the-moneyhungrywhore:

thepeacockangel:

Otherwise they wouldn’t expend so much time regulating and mocking prole women’s expressions of femininity, and so much time on policing prole men’s masculinity, like gnc dudes are only ever depicted at all if they’re bougie or villainous.

and like think about it, the effete aristocrat dude doesn’t scare them, doesn’t shock the system really, but street queens and the new york dolls are some rumbling revolutionary undercurrent that terrify people

Have u noticed how ugly old money fashion is? The classy modest style is always seen as the highest form of a woman respecting herself. But when the working class make up their own style old money starts to call them things like hoe and slut so theyll conform to their boring fashion standards

Like I think that it’s more than that by being the arbiter of what is “self respecting” and what is “tasteful” but also making that shit fucking complicated they prevent the incursion of outsiders but also regulate working class people and especially working class women’s behavior, also by putting working class women in the box of “sexually accessible” but also “promiscuous” and “not the sort a gentleman marries (because of her supposed promiscuity)” it makes working class women sexually accessible to bourgeois men, but also prevents working class women from marrying up into the bourgeois, and dissipating dynastic fortunes.

But like also by denigrating working class women’s expressions of femininity (because like the definition of femininity that currently reigns is something codified by the 19th century bourgeoisie, and they’re in a position of cultural authority) and telling us we’re getting femininity wrong I think like maybe like we’re put in a position of like A: Competing with each other for scraps of respectability 

B: By saying we’re an inferior or incorrect imitation of them they make it harder for us to recognize and value as ours culture that we’ve created, also by making it a matter of good vs. bad taste (and perpetuating the idea that style is purely individual and not connected to class) they perpetuate the myth that our status in society is because of personal failings rather than systemic injustice, and like taste is an especially good one because they can always adjust it to exclude things we do and cannot be objectively evaluated so we can never be sure we’ve “gotten it right” and it’s also harder to argue “No my taste IS GOOD” with someone who has that kind of social power over you.

C. By calling us excessive and unable to self regulate they cast righteous anger as evidence of our inferiority, and place us in the position of an endless self regulatory, panoptic project

D. By making us ashamed they make us quiet and obedient.  If we fear humiliation, we will be quiet.  By hypersexualizing and pathologizing working class women they make it harder for them to speak because to speak is to risk humiliation and makes it easier to dismiss them when they do.

E.  I think this is because working class femininity and the femininity of other oppressed groups if unleashed has profound revolutionary potential, I can’t quite explain why.  It may have something to do with patriarchal masculinity inherently being prone to recreating power structures that serve to preserve it, but also maybe femininity that isn’t of the socially approved (pure, bourgeois) kind involves a kind of difficult to regulate community and solidarity, like by enforcing masculinity on prole men, they’ve made emotional closeness harder to create and easier to regulate, femininity involves emotionality and close friendships, by creating something we must prove we are not (and we are guilty until proven innocent and then we’re still under suspicion) they create fear and strife.   They also make us deny our identity as working class women to avoid being categorized as deviant non-women (which makes it easy for them to turn working class men against us) which is a big obstacle to class consciousness.

Or like that’s what I think?