A Teacher's guide to Dorothy Allison's "A Question of Class."

1. EXPLORING SEX AND CLASS: A TEACHER’S GUIDE TO DOROTHY ALLISON’S ESSAY, “A QUESTION OF CLASS”
By: Jarrett Kaufman
9 April 2018

2. D
• Point 1: The Mythology of the “Noble” Poor
• Point 2: The Homogenization of “Queer Folk”
• Point 3: The Marginalization of “They” and the “Other”
Arguments of Discussion

3. THE NOBLE POOR: AN AMERICAN MYTH OF CLASS IDENTITY AND POVERTY
• Hard Working
• Unionized
• Victims of a corrupt “system”
• Clean
• Christian
• White
• Distain or distrust for the Federal Government
• Potential for economic mobility

4. • Allison states that, “The myth of the [noble] poor settled over us and glamorized us.
I saw it in the eyes of my teachers, the Lion’s Club representative who paid for my
new glasses, and the lady from the Junior League who told me about the
scholarship I had won. Better, far better to be one of the mythical poor than to be
part of the they I had known before” (21)
• Furthermore, Allison adds that, “I knew who I was, knew that the most important
thing I had to do was protect myself and hide my despised identity, blend into the
myth of both the good poor and the reasonable lesbian” (29).

5. QUEER FOLK: ONE SIZE FILLS ALL
• Allison explains that, “I copied the dress, mannerisms, attitudes, and ambitions of
the girls I met in college, changing or hiding my own tastes, interests, and desires”
(22).
• Allison further remarks that, “The stories I told about my family, about South
Carolina, about being poor itself, were all lies, carefully edited to seem droll or
funny. I knew damned well that no one would want to hear the truth about poverty,
the hopelessness and fear, the feeling that nothing I did would ever make any
difference and the raging resentment that burned beneath my jokes.” (22)

6. • Allison says that, “It has always been tempting for me to play off of the stereotypes
and misconceptions of mainstream culture, rather than describe a difficult and
sometimes painful reality” (24)
• Sociologist Paula England discusses gender roles and social class in, “Sometimes the
Social Becomes Personal: Gender, Class, and Sexualities,” explaining that, “both
sexes face pressures to conform to gender norms, and thus to be straight” (14)

7. ENGLAND EXPLAINS THAT ALL SOCIOLOGISTS RECOGNIZE THAT SOCIAL CONSTRAINTS AFFECT INDIVIDUALS’
OUTCOMES. THESE EFFECTS ARE SOMETIMES RELATIVELY DIRECT. OTHER TIMES CONSTRAINTS AFFECT OUTCOMES
INDIRECTLY, FIRST INFLUENCING INDIVIDUALS’ PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS, WHICH THEN AFFECT THEIR
OUTCOMES. IN THE LATTER CASE, THE SOCIAL BECOMES PERSONAL, AND PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS THAT ARE
CARRIED ACROSS SITUATIONS (E.G., SKILLS, HABITS, IDENTITIES, WORLDVIEWS, PREFERENCES, OR VALUES) AFFECT
INDIVIDUALS’ OUTCOMES.

8. ENGLAND’S FINDINGS ON CLASS AND SEXUALITY
• young men engage in same-sex relations less than women and have more
heterosexist attitudes
• people from disadvantaged class backgrounds are especially likely to have
unintended pregnancies and non-marital births
• both sexes face pressures to conform to gender norms, and thus to be straight
• women whose mothers had less education are more likely to have had a non-
marital birth by age 25
• men’s gender nonconformity is more controversial precisely because the male
gender is more valued

9. UNDERSTANDING “THEY”: THE OTHER OF THE OTHER
Allison explains in her essay that, “Me and my family, we had always been they” (13)
She says that she had to “Hide, hide to survive, I thought, knowing that if I told the truth about my life,
my family, my sexual desire, my history, I would move over into that unknown territory, the land of they,
would never have the chance to name my own life, to understand it or claim it” (14)
According to Allison, “sexuality and self are shaped by both desire and denial” (15)

10. SHAME: A CULTURAL TACTIC OF OPPRESSION
• Scholar J. Brooks Bouson explains in “You Nothing But Trash,” that “The fact that
the term ‘trash’ means ‘social waste and detritus’ points to the social degradation
and shame implicit in this derogatory class designation. Referring to whites who live
in poverty—classically in rural poverty—the term also invokes long-standing
stereotypes of poor whites as ‘incestuous and sexually promiscuous, violent,
alcoholic, lazy, and stupid’” (101)
• Bouson saiy that, “Living in a ‘shame- based’ society in which there is ‘shame about
shame and so it remains under strict taboo’” (101)
• Furthermore, he argues, “Shame ‘is reproduced within families, and each culture has
its own distinct sources as well as targets of shame.’ That shame derives from the
shame sufferer’s ‘vicarious experience of the other’s scorn’ and that learned familial
and cultural shame can lead to destructive forms of self-hatred and self-contempt
become evident in Allison’s treatment of white trash shame (103)

11. ALLISON ON SHAME: LIVING AS A “THEY”
• We were not noble, not grateful, not even hopeful. We knew ourselves despised. My
family was ashamed of being poor, of feeling hopeless. What was there to work for,
to save money for, to fight for or struggle against? We had generations before us to
teach us that nothing ever changed, and that those who did try to escape failed
(102)
• I knew who I was, knew that the most important thing I had to do was protect
myself and hide my despised identity, blend into the myth of both the good poor
and the reasonable lesbian (29).
• My sexual identity is intimately constructed by my class and regional background,
and much of the hatred directed at my sexual preferences is class hatred—however
much people, feminists in particular, like to pretend this is not a factor (23)

12. SEXUALITY, GENDER, AND CLASS

13. SOME ASPECTS OF LOWER CLASS SEXUAL BEHAVIOR
• According to Sociologist Lee Rainwater, “We have myths of naturalness that
emphasize immorality, hatefulness, sexual avarice, promiscuity and sensual gluttony.
Many of the images which Americans have, and historically have had, of the lower
class can be subsumed under one or another version of natural man as good or evil”
(96)
• Rainwater concludes that: “One of the main differences between the middle class
and the lower class, and within the lower class between couples in intermediate and
highly segregated role relationships, has to do with the extent to which the sexual
relationship is assimilated with other aspects of the on-going relationship between
husband and wife” (103)
• He explains that, “In the lower class, among couples in highly segregated conjugal
role relationships, on the other hand, the sexual relationship is isolated from aspects
of the husband-wife relationship and stands in sharp contrast to these other aspects
because it requires concerted cooperation on the part of the two partners” (103)

14. CONCLUSIONS: UNDERSTANDING SEX OPPRESSION IN A
CLASS-CONSCIOUS CONTEXT
• The poor are categorized as either “noble” or “ignoble.” If one is considered
“ignoble,” he/she is further marginalized by society and labeled, “trash.”
• Members of the LGBTQ+ community are “homogenized” into an easily consumable
“type” by mainstream media for a heteronormative culture.
• Those (poor and/or queer) who do not conform to those “types,” can often be
further marginalized—by society, by institutions, by family, by friends, and even by
partners.
• Allison states that, “I felt myself at the mercy of the important people who knew
how to dress and talk, and would always be given the benefit of the doubt, while my
family and I would not” (32)
• She believes that “We have to throw off the conditioning of being despised, the fear
of becoming the they that is talked about so dismissively, to refuse lying myths and
easy moralities, to see ourselves as human, flawed, and extraordinary. All of us—
extraordinary” (36)

15. SOURCES
• Allison, Dorothy. Skin: Talking About Sex, Class & Culture. Firebrand Books, 1994.
• Bailey, Peggy Dunn. “Female Gothic Fiction, Grotesque Realities, and Bastard Out of Carolina: Dorothy Allison revises
the Southern Gothic.” The Mississippi Quarterly 63.1(2010): 269-290.
• Bouson, J. Brooks. “’You Nothing But Trash’: White Trash Shame in Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina.”
Southern Literary Journal 34.1 (2001): 101-123.
• England, Paula. “Sometimes the Social Becomes Personal: Gender, Class, and Sexualities.” American Sociological
Review 81.1 (2016): 4-28.
• Herren, Greg. “One Man’s Favorite Lesbian Literature.” Lambda Book Report 10.6 (2002): 13.
• Rainwater, Lee. “Some Aspects of Lower Class Sexual Behavior.” Journal of Social Issues 22.2 (1966): 96-108.
• Rose, Charlie. “Dorothy Allison.” PBS 9 September 1995.