But–to bring this essay full-circle–Loki is a pretty queer god, and this goes hand-in-hand with his shunning by more conservative Asatru elements (and Christian missionaries). He’s a shapeshifter and a cross-dresser, who is heavily implied to engage in all sorts of kink, and at one point gives birth to Odin’s horse Sleipnir. (For what it’s worth, I’ve had some non-heathen pagan friends, highly immersed in kink at present, suggest to me that Loki’s painful, humiliating binding, detailed in Voluspa, influences my own sexual proclivities. Seeing how all the personal gnosis I can muster implies that he hates and is ashamed of the binding, and it’s torn his family apart (he is bound with his son’s own intestines), I was outstandingly pissed off at the suggestion. So I guess there are limits to what I’ll claim, when it comes to this.)

I don’t think it’s coincidence that he seized me when I was young. And I’m coming to see drag and queer activism, generally (as much as I’m involved in it, which isn’t as much as I’d like) as a devotional act. For whatever reason–quite possibly, at least in part, my queerness–he’s a god who adores me and cares for me, and I figure that no matter what anybody else thinks it’s the least I can do to give him some attention and love back, through queer, genderfucking acts.

Hail Loki. And in the words of the modern skalds, fuck the haters.