I am going to be TOTALLY EMBARRASSING here and admit that this just makes me think of all the "Bertie and Jeeves are old" slash that's been written (including your first fic, which was more kind of adorable and gen, really.) I mean. If the person's 82 and it's 2008, then they would have been about 20 during the 40's, and damn. I'd want to ask them if they have any stories about prohibition from when they were young (if it ended in '33 maybe they'd have been too small, but if the person's a couple years older than 82, then they might have some memories of drinking illegally as a pre-teen or something....) I'd want to know if they were part of the risque theatre/art scene or whether they went to any gay bars ("fairy clubs") secretly run by the mafia. 9_9 TOTALLY POLITICALLY INCORRECT. Hoo boy.
Unless they are artsy and flamboyantly into showtunes, opera and Foucault, maaaybe my line of questioning would be far too loaded and full of stereotypical assumptions.
I guess the questions other people have suggested I agree with. When they came to NY and why are good things to ask because a lot of immigrant families moved around seeking work. My grandmother's family moved from Idaho back to B.C. and within B.C. between a number of small towns depending on where my great-grandfather was hired to work as a foreman at some mine or other. The depression mindset really is something else, too. The kind of elderly people who rinse out plastic zip-lock bags and hang them on the fridge to dry so they can re-use them are probably going to look at young queers today and shake their heads at the materialism of it. But the middle-aged people who were young during the sixties will probably understand and be more confused about new-agey queerness vs. the older styles of presentation where passing was part of survival and messing with gender roles was a form of resistance instead of grounds for accusation re: mimicry of heterosexist gender roles... wait. Maybe that came up in the '70's. Theory is confusing.
*edited to fix conflation of class and age issues in academia, man I ramble--way too disconnected from reality at the moment*
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Date: 2009-01-23 06:45 am (UTC)Unless they are artsy and flamboyantly into showtunes, opera and Foucault, maaaybe my line of questioning would be far too loaded and full of stereotypical assumptions.
I guess the questions other people have suggested I agree with. When they came to NY and why are good things to ask because a lot of immigrant families moved around seeking work. My grandmother's family moved from Idaho back to B.C. and within B.C. between a number of small towns depending on where my great-grandfather was hired to work as a foreman at some mine or other. The depression mindset really is something else, too. The kind of elderly people who rinse out plastic zip-lock bags and hang them on the fridge to dry so they can re-use them are probably going to look at young queers today and shake their heads at the materialism of it. But the middle-aged people who were young during the sixties will probably understand and be more confused about new-agey queerness vs. the older styles of presentation where passing was part of survival and messing with gender roles was a form of resistance instead of grounds for accusation re: mimicry of heterosexist gender roles... wait. Maybe that came up in the '70's. Theory is confusing.
*edited to fix conflation of class and age issues in academia, man I ramble--way too disconnected from reality at the moment*