February 22, 2008

• Opinion, Rumor, Speculation, and Guesswork

  This is the way I remember bikers looking to my eyes forty years ago.

  

  [photo credit:  Doug Barber]

  This is how I see them now.
  

  The old man playing darts at right (in an image I captured a few summers ago at a party in my neighborhood) is more or less typical of Alaska Hells Angels.  He is older than many, but reports in the media indicate that the average age of the population of motorcycle riders, outlaws included, is increasing.

  I said in my recent entry about outlaw bikers that I haven’t been hanging out with them since I moved to Alaska.  This is true, but it doesn’t mean that I have had no contact with them.  Years after I moved to this area of the Susitna Valley, the Hells Angels from Anchorage established a party place and “clubhouse” nearby (cleared some land and moved a trailer onto it).  I hear their bikes go by on the highway in summer, and run into some of the guys occasionally.  The number of young ones seems to be diminishing.

  When I moved to Alaska, the Brothers MC were the only outlaw motorcycle club in the state or at least the only one I knew about, the only one I ever saw any sign of.  From this point on, if I forget to qualify or attribute some questionable statement or characterization, just refer to my title.  First, I heard that the Hells Angels were trying to take over the Brothers, then there were no Brothers and there were a lot of clean, new Angel colors on the backs of former Brothers.  It had not been an entirely peaceful transition.

  I’m still bemused at this message “Coxtom” went to so much trouble to deliver to me over and over again without leaving me a way to get back to him and respond to his question:

  Did Oregon OMG’s keep the HA out of here? I don’t think Oregon has a HA
  chapter. It makes me proud to be a native. I wish you would come down
  harder on the HA as they are growing in power and numbers. I am so glad
  that we live in a time and place where no woman/human has to live the
  way you did. The HA uses/used fear to get what they wanted, but those
  days are gone. I wish you and all of the people/woman that got violated
  by the HA would take action. Many are dead. It is not too late.
  Monsters are always monsters. You may save a life by being retaliatory
  rater than reminiscent. Those same sick fucks are still alive and
  destroying lives. At least two lives that I know of. Either way, great
  writing.
  
  Fuck You Hell’s Angels
  Coxtom

  Although, to get to the comment boxes, this nitwit at least had to scroll through the entries in which I mentioned being “violated” by Gypsy Jokers, he seems to think I should retaliate against the Hells Angels (“HA”), some of whose members retaliated against the Jokers at the time.  I probably made a misstatement in that entry the other day, when I said those guys had no chivalrous intent.  Nobody knows what was in all their minds.  Some of them were my friends. 

  I was known as Gross to a few of my closest friends and as “that mouthy redhead” to many guys who were not even aware of the existence of some of the quieter women around.  I had gained a lot of respect, however grudging, for my mechanical skills and my enthusiastic and imaginative efforts at “freaking the straights” and showing class.  One might even say it was a chivalrous gesture when I was offered the first whack at Linda for having abandoned me to the Gypsy Jokers.  Nevertheless, I am sure that the Hells Angels’ perception of my rape as a valid excuse to raid Gypsy Joker territory had to figure into their motivation.

  Members of one club are likely to object that their group does not deserve to be mistaken for another or lumped together with all the others, but the fact remains that many of them are associated in criminal conspiracies, nearly all of them observe similar mores and customs, and the government, media, and “straight citizens” tend to lump them together.  If there is some difficulty inherent in trying to encompass all outlaw motorcycle clubs under a single umbrella, there is an even greater difficulty in assuming identical motivations for individual men in those clubs.

  My friend and fellow rape survivor here on Xanga, has posted the first cliffhanging part of her reconstruction of the story of her rape by yet another outlaw motorcycle gang, neither Hells Angels nor Gypsy Jokers.  When she came to Xanga, she messaged me with a multitude of questions, seeking to understand why anyone would do such a thing.  That presented me with more than a few difficulties.  As soon as I began trying to answer her questions, it became apparent that there was a vast philosophical gulf between us.  I don’t see the world in terms of black and white or right and wrong.  She does.  She was seeing them as evil, while I was seeing them as human.

  I did my best to explain their belief system, and we went around a few times over concepts such as chivalry (a medieval belief system based upon the assumption of the inherent superiority of males of high, “gentle”, or “noble” birth), and the evolution of small females and large males by natural selection versus creation of one to take care of the other. 

  Needless to say (to anyone who knows me), I’m not about to be converted to her philosophy.  Neither do I suffer because she doesn’t share my beliefs, nor worry overmuch about whether she ever achieves the understanding she seeks.  Everyone has his or her own beliefs.  It is not my job to alter those beliefs even if they form a barrier to an understanding of reality, and even if, like the outlaw bikers’ beliefs and the beliefs of religious fundamentalists, I find them bizarre and counterproductive.  What is, IS.

  Despite my thinking that their ways are bizarre throwbacks to less enlightened cultures, I don’t find the bikers hard to understand at all.  Most people on this planet live in cultures where women are undervalued and/or viewed with superstitious fear.   China now has a severe shortage of women and has developed the unique phenomenon of bachleor towns, because their government mandated population control and their mores and customs dictated the killing or sending out of the country of their female children.   Some Africans mutilate the genitals of young girls to discourage any interest in sexual activity.  Some religious nuts in this country and elsewhere are just as unappreciative of their women, so why not irreligious nuts as well?

  To understand these guys, it is also helpful to understand the psychology of mobs.  It has been said that the intelligence of a mob is equal to the IQ of its stupidest member, divided by  the number of members.   Anyone who doubts the capacity for ordinary “good” people to demonize and torture those who are different from themselves need only look at Abu Ghraib or the Stanford Prison Experiment.

  The outlaw bikers that I got to know intimately were more emotionally vulnerable than most men.  Most of them had been in military organizations and appeared to need to be part of some group that was perceived as powerful.  None of them was sufficiently subordinate to succeed at a military career, however.  Virtually every one of them exhibited signs of one or more of the Cluster B personality disorders:  antisocial, borderline, histrionic and/or narcissistic.  They talked a lot about brotherhood and solidarity against their enemies, and they fought a lot among themselves.

  When considering their behavior, it is also important to bear in mind the influence of drugs on their personalities, particularly alcohol at the time I knew them, and now also meth and crack, I have been told.  Given the facts, it all makes sense.
  

  • 5:56 pm
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