When lesbians buy houses

How does a community determine
when it has "sold out"?

by JOHANNE CADORETTE

Last year, tired of being at the mercy of landlords and sky-rocketing rents on the Plateau, my girlfriend and I bought a condo. I was excited about living in a place we would own, proud to be taking control of my financial future. I never thought I would end up feeling guilty about it. But there you have it: as absurd as it sounds, sometimes I feel guilty about being a lesbian homeowner. How is it that my real estate and sexual identity might clash?

I became aware of my guilt when I realized that the "I Bought a Condo" story I pull out for acquaintances wanting to know what I've been up to, varied depending on my audience. With lesbians, it was all about how long it had taken to scrape a down payment together, what a good deal the place had been, and how the mortgage is cheaper than rent was. While that's all true, I found that I emphasized different parts of the story when talking to, say, gay men, straight colleagues or family. With this audience, the story mysteriously shifted to colour schemes, the cost of hardwood floors, and my newfound passion for household appliances.

Homosexual homeowner panic

Curious, I started talking to other dykes about Homeowner Guilt to see if I was alone with my neurosis. I quickly found I was not, and that lesbian guilt is not limited to the realm of homeownership. I spoke to a dozen dyke activists, freelancers, students and professionals. All of them claim to have felt guilty at some point about all sorts of stuff related to money, including spending it on trips, buying new cars, owning businesses that make money "off the backs of gays and lesbians," being better off than their friends, having employees and being landlords. One lesbian who works for a major financial institution admitted that when she sees someone panhandling, she feels guilty about her role in the system that perpetuates poverty.

Ah, The system. No one ever specifies what that system is, but we all seem to know what it means to be part of it (or not part of it). I'm sure lots of lesbians have no problem having cars, cash, triplexes or being part of this system, but why is it that so many of us do?

Are all dykes poor?

"There is this idea in the community that lesbians must be poor," says Line Chamberland, sociologist and assistant professor at UQÀM's IREF (Institut de recherches et d'études féministes).

Yet, Chamberland says, it's difficult to draw such a conclusion decisively, since little research has been done about lesbian poverty. One voluntary study conducted in the United States did show that while lesbians earn less than gay men, they earn roughly the same as heterosexual women. (It should be noted that the lesbians surveyed tended to work longer and have a higher level of education than heterosexual women.) A survey conducted by La revue treize, a now-defunct Montreal lesbian magazine, found the range of salaries in the lesbian community was pretty diverse.

"The Treize survey showed that there is a wide range of revenues in the lesbian community in Quebec. For example, some of the respondents had no savings at all, but one had about $700,000."

Despite the findings in both surveys, the lesbian community embraces the posture of poverty. It is not uncommon to hear lesbian activists citing poverty as a factor in several issues affecting lesbians. Heck, I've even used the argument myself. Chamberland believes part of the reason for that may be the legacy inherited from early lesbian activism. In Montreal during the '80s for instance, it was much harder to come out of the closet at work, and many lesbian activists simply chose not to work in mainstream environments. It became a generally accepted idea in many lesbian activist circles that you had to be poor to be out, because you couldn't possibly be out in a corporate, well-paid work environment. There is also the feminist legacy to consider: the feminist movement evolved out of radical, left-wing, grass-roots activism at a time when women had little or no political or socio-economic power.

The risk of alienation

Chamberland argues that while there certainly is plenty of poverty in the lesbian community (in Canada, women still earn about 30 per cent less than men on average), defining the lesbian community as poor is not only inaccurate, but counterproductive. The image of lesbians as inherently poor could be alienating wealthier lesbians, who, feeling like they are not part of the community, may be reluctant to join groups and organizations and therefore are never solicited for financial support.

Chamberland also believes that the poverty argument is holding the lesbian community back. When organizations fail or rifts occur, it is easier to blame lack of resources than to take an honest look at what's going on, even when financial issues have played a role, she points out.

So if there is no proof that lesbians are generally poor, why do so many of us feel guilty about having an even slightly higher standard of living? "Lesbians feel guilty about not only having money, but also about choosing to indulge in some of the things it allows," says one lesbian I spoke with about the topic. "The guilt is partly about being women and having things what we generally assume to be the territory of men."

Could it also be that some of us are having a collective identity crisis, caught between our community's self-image as doubly-oppressed and our individual desires to benefit from some of the advances we have gained thanks to the tireless work of that same community? And who says not living in poverty necessarily means abandoning all political sensitivities for the values of the establishment?

I'd like to think that there must be some kind of happy medium. Maybe I need to believe that as lesbians, we can turn parts of the system to our advantage and leave others behind. Besides, I'm glad I could call on the services of a lesbian banker if I chose to, and that I can fix my own leaky plumbing rather than begging my straight landlord who's laughing all the way to the bank with my hard-earned lezzie dollars.