Feminism and Class

(Originally published on LiveJournal on 26 June 2007)

With yesterday’s post about how horrible women can be to men and get away with it, and this one following on so soon after, I’m in danger if this turning into a Men’s Rights blog, but this occurred to me and I thought I’d get it down and out there.

I’ve read a few men’s rights blogs, and they all seem united in thinking that feminism is wrong and should never have happened. I disagree. I think feminism is right and necessary, but in the last couple of decades it’s badly lost its way.

One thing that’s always perplexed me about feminism is that it only really seems interested in the women of the comfortable classes. Female university students, who on the whole come from wealthy families and have plenty of options,are surrounded by it, but nobody’s trying to raise the gender consciousness of single mothers on council estates, point out their lack of options and blame that on the patriarchy. It’s also been clear to me that, while the people who have power are almost invariably men, it doesn’t follow that any given man has any power at all. Most of us are wage-slaves, working long hours in shitty jobs to raise money to support families we see little of.

But I enjoy reading history, and it struck me that historically, upper-class women have been probably the most unequal compared to their male peers than any other class. Up until relatively recent centuries, women of the upper classes have been bargaining chips, married off to secure political alliances with other powerful families. They were the property of their fathers, then of their husbands. Their children were taken care of by servants, provided by their husbands and fathers. They may have been materially comfortable, but they had almost no autonomy, no control over their own lives, no control over their homes and families and no identity as individuals, and their fathers, husbands and brothers ran the country. This is exactly feminism’s concept of relations between the sexes!

Among the poor, however, there was very little sexual inequality. Men earned money by paid work outside the home, but it was badly-paid, often dangerous work in heavy industry. They worked long hours in terrible conditions for slave-driving bosses, and every penny went on the table at home to feed the family. They had no autonomy, no control over their own lives, no control over their homes and families and no identity as individuals either. They did what they had to do. Their wives were no better off, but no worse off either. The man would have been the primary breadwinner, but they weren’t paid well, and working class women have always done paid work outside the home, so their level of financial dependence was less significant. Neither the man nor the women had any power outside the home, and who had the power within the family came down to strength of personality. We’ve all heard of  (and may be related to) those terrifying working class matriarchs who dominated generations of a family, and the stereotype of the wifebeater and the stereotype of the hen-pecked husband are both pictured as working class.

Wealthy women now have all the autonomy they could wish for, and it is now poor women who seem to face the greatest inequality. But feminism, based as it is on the experiences of the wealthy, is not interested. It would much rather fight battles it’s already won, and find new ways to say that 18-year-old rich girls are oppressed.

But I’m a man. What do I know?