Prejudice and Socioeconomic Status Within Gay Activism

My comments and question(s) this week come from "A Queer Ladder of Social Mobility".


As I've read this, a few things have come up for me. The most prominent for me is still how sections of the gay community (the homophile activists in this case) can completely reject and even belittle other members (the gay bar-goers/owners). This also applies to the relationship mentioned with the covert/overt homosexual. Both the activist and the covert homosexual depends upon their counterpart in order to achieve their own ends, but at the same time manage to express disdain and disrespect for these people.


I also noticed that socioeconomic status seems to play a large role in gayness. For example, the author states that many secret homosexuals have a higher socioeconomic position than do more "out" homosexuals. Later, she talks about how the DOB lost half its founding members when the working-class and middle-class women disagreed on the group's function. I find it interesting that in this case it was the working-class women who subsequently left the group and the middle-class women got their way. This leads me to question where we would be now if those of lower socioeconomic status had been allowed to make more decisions about the movement. 

The magazine published by the DOB

Finally, I noticed on a few occasions that perhaps the underlying issue (especially in the first case) is that the fear of being prejudiced against may lead to the prejudice of others. For instance, when the DOB was scared that "butch" women would scare away the "proper" lesbians, they instituted rules banning women from wearing "men's" slacks (whatever those are). Essentially, in order to avoid the prejudice of others, they worked very hard to play into mainstream gender roles that didn't necessarily fit with would-be members. In this way I think it can be said that their fear led them to commit injustices against their own, i.e. the fear of prejudice begets prejudice.


Questions: What do you think would be different if poor gay men and women had had more control over the gay movement? 


Did the activists actually harm the community more with their actions?