The Underclass: Lives & Times in the Gutter
As convenient for the denialist this is, it occurred to me I should clarify what the underclass / gutter is reference to - and it is not trans people but being a working-class, poor or messy, 'difficult' woman who is represented nowhere and by no one. Who has been erased, scolded and dismissed by every political party she may have hoped would speak up for her.
We know women from every class, caste and creed are shouted down, silenced and held to hypocritical standards when it comes to speaking up for themselves (It's almost as if we need some new form of feminist analysis, which looks at the intersection of these factors... ) and shame is one method we are almost all vulnerable to. And, there is little more shameful or socially excluding these days than being labelled a TERF - until you realise the full extent of the madness our culture is in the grips of, that is.
There's a particular confluence of minimising factors at play specifically for those of us struggling under the weight of economic and social disenfranchisement. We are struggling to be heard, or too socially restricted to dare to be: as women are erased as a sex class, along with our words and ownership of feminism, and the disappearance of class analysis in supposed leftist politics, we are now totally unrepresented as well as taken for granted and openly disparaged and abused.
As women we are deemed unworthy of a central place in our own liberation movement. Unworthy and, paradoxically, given oppressor status as cis in a bizarre twist of logic that has robbed us of so much.
Working-class women are denigrated as uneducated, unsophisticated, gullible to misinformation and prone to crass judgement. Our likelihood of ending up in institutions through other associated factors (poverty, drug addiction, the care system, absence of social support networks, lack of qualification or higher education and mental health being just a few) isn't properly recognised, and when those of us who are economically oppressed or socially exiled end up in these systems we experience a particular set of difficulties.
That our welfare and dignity in refuges, psychiatric wards and prisons is, in fact, important and under threat is high-handedly dismissed as hysterical fear-mongering that our superior sisters would navigate with compassion, class (un-ironically) and better feminism, which seems beholden to self sacrifice with a gnarly smirk. When there is evidence that we really have been harmed it is again dismissed. That was an aberration; the procedures failed and will now be fixed. 'She' was not a trans woman (although female pronouns still apply) or is just one of those really bad women. Shit happens.
Even if we aren't classically defined as working-class but are welfare dependant or in minimum wage work; having missed out on those priming experiences in schooling or functional family; having suffered isolating and coercive control early on in life; being floored by mental health crises or maladaptive behaviour - we're still out of the public discourse. It leaves us ostracised and muted.
I have heard a phrase - "Nothing about us without us". I wish that was true for everyone, when it came to their lives.
Instead we are a fleeting guestimation in the head of another's imagination, and rarely is that ever going to be a multifaceted character with full range of emotions and experience. People can picture themselves, as they are now, in situations they think they can realistically envisage. It isn't likely accurate though.
At it's most profound - good people, fundraisers who spent a night out sleeping rough in an event etc - it reminds me of those t.v. shows where a celebrity or secret millionaire walks into a crappy, bleak flat as a 'social experiment' to see how they'd manage living on the breadline for a week. We can all buckle down in the short term, especially when we have decent shoes and a full belly up til recently. Especially when we have a crew to accompany us and keep us motivated. It's when it lasts for months or years, with no end in sight, no new shoes, the legs start to go out from under you, your mind breaks and only more darkness floods in. The real limitations put upon us, the real struggle, isn't replicable. Our inner dialogue and reflexes aren't either, and we are changed and judged.
As one woman puts it in her upcoming piece;
"You're not really a woman when you're street homeless. You're not given any of the courtesy women often are. You probably wear men's clothes, you act tougher, you walk and talk differently. You are way more at risk if you show the vulnerability of being female, so you crush it. They know you have a vagina - that comes into 'conversion' a lot - but you're very much a sub-woman. A shell. You failed at woman-ing."
We can't even have a unified gathering in tribute to the women killed by men. Trans Day of Remembrance garners mass coverage and bleeding hearts, while our own refuges and charities against VAW will refuse to participate in vigils for murdered women because transwomen are not honoured (despite there having not been a murder of a transwoman in the UK in years).
Sarah Everard's memorial was hijacked and trashed in the pseudo-anarchic hysteria of Sisters Uncut and their desperate need to centre someone a bit edgier - less white, straight and heteronormative - which lead to the desecration of a public expression of grief.
As women struggling with life's mundanities we aren't important enough. We have little online presence outside of our social circles in the age of social media mantras delivered by icons of manicured perfection, replete with edgy selfies. Except for that most hated platform of radicalisation, that hot bed of harpies - MumsNet - there's nowhere for us. We are ridiculed, demonised and reminded that we should, really, be sharing childcare and cooking tips alone, not sticking our noses into the politics of gender. As well as this, we generally don't have the time or energy to engage in the unholy mindfuck / minefield that is gender politics.
For Penny, there was never a time she was helpless with no one to help - give her a place to stay, a shoulder to cry on or just to lend her a fiver to top up her phone. That knowledge filters in through every sense, it informs everything you think and feel. It is integral. It will never be the same until you have been completely alone.
Working-class women are placed into the role of enforcer when someone complains about a male in a female-only space. The toilet attendant, the woman working in the changing rooms - they are left at the sharp end, implementing self identification rules proudly embraced by the boss who gets glowing praise and rainbow stickers and never has to deal with the shocked faces of these bigoted women.
We have no voice. As the complainant we are hidden, and so wildly caricatured mental images develop in the public consciousness. We are the heartless harridan, vulgar and afraid of what we don't understand. Or maybe we are just old, 'conservative', religious (this is great for dismissing women of colour) and a bit backwards. We cannot be sympathetic characters, we are bad women, bad feminists. A TERF. She who needs educating.
No one, bar those terrible TERFs, wept at the indignity and suffering of the prisoner FDJ or the victims of Karen White. Whereas Jade Eatough, Nicola Cope, Marie Dean were all sex offenders, all trans, and all subject to fawning tweets, petitions, headlines and tributes. The very fact the gender ideologues feel able to brush aside sex offences of self-declared transwomen, but not the ultimate thought crime of not accepting them as women, is one thing. What they are too cowardly to admit (or even so unaware of themselves they don't know) really uncovers their simpering devotion to their favoured sacred-cow (the undeniable mascot of misogynists) and their allegiance to doctrine - that women in prison or living on the streets have broken gender norms to such a degree they can't even be viewed as worthy of protection anymore. Those who complain about being left to clean up the piss on the toilet seats in the ladies have always been easy to caricature as petty, spiteful nags.
Do the Emma Watsons, Jameela Jamils, Katherine Ryans or Laurie Pennys of the world really believe they are of equal worth to the woman serving time for shoplifting or drug offences? Can they honestly accept that, given different beginnings, their places could be swapped? And have they ever tried to empathise with these underclass, gutter-dwelling sisters?
For the idealistic, pop-left paragons of virtue there are simple, sweeping answers on prison abolition, a few repeated stats on how prisons don't work and are used disproportionately on the poor and marginalised. What there is very little acknowledgement of is the true vulnerability and life of (almost always male) violence these women have had to survive and continue to contend with.
The high-class, luxury feminist may well have endured domestic or street violence, rape and coercive control. But, that's not the point. What they have not endured is that while stuck in social systems that can't care even if they wanted to.
Like being stuck in a judicial system in which even the professional advocates collapsed with compassion fatigue years ago, can't keep up with the workload and have absorbed too much; in a system that has neither time nor inclination to delve into their specific situations; that has, literally, no beds at the inn and is rushed of its feet with ten other, near identical or worse, cases.
So, that's what I want to do here - speak as a woman who has been left on the steps of the council, homeless, beaten and with no options. As a woman with no access to legal funds to tackle unlawful evictions, sackings or harassment: who isn't taken seriously when challenging the school or the office or media: who doesn't have the presentable, 'good victim' profile for TV or radio. Myself and my contributor do this, and our hope is to amplify others. For this we will be publishing several pieces on the stories of women who are rarely heard.
Unlike transwomen, the urge is not to 'be kind' and take a good faith interpretation. The violent, murdering sex offender in San Quentin has emerged from their crysalis to be a delicate lady now. Not like these women. Us. We're rough and troublesome; we don't live the same way or care as much, we don't see the bigger picture like they do - you can see it in our words and deeds. We're able to manage in these situations by pure weather-worn resilience.
For them to really be like us, it's like trying to imagine a prize racehorse ploughing a field or carting coal down a mine. We are of the underclass and in the gutter, and the chattering classes in ivory towers telling us to avert our eyes and eat cake is getting a bit much now.
