Out of the Class Closet: Lesbians Speak

Off Our Backs, Jan/Feb 2005 by Winter, Amy

Out of the Class Closet: Lesbians Speak Edited by Julia Penelope Crossing Press, 1995.

Women's stories have the power to change ideas and attitudes, and Out of the Class Closet is a good example of this power. It includes the stories of women from a broad range of class backgrounds-from rural poverty in Missouri to landed gentry in Scotland. It includes stories that examine the intersections of race, ethnicity and access to social and economic resources. Many stories also address the confusion and difficulties inherent in the process of changing class-either "making good" by leaving one's class of origin behind, or losing economic privilege and security through disability or family tragedy.

Editor Julia Penelope's introductory essay, "Class and Consciousness," combines her personal experiences with an analysis of the complexities and commonalities in the stories written by the other women. She discusses the values inherent in language that shape our thinking about class-that it's always better to be higher on the scale, to be "up" rather than "down." She examines the difficulty in figuring out what an individual's class background is by identifying various factors which help determine class: family composition and status, money, privilege, food, manners, language, education, geography, time use and availability, and beliefs about intelligence.

Some of the stories included:

In her essay "A Very Moving Story," Alien Nation writes about relocating her wood-frame house, a process that required a five-ton flatbed trailer and numerous chains and winches; she intersperses this story with flashbacks to her childhood life in rural poverty. Her experiences of living in poverty gave her the confidence-desperation-to attempt something others believed was impossible.

Catherine Odette's story "Potato Skins" tells of growing up poor in the city and her mother's gratitude at being able to feed her family with food other people would have thrown away.

In "Goodbye to the House," the process of selling the family home in an upper-class Detroit neighborhood sparks Helen Elaine Lee to write about being Black and middle-class.

Elliott expresses her frustration with the word and concept "redneck" used by middle- and upper-class women, and discusses her working-class upbringing in a small midwestern town in her spectacular rant, "Whenever I Tell You the Language We Use Is a Class Issue, You Nod Your Head in Agreement-and Then You Open Your Mouth."

A wonderful piece of creative writing, Linnea Johnson's essay "Just Who Do You Think You Are?" discusses patriarchy, class and feminism in engagingly poetic terms.

Felice Yeskel provides an excellent description of the purpose and process of cost sharing as an alternative to sliding scales in accounting for income differences when organizing feminist events.

This anthology is an excellent tool for sparking original thinking and discussion about class differences, and demonstrates the complex ways poverty and privilege shape women's lives. As Julia Penelope says, "As we map the limits and scope of the worlds we inhabit, class is an axis of orientation we must explore in great detail."