86 Women are more strenuously conditioned toward upward cultural mobility or “gentility” than men, which often results in the woman consciously betraying her class origins as a mat- ter of course. The hierarchies within the whole span of the middle class are most easily demar- cated by lifestyle and dress. For instance, the much-scorned “Queens housewife” may have enough to eat, may have learned to consume the unnecessities, and may have made it to a desired social bracket in her community, but if she ventures to make art (not just own 1t), she will find herself back at the bottom in the art world, looking wistfully up to the plateau where the male, the young, the bejeaned seem so at ease. For middle-class women in the art world not only dress “down,” but dress like working-class men. They do so because housedresses, pedal pushers, polyester pantsuits, permanents, the wrong accents are not such acceptable disguis- es for women as the boots, overalls and wind- breaker syndromes are for men. Thus young middle-class women tend to deny their female counterparts and take on “male” (unisex) attire. It may at times have been chic to dress like a native American or a Bedouin woman, but it has never been chic to dress like a working- class woman, even if she’s trying to look like Jackie Kennedy. Young working-class women (and men) spend a large amount of available money on clothes; it’s a way to forget the rats and roaches by which even the cleanest tene- ment-dwellers are blessed, or the mortgages by which even the hardest-working homeowners are blessed, and to present a classy facade. Artists dressing and talking “down” insult the hardhat much as rich kids in rags do; they insult people whose notion of art is something to work for—the pink glass swan. Yet women, as evidenced by the Furies’ publi- cation, and as pointed out elsewhere (most not- ably by Bebel), have a unique chance to com- municate with women across the boundaries of economic class because as a “vertical class” we share the majority of our most fundamental experiences—emotionally, even when econom- ically we are divided. Thus an economic analy- sis does not adequately explore the psychologi- cal and esthetic ramifications of the need for change within a sexually oppressed group. Nor does it take into consideration that women’s needs are different from men’s—or so it seems at this still unequal point in history. The vertical class cuts across the horizontal economic class- es in a column of injustices. While heightened class consciousness can only clarify the way we see the world, and all clarification is for the better, | can’t bring myself to trust hard lines and categories where fledgling feminism is concerned. Even in the art world, the issue of feminism has barely been raised in mixed political groups. In 1970, women took our rage and our energies to our own organizations, or directly to the public by means of picketing and protests. While a few men supported these, and most politically conscious male artists now claim to be feminists to some degree, the political and apolitical art world goes on as though feminism didn’t exist—the presence of a few vociferous feminist artists and critics notwithstanding. And in the art world, as in the real world, political commitment frequently means total disregard for feminist priorities. Even the increasingly Marxist group ironically calling itself Art- Language is unwilling to stop the exclusive use of the male pronoun in its theoretical publica- tions.6 Experiences like this one and dissatisfaction with Marxism’s lack of interest in “the woman question” make me wary of merging Marxism and feminism. The notion of the non-economic or “vertical” class is anathema to Marxists and confusion is rampant around the chicken-egg question of whether women can be equal be- fore the establishment of a classless society or whether a classless society can be established before women are liberated. As Sheila Row- botham says of her own Marxism and feminism: They are at once incompatible and in real need of one another. As a feminist and a Marxist | carry their contradictions within me and it is tempting to opt for one or the other in an effort to produce a tidy resolution of the commotion generated by the antagonism between them. But to do that would mean evading the social reality which gives rise to the antagonism.” As women, therefore, we need to establish far more strongly our own sense of community, so that all our arts will be enjoyed by all women in all economic circumstances. This will happen only when women artists make conscious ef- forts to cross class barriers, to consider their audience, to see, respect, work with the women who create outside the art world—whether in suburban crafts guilds or in offices and factories or in community workshops. The current femi- nist passion for women'’s traditional arts, which influences a great many women artists, should make this road much easier, unless it too be- comes another commercialized rip-off. Despite the very real class obstacles, | feel strongly that women are in a privileged position to satisfy the goal of an art which would communicate the needs of all classes and sexes to each other, and get rid of the we/they dichotomy to as great an extent as is possible in a capitalist framework. Our sex, our oppression and our female experi- ence—our female culture, just being explored —offer access to all of us by these common threads. 1. Class and Feminism, ed. Charlotte Bunch and Nancy Myron (Baltimore, 1974). This book contains some ex- crutiating insights for the middle-class feminist; it raised my consciousness and inspired this essay (along with other recent experiences and conversations).