Women's rights general conversations - Thread 10

Margaret Mead was an early 20th century anthropologist who studied small tribal villages in southern Africa.

She discovered two villages around 10-20 miles from each other, both of which had knitting cultures. In one village, knitting was women's work and was felt to be necessary for garment making for the villagers. It was disdained by men who refused to have anything to do with it except wearing the garments (and presumably whingeing if there was anything wrong with them).

In the other village, knitting was solely done by men. It was considered almost holy and precious and women were not allowed anywhere near the knitting, particularly if theywere menstruating. Possibly they weren't even allowed to wear the garments.

Mead concluded that in both cultures, it wasn't about the knitting, but about the knitters and male knitters were more revered than female ones.

Plus ça change...

He didn't knit that shawl thing.

And the loose ends. My work is far from perfect but then I don't wear it on national TV with an arrogant smirk.

Is that meant to be a cable knit jumper in the picture? He's made a right pig's ear of the plaited sections at the bottom.

Yes he did. He was also very vocal about transwomen being included in sports (he was all for it, but seems to have gone a bit quiet on the subject recently).

The BBC had an article yesterday about some blokes who've started knitting. Women barely got a mention. Suddenly a man does it and it's news worthy. They'll even build a program around it.

Doesn't Daley have form for this? Didn't he rent a woman and buy her child?

Sounds like they just made it up as they went along. Daley looks ridiculous in that thing.

Thanks for that, CriticalCondition. Yet another case of people not listening to those who do actually know what they're talking about.

Tom Daley's knitting programme has seriously pissed off the knitters of Shetland. Misappropriation and misrepresentation of a precious culture, taking their time, kindness and and even their language. Sound familiar?

https://www.shetlandtimes.co.uk/news/letter-you-ve-misrepresented-an-entire-culture-open-let-418907/

I was just reading the latest mail-out from Sex Matters. They are doing such good work, talked about the 199 Days Later and the GLP case, etc. But it does my head in: none of this should be necessary! 99% of what they are campaigning for is just asking people to do their bloody jobs! But mutton-headed inaction seems to rule.

Guess we need to be ready for more eye-rolling then. Gods what a bore.

Spot on, @Kucinghitam - tedious sea-lioning is, well, tedious.

Twas different there, though. And back then, there was a sense that some people at least were #bekind-ers. I think that is dead in the water now. There's really no sense in which these people are posting and debating in good faith. It's trolling, pure and simple.

IIJM, but seems to me that, scanning through the top few threads in this folder, more and more have been 'invaded'? I've joked before about them being paid for their efforts, but it does make you wonder. it's dispiriting and annoying, but I suppose there's not much that can be done. It does seem to me me to be getting worse and worse, though.

Audrey Ludwig has written an interesting piece suggesting that DEI should fall under the Risk&Compliance department, rather than HR.

https://audreyludwig.com/why-equality-law-compliance-belongs-in-risk-management-not-human-resources/

@FlowerUser thanks so much for this, it give me some good stuff to start on and helps massively.

What I remember is a vid where two of the women who spoke at the meeting were discussing the reaction of the men, and then a short clip was played of the men shouting and gesticulating. Being there must have felt surreal and, even all those years later, the women still thought it bizarre.

I asked ChatGPT and then searched its results and Google's AI told me that the specific event where male delegates erupted with shouting and jeering at women delegates demanding action on the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) occurred at the 1973 AFL-CIO convention in Miami, Florida.

ChatGPT then was asked to find a YouTube clip, but couldn't and suggested this:

"Here’s what’s solid:

• The 1973 AFL-CIO convention did take place in Bal Harbour/Miami Beach in October.
• The AFL-CIO formally endorsed the ERA in 1973 (so the issue was live in that period).
• There are contemporaneous archives and proceedings from that Miami week (including women’s auxiliaries), but I can’t locate filmed footage online of the shouting scene.

If you want to chase the primary footage, these are the most promising holdings:

• George Meany Memorial AFL-CIO Archives (UMD Special Collections) — they hold convention films/reels for the 1970s; request Miami Beach 1973 convention coverage.
• Walter P. Reuther Library (Wayne State) — CLUW, Olga Madar and Addie Wyatt papers often reference women’s interventions at conventions around 1973–74. Ask for any audiovisual tied to AFL-CIO ’73.
• Texas Southern University / Barbara Jordan Papers — file entries for the AFL-CIO Miami 1973 convention week (helpful for dates/participants while you place a film request elsewhere). "

Hope this helps.

Damn, wish I could find it, it's driving me daft!

Wonder if anyone can help here. A while back I saw a clip about women in the labour unions in the US in, I think, about 1980. There was a big union gathering and a couple of women got up on stage to speak, whereupon the men in the audience flew into a rage and started shouting very angrily for them to shut up. It was quite shocking to see how furious the men were.

I've been trying to find out more but can't find anything at all about what happened. Does anyone know?

So... a film I need to watch, at some point!

That's a really good observation Kuc.

I've never cared for that film <sniff>