1992: Kicked Out of The Social Register

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New York, N.Y. — There was a time when being in The Social Register was important. “Who’s Who in America,” “The East Coast,” etc. During my younger, radical days I chaffed at this social instrument crafted to separate society.

In 1993, I decided to go full-radical when I updated my annual profile. It was important to have an opposite sex spouse, preferably from the same race and faith. I listed my Muslim Indonesian husband.

It was important to belong to the Harvard, Yale or University Club, if not the Metropolitan, Colony or Athletic Clubs. For “club,” I listed ACT UP, founded just a few years before to bring attention to the AIDS epidemic by means radical, nonviolent protest.

For volunteer community activities, usually Daughters of the American Revolution or the American Red Cross, or Board of Directors of a prep school, I listed AIDS Center of Queens County where I was distributing condoms in gay bathhouses.

I was subsequently dropped and never heard from them again…

These families are often referred to as “The Establishment.” They were listed in the last century in The Social Register. America’s social elite was a small, closed group.

The leadership was well-known to the readers of newspaper society pages, but in larger cities it was hard to remember everyone, or to keep track of the new debutantes and marriages.

The solution was the Social Register, which listed the names and addresses of about 1% of the population.

Most were WASPs, and they included families who mingled at the same private clubs, attended the right teas, worshiped together at prestige churches, funded the proper charities, lived in exclusive neighborhoods, and sent their daughters to finishing schools and their sons away to prep schools.

In the heyday of WASP dominance, the Social Register delineated high society.

According to The New York Times, its influence had faded by the late 20th century: “Once, the Social Register was a juggernaut in New York social circles… Nowadays, however, with the waning of the WASP elite as a social and political force, the register’s role as an arbiter of who counts and who doesn’t is almost an anachronism. In Manhattan, where charity galas are at the center of the social season, the organizing committees are studded with luminaries from publishing, Hollywood and Wall Street and family lineage is almost irrelevant.”

Two decades later, about 2012, I furthered my radicalization by declaring a vow of poverty (story)…