective about this subject and not drown myself in my own venom in the process. So let me make my point of view very clear at the outset. I dislike the Old Guard intensely. I have no use either for its customs or its pretensions, both of which I find to be either absurd or insulting. Now, that being said, how do I go about explaining it? Hmm, well, I suppose I can begin with a parameter of sorts. I don't care what the Old Guard does in their own groups. That is none of my affair. I'm not a part of it, I have nothing to say in the matter and just because I think they are acting like a bunch of nitwits is not going have any bearing on anything they do. On the contrary, I would be dumbfounded if it did. My objection is to their attitude towards the scene and everyone else in it.
I'm sure you all have heard the old religious joke about the man who dies and ends up in heaven and St. Peter is showing him around. He gets taken past groups of all sorts of denominations and religions and then he sees a small group huddled in a corner. He asks St. Peter who that group is and he is told, "Oh, those are the Catholics, but don't say anything to them because they think they're the only ones here."
That seems to be what the Old Guard is like. Its members labor under the delusion that for some reason they are the final arbiters of all that matters in the scene and that everything is judged my their standards and customs, no matter how ridiculous and antediluvian those may be. Never mind that the bulk of the rest of us find their costumes absurd, their practices revolting. They have the only true BDSM and everyone who does not conform to their way of doing things is not "real."
Of course we aren't real! We're all holographic projections! And the Moon is made of green cheese.
The best way to describe this attitude came from, of all people, Dr. Erwin Lutzer, who is pastor of the Moody Church in Chicago. Now, at this point you are no doubt wondering why I, of all people, would be referring to an Xtian, but one must know the ways of the enemy and so I listen to their stuff on occasion. Anyway, in 1975 Dr. Lutzer wrote a little book while on the faculty of the Moody Bible Institute and was on their radio station being interviewed about it. He talked about the good fundamentalist family who never watched television, danced, went to movies or did other fun things and while they realized that their neighbors chose not to live that way, they assumed that they were well respected for their abstemiousness. He then said, "What they don"t realize it that the neighbors just think they are crazy."
And that is the problem the Old Guard faces. They do not realize the level of contempt they are viewed with. Secure in their illusion that they are somehow the keepers of traditions that exist only in their own groups, they seek to lord their imagined status over others and never cease trying impose their ways on everyone else.
Let's take the costumes for example. They have the custom, harmless in itself, of "earning one's leather." Now that is not a bad thing within their groups. Certainly something given for recognition of accomplishment is going to have a unique value for the recipient. My own signature blade was given to me by the Chicago magickal community in recognition of some service I had done for them. So there is nothing wrong with the custom.
The problem comes from the assumption that everyone else is supposed to follow the same custom. I cannot conceive of a situation where I would object to someone using a blade that was not a gift. The idea is laughable. But there are those in the Old Guard who are horrified that people will actually go out and BUY their leather clothing! And it gets better. They not only expect everyone to have "earned" their clothing, they expect them to bow and scrape to those who have done so, even if that earning process was nothing more than being pissed on by a dozen men in the bathroom of some bar somewhere (and I'm not making that one up!)
How are such people to be taken seriously? Yet they expect to be and are amazed when they are not.
And of course how can we forget the insignificant idea of PROTOCOL. With their silly lists of rules that they go around with trying to get everyone to follow they succeed only in making themselves disliked, avoided and ignored. After all, the question may legitimately asked of them, "Who the hell are you to try to tell anyone how to behave?"
And, of course, the answer is, "Just a bunch of nuts."
But wait a minute. Maybe I'm being too harsh, or then again maybe not. After all, if someone were to go to a vanilla gathering and get upset over the way people dressed or how they greeted each other, everyone would think that that person needed some serious professional counseling. Likewise if someone assumed that their relationship dynamics should be the same for everyone else that person would be branded a hopeless clown. Yet the Old Guard does exactly that and lives under the illusion that because they have somehow managed to attain some rank in their own little rank world everyone else is somehow mystically obligated to modify their ways to suit them.
Perhaps it is time they realized that the world does not work that way. And finally, let us not forget that they view themselves as the holders of the Sacred and Holy Traditions. Well, a tradition is nothing more than glorified mold on the walls. It is nothing more than something somebody thought up and persuaded other people to go along with and over time gathers a vernier of authority because it is OLD. If that is the case they can keep their traditions along with their leather walkers and colostomy bags.
They are the past.
We are the future.
Reprinted with permission from: http://www.geocities.com/daggerdom/
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- Why Old Guard? by David Masterson
- Old Guard, New Guard by Gayle Rubin
