Hippie Faggot Freak: The Making of a Gay Liberationist

Growing up in 1950s and early 60s America, Dale Michell was an outsider from the start. He learned at an early age the price one paid for being different. Bullied and harassed, Dale started seeking an escape even before puberty revealed just how dangerous his predicament was. By fifteen, taunts had turned into blows, and Dale lived under a near-constant threat of assault.

But there was hope. The whiff of revolution was everywhere. Black Power, free love, androgyny, LSD, and Haight Ashbury were all the rage. Freaks like Andy Warhol, Timothy Leary, Little Richard, and Janis Joplin were in; stuffed shirts like Billy Graham, Liberace, and Lawrence Welk were out. It was the perfect time to come out.

Taking it all in, Mitchell embraced Sixties-style rebelliousness with a vengeful vigor. No outrage was too petty or extreme. From bullied teenager to gay barfly to hippie faggot freak to drug-addicted speed junkie, he kept at it, trying to secure an escape from his past. Not until he participated in the Stonewall riots did he finally glimpse something previously unimaginable—a rebellion by and for gay people.

Hippie Faggot Freak: The Making of a Gay Liberationist is the frank, raw, and sometimes harrowing account of a young man’s struggle against seemingly insurmountable odds. New was the idea of living as an out, proud, in-your-face gay man. Dale’s story is the story of one who was among the first.

Thoroughly engaging, the account is also sometimes shocking. Dale’s journey was improvised—traveling a path without blueprints or roadmaps, where there was only a thicket of hatred and lies. As often as not, it led to dead ends. Yet he emerged as something never before seen: a “gay liberationist.” Ultimately, Hippie Faggot Freak is a story of transcendence—of bravery, perseverance, resilience, and, most importantly of all, an unquenchable thirst for freedom.

Praise for Hippie Faggot Freak
“Hear ye, hear ye, youth of today! And you of any age! Read Dale Mitchell’s lively tale of “gumption,” the resistant spirit it took for a gay man born in 1939 to survive and finally thrive in an America determined to kill his sense of self-worth. Thanks, Dale for this deeply moving memoir.”
—Jonathan Ned Katz, author, Love Stories: Sex Between Men Before Homosexuality.

“With unforgettable images and vivid dialogue, Dale Mitchell in his memoir, Hippie Faggot Freak, describes his journey as a bullied and brutalized gay boy from a white, middle class, homophobic family in the mid-Twentieth century. Fleeing his parents, a psychiatrist, and threats of being drafted into the U.S. war in Vietnam when he dropped out of university, Mitchell descended into New York’s Greenwich Village in 1969. In unsparing detail, he takes us with him on a journey of despair, desolation, destitution, and drugging, and introduces us to the sometimes, astonishing queer intellectuals and creative spirits he encounters…. Mitchell’s memoir is a tour de force. Read it! And celebrate the courage and resilience of one gay man whose story is the pulse beat of a generation.”
—Bettina Aptheker, Distinguished Professor Emerita, Feminist Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz

“Dale Mitchell’s Hippie Faggot Freak is a memoir of a queer childhood that vibrantly strikes every terrifying, confusing, and deeply gratifying nuance of what it meant to be a gay boy growing up in the world before Stonewall…Hippie Faggot Freak captures the exhilarating touch, smell and feel of freedom – and details the arduous, frequently bewildering journey to finding it.”
—Michael Bronski, Professor of the Practice in Activism and Media Studies of Women, Gender and Sexuality, Harvard University