class/social standing and Feminism

[sparky159]

is there a place for working class people in Feminism?
ill answer my own post to as why im asking this.

I can't see that class makes any difference whatsoever. If you're a feminist then you believe in equality - why would you think that class matters?

Why would class have anything to do with feminism?

the reason why i was asking this is because-
since being here ive become very interested about what a lot of people have had to say.
its made me think about my own ideas/thoughts and also where all this stands in my own life.

i also feel that my life is very diffrent than a lot of peoples on here.
although i find it very interesting-i cant understand what others are saying some of the time-and them probably not me either.
i cant understand the feminist books.

having said all this-when i look around me-i think theres a lot of issues that are also of interest to feminism.

id like to get more involved but i feel stuck.

i hope i havent offended anyone-i dont mean to.

I can imagine that some of the threads on this section are quite impenetrable. I am still frequently occasionally baffled as to what people are on about, or words are used that I don't understand. There's a lot of university/highly educated/well read type jargon I think. Which I can imagine makes it all seem rather inaccessible.

Is it about education rather than class? Is it about whether you went to university or not? Class itself is such a confused concept I'm not sure that it can really be used to define anyone that well any more. But is what I said above what you're talking about?

Do women have different problems according to where they are in teh social structure. My main issue is rape/sexual assault/casual everyday sexual assault of women. I think these things are across all women regardless of what "sort" they are - surely in these matters we all experience similar things?

x-posts

Usualsuspect: £500 and a Room of One's Own???

I agree with ISNT that there is a very academic tenor to some posts in this section which are off putting.

I consider myself intelligent, and a lot of them have me going 'eh?'

I think feminism is hugely important - it's a classless issue.

Ok .. sorry ,should have kept out of this topic

yepIsntwhat you said above is what im talking about.
yes youre right-i think ive got education and class mixed up-i think it is about education rather than class.

yep- i think we all experiance simmallar things but i think theres a diffrence in how you deal with these things/how you see these things depending where you are on the social structure.

Ho do people define what class they are? There are threads and threads on here with people arguing a lot about it all.

I don't think it means much any more does it, apart from the upper class/aristocracy? I mean I can usually spot one of them, the large country estates / crowns are a bit of a giveaway!

ok-ive made a mistake-i didnt mean class i meant education

ISNT - I think there are still class divisions in society, but they are becoming a lot more blurred. That's a good thing of course.

However the fact that we still have an aristocracy in this country is not great .

as a child of immigrants, who is herself an immigrant to yet another country, i have never shared a common culture with a working class or middle class person in any country i lived in

income levels and type of employment, but not culture

in the sense that in the uk for example, the class signifiers that people usually roll out (what do you call the smallest room in the house, is it a sofa or a setee, do you or would you holiday at x) never really apply to me

i am not over familiar with non-north american feminist thinkers and writers but i wouldn't say that the second wave was dominated by white middleclass women - i am thinking of bell hooks, audre lorde, cherrie moraga amongst others

perhaps it is v different here in the uk

I think that class as a concept where everyone is talking about the same thing is problematical. Loads of people put themselves in a class which others say they aren't - it's all subjective.

Not for a minute saying that there aren't people who are worse off and people who are better off and it's very hard to move up etc.

It's a combination of money, what influences you are exposed to in your locality, education, etc etc

For eg if you are a young teenage girl growing up on an inner city estate in london where there is a lot of gang activity, your experience is going to be very different to if you are at a posh private school. Both of these girls will get shit from teenage boys, how they feel about that, whether they feel they can do anything about it and what their expectations of the boys are in the first place are may differ.

sparky - I know what you mean re stuff going straight over one's head (and I am fairly well educated), but what you need to do is just hijack and ask the posters to explain what they mean. They're a lovely bunch - there's nothing to feel embarrassed about and I'm sure they'd help out. Feminism/feminist debate should be accessible to everyone - and if they're spouting inpenetrable bollocks, then they might need it pointing out from time to time :o.

Usualsuspect: I'm sorry, I think my post came out much more abrupt than so meant it to.

But that text is an interesting one (I hope) for this thread: not only was it an early (and formative?) feminist text (1929); it was about the requirements that Woolf argued were necessary to escape patriarchy, and they were in practice available only to affluent and educated women. The Room of Ones Own was both a literal and figurative separate space, and the £500 the means required to dwell in that space.

As an aside, I checked what £500 in 1929 would be worth today. In terms of RPI, it would be around £22,000; against average earnings, over £90,000 (according to measuringworth.com).

I can see that people experiences of feminism could be different depending on class. Upper class and the ideas of women as property - making good marriage matches etc. Then the working class women and the lack of access to higher paid jobs/ the male female pay divide etc. The recent budget cuts and the effect they will affect the lowest paid, which will tend to be women etc.

I believe feminism to be classless, but can see how it is easily side tracked.

Problem with those sorts of class signifiers chibi is that they are spouted by a bunch of insecure hyacinth bouquet types. So I really wouldn't pay much heed to them

I think there is a 'class' element to feminism.

Women who have less opportunities (by which I mean, broadly speaking, access to education/money)are more likely to be exploited/oppressed.

Also, I think that there's a perception among certain groups that feminism is a sort of hobby for middle class/posh women who are a bit bored.

Which is of course, nonsense.

My personal feeling is that 'middle class' soap-boxers have some responsibility for alienating women from other sectors of society. For 37 years the expression "strident feminist" had me in fits of laughter - but this topic, which I've already admitted scares me, brings the phrase uncomfortably to life.

Perhaps, like all worthwhile movements everywhere, feminism has attracted its share of proponents keener on being RIGHT than in persuasive argument. All women are aware of inequality in their lives. All women struggle against some male-dominated element of our culture. IMO, preaching is unlikely to move them to think more clearly about it. Putting them down certainly won't do it.

Maybe we need another new name for it.