For a Spell: Sissie Collectivism and Radical Witchery in the Southeast

In the Southeastern United States of the late 1970s, a regional network of radical communal gay households formed in the face of rising New Right terror. Comprised of primarily white, self-described sissies, the "Southeast Network," as it came to be known, spanned from the Ozarks, to New Orleans, to Appalachian Tennessee. Though this network was short-lived, its legacy lives on today through Short Mountain Sanctuary, a thriving member of the international network of Radical Faeries. Jason Ezell's intimate account of the formation and dissolution of these sissie houses reveals a little-known history of Southern gay liberation, nonbinary gender expression, and radical feminism and femininity.

Drawing from journals, letters, oral histories, collective manifestos, and newsletters, Ezell illustrates how these gay households nurtured their community through lesbian feminist practices such as collectivism, consciousness-raising, witchcraft rituals, and rural gatherings. As people and practices traveled from one house to another, these linked houses attempted to conjure underground sanctuaries for queer southerners. Preserving their moving stories, Ezell details the visions, experiments, and shortfalls of these radical households in their attempts to build solidarity, resist mounting right-wing violence, and sustain their revolutionary dreams for queer movements yet to come.