I wrote a quick and exasperated post recently<\/a> on what I perceived to be a reductive, stereotyping and patronising use of the term \u2018working-class\u2019 cropping up in a lot of otherwise well-meaning writing. I was initially inspired by the editors of Vagenda Magazine’s defence of Caitlin Moran<\/a>, but the surrounding debate and its systemic problems are bigger than both of these. Despite retaining their article as a jumping-off point, therefore, I\u2019m less interested in the specifics of Vagenda themselves than in giving a more considered explanation of some of the reasons behind my annoyance with the idea that intersectional feminism and ‘comprehensible’, ‘accessible’ feminism are somehow incompatible.<\/p>\n
One reason behind how badly the Vagenda article was received was, I think, the authors\u2019 attempt to address a relatively specific issue (‘Leave Caitlin alone, she’s working-class and hardly anyone else in the UK media is!’ \u2013 as if that isn’t in itself a whacking great elephant in the room, on which more later), and to address it in the more or less specific context of the kind of feminism they’d seen and experienced in the UK, without recognising that, well, feminism is really fucking big. <\/p>\n
As explained in this post<\/a>, \u2018feminism\u2019, even just within the UK, is not and never has been exclusively \u2018a white, middle class movement\u2019. The history, theory and practice of feminism is diverse, multiracial, international, and takes in issues of class, age and sexuality among others. Throughout feminism\u2019s development there have been, as noted here,<\/a> tension, discussion and conflict within the movement over how this diversity is represented, and, as noted here<\/a> in 2008, there continue to be.<\/p>\n
The concept of intersectionality<\/a>
is, in part, a way of helping to articulate this diversity. This was the very
term Vagenda identified, oddly, as an example of unhelpfully academic
language, when in fact, as the vast majority of responses to their article
have pointed out, it\u2019s one that\u2019s relatively simple to explain by
reference to lived experience. It\u2019s also a term whose practical relevance
is easily proved; in the immediate fall-out from Caitlin Moran\u2019s failure
to question Lena Dunham on the racial diversity of
Girls<\/strong>, her fellow journalist Bim Adewunmi<\/a> did a
comprehensive and accessible job of clarifying why this mattered, both
explaining intersectionality and making a positive case for it:<\/p>\n
I am a woman, a black woman born in London to Nigerian parents, a Muslim
woman (who does not wear a hijab or veil). I am educated and
self-employed but relatively low-earning. These things, as standalones
or collectively, define how I see the world. One often bleeds into the
other so comprehensively, they seem almost interchangeable. This is, in
its most basic form, what we call intersectionality: the idea that we
wear a lot of caps, and often in challenging one wrong, we are
challenging many. In reading that Moran tweet, my first thought was:
“I cannot afford to take off my ‘race cap’ and focus
just on the plain ol’ sexism that plagues the television industry;
and nor do I want to.\u201d – Source<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Intersectionality allows the integration of systems of oppression \u2013
patriarchy, capitalism, racism, among others \u2013 to be identified,
analysed, and challenged, and it provides a means of transcending and
critiquing single-issue politics. The theory may be obscure, the
practice surely is not.<\/p>\n
There is an identifiable, and to some extent understandable, urge within
some pop-feminist platforms to crusade against a feminism which they
describe as too theoretical, remote and academic to gain mass appeal.
The idea of a divide between academic and populist ways of promoting
progressive politics is not unique to feminism; a similar debate
periodically engulfs much of the left. How can \u2018ordinary
women\u2019, or indeed \u2018ordinary people\u2019, be appealed to in
language which will resonate with their everyday concerns and not
alienate them by using words of more than two syllables?<\/p>\n
But the first half of that question doesn’t automatically imply
the second. Being \u2018ordinary\u2019 doesn\u2019t mean being stupid.
It doesn\u2019t mean not having been to university either. Politics
predicated on the assertion of an academic\/middle-class versus
populist\/working-class divide are, at best, disingenuous, presenting as
mutually exclusive what is surely more a question of priorities. <\/p>\n
There is a difference between wishing to focus on \u2018ordinary\u2019,
material concerns \u2013 the gradual erosion of living and working
standards under the present government; closures and funding cuts to
women\u2019s refuges and childcare services; the removal of housing,
child, and disability benefits \u2013 and assuming that the people
affected by these concerns cannot recognise, analyse and talk about them
for themselves, in language which can be sophisticated as well as
rudimentary. <\/p>\n
Too often, in debates within feminism \u2013 often valid and necessary
debates \u2013 over how best to engage \u2018ordinary women\u2019, these
women are implicitly othered, there to be appealed to and won over by
more enlightened middle-class feminists rather than considered capable
of engaging in the debate on their own terms and by themselves.<\/p>\n
In such narratives, liberal commentators often employ presumptious ideas
of what \u2018a working-class girl\u2019 might think of feminism,
without having any meaningful direct experience of this on which to
draw. Back in March, by contrast, the
Camden New Journal<\/em> writer Pavan Amara<\/a> produced
an
excellent piece<\/a> for The F-Word in which she interviewed a variety
of working-class women and recorded their opinions and attitudes
towards feminism. Her conclusion \u2013 that working-class women face
preoccupying problems of poverty and inequality, and frequently regard
mainstream feminism as remote and irrelevant \u2013 is the same kind
of thing that Vagenda\u2019s post was trying to get at, but far more
plausibly expressed and empirically grounded. My problem lies not with
that argument itself, but with the patronising ideas about class which
seem to inform so many presentations of the argument. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s particularly galling to see an assertion with which I
agree \u2013 that class is an aspect of identity too often left out
of debate \u2013 being used in ways which can actually shore up
negative assumptions about class. From Vagenda’s
article:<\/p>\n
Going into certain state comps and discussing the nuances of
intersectionality isn\u2019t going to have much dice if some of
the teenage girls in the audience are pregnant, or hungry, or at
risk of abuse (what are they going to do? Protect or feed
themselves with theory? Women cannot dine on Greer alone.)
“This woman does not represent me”, they will think of
their well-meaning lecturer, because how can she, with her private
education and her alienating terminology and her privilege, how
can she know how poverty gnaws away at your insides and suppresses
your voice? How would she know how that
feels?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
(I assume there\u2019s been an unintended elision between
secondary and university education made there, since in my state
comprehensive we had teachers, not lecturers, and I\u2019d be
frankly astounded if any of them had been privately educated
\u2013 they\u2019d been
educated<\/em>, yes, but by the state, exactly as I was being.
\u2018State-educated\u2019 shouldn’t be used as a synonym
for \u2018stupid\u2019 either.) <\/p>\n
Generalisations like this are often in danger of buying into
narratives which see working-class parents, schools and
communities as unable to impart education or instil political
consciousness in the same way as their middle-class
counterparts, and which present working-class girls as the
helpless inhabitants of some kind of neo-Victorian
netherworld, a perspective which is, again, less helpful than
it clearly wishes to be.<\/p>\n
What this perspective also neglects is that Women\u2019s
Studies, at least in the UK, was rooted to a large extent in
attempts by women of generally less privileged backgrounds to
question and critique the privileges of existing academia and
to draw attention to neglected perspectives and experiences,
including those marginalised by virtue of class, race, age and
sexuality. That feminism in academia is now
considered<\/em> middle-class and irrelevant perhaps says
more about the squeezing out of attention to and discussion
of class-based analysis within it; the erosion of empowering
traditions of adult education and of self-education through
libraries and community colleges; and the pricing out at
postgraduate and increasingly at undergraduate level of
poorer students, than anything about education\u2019s
intrinsic appeal to and suitability for anyone outside the
bourgeoisie.<\/p>\n
The unhelpful aspects of these well-intentioned arguments
are compounded by the fact that those who find themselves
in the position to make them to a mass audience are hardly
ever working-class themselves. The restriction of access
to politics, media, arts and entertainment to those with
the parental support or independent wealth to get them
through unpaid internships, or maintain them in precarious
freelance work, is referenced increasingly often as it
becomes more glaringly apparent, but hardly ever with a
view to how the situation might be changed. Caitlin Moran
is frequently held up as a representative of The Real
World on the grounds that she had it tough once upon a
time, as though her current individual high profile makes
up for the fact that there is hardly any mainstream media
or political platform for those who continue to have it
tough right now. To their credit, it\u2019s not as if
Vagenda don\u2019t recognise this:<\/p>\n
What feminism needs is more voices \u2013 a whole chorus
of them. By all means, we can criticise those already at
the top, but we should be combining that with a real
desire to listen to women from all walks of life and
their experiences: to actively seek them out, rather
than waiting for the lucky few to claw their way into
our ranks. Giving them jobs on newspapers so that they
can write movingly and persuasively about the
inequalities they suffer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
But what should also be recognised is that an
intersectional perspective is vital in facilitating
these developments, and that intersectionality affects
the very focus on \u2018ordinary\u2019 concerns which
these arguments advocate. The political climate since
the banking crisis of 2008, and the imposition of
economic austerity, has only sharpened the need to
prioritise issues of material inequality and financial
stability – especially
for women<\/a>. Much of the burden of analysing and
opposing the impact on women of rising unemployment and
the erosion of the welfare state is being shouldered by
women whose identities mean they are under attack from
several intersecting angles: as low earners, as mothers,
as women of colour \u2013 very often, all three. Here
for instance is Ava Vidal<\/a>
interrogating the myth of reliance on benefits as a
\u2018lifestyle option\u2019 (and doing so,
incidentally, in highly accessible language):<\/p>\n