Queer Elites Are Still Elites
Beginning in the period between the world wars, and accelerating over the last half-century, the global economic order and political sphere have been restructured to the benefit of a category of people I call “symbolic capitalists.” Who are symbolic capitalists? Folks who make a living from what they know, who they know, and how they’re known. People who work in fields like media, tech, finance, consulting, administration, education, research, entertainment, and the arts. If you’re reading this essay, chances are high that you yourself are a symbolic capitalist. Like me.
By virtually any empirical measure, symbolic capitalists are elites. We are among the primary “winners” in the prevailing socioeconomic order. However, symbolic capitalists have a hard time recognizing the ways in which we benefit from and perpetuate social inequalities because we often define ourselves as allies or tribunes not only of LGBT people broadly, but of the most marginalized and disadvantaged. And this self-perception is not entirely unearned. As I detail at length in my recent book, We Have Never Been Woke (2024), there are deep and long-standing ties between the LGBT community and the symbolic professions going back more than a century.
In the contemporary context, as urbanist Richard Florida’s research has shown, symbolic capitalists in the US tend to congregate in cities with a vibrant “gay scene.” LGBT Americans are, in turn, especially likely to work in the symbolic professions compared to other fields.
Among cisgender heterosexuals, those who are most likely to become symbolic capitalists (folks who are highly educated, relatively affluent, urban or suburban, liberal, and white) are also especially likely to identify as “allies” to LGBT people. Meanwhile, symbolic capitalist employers such as Match, Disney, Oracle, and Salesforce have been at the forefront of pushing back against anti-LGBT legislation in recent years (albeit with mixed motives and results).
Moreover, starting after 2011, symbolic capitalists (and affiliated institutions) underwent dramatic shifts in how they talk and think about social justice issues and engage in political action. Alongside causes like environmentalism, anti-racism, feminism, and disability accommodations, LGBT rights and representation were central to this “Great Awokening.” And this did result in radically increased visibility for LGBT people and LGBT causes.
For a sense of how pronounced these shifts were:
In 2012, only 14% of major studio films included an identifiably LGBT character, and only half of those passed the “Vito Russo Test” (meaning, the character was an important part of the story and was not defined solely or predominantly by their sexuality). By 2020, nearly a quarter (23%) included identifiably LGBT characters — a 64% increase — and 90% of those movies passed the test. Representation in television and streaming shows followed a similar trajectory. The share of regular and recurring LGBT actors more than doubled from 2012 through 2020 — including a rapid expansion of queer and trans characters in children’s and family programming. LGBT representation also grew more racially diverse. By 2020, a majority of LGBT characters on the small screen were non-white. There was exponential growth in LGBT characters in video games too — with an ever-larger share of those characters featured as protagonists.
Entertainment was not unique in these regards. News media and academic research also began to focus much more intensely on gender, sexuality, and LGBT issues. So did book publishing. Meanwhile, funding for LGBT advocacy organizations more than doubled from 2012 to 2021 (regrettably, non-trivial shares of that money seem to have been misused).
Note: Dollars have been adjusted for inflation to 2021 dollars. Source: Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.
Simultaneously, new forms of gender and sexual identification proliferated, and symbolic capitalists began adopting these labels at significantly higher rates — including growing numbers of celebrities and influencers such as Kaitlyn Jenner and Elliot Page (trans), Megan Rapinoe (lesbian), Miley Cyrus (pansexual and gender-fluid), and Frank Ocean (bisexual).
Put simply, over the course of the last decade, there has been a dramatic increase in the prominence of LGBT individuals and issues, driven heavily by symbolic capitalists, their outputs, and their associated institutions. And yet, as Jean Baudrillard famously put it, “Behind every image, something has disappeared.”
In the case of LGBT rights, what has disappeared over the last 15 years are the challenges, preferences, and priorities of “normie” LGBT folks, which have been largely displaced by the preferences and priorities of queer and trans symbolic capitalists. The most genuinely disadvantaged LGBT people have receded even further from view than “normies.”
While many LGBT folks have enjoyed increased acceptance, opportunities, and prosperity in recent decades, others continue to face significant difficulties in meeting their basic needs or attaining the minimal levels of security, dignity, and respect commensurate with living a decent life. But rather than keeping the focus on the most vulnerable, there has been a growing preoccupation with the challenges elites face, such as disparities within high-paying and high-prestige occupations, or “microaggressions” many encounter while navigating professional spaces. Or the kinds of mental health issues that are uniquely prevalent among highly educated and relatively affluent white progressives. Who knew marginalized people were all so well-credentialed, photogenic, and successful?
To be clear, this isn’t to say that symbolic capitalists are all cynics or charlatans pretending to champion the downtrodden for personal gain. Rather, it’s human nature. People get caught up in their own milieus and bubbles, with some unhelpful ideology mixed in, and become blind to the ways their ideas and actions harm those who are actually the most disadvantaged.
This is why the more existential struggles faced by working-class or poor LGBT people are evoked, at best, in passing — when queer elites attempt to implicitly or explicitly portray themselves as being in the “same boat” as these others. In reality, the prospects and life experiences of gay, bi, and trans folks tend to be highly polarized, meaning that collectively speaking, LGBT Americans are more likely to be at the tail ends of both sides of the socioeconomic spectrum.
As compared to cisgender heterosexuals, LGBT Americans are more likely to be high-school dropouts and college grads. They are more likely to experience homelessness, poverty, food insecurity, trauma or violence — and they’re also more likely to be wealthy. Less-educated bisexual women, trans Americans, and blatantly gender-nonconforming individuals are particularly likely to fall into these former categories as compared to cisgender lesbian or gay Americans (whose overall poverty rates are about the same as their cisgender straight peers). People who are both sexual and racial/ethnic minorities, or who live in rural areas, also tend to face more adversity.
Meanwhile, highly educated and/or white cisgender lesbian, gay, or bi Americans, especially those who live in urban areas, are more likely to skew towards the upper end of the socioeconomic distribution. In terms of household prosperity, lesbians generally earn more than straight women. And much like their cisgender and heterosexual peers, married LGBT Americans are more likely to be educated and prosperous than most others in the US. In fact, on average, same-sex married couples enjoy significantly higher household income than their heterosexual married counterparts. Recent research likewise suggests that children raised by married same-sex couples tend to outperform most others in terms of educational attainment as well.
Since the onset of the Great Awokening, the gaps between LGBT people in these two camps have only grown. However, this isn’t something symbolic capitalists talk about much, despite our heightened focus over the last decade on the challenges still faced by LGBT people. Erasing these distinctions does little to help the genuinely disadvantaged. If anything, it trivializes the challenges they face — which is why LGBT Americans who are experiencing significant suffering and privation rarely lump themselves in with elites, pretending as though their hustling for food or physical safety is analogous to professionals’ struggles to outcompete “cishet” rivals for a promotion at work. No, the conflation is strictly by elites.
These tendencies, which are most pronounced among symbolic capitalists, should not be mistaken for genuine solidarity. Symbolic capitalists are not putting their own prospects, resources, and well-being at stake in order to help others in any meaningful sense. Instead, they’re trying to leverage collective identities in the service of personal gain — often at the expense of the genuinely vulnerable, marginal, and disadvantaged in society. However, it’s difficult for elites who are engaging in these behaviors to recognize what they’re actually doing. As the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu put it, “Symbolic power is that invisible power which can be exercised only with the complicity of those who do not want to know that they are subject to it or even that they themselves exercise it.”
The good news is, there are some questions that we can ask ourselves to render these tendencies more transparent. For example:
Might I be exploiting ambiguous labels or umbrella terms to lump myself in with others who are not, in fact, in the “same boat” as me? Might more specific descriptions or terms be more appropriate?
When talking about LGBT issues, how often do I slip into discussing my own desires, experiences, feelings, hobby horses, and pet peeves instead of focusing on people who are genuinely disadvantaged in society?
Am I directly or indirectly comparing my own anxieties over status, professional success, and “First World problems” (e.g. the “microaggressions” or imposter syndrome I face at work) with the more serious problems like physical violence or food insecurity that others have to deal with, especially in less liberal parts of the world?
If I make a claim about what LGBT people want or need — is this based on representative and reliable empirical data? Am I accurately conveying the most pressing priorities and concerns of the majority of the group? Or am I, intentionally or not, substituting my own preferences and interests for those of the group writ large?
Am I implicitly or explicitly portraying myself as a kind of spokesperson for the group I’m affiliating with, even though I may not be particularly representative in truth (given the high levels of socioeconomic and cultural polarization among LGBT people)?
Am I engaging on these issues in ways that could plausibly “move the needle” and convince persuadable fence-sitters or skeptics? Or am I indulging in rhetoric/behavior that is easy, useful, and satisfying for me, but may be alienating to the people who need to be convinced?
If engaging in activism: does my advocacy provide tangible assistance to any actual living person? Or is it, at bottom, symbolic gesturing that may signal my own righteousness, but does little to actually solve concrete problems for folks who need help?
Brutal honesty with respect to questions like these can be deeply illuminating — although it will often expose realities we’d rather avoid. What to do with the information we glean from these inquiries, however, is not a social science question. It’s a matter of politics and morality.
Indeed, it’s not my place, as a cisgender heterosexual, to pop into a queer space and tell anyone what to call themselves or how to live their lives. These are choices people must make based on their own values and priorities. But speaking as a sociologist, I encourage folks to bear in mind that — whether in an LGBT context or not — claiming affiliation with a particular group doesn't necessarily mean that you are representative of the group. It doesn’t automatically entitle you to make grandiose (and often inaccurate) claims on behalf of others who happen to identify with the group. It doesn’t mean a “win” for you personally is a win for everyone else in the group — nor does it entail that a slight against you personally is a slight against the group as a whole.
In these populist times, symbolic capitalists and elites in general are often framed as the enemy. Reality is more complicated. Almost any social movement that has actually succeeded has flourished in part because of support by elites — or a subset thereof. Symbolic capitalists, despite their faults, have also done a lot of social good. However, there is plenty of room to grow in that regard. Being more honest and conscious of the differences between ourselves and the people we purport to represent and serve is a good place to start. Symbolic capitalists have every incentive to erase these distinctions. However, if we’re truly committed to liberal social justice, it’s time to recognize that indulging in these kinds of social distortions is a luxury others cannot afford.
Published June 15, 2025
Published in Issue XIII: Heretic
