Our Fierce Advocate...

...Nope not President Obama. I'm referring to the newspaper/magazine. I always feel slightly smaller and pissed off after reading 'The Advocate.' Maybe it's because I don't make enough money? Not really, it's because too many of the major gay news outlets are ridden with class division and this publication is one of biggest perpetrators.

'The Advocate' focuses very heavily on the New York City centered, hyper consumerist, upper-middle-class brand of homosexuality. I could also write about how almost every photo is completely and unapologetically gender-normative, but that would go beyond the relevance of this post.

Just to serve as a small example of their disregard for LGBT of the lower classes, 'The Advocate' created a photo project called "A Day in Gay America," which contained all different pictures that were supposed to represent typical gay Americans doing typical things. Here is the project's caption:

"What does it look like to be gay in America in 2010? There are some people who insist that if you don’t look like a stereotype, you’re just not doing it right. But the truth is that our gay lives are simultaneously as mundane as those of our heterosexual peers and more wildly varied than even we acknowledge at times."

Among the 37 photographs of typical gay Americans are Rachael Maddow, Jake Shears, and other celebrities. Also, most of the photographs featured people with well-paying, white color jobs or opportunities, such as an NBC correspondent, a man who works behind the scenes for the US Senate, and a paleontology doctoral student. This is hardly an effort to include representation of the daily lives of countless LGBTQ Americans. Since class is so important to people's identity and lifestyle in the United States, any project that claims to represent the daily lives of people within the American Gay Community must have pictures of people from all class levels.

Where is the inclusion of the gay worker who struggles to earn a living? What about the unemployed? What about the lesbian who had to drop out of college due to tuition costs? I don't see any photo of people who have been impoverished due to the economic effects of social discrimination. There is not even one photograph of a blue-collar worker. Perhaps gay blue-collar workers do not exist?

The project does include a picture of a Sylvia's Place worker (Sylvia's Place is a shelter for homeless LGBTQ youth). At least they mentioned the existence of homeless LGBTQ youth, but the photograph featured only the presumably successful staff member. Only if the photo actually included a homeless LGBTQ youth would I then have labeled it a token effort.

I do not want to criticize the 'Advocate' without good reason, it's just that as "the worlds leading source for LGBT news and entertainment," the publication has an obligation to represent the full spectrum of the Gay Community. Class stratification in America hurts, and sadly it is no different within the Gay Community.