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.

what is your vision swallowedafly?

ifgraceasks I am not sure what your point is in saying what i said is to do with equal rights and opportunities?

as a feminist obviously I am interested in having these things for women.

my only exposure to formal feminist writing has been through community development work writing and that refers a lot to marxist-feminist thought which is surely not middle class at all!

ok as an outsider what i have gleaned thus far is

having a middle class perspective (whatever that is i have no clue) = bad or not really valid

having a working class perspective (whatever that is i have no clue) = good

how do these perspectives tie in with things like sexual violence, pornification of culture, misogyny etc

seriously i have no idea

No having views from a middle class perspective is not a bad thing it's simple too much of one thing as not everyone has the same background/same way of living.

what is a middle class perspective? what sorts of views do middle class feminists have that differentiate them from working class feminists?

i am not from the uk, class distinctions here don't really feel right applied to my own situation, and i don't know anyone who identifies as a feminist in rl in the uk

i think i am going to have to abandon this thread, it ain't for the forriners i guess

Chibi - I was probably stereotyping a bit, I think there are some issues that affect different sections of society, as someone upthread said, some women have careers, while some have jobs. If you asked the women what changes needed to be made, you would probably get very different answers.
Actually maybe I just mean income bracket as class has become blurred.

i am still v confused

feeling less and less like i have anything to offer these threads

and am feeling like i have the 'wrong' voice

i think i will go back to lurking, let you all get on with it

Now we're getting into the realms of reverse snobbery and things like that which are very complicated indeed.

It's something to do with people who are more well off having an "easy ride" and thus not understanding at all about the problems of the "(wo)man on the street" who is somehow more earthy and wholesome?

Thus people who are privileged and sit around wanking on about their petty problems in posh coffee houses are not going to be of any help at all to actual real women who are out there getting their hands dirty, as it were. This leads at the extreme to hideous photo ops of people like david cameron enjoying a pie and a pint in the "gnat and nadger" with a load of bemused-looking commoners.

There is a lot of guilt attached to having done well in the UK, and derision is reserved for those who don't express that guilt. Thus if a middle class woman expresses her views on things, it has to be pointed out that she probably hasn't ever actually experienced anything bad and thus might be talking bollocks. How this applies when, as has been pointed out, things like rape and wage differentials and pornification affect all women, is a bit confusing.

Don't go back to lurking chibi, I really enjoy your posts.

I don't understand all this stuff either, really. I think that a lot of people think they know what they think, but the labels they would apply are not the same as the ones the next person would and so the labels become meaningless. I think

now i definitely know i have the wrong voice

when i had my experience of sexual violence i was in my early teens so too young to be wanking on in my priviledged way in a coffeshop

is there some sort of scale for me to calibrate how upset by that i should have been, perhaps against the experiences of a woman who works as a miner or a shelfstacker

maybe i should have just had a cappucino and a good laff about it all

No, chibi, it's not that one's bad or the other good. Most feminist thinkers, especially these days, live reasonably comfortable lives. They have choices. They are, naturally, the people who have the luxury of choosing to explore social & political issues. They have the resources to campaign, to seek political hearing and to network.

Less well-off women might be working two jobs, living in conditions of great hardship and in dangerous circumstances. The immediacy of their problems leaves few resources for social & political networking, research, etc. I'd argue that the poor woman is in more urgent need of feminist support. But the wealthier sector has the louder voice.

The 'comfortable' women who give feminism its voice often have no real idea of what life is like in poverty. The poor woman, therefore, feels the feminist isn't speaking to - or for - her.

Someone will be along to trash my post in a minute, so I'll say this is MY take on it. Nobody else's.

apols for the last post i am personalising this and internalising it when i (probably) shouldn't be

but i will bow out anyway as am getting increasingly upset

hope i have not caused offense, i am sad and frustrated, and a lot of things combined with this are making me lash out

again, v v v sorry

Cross-posted. You didn't need my post Sorry.

That's the thing chibi, I don't think that women's experiences of these things differ in how it makes them feel and that it shouldn't be happening in the first place.

i suppose what differs is that in different countries around the world there are different levels of how illegal it is for men to do this
how comfortable women feel reporting these things
how seriously that report will be taken
whether teh society the woman lives in enables her to see this as the attackers fault, or whether to see it as her own fault
whether others in her society will blame her
whether she expects anything different
etc etc etc

so I think that the "class" thing is a red herring, the problems are universal, how bad they get/how they are dealt with differs according to circumstances.

As long as people are aware that not everyone has the same circumstances as them, and tries to think about people in other circs, then there's no problem, surely?

ISNT- I hope i wasn't doing reverse snobbery. I'm very unlikely to ever have a 'career', but I support women who do because I want women to have power and a proper say in the way things are done. I think that some women have been forgotten but that doesn't mean I begrudge those whose voices have been heard. There's many fronts and they're all important.

So... I would consider that women should have equal rights and opportunities... however I chose to stay at home to look after children whilst dh worked so was the breadwinner providing for us all. Is my choice any less valid than that of the woman who struggles to juggle career and family?

My career prospects have diminished so financially if we were to separate I would be less well off than if I had continued working.

Dh used to come home and cook/clean/change nappies - presumably without feeling emasculated.

I feel as though some feminists are inclined to stereotype relationships as much as individuals. I've seen a lot of mistrust of men and even man-hating from some of the regular posters on the feminist forum.

In my experience not all men are bastards.

Good post, SAF