Revolution Begins At Home

By Coletta Reid and Charlotte Bunch

(As published in Class & Feminism, edited by Charlotte Bunch and Nancy Myron [Diana Press, 1974] pp. 70-81)

Early in the Women’s Liberation Movement, I saw class as an “issue” that men in the Left used to put down feminism. Later it became an “issue” that many women said we had to discuss, but these discussions never went beyond wondering why welfare mothers weren’t beating down our doors. Hours were spent beating breasts with guilt. The verdict: Women’s Liberation was middle class and that’s bad, but we never understood why. We never examined how our behavior created and perpetuated that kind of movement. We never looked at how working class women within our movement were oppressed.

When class became an “issue” in the development of a lesbian feminist movement in D.C., I was apprehensive. Academically, I knew that class divisions existed and ought to be abolished, but I did not connect that to my behavior or to what was happening to women in the movement. Of course, I did not imagine that I was a class supremacist. Only after months of struggle (or should I say, fights, hostility, withdrawal, trauma…) did I begin to understand that much of my behavior came from being raised middle class and was oppressive to working class women.

I finally recognized that class in our society is not only an economic system that determines everyone’s place, but also patterns of behavior that go with and reflect one’s status. When middle class women carry their attitudes and ways of behaving into the movement, it oppresses working class women. Class divisions and behavior come from male dominated society and it is absurd for us to perpetuate them. If middle class women remain tied to male class values and behavior, we cripple our growth and hinder the development of a movement that can free all women. Class struggle is not a question of guilt—it is a question of change, for our movement’s survival.

I come from a thoroughly middle class family (economic security, education, etc.). Coletta comes from a working class home, worked her way “up” through college and a “good marriage” and accepted middle class values that oppress working class women. From our experiences, we will describe ways that middle class women are oppressive, how we avoid class consciousness and changing ourselves, and how we must change.

Classist behavior is rooted in one basic idea: class supremacy—that the individuals of the upper and middle class are superior to those of the lower classes. Middle class people are taught to think that we are better than working class people and we act out that superiority and self-righteousness in a thousand daily ways. Class supremacy, male supremacy, white supremacy—it’s all the same game. If you’re on top of someone, the society tells you that you are better. It gives you access to its privileges and security, and it works both to keep you on top and to keep you thinking that you deserve to be there. It tells you over and over that the middle class way is the right way and teaches you how to keep that way on top—to control people and situations for your benefit. No one in our movement would say that she believes that she is better than her working class sisters, yet her behavior says it over and over again.

Class supremacy is acted out in thinking that working class women are less together, personally and politically, because they do not act and talk the way we do. Their politics may not be expressed in the same manner, their vocabulary may not be as “developed,” and so they are “less articulate” and treated as less important. Or they may be hostile and emotional so one can hardly trust their political judgement; after all, we’ve learned to keep ourselves in check, to be reasonable, to keep things in perspective. Looking down with scorn or pity at those whose emotions are not repressed or who can’t rap out abstract theories in thirty seconds flat reeks of our class arrogance and self-righteousness.

Other middle class women pull the opposite number; emotionalism, hysteria and tears when you’re feeling bad and things don’t go your way, or begging sympathy because it’s just too hard to change. To a working class woman this constant preoccupation with one’s feelings and the difficulty of changing is a luxury she could never afford. She is tired of hearing how it’s really hard for you to change because your mother was neurotic, etc. while you go on oppressing her. She had to do many unpleasant things that middle class women complain about endlessly, like exploitative jobs, just to survive. Endlessly analyzing and discussing your feelings is another way to keep control, which involves both out-talking people and using your feelings as excuses.

Sometimes a middle class woman feels superior because she believes that she worked for what she has—that her skills, education, possessions and position come, not from her class privilege, but from hard work. I used to feel this way because I compared myself to the rich, not the poor; so, I thought that I did not have a lot to start with and had earned what I did have. By downplaying the role that privilege played in getting each of us to where we are now, we can keep on thinking that anyone can make it if they “try as hard as we did.”

For example, I used to think that I had savings because of my good planning and frugality. Although I had saved a lot at a low salary, I was not recognizing that my ability to save came from my privilege—that I had inherited economic security and actual possessions to afford to live cheaply. If you think that you are where you are just because you worked hard, it is easy to become self-righteous and make classist moral judgements about others.

Often, middle and especially upper middle class women for whom things have come easily develop a privileged passivity. Someone with privilege can conveniently think that it’s not necessary to fight or discipline herself to get anything. Everything will work out. Because she has made it by following nice middle class rules of life, she doesn’t like for people to be pushy, dogmatic, hostile or intolerance. Material oppression doesn’t bombard her daily, so she has the luxury and time to move slowly and may resist taking a hard political stand or alienating “anyone.” She can afford to assume that most people are good and that it is unnecessary to fight or prove oneself to anyone.

Advocating downward mobility and putting down those who don’t groove on it is another form of middle class arrogance. Someone who has never had to worry about eating or being acceptable can leave a job easily without knowing where money will come from, embrace patched pants and brown rice and anti-materialism as good for the soul, and treat with disdain those who are hung-up with material needs. She can usually also go back to her parents, college, or a good job when she tires of poverty. Once more, middle class women set the standards of what is good (and even the proper style of downward mobility which often takes money to achieve) and act “more revolutionary than thou” towards those who are concerned about money and the future. Often these middle class revolutionaries then live off of working class women, who haven’t discarded all their property (which the middle class women may carelessly destroy) or who keep their jobs because of the fear of real poverty. This sharing is done as a “revolutionary communism,” but since it ignores the different class realities of those involved, it is a fuck over.

The “more revolutionary than thou” attitude is only matched in arrogance by the paternalistic social worker type who understands the “problems” of the working class woman and wants to help her out. Psychological paternalism occurs when one middle class woman explains to another that “you have to understand Mary’s background and why she is so hostile.” What Mary needs is for her to stand up and fight classist behavior with her, not explain away why she is the way she is. Paternalism can be benevolence in which the middle class woman gives out of personal graciousness, rather than from the recognition that she has class privileges which it is her responsibility to share. She also retains control over the access to privilege and withdraws it when she disapproves, i.e., when she is threatened. Whatever form the behavior takes, it is condescending because it assumes class superiority instead of recognizing that as women raised in the middle class we have received some useful benefits (such as money, education, skills) which we can share. It is arrogant because it accepts society’s idea that privilege makes you better when, in fact, being raised middle class has messed us up in many ways which working class women can help us understand and change.

There are a lot of small, indirect and dishonest ways of behaving that are part of being raised in “polite society” where “being nice” is at a premium. One is being indirect about anger and disapproval in destructive ways: we bitch, harp, withdraw, make snide comments, gossip, pout, etc. We make people feel our disapproval or anger but we do not say what is really on our minds.

Some of us try to smooth things over and prevent open conflict which we fear. I did this because I took conflict and anger personally and assumed that if the other person liked me, she wouldn’t get angry. It was hard for me to get over an angry scene, so I tried to avoid hostility. This behavior gives the illusion that things are o.k., that you’re still under control, but it is dishonest and destructive because it does not resolve problems and messes over the person who is direct about her opinions and feelings.

These are only some of the forms of classist behavior that we have come to understand in our group. No one woman has all of these traits. On the surface many of these forms seem opposite or contradictory, but what is important is that they are all ways of maintaining the supremacy of the middle class and perpetuating the feelings of inadequacy of the working class. We are not saying that all middle class values and traits are inherently bad: many are helpful, and when disassociated from supremacist use can help us all. But if we are to be able to use any of these and to develop new non-classist ways of behaving, we must examine the effects of our present behavior and how we resist changing.

Resistances to Change

When working class women start confronting middle class women with their oppressive attitudes and behavior, they begin to hear a series of defenses and rationalizations that would stagger a horse. It is not helpful to defend ourselves when someone tries to point out our classist behavior. It is important to be as open as possible, to listen to the working class woman and change what she tells us. Working class women don’t confront us because they get their kicks that way, but because they want to work in a movement with us and they can’t do it unless we stop oppressing them.

The following are some of the ways middle class women react when confronted. None of them are helpful. If you find yourself acting in these ways, stop.

First, there are several ways to divert the issue and avoid dealing with criticism. A common diversion is denying that we are really middle class. Our father worked his way up, or we come from a “hybrid” family, or all of those definitions of middle class don’t really apply to us. Of course, this in no way deals with what the working class woman is saying to us about our class supremacist behavior.

Or we deny that the woman criticizing us is really working class. She may have gone to college, or she dresses “well,” or she’s as articulate as we are. Anything to throw into question her criticism of us. According to this diversionary tactic, only a woman with six kids working in a factory can say anything to us about our class oppressiveness.

It is also diversionary to accuse the working class woman of denying our oppression. She’s not denying that we are oppressed as women. All she is saying is that we also oppress her because of our class supremacist behavior.

Then we can always avoid the issue by demanding to know how working class women are going to bring about an economic revolution. When they start talking about our class oppressiveness, we start inquiring about their program. How will our being unoppressive help the coal miner’s wife? What are they doing to alleviate the plight of Peruvian Indian women? Of course, the point of our changing is to build a movement together aimed at changing the condition of all women.

The second most common way of dealing with class criticism is the guilt trip. The purpose of criticism is to make us change, not make us feel guilty. It’s not our fault that we were born middle class and breast beating about who our parents were and how we grew up isn’t helpful. It is our fault, if after being told how we’re oppressive, we just feel bad and guilty but continue the same oppressive behavior. Guilt makes us know we ought to be “concerned” about working class women so we add them onto the end of statements or talk about how we ought to have more articles about “them.” Guilt is not a helpful way to react to someone pointing out our class supremacist attitudes and behavior. It’s just another way of not changing.

One of the most common ways of expressing guilt is to glorify the lives of women who were raised in working class homes. We talk a lot about “far out working class dykes” and wish that we hadn’t been raised in the suburbs. This in no way deals with the economic insecurity and position of inferiority that working class women grew up in. It’s pretty upsetting for a working class woman to look back at her own life and how she has been treated like scum, while we are telling her what an exciting experience it must have been. Then there are middle class women who put working class women on a pedestal to admire, imitate, or observe with delight. This is just another way of denying that working class women are our equals to be listened to and struggled with.

A step up from outright defensiveness and guilt occurs when middle class women begin to realize the force of criticism but are unable to deal with it politically. So we take it personally. We talk and feel as if we are being unjustly attacked, as if the other woman has no real class grievances against us but is just hostile. “Nowadays, she’s just angry at me.” Instead of looking at our behavior, searching for anything that might be class supremacist, we assume the working class woman is being unfair to us for no reason. Generally, instead of seeking her out to find out what’s wrong, we withdraw in confused “hurt,” thereby protecting our classist behavior. Often we feel self-righteous because she’s the hostile one. “I tried to keep up the friendship but she just wasn’t open.”

Once we have a little class consciousness we don’t think that the working class woman is being unfair for no reason, but we think she has things out of perspective. Her hostility is greater than our oppressiveness warrants. We feel as if we are scapegoats, as if all her hostility from every source is directed at us. She has everything out of proportion and how can we change in such an environment?

Often middle class women react as if working class women want to take away our very identity. “They don’t want us to be ourselves; they can’t accept strengths in anybody.” We don’t know if ay of our behavior is any good anymore. So we become totally passive and of no use to anyone. We acceptingly listen to all criticism with apparent openness and understanding. Yet, we do nothing. Our “polite” acceptance is a passive evasion. If directly challenged, we say, “You’re right but I can’t deal with that now.” We don’t take initiative because it might be classist. This sort of passive withdrawal from the fray is a very effective way of not having to change. It indicates that we know that part of our identity is based on our middle class ways of acting. Middle class women have to build identities that are not based on our supposed superiority. The way the system has worked we have built who we are partly on whom we are better than.

Another passive reaction to class criticism goes, “Yes, I know I’m classist, and I really need you to struggle with me. Tell me every time I oppress you and I’ll change.”

This puts the responsibility for change back on the working class woman. We are the ones who are oppressive, so it is our responsibility to search our own and other middle class women’s behavior and attitudes and to respond openly to working class women when they confront us.

We have to trust that working class women aren’t just trying to tear us down, that they want us to change, that they value us as persons apart from our class oppressiveness. For sure, working class women don’t struggle with those they don’t care about or who they don’t think will change. We can’t wait for someone else to make it clearcut, totally explained and unambiguous. If part of what someone says about us seems wrong, we shouldn’t use that as an excuse to dismiss it all. We have to examine ourselves, what others say and learn by risking change.

The anger of working class women towards middle class women is justified by life-long class oppression, and the class system will not be changed until middle class and working class women both see how oppressive it is and unite to change it. Working class women want middle class women to take up the struggle against classist behavior as their own, to stop resting on their secure middle class position. Middle class women haven’t had to make the fight against classism important because we got benefits from it. We were in the superior position. Working class women want us to stop supporting the class system by accepting its middle class values, stop resting on our privileges and start confronting and challenging class oppressive behavior in ourselves and other middle class women. They do not want to be the only ones who fight against classist behavior. If they are, they might as well separate into their own movement.

Working class women also want us to use and share our middle class privileges with them—the things and skills we have because we were born into the middle class. They want us to share our money, our property, our access to jobs, our education, and our skills. Many middle class women think that downward mobility (voluntary poverty) makes them less classist. In fact all it makes us is poorer and unable to share potentially large salaries with those who don’t have the choice of voluntary poverty.

Bringing down the male supremacist system in this country will not be a possibility until we stop acting out our class supremacist attitudes on the women with whom we’re building a movement.