Darkdaughta has additional suggestions:

“and because class can never be simply about economics, especially for all the west indians I’ve encountered these are the ones I’d add…”

(as before, bold those that apply.)

35. Your entire family or individual relatives was preoccupied with making sure that the family name was protected.

36. Your family name brings sighs, awe-filled glances , rolled out red carpets and immediate access in circles where your family is known.

37. Family members hold government office, are CEOs of large companies, are well known authors, land/property owners or successful business people who own their own businesses.

38. You are closeted about some important facet of your identity especially one related to the erotic, because your family is well known and people would talk causing a lowering of overall family status.

39. Small children in your immediate family go to montessori, waldorf or other paid schooling that older family members never did and it is understood that they will all have the opportunity to go to university or college…as the amerikkkans call it.

40. You have investments, stocks and/or bonds.

41. You can afford to go on vacation once or twice a year to another country either because of cash at hand or because of credit.

42. You have a line of credit at your bank.

43. Your landlord is friendly, does repairs on time and doesn’t present you with eviction notices if/when you’re late with the rent.

44. For that matter, you are of a higher class, economic bracket or educational background than your landlord.

45. You presently own your own single family home or condominium.

46. You choose to rent and don’t ever have to worry about how you will pay next month’s rent, bills, grocery costs, entertainment and any incidentals or emergency health care related bills.

47. You have medical and dental insurance.

48. You have home contents insurance.

49. You have a non-second hand car.

50. You could have a non-second hand car and afford it easily, but you choose to buy a second hand car on principle.

51. You could buy anything you need new and at cost, but you choose to buy second hand or to haggle 0n principle or because you’re cheap or because you were taught to not flaunt your financial privilege.

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Before now I never really identified the fact I didnt spend my childhood in one home with one family as being so massively abnormal, even though I know its not usual.  But these questions, representing as they do what middle class people probably consider the ‘norm’, do make me feel different.  I have lived in so many different homes, sometimes only for a week or two.  I have spent time sleeping rough, going from sofa to sofa and bed to bed, and in squats.  Not political squats, just empty houses that we took for ourselves, for as long as we could before being removed (not long, usually).  Nowadays I have a secure home, we rent from my partners parents, paying their mortgage on this house.  We dont own our own home but I think this is maybe the next best thing, renting from people who will let us decorate our own way, who wont kick us out without notice, and who are happy for us to live here long term.

Anyway - my point is - that maybe some people who dont move around a lot, who have a secure home, arent really aware that that in itself is a privilege?  But also - I dunno, in some ways it was neglect, and I went through a lot of abuse and it was really a hideous way to live.  Once upon a time my school teachers looked at me and thought I’d be the kid that made it, that got to uni and did good, because I had the brains.  Then my home life went mental, and I lost whatever chance I may have had at scholarships and university places.  I also screwed up in other ways and lost time and ability, as well as developing long term mental health issues, just because I was a kid trying to survive while other kids were going to school and doing kid stuff.  But in other ways, not having that “secure loving family unit” has been liberating for me, because I’ve seen the way many families operate and how they can be psychologically abusive, where they are not outright physically abusive.  I’m not sure if I got out lucky.  Also - I managed to slip through the net, I always do somehow, and I stayed out of the “care” system.  I had friends in care and I witnessed enough I didnt want to be part of it.  So on one hand I was lucky to stay out of care, but on the other I went through rough times in other places instead, and I didnt get any of the government help that is reserved for kids coming out of care.

Starfish has been writing about family here, and her response to the class meme is here, with some interesting discussion following.  I think there are cages everywhere, but I dont have much else put together yet to say.

Support for meritocracy allows racists to continue being racist, sexists to continue being sexist, almost everyone to continue attacking the “purpose” of those with disabilities or disorders, etc.  And yet I see an overwhelming amount of support for meritocracy and individualist centred brands of politics among so called progressives all over the place.  Class politics in the UK were already complicated enough for me to understand when they said you supposedly either had it, or you didnt, but the reality of who fell into either category was more complex than anyone wanted to admit, and what people were telling me never seemed to tie up with what I have actually witnessed and experienced.  Add meritocracy and the American Dream into the mix and the whole thing just spins so far out that noone makes sense anymore.

I’m confused.  I’m fed up.  Too many individualist leftists indulging in victim blaming and meritocracy worshipping, alleged anarchists and socialists indulging the evolutionary psychologists (thank you Dr Socks for introducing me to a whole new set of weirdos, but they do keep popping up everywhere don’t they) by accepting it as a “science” rather than as only slightly different explanations (excuses) for the same old entitlement and the same old oppressions.  Women are women because we have women’s brains, men are men because they have men’s brains, and men’s brains and women’s brains are fundamentally different except when that man is really a woman or that woman is really a man, but regardless - men’s brains whether in a man or a woman are superior and women’s brains whether in a woman or a man are inferior.

The left is too far right, women are still for sale but somehow capitalism becomes empowering when it’s us being commodified, and nothing makes sense.  Everything is backwards, contradiction is hailed as truth and truth is trashed as the rantings of crazy people who allegedly enjoy being victims, who are “probably” turned on by the victimisation of their sisters, that victimisation which they spend their time tirelessly trying to make public.  Somehow screaming NO! is really a sign that in secret, we like it, we desire it, we protest only because we find it sexually stimulating - now where have I heard all that before?  Are people really so desperate to fit in that they will overlook this stuff as if it doesn’t matter, as if this sort of blatant doublespeak and victim blaming language is compatible with liberation struggles?

Was I completely deluded to think that it was the people on the right who only cared about the lives and fates of their own selfish selves, and that those on the left were more inclined to care about the lives and fates of us all, collectively, as people all under the same sun?  When did the left start parroting Thatcher, who they claim to hate, but even so I’m really having difficulty seeing where the line is, between them and her.  “There is no such thing as society”.  Indeed.  Or maybe I’m too young to have understood until now that that was always the way, and only now am I beginning to see that no matter how much some people might say anti racism, no matter how much they might say feminism, no matter how much they might try to claim these positions and actions, i do not think it means what they think it means.

What an utterly cryptic and useless post I gave you.   I’m working it through, bear with me.  Too much going on, not a great enough handle on my own language to express what I need to.

This is a group of people who describe themselves as socialist feminists and who are organising a conference in a London University later this year.

I dont trust them, I dont think we have much in common, or that most of what they talk about represents my interests as a working class woman. I don’t accept that the ideas they present are necessarily socialist or feminist, and my opinion on that is not completely based on the perspectives that they do present, but is just as much based on the ideas that they do not. As an example - I mean sure i’m for access to abortion, but what about those of us who want to go ahead and have children? I’m not seeing these mostly (all?) young, white, educated women showing any real interest in maternity care or the various issues that are specific to mothers, its like for them the whole struggle ends at the right to abortion (or to sell sexual services from some nice flat in a nice part of town). Likewise they don’t seem to realise there are women who are over the age of 25, or who are physically disabled, have mental illnesses, are elderly, are poor, are drug addicts, are homeless.. They say they’re ‘diverse’ but they arent, not really, not in any way that i can tell.

Probably my very negative opinion wont do them any damage whatsoever seeing as everything I believe in is dismissed often enough as a repressed middle class sort of feminism. The irony of this makes me so fucking angry.

I think the women at the leading end of this group and campaign are more concerned with their own ‘names’ and their own future careers than they are in their politics. They deliberately misrepresent other feminist perspectives, particularly radical feminist perspectives. At last years feminist fightback conference they managed to have talks on both queer and transgender issues yet they had nothing specific to lesbians. They didnt even touch the issue of violence against women, I think the closest they got was some sort of talk on traffiking, which was dealt with as an immigration issue rather than as an issue of violence and slavery. They had a few different talks on sex work, presenting several pro industry speakers, but no-one of an opposing viewpoint, and no-one from any of the many groups who provide feminist support to prostitutes (for example, The Poppy Project, who provide direct support to prostitutes as well as lobbying on their behalf). They invited Object, a UK anti-pornography group, to share a platform with pro-pornography campaigners, and slandered Object when they, in my opinion rightly, refused.

Off topic - The thing about conferences on sex work, is that they are always overwhelmingly going to represent the pro side, because it’s very fucking difficult to get the great majority of us who are anti because of our own experiences in prostitution to want to go public about it.

But back to the Feminist Fightback people. Last year they also found the space to provide a platform to Backlash, who are an openly anti feminist group. But then they arent the only feminist platform who are spending resources promoting openly anti feminist spokespeople. Seems a bit fucked up to me but there you go. Don’t anti feminists have enough spaces to talk from and in? Feminists work and fight for the space to talk, then we give it to anti feminists? Why?

I wont be going to Feminist Fightback and I wouldnt even if money and time wasnt an issue. Their focus is too narrow for me, they represent the interests of too narrow a group and it doesn’t include me, in any way.

 Marilyn Waring: Sex, Lies & Global Economics

“a radio version of the feminist economics film about the New Zealand author and former member of parliament Marilyn Waring, directed by the Oscar winning Canadian director Terre Nash”.

She came from Greece, she had a thirst for knowledge. She studied sculpture at Saint Martin’s College, that’s where I caught her eye. She told me that her dad was loaded. I said “In that case I’ll have a rum and coca-cola”. She said “fine”, and in thirty seconds time she said,

“I want to live like common people. I want to do whatever common people do. I want to sleep with common people. I want to sleep with common people like you”

Well what else could I do? I said, “I’ll see what I can do”.

I took her to a supermarket. I don’t know why but I had to start it somewhere, so it started there.

I said “Pretend you’ve got no money”. But she just laughed and said “oh you’re so funny”. I said “yeah? Well I can’t see anyone else smiling in here”.

“Are you sure you want to live like common people? You want to see whatever common people see? You want to sleep with common people? You want to sleep with common people, like me?”

But she didn’t understand. She just smiled and held my hand.

Rent a flat above a shop, cut your hair and get a job, smoke some fags and play some pool. Pretend you never went to school.

But still you’ll never get it right. Cos when youre laid in bed at night watching roaches climb the wall, if you call your dad he could stop it all.

You’ll never live like common people, youll never do what common people do. You’ll never fail like common people. Youll never watch your life slide out of view.

And dance, and drink, and screw, because there’s nothing else to do.

Sing along with the common people, sing along and it might just get you through. Laugh along with the common people, laugh along even though, they’re laughing at you and the stupid things that you do.

Because you think that poor is cool.

Like a dog lying in a corner, they will bite you and never warn you. Look out. They’ll tear your insides out cos everybody hates a tourist. Especially one who thinks it’s all such a laugh and the chip stains’ grease will come out in the bath.

You will never understand how it feels to live your life with no meaning or control.

And with nowhere left to go.

You are amazed that they exist. And they burn so bright whilst you can only wonder why.

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From the “different class” album. Watch the music video and listen to the song here. There’s also a rather good William Shatner version.

The image above is the cover of the graphic novel version by Jamie Hewlett, he of Tank Girl and the Gorillaz. It’s almost impossible to find a copy but someone kind has scanned the pages.

I have been singing this to myself for weeks so thought I’d share.