As part of my progression into the Magician archetype, I have come to understand the need to incorporate my class history into my journey, because my experience of class is, at its heart, the experience of magic.
I am working class - but rural working class. That has meant, as the UK, and the world, urbanises, that I have become classless - not in the way that allows social mobility, but in the way that precludes any real progress at all. I have to make this transition from Warrior to Magician successfully, because disability means I can no longer effectively fight, and my experience of classlessness means I have no access to community support, and the social capital that lends.
Working class, as defined by urbanised experience, is, as a recent exchange on Instagram revealed, and as my own current situation in a fundamentally working class street in a working class town confirms, defined by "drama", "people being loud in public", "chaos", "dysfunction" and "avoidable errors of judgement."
Rural working classness, however, is the very opposite of that. It is a quiet carefulness - carefulness with people as well as things. There is drama, but it's the quiet drama of gossip, not the loud drama of declarations and accusations. In the rural working class, we don't scream in peoples' faces, damage their property, or physically assault them - we quietly observe that they "don't always behave how you'd think people should in their situation." We hold meetings they're not invited to, greet their applications to join committees with polite derision. I know all this because it happened to me and my family - because we hadn't always lived in the village, or even the county. Because my mother had "notions" - her own father's condemnation of her, and the perfect description of a woman who, though firmly working class, endeavoured to present herself and her family as otherwise. I still feel resentment that the village I had to leave when I would have preferred to stay treated a peer who was a criminal and drug addict better than I was treated, because his family were a proper village family; they were established, they had history that my family would never have. He was given a council bungalow; I was told it was "improper" for me to even enquire about a one-bedroom house with a small garden, because "gardens are for families." I didn't even have the words to describe being trans fully at that point, I certainly didn't know it would be possible for me to physically transition - but everyone in that village, everyone around me, recognised I was not going to be someone who had a family - because the working class, especially the rural working class, consider "family" to exclusively mean "children." (Another reason for my family to be politely excluded - I am an only child. There were only two other only children in my village when I was growing up, and their families were equally viewed as "not really part of things here." In the urban working class, this fixation on children, plural, has resulted in an attitude that it doesn't matter how many children you can afford to support - you have as many as you can, because your children buy your place in community...being someone who has never wanted children, and will certainly never have them, I've heard both the slamming and the locking of enough gates against me because my family is my wife, and the close friends I have particular regard for, and a sense of duty towards.)
I stand adrift from British class - I come from generations of people who lived in working poverty, with occasional dips into absolute poverty. My education has been something I have had to pursue informally, ad-hoc, and entirely without support. I was raised to believe that you "have to work hard to get what you want" - but without any kind of map as to how that effort should be directed, which has resulted in me wasting over two decades working to the point of exhaustion at the wrong things, never getting ahead, but rather running full-tilt into dead end after dead end. The men in my family worked in factories - but factory hours no longer fit with bus routes. I can't see well enough to work at the speed a modern factory line demands. I'm completely night blind, and factory work means shift work. And the factories are closing rapidly in any case. My competence at administration and organisation has previously got me into middle class businesses - but I've never been allowed to progress beyond the entry-level, minimum wage levels in those businesses. Increasingly, the shift to "female focus" - meaning indirect communication, extensive consensus-seeking (ie, endless meetings), rather than decisive, action-focused leadership, and the rise of AI and automation, means those roles are declining, and the attitude is that my "energy" is not appropriate any more.
Working class energy is, at its heart, masculine energy, even when it's held by very feminine women. It's the energy of getting things done, rather than talking about getting them done. It's the energy of "use the resources you can see", rather than identify the exactly right and proper components. It's the energy of "me first" rather than "there is no 'I' in 'team'". It's the energy of survival. And the Western world is being deafened by people who point to dysfunctional men who should be in prison, away from decent society, and howl that "masculine energy is toxic! We can't allow it in our businesses!" Middle class people can and do have very masculine attitudes, but they also have the means to be chameleons - to spend time learning to disguise and dissemble. To immerse themselves in other identities. To buy the right clothes, the right cars, the right club memberships. Houses in the right areas. The right holidays. The right hobbies. They can feign the acceptable energy, whilst holding another energy in reserve, ready to switch back seamlessly as and when society shifts.
Working class people survive because of our masculine energy and focus. Because we need to survive, we can only afford space for that one energy, regardless of our gender and gender expression. We have to stand ready to be violent, because we are not able to afford to simply move away from violence in the way middle class people can.
We become the indecent people who do violence at the command of decent people whose designs and desires demand violence, but who refuse to dirty their hands. And no army is ever fully trusted by those who employ them.
"Working class" is being increasingly discussed - but, like "trans", the reality of what it means to be working class, rather than merely "identify as" working class, is being ignored, in favour of including everyone who "feels that the term resonates for them."
I am working class - but rural working class. That has meant, as the UK, and the world, urbanises, that I have become classless - not in the way that allows social mobility, but in the way that precludes any real progress at all. I have to make this transition from Warrior to Magician successfully, because disability means I can no longer effectively fight, and my experience of classlessness means I have no access to community support, and the social capital that lends.
Working class, as defined by urbanised experience, is, as a recent exchange on Instagram revealed, and as my own current situation in a fundamentally working class street in a working class town confirms, defined by "drama", "people being loud in public", "chaos", "dysfunction" and "avoidable errors of judgement."
Rural working classness, however, is the very opposite of that. It is a quiet carefulness - carefulness with people as well as things. There is drama, but it's the quiet drama of gossip, not the loud drama of declarations and accusations. In the rural working class, we don't scream in peoples' faces, damage their property, or physically assault them - we quietly observe that they "don't always behave how you'd think people should in their situation." We hold meetings they're not invited to, greet their applications to join committees with polite derision. I know all this because it happened to me and my family - because we hadn't always lived in the village, or even the county. Because my mother had "notions" - her own father's condemnation of her, and the perfect description of a woman who, though firmly working class, endeavoured to present herself and her family as otherwise. I still feel resentment that the village I had to leave when I would have preferred to stay treated a peer who was a criminal and drug addict better than I was treated, because his family were a proper village family; they were established, they had history that my family would never have. He was given a council bungalow; I was told it was "improper" for me to even enquire about a one-bedroom house with a small garden, because "gardens are for families." I didn't even have the words to describe being trans fully at that point, I certainly didn't know it would be possible for me to physically transition - but everyone in that village, everyone around me, recognised I was not going to be someone who had a family - because the working class, especially the rural working class, consider "family" to exclusively mean "children." (Another reason for my family to be politely excluded - I am an only child. There were only two other only children in my village when I was growing up, and their families were equally viewed as "not really part of things here." In the urban working class, this fixation on children, plural, has resulted in an attitude that it doesn't matter how many children you can afford to support - you have as many as you can, because your children buy your place in community...being someone who has never wanted children, and will certainly never have them, I've heard both the slamming and the locking of enough gates against me because my family is my wife, and the close friends I have particular regard for, and a sense of duty towards.)
I stand adrift from British class - I come from generations of people who lived in working poverty, with occasional dips into absolute poverty. My education has been something I have had to pursue informally, ad-hoc, and entirely without support. I was raised to believe that you "have to work hard to get what you want" - but without any kind of map as to how that effort should be directed, which has resulted in me wasting over two decades working to the point of exhaustion at the wrong things, never getting ahead, but rather running full-tilt into dead end after dead end. The men in my family worked in factories - but factory hours no longer fit with bus routes. I can't see well enough to work at the speed a modern factory line demands. I'm completely night blind, and factory work means shift work. And the factories are closing rapidly in any case. My competence at administration and organisation has previously got me into middle class businesses - but I've never been allowed to progress beyond the entry-level, minimum wage levels in those businesses. Increasingly, the shift to "female focus" - meaning indirect communication, extensive consensus-seeking (ie, endless meetings), rather than decisive, action-focused leadership, and the rise of AI and automation, means those roles are declining, and the attitude is that my "energy" is not appropriate any more.
Working class energy is, at its heart, masculine energy, even when it's held by very feminine women. It's the energy of getting things done, rather than talking about getting them done. It's the energy of "use the resources you can see", rather than identify the exactly right and proper components. It's the energy of "me first" rather than "there is no 'I' in 'team'". It's the energy of survival. And the Western world is being deafened by people who point to dysfunctional men who should be in prison, away from decent society, and howl that "masculine energy is toxic! We can't allow it in our businesses!" Middle class people can and do have very masculine attitudes, but they also have the means to be chameleons - to spend time learning to disguise and dissemble. To immerse themselves in other identities. To buy the right clothes, the right cars, the right club memberships. Houses in the right areas. The right holidays. The right hobbies. They can feign the acceptable energy, whilst holding another energy in reserve, ready to switch back seamlessly as and when society shifts.
Working class people survive because of our masculine energy and focus. Because we need to survive, we can only afford space for that one energy, regardless of our gender and gender expression. We have to stand ready to be violent, because we are not able to afford to simply move away from violence in the way middle class people can.
We become the indecent people who do violence at the command of decent people whose designs and desires demand violence, but who refuse to dirty their hands. And no army is ever fully trusted by those who employ them.
"Working class" is being increasingly discussed - but, like "trans", the reality of what it means to be working class, rather than merely "identify as" working class, is being ignored, in favour of including everyone who "feels that the term resonates for them."
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