‘The arts’ are a construct that we make; the transcendence claimed for art in our society gives it status at the expense of influence. Several distinct conceptions of ‘the arts’ are embedded in current usage. The leisure-class idea of high culture gave way after 1945 to the welfare-capitalist project of making good culture available to everyone, and this was developed rather than challenged by the new left, which gained an ascendancy in certain fields. The Thatcherite attack on the arts is not incidental, therefore: to make use of ‘the arts’ the new right has to reinvest them with its own values. Gay men tried to resist hostile legislation by pointing out that they have been major producers of art. But there is a longstanding association between the artistic and ‘effeminacy’, and to the new right the arts and homosexuals constitute a joint target. Probably its ‘universal’ implications make ‘art’ unhelpful to subordinate groups, such as gays: it might be better to insist upon a distinctive subculture.