I'm coming out................as Working Class

There has been a lot of talk on my twitter timeline recently about class. Specifically the tensions of negotiating Middle Class spaces as a Working Class woman; and whilst I don't intend to add my comments to what's been happening it has given me the impetus to write this post.

So, this is me, coming out as Working Class: I'm a working class woman, trying to negotiate the very foreign world of academia and I have some thoughts I want to share on this experience.

I grew up on council estates, after my family home was repossessed in the recession in the 1980s because my parents could no longer afford the mortgage. I watched from an upstairs window as my dad argued with the bailiffs when they came to repossess the car. We didn't have much money when I was growing up. My parents worked in low income jobs and life was tough. At birthdays and Christmas I grew so used to being told "We can't afford that" that I stopped asking for expensive gifts. I remember one year when I wanted a Ghettoblaster for my birthday, and it nearly broke my parents paying for it.

I'm the first of my family to get a degree. So when I returned to university as a mature student, I had no frame of reference. Despite this I fell in love with it. I felt at home at university, like I'd found my place. For me academia is a world full of learning, challenge, debate and knowledge sharing. But, from day one I glossed over my past. I VERY quickly realised that being working class made me different, made me other. So I just didn't talk about my childhood. I nodded and smiled as others talked of the help they got from parents and the family holiday's they'd had to far off countries.

As I moved from being a student to working in academia this feeling of not belonging deepened. My colleagues are overwhelmingly middle class, and this is difficult, because I don't know the rules of the game. I can't do the academic politics thing, I have no idea how. And this has led to me being scapegoated and shit upon on more than one occasion. I wish I could say that this was by academic men, but unfortunately it's been by middle class women.

When the shit hits the fan, working class people band together, they close ranks. The middle-classes however, are out solely to protect themselves, even if this comes at someone else's expense. And in a middle class world a working class woman is very exposed to this. I expect that people will stick with me, but they don't. And every time it has happened I've been deeply hurt and shocked. This is not how people behave.

When I was a young mum, living in my own council house with an abusive husband it was my working class friends that helped me survive. We shared food, lent money to each other, shared baby formula and nappies. We kept each other going. This is what I expect from other women, this sisterhood. So it's completely alien to me when other women have used me to forward their own agendas and discarded me when things got difficult.

Negotiating the world of academia as a working class woman is hard. Everyone understands my marginalisation for being a woman, but no-one seems able or willing to even talk about how I am marginalised by my class (not even me, up until now). I don't know the rules, the codes, for how to behave. And honestly, from what I've experienced of them, I don't want to play the game by those rules.

My experience has been that in academia there is a very individualised culture. Everyone looks out for themselves, others be damned. But I come from a collectivistic culture, where the survival of everyone is more important than any one individual. It's almost impossible to square this circle.

(I was going to say that it's 'not all middle class academic women', but come to think of it, the women I know in academia who have been helpful and supportive come from working class backgrounds).

I've spent the last 7 years trying to pass as middle class, and I've been fairly successful. I'm smart, articulate and educated, so I can ape it, sometimes. But it's an added workload and I'm tired of wasting my energy pretending to be something I'm not. I'm tired of trying to be smaller, of trying not to be too loud, too sweary, too balshy. Of doing everything I can to disguise my working class roots.

There's a big push in academia at the moment around diversity and inclusion, but still no-one is talking about class. Oh, there's the 'widening participation' agenda aimed at getting more 'poor' students to university, but no-one is talking about what happens to them once they're in. And we should be, we need to be, because academia is a hostile environment for the working class.

So this is me, coming out as working class. Saying I'm proud of my roots and what I've achieved. And also saying, you need to take a long, hard look at yourself academia. A really good look. Recognise the class privilege that drips off almost every one of you and how your thoughtless, self-serving actions can ruin the life of someone like me. If you really want to be inclusive you've got to start thinking about including the working classes in your precious ivory tower.

2014 - An interesting year

What can I say about 2014? It's been an interesting year. I started 2014 in the midst of what was essentially a nervous breakdown. Very few people knew (or to date, know) about my mental health problems this year. Not because I'm ashamed of them, but because I tend not to talk about that type of stuff often. The reasons for my mental health issues were myriad, and I'm still dealing with some of the fall out, but on the whole, I'm better now. 

I spent the first half of the year hiding in bed. Unable to go to work, unable to play with my son, unable to do anything....except read and crochet. So I read, LOTS. Mostly feminist theory, and I learned lots. I also crocheted LOTS and I've gotten pretty good.

2014 is the year I finally acknowledged that my migraines were a disability. That I wasn't a 'normal' person who got ill sometimes, but a chronically ill person who needed to take self-care more seriously. This lesson was hard to learn, but it couldn't have happened at a better time, because in the last few months of 2014 I was diagnosed with ME/CFS. And now I really have to accept that I can't do things the way I used to.

So far this post seems a little gloomy, but these experiences have led to some positives. My health issues led me to @phdisabled and a community of others in academia with chronic illness/disability. I realised that the struggles I had faced were not just my experiences. That academia has a culture that excludes those like me. That this culture is pervasive and subtle and easily internalised. And I got angry. I found myself speaking out on twitter, writing for the PhDisabled blog and joining the group to help change things. In essence I joined a campaign. 

My feminist reading also gave me a better understanding of sexism and women's oppression. And this made me angry. So I used my voice. Online and off. I became that feminist that my friends sometimes roll their eyes at, and I'm proud of this. ;) 

These two passions opened up new possibilities, and combined with my passion for all things STEM I began to see a new path for my energies and talents. In the summer, I won what I thought was the PERFECT PhD position. And we began to plan a move to London.

Then my gran got sick, and I had this feeling that she wasn't going to get better. Things with the London move became more and more complicated and I realised that I was going to have to make a heartbreaking decision. I withdrew from the PhD place. I felt cheated! Why would this opportunity come along if I wasn't able to take it?

Around this time my gran went into hospital again, and in early September she died. Suddenly not moving to London seemed right. I got to see my gran a few days before her death. I got to say goodbye. We should have been in London by then.

My gran's death hit me hard. Though I had prepared for it, I was still devasted. I was close to my gran as a kid, and there's so much I could tell you about what she taught me. But I'm saving that for another post, when I'm ready. 

By my birthday in mid-september, I had had enough of 2014. It was a crap year! I just wanted it to be over. I felt exhausted. Wrung out. I literally couldn't take any more. 

Then I got a great job, working in public engagement, with an amazing team of women. Suddenly going to work was fun and things seemed a little brighter. Maybe the year was going to end on a good note after all. 

One day, a month or so into my new job, my manager called me into her office. I felt like a schoolkid being called in to see the headteacher. But she wasn't telling me off, far from it - she showed me a job that had just been posted on the uni network and said

"You HAVE to apply for this. You are PERFECT for it"

I looked over the job description and can honestly say it was like someone had written the perfect job for me. I applied, with hope, but no real expectation. I interviewed at the end of October and I started the job at the beginning of November. And I bloody LOVE it. The job is AMAZING. I'm working on diversity in STEM in HE. I get to have a direct effect on policy (even if it is only at one university). This job uses all of my skills, stimulates my brain and satisfies that eternal curiosity. If you'd told me in Septmeber that I would finish 2014 on a high, I'd probably have killed you. But I have. I CANNOT wait to get started on 2015. Despite my grief, despite my health issues, I'm facing the new year with excitement and looking back on 2014 with some affection. 

Happy New Year! 

Reading Audre Lorde is changing my life

As my interest in feminism has grown, I've started reading some of the works of feminist writers. I've started slowly and avoided certain topics completely (due to self care), but I'm learning so much. I've loved the books I've read so far and they've all been helpful to me in their own way. But none have spoken to me in the way that Audre Lorde has.

I started reading her "Sister Outsider" just after a trip to visit a friend. Said friend had me read the essay "The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action" from this book. And I was hooked! In this particular essay Lorde points out that our silence hasn't ever protected us from violence, victimisation and ridicule. As women we get those anyway, whether we are silent or whether we "speak". This essay spoke to me because this is how I view my move into feminism and activism. Through twitter and blogging I found my voice. I am able to speak against injustice where I see it and people respond to my writing. I've written not just on my own blog but for other campaigns too, and I continue to do this. It allows me, in some small way, to feel like I am fighting. But more than this, I'm fighting using something I am good at. I LOVE writing. I always have. And because I love it, and have done so much of it (for fun) over the years, I'm pretty good at it. I'm confident about my writing, in a way that I am not always confident about "speaking" in person. So being able to write, to use writing as my voice, as a way to break the silence has been immensely powerful for me. And reading Lorde's essay felt like a validation of all of those feelings. I feel stronger because I write; I feel empowered because I write; I feel like I'm contributing because I write; I broke my silence because I write.

But, Lorde's impact on me doesn't end there. When I got home I went to the uni library and picked up Sister Outsider. I started reading and was blown away by the essay "Poetry is not a Luxury". In this piece Lorde talks about the power of poetry and how it is not a trivial thing. I was moved almost to tears (I kid you not) by this paragraph:

"For women then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action. Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives."

When I read those words, they hit me in the chest, took my breath away, and filled my eyes with tears. Here Lorde was putting words to a feeling I've had my whole life but never been able to articulate. I've always used poetry to cope and process. When I'm dealing with trauma I write poems. When I'm hurting and sad, those feelings express themselves through words on a page. I rarely let people read these poems. They are MINE, for me. A way to deal with my life experiences, to process my pain. The act of writing these poems frees me somehow. Lets me see the hurt and deal with it. It moves it from within me to on the page. Poetry is and always has been my survival tactic. To see that this is true of other women, and to see Lorde articulate it so clearly, changed my life. It moved me, in a way no other piece of writing ever has. It switched something in my head and again, made me feel stronger and more connected to other women.

It was so powerful that I had to share it: I tweeted it. And since then it has sat in my heart and in my head, I'm pretty sure those words have taken up permanent residence inside me. :)

After this I was besotted with Lorde and her writing, but sure that her words were done moving me so much. And then she hit me again, with her essay "Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power". In this essay Lorde talks about reclaiming "the erotic" as not just referring to sexual behaviours and actions, but as that feeling of love and passion. That these feelings do not just pertain to sex and relationships but to our passions, such as writing, art, to everything:

"The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. For having experienced the fullness of this depth of feeling and recognizing its power, in honor and self-respect we can require no less of ourselves."

Again, this hit me in the chest. These words gave me permission for my pursuit of my education. For the direction I am trying to push my career. My path is one which follows the erotic in this sense, when I research, teach and write I feel this sense of satisfaction. I KNOW it is what I am supposed to be doing. What I was made for. There have been times when I have felt like this pursuit is selfish. That the sacrifices my family make for this are too much to ask. But these words again freed me. Lorde spoke to me and let me know that what I am doing will make me a stronger, more whole person. And in truth, that to not pursue this sense of satisfaction would be a betrayal of myself.

Like I said, this book is changing my life. Sister Outsider contains so much other wisdom, words about being a black woman, a lesbian, about intersectionality and multiple oppressions. I know it's a book I will return to again and again throughout my life. If you haven't read it, DO. It is truly an amazing work. I intend to find EVERYTHING Audre Lorde has ever written, because I have a feeling she has much more to say to me.

To my London friend (you know who you are) THANK-YOU, thank-you for putting this book in my hands.

To the memory of the amazing Audre Lorde I say: Your words changed my world. Thank-you!