Алексей Чадаев Наблюдения, замечания и предложения
«If social climbing, whether in actuality or in fantasy, is well understood, social sinking is not, althoug there’s more of it going on than people notice. Male homosexuals and lesbians, respectively, exemplify these two opposite maneuvers. Ambitious male homosexuals, at least in fantasy, aspire to rise, and from humble origins to ascend to the ownership of antique businesses, art galleries, and hair salons. The object is to end by frequenting the Great. They learn to affect elegant telephone voices and gravitate nstinctively toward «style and the grand. Lesbians, on the contrary, like to sink, dropping from middle-class status to become taxi drivers, police officers, and construction workers. The ultimate male-homosexual social dream is to sit at an elegant dinner table, complete with flowers and doilies and finger bowls, surrounded by rich, successful, superbly suited and gowned, witty, and cleverly immoral people. The ultimate lesbian social dream is to pack it in at some matey lunch counter with the heftier proles (пролетариями — А.Ч.), wearing work clothes and doing a lot of shouting and kidding».
Это из древней, конца 80-х, но нимало не утерявшей актуальности книжки американского социолога Фассела «Класс».
