WHY ARE YOU NOT WRITING AWARD WINNING DRAMA, EH?

Where are all the working class women writers?

1) They are EVERYWHERE. Seriously, go to a spoken word event! Go to one shitting spoken word event in Sheffield, or Bradford, or Manchester, or Leeds and LISTEN to these women’s voices. Listen to the stories of single-motherhood, forced prostitution, being different, being alone. Go to women's events like the Ladyfests, or Feminist Networks, or conferences like Women Up North and TALK to the women there about their experiences. Read the zines. Seriously. Get yourself a cup of tea, sit near the display table and READ THE ZINES. Some of the funniest, most knowing writing I've read this year has been in zines. Read the blogs, Jesus there are some AMAZING blogs by working class women out there, they might not be all about how dreadful everything is, but they are there. Look at tumblr, LOOK AT TUMBLR, and tell me we don't have working class women writers par excellence. They might not be making lots of MONEY and PRESS, but they are THERE!
2) PLEASE stop silencing middle class women. We might have parents that went to university, and we might have grown up with certain aspirations taken as a given, but that doesn't mean we don't know pain! We don't know poverty, or neglect, or abuse! I am getting INCREASINGLY FED UP with feeling not 'working class hero' enough to be deemed acceptable, just because I happen to have had a parent who was a teacher. Yes, I am aware that MASSIVE FUCK OFF PRIVILEGES come with my being middle class, but that doesn't mean my writing has no cultural value! (Yeah, I know, I'm a massive privileged cow bag. I should just go throw myself in the sea. I KNOW.)
3) Stop saying that things working class people actually like to do don't count! Why is it only deemed star worthy if a working class woman writes something that is as good a a middle class woman's writing? Why does everything have to have literary merit? Why take the piss out of Jordan's books, if people enjoy them, and working class women read them, and they therefore get pushed up the best seller's lists, why is that such a MASSIVELY BAD THING? Why is it only remarkable if a working class woman writes something that middle class people (or middle class people who are the children of working class people, like me) can appreciate? Oh, but we must have more work that tells us what it is like to be working class! Really? How about reading one of those misery memoirs you love to scorn? Or is that too real for you? Not enough long words? Too many references to a defunct and abusive system that is RUN BY MIDDLE CLASS PEOPLE?

Grrrrrr
Honestly, sometimes if I didn't blog I would explode.