Confronting classism: Meetup.com

Two years ago, I wrote a manifesto on who I wanted to meet: intelligent, interesting women who didn’t orbit around men. I live in Arizona, which is a bit Stepfordian in its bent. Surely there were others out there who were feeling me.

This manifesto crystalized into my Meetup, and today we have almost 500 members. I’ve been very please with the diversity of my group in every way — it’s full of women from all over the world, of all regions, religions, backgrounds and age groups. We’re now a powerful network of women who want to change our society and the world, and we’re starting to mobilize in a real way.

But today’s meeting left me a little scared and sad.

One of our members, for whatever reason, is frugal to an extreme. She’s vocal about her budget. I get the feeling that she didn’t have a lot of comfort growing up. She is overweight and hey, so am I. She feels comfortable eating what she wants in our presence, and I totally support that.

Today at lunch she left the table for a moment, and someone mistakenly threw away the rest of her food. There had been the assumption that she was done eating. She had intended to take the rest of the food home, although there was barely anything left.

As you’d imagine, conflict ensued. The member whose food was thrown away was upset. She vocalized her unhappiness. When she got up and left for good, the member who threw away her food said, “God, can you believe that? Get over it! She didn’t need the extra calories, anyway.”

The whole scene made me realize the great divide in our group between members who have been poor, and those who have never known want. Abashedly, I realized that my manifesto is geared toward attracting the kind of educated women who had the time and resources to go to college to learn about life rather than learning a trade.

So I guess I’m looking for a way to reconcile this — how to keep diversity in the group (interesting women are interesting women!) without losing members who think my group is too undiscerning — or snobby. This isn’t the first moment of friction in our group. Any thoughts?