Kathleen Stock article about Jack Monroe

[AnonWeeMouse]

Kathleen Stock writes:

unherd.com/2023/01/jack-monroe-the-acceptable-face-of-poverty/

Monroe responds by blaming these critical points on Kathleen Stocks GC views.

I don't think that's fair. I think Monroe is using that as an excuse to try and avoid criticism.

Her publisher has had to release a statement about the dangerous tips in Monroe's New Book and Trussel Trust are refusing to hand it out over safety fears.

I don't think it's right or fair for Monroe to try and hide behind being Non binary or trans etc. She hasn't claimed those identities for ages has she?

Which is why Munroe’s accusation of Stock “targeting” her for being trans/non-binary or whatever is ludicrous, because how is anyone meant to keep up with the latest Munroe status and know what’s currently true or active?

I for one had it in my head she wasn’t identifying as that anymore, I thought she’d quietly moved on.

(From a GC pov, the mention of "identifies as non binary and transgender" should help cogs rotate for some readers. Nothing really to do with JM in particular, but more to do with what DOES that mean and why should it matter/influence things.)

So true.

I suppose people who have been occupying that social bubble, where ‘identifying as’ something brings social capital, while at the same time anyone who thinks it is a load of cobblers is aggressively silenced, must have very little awareness of all the unspoken thoughts the majority of people are thinking about it.

A few questions

Was she an alcoholic or anorexic when she fell pregnant, or both? And was she broke or spending all her money on whiskey? What does she use on her eyes so that no-one noticed she'd been sobbing in the taxi (this one I need to know)?

Tbh, I don't really care that much. It seems she's currently not in a bad place and, as much as for any random on the internet, I hope that continues for her.

What does she use on her eyes so that no-one noticed she'd been sobbing in the taxi (this one I need to know)?

Yes, I think she was on the way to the photoshoot too. She looks gorgeous and sparkly-eyed in those pictures in the bath.

Once youve tasted poverty ... that fear doesnt easily disappear.

Recipes sound like they are poverty based.. and sad to see more affluent ppl mocking them.

Also, re her son, I believe there is evidence online that he spends almost all his time with his father, and thank goodness for that, in the light of all the issues his mother seems to have.

It’s kind of disturbing that she’s using her son as a shield in the guardian article - her excuse for not asking her parents for help is that she was scared her child would be taken into care 🙄 That just doesn’t make sense, as her sons father was co-parenting and of course her own parents were foster carers so it seems highly unlikely that social services would have put her child in the care of strangers.

She uses the same excuse when she’s talking about her substance abuse issues - and again, why would her child be taken into care if he’s got an involved father who also looks after him?

I get the impression that there is only so much to be written about cooking on a severely limited budget, due to the very nature of the thing. That's a problem if you make a living from doing exactly that. So JM, having run out of sensible things to say, has tried to fill some space and made some shit up. Fair enough, many of us have had to add to a word count, only not all of us have written anything which could cause the loss of a few fingers.

I don't know much about her background, but I did admire JM for standing up to Katie Hopkins. Her early work has been quite useful to me, and her carrot, coriander and kidney bean soup recipe is very nice. However, she missed the mark here. Chilling an empty glass bottle is fine for rolling pastry, for example, but freezing a full one is dangerous. Nobody really needs an egg ring anyway, and tin openers are cheaper to replace than knives or mallets. Or indeed, fingers.

I don't think the article was unfair at all, and JM would have done herself far more good if she just ignored it. I hadn't read much by Stock before, but will make a point of doing so in future. And that came about because I saw a tweet which quoted JM whining about it!

I'm not a JM fan but I think the idea is frequently to use up the tins from food banks, hence the spaghetti hoops, tuna etc.

I don’t think people are mocking poverty-based recipes - it’s the daft stuff she used to fill the book because she didn’t have enough material.

Anyone who has baby-boomers for parents knows what the fear of poverty does. A whole frugal generation terrified by extravagance because of childhood memories of rationing and hunger.

I know this from long personal experience. The recipes aren't what is mostly being criticized though. It's the "helpful" hints.

My dad was a borderline hoarder all of his life because of his extremely deprived childhood. My mum has never been able to eat bitter sensibly after growing up with your tiny week's rations divided onto a saucer...

My DH knew real, frightening poverty as the child of a isolated and rejected teen single mum in the 70s. He was exposed to huge risk and neglected as a result of the choices she was forced to make. No loving and solvent family popped round with big shipping bags there. He will never ever not feel the anxiety of being poor and needing to be cautious and go without, despite copious evidence and lived experience to the contrary. (Absolute kudos this mum for getting him where he is)

Lots and lots of people know this. But that also means they know that what people struggling with real lack of financial safety nets, food banks, socially isolated and alone need is not a smart hardback book packed with hints and tips that make no sense, and err on the dangerous and time consuming.

It's exactly the point KS is making. Real poverty is unattractive and difficult to spin into something marketable. Hence the gravy train around JM.

I think quite a lot of the recipes don't stand up to scrutiny, tho. Where she talks about rinsing off baked beans to cook in with other things, the timings tend to be really long, as if they weren't already cooked.

And the rinsing off spaghetti hoops to make cacio e pepe is ludicrous.

I can see no reason for a clever woman like KS to write such an unnecessarily unkind article poking fun at JM. Is this what passes for feminist discourse now?

Yes. I bought one of her books because a friend of mine regularly made her chilli which involved just a few tins and recommended it. I haven’t made one recipe because I didn’t want to go out and buy the obscure tins of stuff I don’t ordinarily buy and couldn’t be arsed with all the faff involved.

I don’t think she is a professional feminist. I thought she was a philosopher first and foremost.

Even so, I think she’d be wasted confining herself to either of those things. I’d love it if she teamed up with Glinner and wrote a sitcom. Think of all the material…..

I've washed the juice off baked beans because the baked beans were pennies on the yellow sticker shelf in the supermarket and haricot beans were about 5 times more expensive.

JM's 'poor single mum' image didn't wash with me because she was a lesbian at the time she decided to get pregnant, but the middle classes loved her as the acceptable face of poor making an effort to get by.

Her book has just been banned by the Trussell Trust food banks for offering dangerous advice.

Do you have similar criticisms for the (male) author of the Guardian article? (Who has been far more pointed, expansive and directly focused on JM imo) and the Times article detailing the Trussel Trust's issues with the book? All 3 discussed here and published within hours of each other...

I'm in poverty. I live in less than 12k a year.

One of her recipes I saw on twitter.called for 200g of biscuits and Christmas chocolates.
No way in heaven would I ever sacrifice a pack of biscuits AND Christmas chocolate on the hopes of making some awful recipe, I'd just eat the biscuits and chocolate.

Another recipe took around an hour to simmer all the ingredients.. an hour! That's not thrifty at all, that's for someone that doesn't have to pay for electric with a key or card.

Recipes are what a wealthy Waitrose Shopper thinks people in poverty would like to cook.
And as it's often women cooking and shopping, it's women that invariably end up trying these abominations and wasting money they don't have and food they can't waste to make inedible recipes thought up by someone with zero experience in actual food sciences and it's the women that end up feeling like they did something wrong and they're a failure because they can't feed their family on the impossible amount of £20 a week.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

Both parents are English academics.

I thought they were just making sure any copies they get have a disclaimer with them?

Good point, highlighting sexism on a feminist board.

It makes me lament the cumulative cultural loss of women’s savage wit, because we’re supposed to #bekind all the bloody time. Let it out sisters - the world will be a better place.

Reading about her history in the Guardian article really winds me up. Why? Because I'm of similar age to her from her area. I didn't go to Westcliff High (which she did as I narrowly failed the 11 plus). Her family was much better off than mine, and I can tell you that this nonsense of all other children going on holiday abroad in her class is false. It's simply not the case in Southend, and you will find a lot of real poverty in the area.

Added to that after university I had to come back and get a job on roughly minimum wage in Southend (as I found the route of university to good jobs being a myth). Don't talk to me about low-paid jobs in Southend.

That's why she's the acceptable face of poverty by publications like the Guardian, because she's middle-class cosplaying as working-class and as poor!

its disgraceful the way she uses her son as a shield. If any of the rubbish she talks is actually true (she couldn’t afford food for him, she had to turn off the fridge, she sold his toys, she’s a alcoholic/drug addict etc) and she was actually a single parent with no support then her son definitely should be taken into care.

i don’t believe a word she says. I’m a single parent who has been on benefits and her appropriation of our identity for sympathy and money is disgusting. She hasn’t worked for years despite having at least shared care of her son if not actually just occasional visitation as per the rumours. Her parents have always been well off and must be at least millionaires since her grandpa died in 2014. These things are a matter of public record.

it’s shows you exactly what the guardian think of actual poor people that they are happy to write such a sympathetic article with an utter lack of critical analysis about her. They have no wish to report what actually happens to the real poor- the pretend middle class media poor like JM suit them better.