Gender as a Class

Class is inherent in any kind of social comparison. Ethnicity and sex are both factors that go into the considerations of class. For most of history, women have been considered subservient to men, at least in the sense that men have a higher social status, and women just tag along with whomever they are lucky enough to be attached to through marriage. Women were never expected to do anything beyond making babies, looking pretty, and supporting the husband as best she can.

It seems that among developed countries, America unfortunately lags far behind most of the others when it comes to social equality in gender. While xenophobia is common in humans in general, most countries do not consist entirely of immigrants from all over the rest of the world. The disconnect between “us” and “them” is about as great here as they are in any other culture, but women in most other countries only differ from each other in terms of class, which is not nearly as alienating as race. Differing cultural backgrounds, upbringing, and even appearance can serve to distance feminists of different races more than social status ever could. Banding together to reach a common goal would force women of different cultural backgrounds and upbringings to acknowledge themselves as belonging in a “group” with people they have spent all their lives being told they need to distance themselves from. This intermingling of different cultures does not turn America into a melting pot. Instead, it has become a breeding ground for prejudice. Forced confrontation does not make people more accepting, it just highlights the differences between each group and magnifies the smallest inequality. People feel more comfortable interacting people with a more similar cultural background, and being in close proximation with other races, without getting close enough to think of them as anything more than “others” only serves to widen the gap between “us” and “them”. 

-Naifang Hu