Raical faeries (also faeries and faes) are a loosely affiliated worldwide network of mostly gay men seeking to "reject hetero-imitation" and redefine gay identity; many are also pagans or members of counterculture movements. The Faeries trace the origin of their movement's name to a "Spiritual Conference for Radical Faeries" called in 1979 by Harry Hay, John Burside, Don Kilhefner, and Mitch Walker in Benson, Arizona. The movement has spread throughout the world over the past decades since, in tandem with the larger gay rights movement, challenging the commercialization and patriarchal aspects of modern gay life while celebrating pagan constructs and rituals, and adapting rural living and environmentally sustainable concepts to modern technologies as part of human creative expression.