On being gay...and poor

On Friday, during a conversation at work, discussion diverted to queer migrants. An acquaintance of the person I was talking to is a Brazilian gay man who left Brazil and is living in Ireland. He left Brazil to get away because of his sexuality. I was told his mother does not know he's gay and when I half-jokingly said that mummies have a tendency to 'detect' .. the reply was "you know, they're coming from a poor background, I doubt she'd know anything about these things".

Acknowledging the fact that I am not aware of any findings which show that parents have a higher tendency to detect their offspring's sexuality, I was struck by the association of sexuality with money. Presumably referring to sexuality, "these things" become loaded with class, race and political ideologies.

In other words, being gay for this person (and many others like her) means a cool, well-off, classy gay man flashing his pink pound around town. According to these ideas, knowing about homosexuality and anything 'gay' requires class and money. A woman in a village wouldn't know about "these things". I would go on and argue that the same sexuality is associated with the urban areas and cities and as Halberstam have discussed, the queer sexuality and gender is transported to the cosmopolitan life in the city. It becomes a complex topic of discussion, a policy issue to be dealt with and a right to fight for. Yet, in the rural area it becomes a nothingness with no history.

The mother mentioned above has been stripped of any knowledge she would have acquired throughout her life and her community/ies. She becomes a old woman in a developing country - no class, no education, no money, no power.

How about the Brazilian gay guy? Does he consciously disguise himself under the dominant Western idea of the cool gay guy? Or do WE bestow that idea on him, refusing to see beyond the outer skin?