The Demographically Correct Homosexual: Adweek on the Upbeat GLBT Mood in a Down Economy

There is a corner of of the world where gay activism and gay consumerism meet in an alliance that believes money buys acceptance. This is the world of advertising. And today Adweek has published a new study from Witeck-Combs Communications and Harris Interactive that says:

"57 percent of GLBT respondents said they expect the economy to improve in the coming year, vs. 45 percent of the survey's heterosexuals. Moreover, 31 percent of gay and lesbian respondents said they think their own household's financial situation will improve during the next six months, vs. 24 percent of the heterosexuals." The usual reasons are trotted out for this (child-free households, though less true today than before) and some news ones are mentioned, including the Obama election (though with friends like these...).

I am not sure these pollsters spent any time on Fire Island this summer, where several houses went into foreclosure and rentals were off a good percentage. They believe that glbt people have been less affected by the downturn because we hold more white collar jobs, a questionable fact to say the least. Perhaps more gay men (as opposed to lesbians, bi folk and trans folk) feel secure enough in white collar environments to come out:

David Paisley, senior projects manager at Community Marketing. "But we have found that gays and lesbians tend to be overrepresented in careers such as education, healthcare and urban core professional careers. These jobs have been less affected by the recession than jobs like construction or manufacturing. In some ways, traditional gay and lesbian careers track closer to women as a whole in the U.S., and these types of jobs have experienced fewer job losses." He remarks that the pattern of unemployment has led some people to dub the current recession a "man-cession," since "it is traditional male jobs that have been hit the hardest. 'Will and Grace' have done much better in this recession."

I suspect the former employees of Men's Vogue might disagree. I suspect that the teachers at schools across the country seeing salary freezes or union givebacks would disagree — and the adjunct professors without tenure would disagree. Nurses would disagree. But this doesn't fit the desired storyline in selling our "market" to corporations. Because this sale is just as much an advertising strategy to win dollars from clients as it is a semi-political strategy on the part of the queer folk who do have white collar jobs — working for polling agencies.  

For many years there have been studies purporting to show that lgbt people earn more money and/or have a greater disposable income, so we are more attractive as a market for certain consumer goods. This study repeats this "fact" which applies overwhelmingly to white gay men in the professions:

"The GLBT market may be the last people on earth who can afford my product." That's in sync with what Combs has seen: "With more discretionary income, GLBTs can spend money on more luxuries than the average household."

Spare me.

It is certainly true that there was a time these studies were important, since the nascent local and national gay media struggled for advertising dollars (which is after all, the media model we follow in this country). But there is also the confusion that acceptance buy business in consumerist society is the same as social acceptance and a way to win political rights.

I have no idea where the economy is going, though I am certainly nowhere near as hopeful as this study suggests my brethren and sistren are. And I am not buying any luxury goods anytime soon. Wish I could, but nowadays I depend on freelance. The job market for this urban media professional is tougher than I've ever seen it — and I started in the biz in the recession of 1976. Will things get better? Sure. When? Beats me. What I do know is that the way the lgbt market is sold doesn't seem to change.

Comments

[Piet]

I agree with your assessment of the economy. I worked through stagflation the first time around, and I see many of the same indicators now. My own salary is frozen; on top of that, my firm have suspended all bonuses and recently re-wrote the vacation policy to cap at three weeks and the personal leave policy (sick days) at ten days. Essentially, that discounted my annual pay by 15%. No luxuries in this house, not for a long time. Where I work, the streets are a ghost-town at 9:00 AM, and public transit ridership is down 5% or more. I think it's going to be a very long recovery.