When the other is the reader: class bias in the liberal blogosphere

I feel like I've been writing the same post over and over for the past year, but I can't seem to repeat this enough, especially when I see headlines like this one from Jezebel: When We Talk About Single Ladies, Let’s Not Forget The Working Class. When "we" talk about the working class. Um, the working class is part of that "we." It's pretty sad when class bias permeates a piece about class bias, but in liberal spaces classism is acceptable -- even encouraged.

Also, I think we need to make the distinction between the long-standing, multi-generational class oppression and the temporary kind that comes with being new to the workforce and heavy in debt with student loans. I'm not saying those things aren't important -- and as the occupy movement has show, that line is becoming thinner and thinner -- but the face of the feminist blogosphere in particular is white, middle-class and college educated.

I've largely stayed away from the discussion at hand, but I really wanted to highlight this comment from Feministe commenter Shelly:

It seems this site is a community only for educated, white, urban, coastal women in the USA and a handful of women in other countries who are similarly situated. Also they have to know feminist theory and the proper lingo. If not, their voices don’t matter.

Granted, I hit a few of these markers myself, but I’m not coastal (I live in a conservative part of the country), I’m not middle-class, and what feminist theory I have has been acquired piecemeal — as in I’ve never taken a formal women’s or gender studies course — but I’m pretty well-read. It’s not like I don’t know this stuff. and frankly, I find it a little insulting that the only way to familiarize oneself with feminist theory and the “proper” lingo is to take a class, but I think it's sometimes easy to forget that not everyone has access to the same resources. I rarely comment, not necessarily for those reasons, but that the minute I identify myself as working-class, my words will be interpreted as less than sophisticated.

So where's the solution when class bias is so deeply woven into progressive circles -- the kind of bias that says "thank goodness they aren't me?" We might not be you, but we're reading you.