Working Women

I was a teen when I first heard a boy, blue collar, say how there was no way his future wife was ever going to have to go out to work.

It has taken me this long to understand, when a blue collar guy says such a thing, what he means is that his wife is never going to work on her hands and knees scrubbing someone else's floor, never going to stand behind a counter for hours until her feet swell so bad she has to put up her feet for an hour before her shoes will come off, never going to lose her fingers or eyesight in a factory, never going to bend her aching back over one more table, and never, ever going to be groped, and spat on, and screamed at by those who control her pay.

Because that's most of what blue collar women's work is.

I knew what I was hearing was sexist; I didn't know the way I was hearing it was classist.