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Home » The politics of knitting, and the meaning of “always”

The politics of knitting, and the meaning of “always”

The New Neo Posted on by

I chuckled along with just about everyone else when I saw this:

Always??? Always been political?

I used to be a knitter, and got rather good at it. After I hurt my arms thirty years ago I had to stop. But I can’t say I ever noticed any politics connected with knitting, with the exception of fictional characters like Madame Defarge. Then there were a few literary references like this from Shakespeare: “Sleep that knits up the raveled sleeve of care.”

So, what on earth did this bizarre statement mean? My suspicion is that, for the person who said it, “always” started quite recently. And “knitting” refers to the online knitting community, which is apparently a Big Deal.

And yes, that does seem to be pretty much it. First, Ravelry’s reason for the ban—which is pretty much standard leftist censorship for the usual bogus leftist reasons:

But on Sunday, Ravelry, a popular website for knitters and crocheters, took a political stand when it announced that it was banning content that supports President Trump, in what it said was a resolution against white supremacy.

“We cannot provide a space that is inclusive of all and also allow support for open white supremacy,” the site said in a statement explaining the decision. “Support of the Trump administration is undeniably support for white supremacy.”

The policy applies to content on the site, including knitting patterns and forum posts, but not to people, according to Ravelry, which said it still welcomed Republicans and those with conservative political views. “You can still participate if you do in fact support the administration, you just can’t talk about it here,” the statement said, adding that “hate groups and intolerance are different from other types of political positions.”

In other words, Trump supporters are white supremacists, and Ravelry don’t have to prove it—it’s a self-evident fact. And of course these white supremacists make people uncomfortable, and we can’t be having people be unhappy or uncomfortable. So we will institute a very bizarre ruling—sort of the knitting equivalent of “don’t ask, don’t tell”—whereby we hate the sin but love the sinner. Trump supporters are welcome; they just need to shut up about it so no one else will get their tonsils in an uproar.

Political speech in general is allowed; just not pro-Trump speech.

The people who run a website can ban whomever they want and whatever speech they want to ban. But Ravelry’s reason for doing this says a lot not only about those who run the site, but about the continuing spread of leftist thought to take on more and more of the populace.

As for “always,” here’s the broader quote, which is a great deal less nonsensical than it initially sounded:

“The knitting community has been this happy little bubble for a long time,” said Amy Singer, the editor of Knitty, an online knitting magazine, which for years had a policy of “no religion, no politics.”

But as has happened elsewhere in society, she said, the bubble burst because not everyone felt included. This year, knitters of color began speaking out on Instagram about their experiences with racism and prejudice in the community.

The community has also recently been talking about other issues of equality, including the size and racial representation of online models, as well as economic diversity, Ms. Singer said.

“There are people who have been talking down to other people because they can’t afford anything better than craft yarn from Michael’s,” she said. “Knitting has always been political, whether you believe it or not.”

So Singer seems to actually have been talking about the online knitting community, and although I have happily managed to have zero to do with the online knitting community, my guess is that she’s correct about it. Politics rears its ugly head practically everywhere these days, more and more and more.

Now the left has taken over Ravelry, proving the general truth of O’Sullivan’s Law: any group that isn’t explicitly on the political right will eventually become leftist.

That site to which I just linked attempts to explain how this happens, and I think the following is correct:

One of the reasons for this is leftist intolerance versus right-wing tolerance. Right wingers are willing to hire openly left-wing employees in the interest of fairness. Left-wingers, utterly intolerant, will not allow a non-Liberal near them, and will harass them at every opportunity. The result over time is that conservative enterprises are infiltrated by leftists but leftist enterprises remain the same or get worse.

Also, leftism is in and of itself a form of decay. It’s what happens not just to television shows but to nations, churches and universities as the energy given off by the big bang of their inception slowly ebbs away. Rather than expend vitality in originality and creation they become obsessed with introspection, popularity and lethargy.

I cannot imagine that a lot of Trump supporters will be eager to remain at Ravelry (definitely not revelry) under a gag order.

Comments

The politics of knitting, and the meaning of “always” — 49 Comments

  2. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, on another thread here, the professor who taught my course on Chinese Communist Ideology pointed out that these Chinese Communist ideologues saw every aspect of education–what and how you taught and didn’t teach–as a political decision and act.

    But this was just a specific case of their belief that every aspect of life as totally pervaded by and based on politics–I presume knitting included; nothing is neutral or untouched by politics, nor can it be.

  3. In other words, Trump supporters are white supremacists, and Ravelry don’t have to prove it—it’s a self-evident fact. –neo

    This is the general MO for the left these days. It’s self-evident facts all the way down.

    Trump colluded with Putin and is now Putin’s stooge. Self-evident. Trump should be impeached. Self-evident. Climate change is going to fry the planet. Self-evident. Trump and his supporters are every variety of ‘phobe and bigot. Self-evident.

    Somewhat belatedly I’m watching/listening to a lot of Jordan Peterson. I look him up on the web and find tons of leftist criticism, but no specifics, no arguments. Peterson is a shallow shill for the alt-right. Self-evident.

    The left was better than this, at least somewhat, when I was a leftist. Now that they can rig the playing field, they won’t debate anymore.

  4. People should just walk away. If Ravelry collapses, it’s all good. The women running it are jerks.

  6. I’m a quilter, but I have an account to save some free patterns that I might try in the distant future. I should say that I had an account – I deleted it.

    Another quilter/knitter friend wrote a very detailed post about her reaction. She doesn’t have political leanings on her blog since she knows it’s not good for continued activity. She specifically said she has issues with both political parties. But, she did not like the attitude since it was one-sided. She’s deleted her participation in the various forums, will not link to the site anymore. But, she has 10+ years of patterns, so she will use the site as a storage site. She also closed comments on that post to avoid having to deal with the stress.

    I wonder if we’ll ever find out if the member numbers change as well as if their income does. If more people stop linking and buying, their revenues have to go down.

  7. Well, I left the site. It’ll be interesting to see how many others do. Especially since I doubt this’ll be the last Ravelry purge. I’m guessing the next step will be to announce that conservative or pro-USA speech of any sort will be forbidden.

  8. Damn it. I am a knitter, and Ravelry is an amazing resource for patterns, ideas, yarn info and such. I also have records and photos stored there of past projects, very helpful when I want to make, say, another newborn sweater for a new grandchild and can’t remember what yarn I used for the last one. Now I can’t go back there, except for one last time to speak my mind.

    I’ve never visited the discussion sections and didn’t realize politics was discussed there. All they would have had to do, if they truly wanted to be “inclusive,” was to ban ALL discussion of politics from any point of view. But that would not have served the true purposes of the Left to shame, silence and exclude, now would it?

    More and more often I see the word “inclusion” used to justify exclusion, and “diversity” used to justify forced conformity. We truly live in Humpty-Dumpty-land these days.

  10. Mrs Whatsit:

    You just touched on something (the definitions of diversity and inclusion) in a post I’m working on right now.

  11. Well, “wars” is a misstatement. That implies two parties going at each other. This is more akin to lynching. Or witch-hunting–and finding, and burning.

  12. “Also, leftism is in and of itself a form of decay.”
    Leftism is the vanguard of third worldism.

  15. “Left-wingers, utterly intolerant, will not allow a non-Liberal near them, and will harass them at every opportunity.”

    The left keeps ‘upping the ante’… sooner or later they’re going to discover that harassment has an end date…

  16. A knitting site taken over by leftists and with the usual accompanying censorship? This is amazing and astounding! Well, maybe not as it does seem they truly do want to control every small detail of everyone’s lives. I hope the reasonable, nonpolitical knitters are now getting an education about what the left really is about.

    Now, I just wonder when I’ll see the same thing on flightsim or avsim. Is every hobby site now a target? It truly is frightening.

  17. Well, maybe not as it does seem they truly do want to control every small detail of everyone’s lives. I hope the reasonable, nonpolitical knitters are now getting an education about what the left really is about.

    A friend is quite the knitter.She delivers “tons” to the local synagogue for charity. She is definitely a yellow-dog Democrat, though she does admit that it is absurd to call Trump a Nazi. As she grew up in Morocco, she had some freedom from the liberal narrative. She told me that a friend of hers kept going on and on about eevuul- Trump. While she is a Democrat, she doesn’t like to talk politics all the time, so she told her friend that if she didn’t tone down all her Trump talk, to not call her. Her friend hasn’t called back. Politics trumped friendship, as it were.

  18. I am an avid crocheter and have deleted my account as well. I am able to find most of what I am looking for by using allfreecrochet.com. There is an allfreeknitting.com as well. Leftists seem to exclude all “wrong” thinking and then get all in a snit when someone on the right rightfully pushes back. I hope some user who is very adversely affected sues them. The funny thing is that they all seem to forget that while they can ban whatever they want, I can decide to never darken their door again. I won’t be sorry to hear that they go under.

  19. Everything is political and always has been to leftest because at heart they are totalitarians.

    I think people like this seek some kind of validation from their actions. It’s part of a narrative in their mind where they are heroes. By believing the worse of their opponent they feel more heroic.

    Real heroism on the other hand involves risk and sometimes sacrifice. Soldiers, cops, firemen risk their lives and sometimes sacrifice it. Liberals never risk anything and sacrifice very little from it.

  20. As interesting as the Ravelry story is, I found the fact that the NYTimes felt it important to spread it, and maybe distort it a little, to be either curious or typical.

    IMHO, the Times wants everyone to know that there is no place left where Trumpism will be tolerated. You will comply, or be removed. The 80 or 90% of us who have no inkling of the knitting community are now informed. Beware! Your pistol and rifle range or gardening club may be next.

  21. I always thought the term “knitting circle” implied a group of like-minded old biddies getting together for a good chin-wag.

  23. Mrs Grundy is a figurative name for an extremely conventional or priggish person a personification of the tyranny of conventional propriety. A tendency to be overly fearful of what others might think is sometimes referred to as grundyism.

    With the Victorian era, its new morality of decency, domesticity, serious-mindedness, propriety and community discipline on the one hand, its humbug, hypocrisy and self-deception on the other. Mrs Grundy swiftly rose to a position of censorious authority. In John Poole’s 1841 novel Phineas Quiddy, Poole wrote “Many people take the entire world to be one huge Mrs. Grundy, and, upon every act and circumstance of their lives, please, or torment themselves, according to the nature of it, by thinking of what that huge Mrs. Grundy, the World, will say about it”.
    In 1869, John Stuart Mill, himself very aware of the potentially tyrannical power of social opprobrium, referred to Mrs. Grundy in The Subjection of Women, noting that “Whoever has a wife and children has given hostages to Mrs. Grundy”.

    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

    Miss Geraldine Grundy is a fictional character of the Archie Comics series. A younger version of Miss Grundy was portrayed by Sarah Habel in Riverdale.

    DONT WORRY, THEY UPGRADED ARCHIE FOR FEMINISTS
    Riverdale is an American teen drama television series based on the characters of Archie Comics.

    In Riverdale, Miss Grundy is a much younger woman played by Sarah Habel. In the fourth episode of the series it is revealed that Grundy moved to Riverdale after changing her name from Jennifer Gibson after her divorce, to escape from an abusive relationship. Since then Grundy has moved from Riverdale to avoid police capture because of her relationship with Archie. When Betty is searching for Miss Grundy online, she finds a Miss Grundy who died years prior to the beginning of the series, with her obituary picture closely resembling the Miss Grundy of the comic book series. In the season two premiere, it is revealed she is living in Greendale and “teaching” another young male student, before she is strangled to death by Black Hood with her own cello bow.

    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

  24. I followed a link to, I think, Slate, about this, and they repeated the line about how Trump had refused to condemn the white supremacists at Charlottesville, despite the fact that he clearly did explicitly condemn them. Don’t confuse the argument with facts when speaking to leftists.

    I am interested to see how many here, in this small section of the web, have quit Ravelry. I hope this hurts the site; they deserve it.

  25. I went over to Ravelry earlier and visited their help site to find out how to delete my account. There are enough people leaving that they have set up a whole (new since Sunday) thread on how to do it. But it turns out you can’t delete everything, and a few people who are trying to leave are protesting that (for instance, if you are a knitting designer and have posted a pattern, Ravelry will not allow you to delete it, although it is YOUR OWN PATTERN. The “help” people say you can remove your name and that ought to be enough to satisfy you.) The people trying to leave are being treated rudely by the “help” people and being told — not expressly, but by barely disguised implication — that if they want to leave Ravelry that proves that they are white supremacists. People can “like” or “dislike” the posts in this help forum, and unfortunately, many many more people are “liking” the posts that are rude to the people trying to leave and “disliking” the much more polite and reasonable posts of the people trying to leave than the reverse. A typical count was 55 or 60 “likes” on a post supporting the new policy compared with 5 or 6 “dislikes.” It’s really disheartening. I think this will probably help Ravelry more than it hurts.

  30. For them’s what cares, science-fiction was taken over by the SJWs years ago.

    There’s a valiant rear-guard contingent partly led by Sarah Hoyt, a science-fiction author, who does the night-shift blogging at InstaPundit, but the situation is quite grim. The old SF publishing houses are now run by SJWs, so they don’t publish good old SF in the tradition of Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke etc. Hoyt advises non-SJW writers to go indie route and she reports that works for some writers.

    I just discovered there’s a new ultra-SJW-intersectional, black, female SF writer, N.K. Jemisin who has won three Hugos and a Nebula since 2016. That’s a very big deal. It puts her into grandmaster level with the likes of Heinlein.

    I checked out her short story collection, “How Long ‘Til Black Future Month?” because it contained “The Ones Who Stay and Fight,” which was a response to an all-time SF story and one that had a huge impact on me, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” Ursula Le Guin.

    “Omelas” is about people who leave an almost-utopia which, however, requires the hideous suffering of a small child. “Stay and Fight” starts from an SJW utopia in an alternate universe, which is being corrupted by radios which can receive broadcasts from the US in our universe. The ones who stay and fight are those who dress in gray and ferret out those who have been corrupted by the Americans broadcasts and execute them with a pike for wrongthink.

    Wow. That’s the new SJW science fiction. Here’s a real quote from the story:

    This is the paradox of tolerance, the treason of free speech: we hesitate to admit that some people are just fucking evil and need to be stopped.

    Jemisin is currently the hottest, most ballyhooed talent in science and this is one of her most important messages. For a longer discussion:

    https://drmauser.wordpress.com/2019/01/30/message-received/

    Jesus wept. Me too.

  32. “There are people who have been talking down to other people because they can’t afford anything better than craft yarn from Michael’s,”

    No, that’s not politics, that’s snobbery. They’re different.

  35. On etsy.com, I tend to stumble upon anti-Trump and plenty of modern day feminist items. Not sure why, really.

  36. Now wait one moment, Rebecca J Frey! I’m left-handed and right-thinking. 🙂

  37. The people trying to leave are being treated rudely by the “help” people and being told — not expressly, but by barely disguised implication — that if they want to leave Ravelry that proves that they are white supremacists. People can “like” or “dislike” the posts in this help forum, and unfortunately, many m

    What are the names of the site administrators?

  38. Miss Geraldine Grundy is a fictional character of the Archie Comics series.

    And a perfectly benign spinster.

  39. I have been on Ravlery for a few years and they’ve always been political. There was a Great Purge back in 2008 or 2009. The people that started the site are lefties from way back. I ignored the pussy hat nonsense and overt support for Pride Month every year because I was just there for the knitting patterns and help with techniques. Their new policy announcement on Sunday made it clear that they don’t want anyone there who doesn’t disavow Trump so I downloaded the projects and patterns I care about and will delete my account.

    Knitty has come out in support of Ravelry as have other sites, designers, and local yarn shops. It seems lots of people would rather virtue signal than conduct business. Get Woke Go Broke.

  41. @ Art Deco: The people in charge are also predictable. June is Pride Month and they have the rainbow flag visible on their front page. If knitting has “always been political” I can only link it to environmentalism – maybe.

  43. Huxley–

    A great fan of SF here, have been for, say, close to 65 years now, and I very rarely read any of the crap produced today.

    As with many films, I look at the products of earlier, saner decades.

  44. Its not just knitting.

    The grim, humorless, and vicious ideologues of the Left aim to take over everything and to force everyone to toe their ideological, thought, speech, and behavioral line.

  46. For once, one of Artfl’s diatribes on Communist influence everywhere would be well-taken. They should rename Ravelry “People’s Knitting and Self-Criticism Circle, Casey Forbes, Zampolit.

  47. Forbes is an unattractive woman who evidently worked in computer programming for 7 years but admits of no employment in the last dozen years on her LinkedIn. She’s about forty.

    Knitting’s not political, of course, she is. I’ve read an account of the purge of some discussion group of McCain supporters in 2008. Evidently liberal trolls would invade their forum, post obnoxious things, and promiscuously flag content. Forbes et al blamed the victim and purged them. Liberals are generally people of unjust disposition, so it’s hardly surprising.

  48. The closest I have ever come to knitting was to think those little “pussy cat ears” hats were cute.

    That was before they became a political thing.

    Now, I think they are downright ugly!

  49. Art Deco – Michelle Malkin supports your recollections.

    http://michellemalkin.com/2019/06/26/anti-trump-crafters-a-decade-long-unraveling/

    But here’s the thing I know from being in contact with conservative knitters and crocheters over the past decade: Ravelry’s ideological bigotry is not just about Trump. They simply cannot countenance anyone in their community who disagrees with them on any political matter. During the 2008 presidential election season and into 2009, I heard from Republican hobbyists whose lively discussion boards were shutdown on Ravelry.

    Janna S. wrote to warn that “while this may not be making waves in the headlines, there is an upswing in conservative censorship that has hit cyberspace.” A group on Ravelry called “The Bunker,” which had more than 200 members who discussed GOP politics and knitting patterns, was singled out and shut down after liberal, pro-Obama members complained about its presence. Ravelry accused the conservative crafters of a “culture of anger and “us versus them” stance.

    One of the Bunker’s active members, Melissa, reported to me that Ravelry co-founder Casey Forbes had replied to right-leaning users asking how peacefully expressing their opinions violated their terms of service by “making excuses for the fact that he just doesn’t like conservative people on his website. … Many of our members are mothers or grandmothers and are completely harmless. We’ve all been discriminated against because we think and believe differently.”

    Meanwhile, rabid leftists who promoted misogynist sweaters slamming Sarah Palin as “c—y” went unpunished. A forum titled “What Would You Do To Sarah Palin” inviting liberal members to post physical threats was allowed to thrive. “The problem here is not that the site owners decided that they didn’t want an active, vocal conservative group on their site. That is certainly their right as site owners,” Melissa noted. “The issue is the double standard and the denigration of the reputations of all members of The Bunker and the injury and/or destruction of some members’ businesses. The far-left is not only tolerated on Ravelry, they are nurtured and encouraged. Their bad behavior goes unchallenged.”

    This was more than 10 years ago, mind you, long before the latest wave of suppression, shadow-banning, algorithm-rigging, de-platformings, and defamation of right-minded people by Twitter, Facebook and Google/YouTube.

    The speech-squelching imperative of the far left is a thread that traces back to the 1960s, when radical philosopher Herbert Marcuse popularized the “repressive tolerance” theory of modern progressives. “Liberating tolerance would mean intolerance against movements from the right and toleration of movements from the left,” Marcuse taught. “Certain things cannot be said, certain ideas cannot be expressed, certain policies cannot be proposed.”

    In advance of the 2020 election, no space in the internet square is safe from “inclusive” exclusion. Silicon Valley’s overlords, like Ravelry’s petty tyrants, have no interest in promoting diversity, discussion and community. They are bent on decimating debate and dissent while wrapped in thick, woolly blankets of hypocrisy and sanctimony.

    “long before the latest wave ” — or maybe just long before we were able to discern that the internet gatekeepers were diverting conservative traffic (mostly because they have been so blatant about it recently).

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