Defining Class Dysphoria

My intent with this essay is to open the door to further conversation.

I am not the first person to use this term— class dysphoria. That being said, my understanding is that this has not been heavily studied and there is not a concrete working definition. I have been able to find no studies on this subject.

I believe that over time I've developed a sense of what I mean when I think about what I'm now calling "class dysphoria".

My concept of class dysphoria has several roots. For one thing, it's important to acknowledge that this is yet another issue (I do not intend to pathologize this as any kind of disorder) that operates on a spectrum. That is, you can have a mild, moderate, severe (or anywhere in between) case of class dysphoria.

My experience of class dysphoria stems from growing up in a privileged neighborhood (with all the trappings of zip code destiny) while being a relatively poor family in that neighborhood.

Notably, I did not fully comprehend my situation at the time. This is both good and bad.

A lack of knowledge will all too often lead to future trouble.

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The Personal

I'm not going to go too deeply into the personal details of my life and my family’s lives in this essay for reasons of privacy. Or, as members of my family have often said, "It's not my story to tell." My personal story is a footnote to a discussion of the general issue.

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Opportunity

I received a good education. Or, at least, I attended a school district (Lower Merion School District) where I certainly had the opportunity to receive a good education. Whether I fully took advantage is debatable.

Privileged people have connections. Some say going to an Ivy League school is more about certification and networking than actual learning. That sounds about right.

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The World Outside Your Silo

One of the perks of college is meeting people from different walks of life. It broadens your understanding of how others grew up, how they live their lives, other ways of being in the world. This is one of the many reasons conservatives tend to worry about people going to college. If you don’t stay in your silo, you may realize there is more out there in the world.

After graduating from Albright College, I continued to live in Reading, PA (poor, diverse) briefly. Then, I moved back to the Philadelphia area—but not The Main Line where I grew up.

I lived in West Mt. Airy (The Main Line of NW Philly) briefly, and then nearby Germantown (also in NW Philly). Germantown was, at the time (2009), remained a predominantly (77%) Black neighborhood. This was my first experience living as a minority in a place.

In 2014, I lived for 8-months in a small town (a few thousand people) in Lancaster County, PA. I was working remotely (before it was cool). By contrast, this town was 97% white and poor. Later that year, I moved to West Virginia. Some of the stereotypes about WV are true, others not so much.

In 2019, I moved back to The Main Line (Greater Philadelphia Area / Western Suburbs). Returning to this extremely boujee space after years of living around poor, working class, rural folks, and people from diverse backgrounds felt surreal. As they say, you can’t go home again.

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Class Dynamics

The two best books I’ve read on class and poverty in recent years are both by Matthew Desmond—‘Evicted’ and, more recently, ‘Poverty, By America’.

Why am I a little obsessed with this subject? Because I grew up surrounded by wealth and privilege, then lived in places far different, and then realized that my life trajectory was not aligned with expectations. There are reasons for this beyond how I grew up. Mental health, life choices, and “life happens” are all factors that cannot be denied. Still, my sense of class dysphoria involves a certain level of understanding of middle/upper class values, norms, sensibilities that are not aligned with my personal background, my life experience and, in certain respects and certain situations, how I move through the world.

Neighbors in West Virginia say hi to each other more than they do on the east coast. One neighbor would ask me how my day was every time I saw her. This neighbor started giving me a hard time (in jest) because, I was told, I often answered this simple question about my day by saying, “It’s complicated.” Apparently, I’m fairly consistent in at least some respects.

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Who is Working Class?

I had a series of discussions with Christina Ward (Feral House) about pitching a panel called ‘They Only Call It Class War When We Fight Back’. Christina grew up working class (WC) and so I’m working off my understanding of what she shared with me.  

"The definition of Working Class can swing widely, but [is] largely defined as a person whose grandparents and parents did not attend college, worked in a manual/unskilled labor field, and usually attended public schools, or a fancy elementary or high school on scholarship. The heyday of unions helped many people during the sixties and seventies earn enough money to move up to the middle class (buying a home, sending their kids to college, going to a private school)...if that's your situation, it means your folks are working class, but you are not.”

When I was growing up, my parents were not working class. My father grew up in a working class household. My mother did not. But step back a generation and family had come over from “the old world”. There is a separate conversation to be had about generational trauma… but that’s another story for another time.

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What are factors that differentiate growing up WC compared to having more privilege?

·       Work ethic

·       What defines "work"

·       Expectation to do better than your parents or climb the ladder

·       First generation graduates

·       Assumptions you will graduate from high school (or get a GED)

·       Assumptions about going to college (or an alternative path)

·       Assumptions that you will graduate from college

·       Assumptions that you will go to grad school, med school, law school, etc.

·       Assumptions about your future professions and career trajectory

·       Assumptions about the people you will spend your time with and the places you will go

Other common factors and life experiences that differ:

·       Precarity (financial and in general)

·       Struggle to afford basic needs (shelter, utilities, food)

·       Emphasis on fulfilling day to day practical and immediate needs/goals

·       Not having more than $400 in emergency savings

·       Need to work multiple jobs

·       Free time and choices limited by childcare demands

·       Jobs are more likely to be physically demanding, lower paying, with less job security and are less likely to include [good] benefits such as health insurance and paid leave

·       Jobs are less likely to have upward mobility within the company or an opportunity for career advancement

·       Living in a place with less green space and more pollution (as well as other health concerns)

·       Less exposure to cultural activities (possibly due to these activities being time or cost prohibitive or not modeled by the previous generation as good ways to diversify your interests)

·       Less opportunity to travel (which may mean a limited range of being able to conceptualize other opportunities to consider as exposure tends to lead to increased aspirations)

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Growing Wealth and Upward Mobility

Think about how compounding interest works. It’s very difficult to gain wealth until you have already accumulated a certain amount of wealth.

Those who already have connections and generational wealth (and status) already have the pieces in place to hand the baton off to the next generation.

Not too long ago, I learned that in the investment world there’s a difference between so-called “Asset Management” and “Wealth Management”. The cutoffs will vary depending on who you ask… but this concept of “wealth” begins around having $3,000,000 in liquidity to your name beyond your annual income.

Those who struggle to come up with $400 in emergency funds do not have the bandwidth to worry about the stark reality of our unfair system. I’m not saying people don’t know. I’m saying our system purposefully does not allow enough resources—time and energy—to have a revolution. This is how oppression, in the form of poverty in this case, continues and the status quo keeps on keeping on.

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This Game Is Rigged

A basic concept of class dysphoria is a sense of internal confusion about where you stand in society as a result of having adjacency to certain privileges while not having access or the ability to achieve at the same level as those with a stronger safety net can.

There may be a sense that you can see how success happens or how people climb the social ladder or how wealth begets wealth without having access to this yourself. A sense that you can see but not touch.

You can share a space while remaining an outsider. That's part of the cruelty and alienation.

Why do some people easily attain what others strive for? Some of this is luck. Some of this is effort and grit. Much of this is because connections and wealth result in an unequal playing field making it evident that most of us never had a real shot.

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Armishaw’s Definition & Further Reflections

Let’s consider how what I’ve said might differ from Holly Marie Armishaw’s definition.

Class mobility is an important area of focus. Those who come from poor or WC or so-called “middle class” backgrounds are going to have a challenging time navigating coming into wealth. They weren’t taught how to handle this. Lifestyle creep is almost certainly going to hit different for those of “new money”.

Armishaw’s statement about trust funds is intriguing. I’ve seen how this goes firsthand. Not well. Trust fund money isn’t earned money. There is plenty of research on the subject that people need to go through trials (you need to learn how to fall down, how to fail, how to dust yourself off and get back up). Those who don’t learn from failure are not well-positioned when they encounter challenges later in life. There will always be challenges… it’s part of being human.

A windfall such as inheritance, much like a lottery win, is another example of coming into money that you did not earn yourself. This is confusing. I know we’re all tempted to break out the world’s tiniest violin for many of these scenarios but the reality is they are hard. Anyone who is a therapist knows that our personal problems can be big problems for the individual even if they seem like small problems for someone else.

I’ve already addressed peer dynamics or at least alluded to it. Trying to “keep up with The Joneses’ when you cannot is not an ideal situation.

Spending beyond your means is basically a form of “stunting” or trying to say you’re something that you’re not. This doesn’t usually end well.

Marrying into a different class is an interesting situation. A family member of mine did this. It’s interesting to think about how it changed that person and how it did not. Much of their life was before my time and most of what I know is hearsay so it can be hard to know.

We do know (from studies) that it’s a good idea for people to have someone in their friend group that is of a higher class than them. This increases your chances of upward mobility in terms of career. Does this have psychological detractors—probably, and that’s what we’re talking about here.

Getting educated beyond other family members. Being “the first” in a family is always going to be hard. Expectations for your life trajectory aside, there’s a huge psychological component. Lots of pressure to succeed. Lots of pressure to take the entourage (both familial and friends) along for the ride. Rumor has it that gaining more wealth than those around you lets you quickly find out who your real friends are. People also (understandably) become suspicious of why certain people suddenly seem to want to spend more time around them. And then there will be those who simply hit you up for money.

I love this final point about normative expectations. “A doctor must be wealthy; an artist must be poor.” The art community often seems allergic to money. Talk of money in the art community remains uncouth. This is absurd. I’ve written elsewhere that artists could be starving a little less and no harm will come to their art. They’ll simply be better fed, better able to move through the world, better able to consider opportunities to further their art careers. You can’t take chances when you lack a safety net.

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Questions for you, dear reader:

Do you have suggestions for an improved definition of class dysphoria?

What are your suggestions for other ways to approach this concept of class dysphoria?