Class and Art Part 2: Leaping first

 

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Part one of this series is a blatant experiment in finding the thinnest comment on class and art you could imagine getting away with … Welcome to part two where we both start to figure out what I was driving at. By art I mean my striving to be creative through writing; by class I’ve just about implied that my personal circumstances include being a low earner from a non-wealthy background. By writing poetry I tried to assure myself that there was some artistic potential in my writing, even though I often doubted that this made me an artist, because my writing goal remained straight-up non-fiction. By eventually earning a decent salary (part-time) and having gone to university, I inevitably ensured that middle class people would read me as lower middle class rather than struggling-to-survive. The perspective that money was my nemesis only really took root when I had to give up my PhD. The problem was that my goals belonged to the middle-class but my means didn’t.

Throughout those years I had a poster on the corkboard near my apartment door telling me that all I needed to know in order to succeed was the truth that I was only the only thing in my way. Having to work 3-4 days a week in an exhausting job wasn’t stopping me from writing chapters. The energy required to be with my two kids fifty percent of the week wasn’t stopping me from doing the research. The routine emotional trauma of trying to reconnect with my kids when they got home from staying with their other parent for half the week wasn’t stopping me from performing clear-sighted objective analyses of the latest developments in critical studies of men and masculinities. No, I was stopping myself.

And Yes, all of that paragraph is an exercise in self-indulgent sarcasm for which I apologise to anyone who isn’t English (and who is still reading), if you are patiently wondering what the fuck I am trying to say.

I’ve heard it said enough times in conversation now, to see without doubt, that the new-age-enlightenment rhetoric of finding all demons within ourselves and healing them first, as a path to achieving what we really want from life – to achieving whatever we want from life – is deeply burdened with class dynamics. On the one hand, we can easily see from statistics and social reality that not everyone can become famous, rich, a celebrated artist or public speaker by simply freeing themselves from negative thought patterns. On the other hand, what we aspire to, what our dreams are made of, is deeply constrained by our class position in society. The individual who defeats the statistics of their social background in order to excel as their imagination chooses, is the exception that proves the rule. They are also the one who visibly succeeds where a far greater number has invisibly failed. And the most-loved of the insincerely meritocratic rich.

At the same time, if we ignore this invitation to look deep within ourselves we are far more likely to give in to the weights laid on our backs by those who profit from the labours of others. Even consuming the art (or success) of the poor becomes a sweet pleasure for the rich provided that there are still enough poor left over to keep their profit-generators running and wages low. Looking deep within ourselves first makes it impossible to ignore the truth of class oppression. Believing that cash-poor families and individuals are struggling because they haven’t faced their personal demons is even madder than believing they are poor because they have not worked hard enough.

I’m following a course from the book The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. It’s a handbook and a workbook for finding creative inspiration and the means to act on it: to create and enjoy creating for its own sake, and towards whatever artistic goals you have for yourself. It works. It’s clever and brilliant and enlightening. One key motif is to leap first and trust that the safety net will appear. The work involves digging out events and people who planted seeds of doubt and shame in you about wanting to make art (instead of doing a ‘real’ job?) It’s powerful and can be overwhelming at times.

As I struggle to deal with the emotional (and resulting physical) fallout from this deep-clean, I can see how exactly alike it is to the continuous emotional-physical cleaning out I have been doing through all the challenges and obstacles of the last twenty years. This book couldn’t have helped me then, because I didn’t yet have the permission to believe that art was what I could or should want to do in the first place. I didn’t know I had a ‘right’ to make art. My personal circumstances were not that kind of safe for me. You can’t leap off from an empty space.

Once I heard a white man in his sixties telling a friend on the train that his daughter had announced that she was going to be an artist. It would work out okay in the end he said, she was marrying a merchant banker.

Class and Art Part 1: Coming Clean

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For many months and even years I’ve had writing as a serious long-term goal as well as a very part-time hobby. I can honestly say that now, as I am steadily getting closer to making it feel real, I am more aware than ever before of just how long and painful the process is going to be. Although a bit of me still dreams that ninety percent of the hurdles are behind me, deep down I know that’s a pernicious fantasy.

There is no coincidence at work in being more accepting of the long haul and feeling it might really happen – that I might really succeed in making myself do it ‘this time’. Whenever I have managed to kid myself that it will be easy, that it will all just fall into place, I have worked against my own progress, not towards it. It may have served to keep me from giving up. Yet the buried knowledge of what was really involved is one of the biggest tastiest meals for Resistance.

In The War of Art, Stephen Pressfield explores every corner of human behaviour where Resistance may show itself – to you and me that’s procrastination by another name, but also fear, ‘laziness’, avoidance, writer’s block and so on. I honour and love his capitalisation of Resistance – it’s The True Enemy. You can choose to take a great holistic view of course: all manifestations of Resistance can be read as precious signposts to what you need to change, to where you most need to go right now. One of the most important observations Pressfield gives us is that Resistance is not something you grow or develop yourself out of. It will be there beside you forever.

So all the while I was only pretending I understood how much commitment it would take from me to write, I was nourishing my Resistance. I paid lip service to the long road ahead, but I clung to the belief in the Big Break where someone influential would stumble upon my work and elevate it overnight, or to a necessary fiction that I am uniquely talented or productive, or interesting. Both of these are bald dead ends. If a writer (or any artist) has no talent or aptitude whatsoever they are unlikely to build up to a big readership whatever route they take (though some popular writers challenge that!), but aside from that extreme, we are all potentially talented and interesting – some of us just get really really excitable about things and have to share them. A great woman once said we should only write when we can’t not write.

I can tell you why I needed that style of Resistance for so long, the ‘I don’t need to worry too hard about working because I know it will fall into place sooner or later’ style. I needed it because I couldn’t do the extraordinary amounts of work which are needed in order to produce ‘serious’ pieces of writing (i.e. something approaching professional, something people might buy, thereby eventually enabling you to not have another job – that kind of serious). I couldn’t do that work. I had to tell myself it didn’t matter. I couldn’t tell myself that if I gave it ten years before I started, it would be an easier road. That would only have been a far worse form of Resistance. I’ve had kids, jobs, partners and break ups. I’ve had health issues, mental health issues, mental people issues and lovely people taking up loads of my time by being fun to be with and letting me talk about all my issues.

I don’t believe for a moment that people born into wealth don’t suffer from writer’s block or any of the other bazillion forms of Resistance, but I do believe that money and survival, expectations and opportunities, feed directly into the bank of possibility. I created vast mental and behavioural contradictions by telling myself that my ‘background’, my income options and my juggling of too many other major commitments, should not inhibit my progress or ‘success’ as a creative producer. Eventually this mess in my mind knocked me over like a train. It’s one of the key ingredients in the soup of mild mental illness that I have fought to recover from ever since finally leaving my jobs. My stubborn refusal to believe that I was at an economic, class disadvantage made me unwilling to assess my capabilities realistically, and so I drove myself into the ground without a second thought.

Being a woman is one of the hardest ‘background’ factors to pretend we are not disadvantaged by. Having children is a job worthy of any human lifetime; also we don’t all have to do it. We live in a world which lies to us every day about this. In sane worlds, men and women put children first and by being unanimous about the obviousness of this, unthinkingly support each other’s creativity and productivity, via and for the benefit of, relationships, extended families and communities. And creativity and productivity are harmoniously intertwined.

Feminism-ism, or something

Be what you are

It seems to me that as feminism enjoys a necessary resurgence it is becoming slightly easier to formulate the critique we need to get beyond it. What do I mean by beyond feminism? Possibly not what I thought I used to mean.

For a long time now I have been sitting uneasily on the feminist sidelines, refusing to refuse the label of being a feminist. Not only am I genuinely disturbed by the thought of feminist friends or any other women I know thinking of me as a non-feminist, a woman who doesn’t think women’s problems (such as structural inequality), are real or serious or worth campaigning or complaining about, I also feel by turns passionate about discrimination against women in its many forms, vile, violent and mundane, and that’s a central feminist sentiment right there.

What’s the but? I often come back round to the term pro-feminism, especially with all the waves overlapping and with post-feminism being such a hopelessly compromised term. What does it mean to be pro-feminist? What could it mean? I wonder whether identifying as a pro-feminist marks me out as not-a-woman somehow.

What does it mean to be pro-feminist if that means not quite feminist, or not feminist? Are there well-developed strands of actual feminism which I am simply not doing enough reading or research to discover, which perfectly situate me and my feminist perceptions?

To me, being pro-feminist is an essential ethical position for a man in this political and cultural moment, and I think it’s great that many more men now identify or describe themselves as feminists per se, often with explicit reference to their wives, daughters, relatives and friends, and the struggles and treatment they witness them withstanding. Is one better than the other? Is being a pro-feminist ally different from being a feminist ally? If you are a man, perhaps not. If a man calling himself a feminist was ever considered to be stepping on the toes of a woman’s identity, that time seems to have well and truly passed.

If you are woman however, and you are uneasy about the degree to which the philosophical essence of feminism may (or may not) be self-defeating, perhaps being a pro-feminist is a more honest position. Or perhaps it is just cheating, evading an honest position. If I want to support feminist causes and campaigns, but fear that there is a self-limiting aspect to the wider project, the best thing would probably be to be braver and say that I don’t identify as a feminist (because I cannot get fully behind it philosophically). But that would leave me estranged from my feminist friends: women who might be working harder than I am to effect real cultural change, which I will benefit from… back to square one. As a woman, my very indulgence in philosophy is probably indebted to past feminists.

It seems time may be a key factor. My wishfulness may be another. My perspective on men and on humans in general is obviously heavily involved, but perhaps it is the self-perpetuating nature of -isms that is at the heart of the issue.

Looking into the future I want to see feminism become redundant; arguably any feminist who doesn’t want this is a weird kind of feminist (a career feminist?). It can’t be that I want this more than most, so that therefore I distance myself from the movement in an ultimately pointless gesture of comforting, delusional futurism, or something. It can’t be that I think gazing into a post-feminist future helps anyone win battles, and it doesn’t help me feel less angry or less vulnerable each time I witness or learn about new (or old) affronts to women.

My thoughts are pushed forward by the inevitable question of what will result from our actions, or inactions. There are plenty of examples of things getting worse because of inaction and plenty of successes achieved. But where each of these are amalgamated to promote an overarching movement or philosophy, we must draw on huge generalisations – like men, and women. These are always dangerous. The million dollar question is: do they obscure far more than they reveal? I suspect they do.

My pro-feminism is about wanting to support a just cause without becoming an -ist. I have long felt happy to abstractly denounce ‘isms’ in their own right, and so this remains the simplest thread in my memory of doubt in adopting the feminist label, as my daily life and other struggles (related to my structural position as a woman and a mother), push and pull me so very far from this place where my intellect gets the luxury of forming opinions at all. I like to give isms a wide berth and I’m not afraid to say so, so why can’t I refuse (femin)ism? Because saying I am not a feminist aligns me with anti-feminists? This is the danger with isms, they are world-views, and thus by their very nature they encompass everything, and that includes everyone. If you’re not a feminist you’re part of the problem.

As a way of analysing gender relations in order to redress social inequality and improve the cultural attitudes towards women which have crushed them, feminist movements are superb and vital. Analysts still regularly provide new conceptual tools with which to assess common behavioural patterns which are covertly or demonstrably gendered power-plays, leading to real-life improvements for many people. How many of these particular gains could be achieved, or not, without the rubric of feminism? That’s not a rhetorical question. I know I don’t know.

Meanwhile, what if holding our image of ‘men’ firm, so that our project retains coherence, could prevent us from witnessing, and maybe even conceiving, the future we want where all individuals are held equally responsible for their own behaviour towards others (and, crucially, deserve the assistance of all others if they are not taught well in the first instance)? Maybe the categories of man and woman underpin a feminism-ism, an ideological layer which perpetuates the adversarial thread within gender relations. We know not all gender relations are adversarial, hell we love each other don’t we? And boy are there some noxious women about. Sure, some women’s noxiousness is rooted in their patriarchal subjection and identification. That’s exactly the same place men’s is rooted. They are still women, suffering the loss of a more enjoyable life, in the same way horrid men do.

Women aren’t responsible for teaching men how to treat women mind you; well yes in a way, but not any more than anyone else. We are all responsible for each other, because we are never really individuals in more than name. Are women responsible for their own abuse because they allowed it to happen? No. Maybe every woman who has been abused by a man because she trusted him had a father she could trust. Maybe every woman who has entertained a dangerous man even though she did not trust him had a father she loved but could not trust. Is it therefore every father’s fault if and when his daughter is abused? If not, can it be the fault of mothers that their sons abuse women and girls? How? Maybe every man who has been abused by a woman inhabits a special minority category, which we should research and give a label to? Maybe, maybe not.

To go beyond feminism used to mean to me: envisioning a post-feminist world, in the sense that major feminist goals were realised and the discourse around it fell away, and became a matter of historical interest and reflection, a celebration in fact. But it won’t be that simple. I am certain that there are fundamental obstacles to a true re-visioning of gender relations which the feminist framework holds in place. I still believe we need thousands of concerted ‘feminist’ actions and campaigns to keep bringing a better future closer, and to prevent the conditions of life for women from getting worse. I also believe we can make massive contributions to social change using feminist networks and women’s networks. Going beyond feminism means finding something which does all the work we need feminism to do, even better. It’s a sexy challenge, no?

I suspect that class now underpins virtually all social and cultural sexism and gendered abuse. (I believe that there are some evolutionary psychological reasons why it served societies to demean and devalue women. But it does not serve women, and the costs to societies of this strategy is now painfully obvious.) If ever there were a time when male and female persons were treated with a fundamental asymmetry of justice, within coercive social structures, and class was not a relevant factor, that time is literally prehistoric. The fact that men are a bit bigger is pretty interesting, but a strong person bullying a weak person isn’t sexism, it’s simply violence, it’s human immaturity. It’s also really easy to imagine through hypotheses about the work males have done while women nurtured babies, which they simply did a lot.

My basic understanding of humanity is that a civilisation or tribe or society which does not condemn almost all internal violence is more or less unheard of, and yet, yes, in every case still it erupts. I am categorically not an expert in evolution or anthropology, but I think the class roots of most contemporary sexism and oppression are sitting there waiting to be found.