"Cast Off - Diversity wars are raging in the knitting world'

[AncientLights]

I've kept the title from the article in the print version of The Spectator 28 Sept, as I can't improve on it.

It's the most astonishing piece - well, astonishing and yet horribly familiar to us here. I'll summarise as it's not the done thing to do a big c&p job and would also be a kick in the financial teeth of the Speccy, who have done so much, via James Kirkup, to publicise the illogicality of the trans movement.

There is a knitter called Nathan Taylor whose online name is 'Sockmatician' - he sounds an interesting character, shall I say. Sockmatician seems to have cause huge offence (and here I will quote as it's so bonkers) by posting 'a poem on Instagram about 'diversknitty' in which he boasted it was a year since he had founded this hashtag, and asked that people use it kindly, rather than attacking one another'. Seems Taylor was committing violence against Bipoc (black & indigenous people of colour, it says here) by telling them how to make their arguments about inclusion, tone policing from a white man - utterly unacceptable.

The war started & raged on. Sockmatation has MH problems, was hospitalised, messages from his husband held no sway. Things got really bad with the yarn festival: yarn producers & other knitting personalities (who knew?) couldn't believe Sockmatition hadn't been uninvited, someone was glad she hadn't been able to attend after all as she'd have been unable to teach her session knowing he was down the hall. Unsupported allegations online about an assault. His patterns have been dropped from two books, one of which was the first official Harry Potter knitting book - the cover was reshot to remove Sockmatition's work. His business has suffered a 75% drop in sales.

There's a similar story about a Kate Davies who is based in the Scottish Highlands. She wouldn't join in denouncing people for their 'transgressions', so she's been attacked, too.

I read it thinking it must be an allegory but have come to the conclusion it's genuine. It is total, stark-staring madness and I can only keep saying to myself and to anyone else who will listen 'How on earth have we come to this?'

It's a very US centric debate too and some of it doesn't translate well to other countries.

The criticism of Edinburgh for having Kate Davies there and not enough diversity was very much an example of that too me. US people looked at the % representation and declared it inadequate despite Scotland's population make up being so different to the US and a huge focus of the festival being on Scottish and UK yarn and sheep breeds and knitting traditions.

Kate Davies lives in rural Scotland, mostly models her own knitwear designs and employs locally. The SJW on Instagram have demands that don't translate well to that.

@BernardBlacksWineIceLolly

yes, we should only read guardian, independent, ect...

and by them we are the bad anti trans privileged evil woman.
we failed to pass purity test.

demn, we need Self criticism time and educate our selves.

plz don't we stop this crap?
that's the reason rad fem can't extent to people.

it's movement for woman or some political party?

We're only a step away from a Cultural Revolution complete with Red Guards

The comment by Kate Davies husband sounds exactly like the sort of apology and confession extracted by them.

I think where the article originates (either a 'right-wing' or 'left-wing' publication) is actually not completely negligible and something I find interesting.
For example, regardless of actual politics I find the Daily Mail vile beyond belief, extreme and very often completely misrepresenting facts to the point that it's not permitted as a credible source on Wikipedia.

That said, I have read articles on the Mail on Sunday by Julie Bindel and others as they weren't being reported elsewhere. I am just very careful to factcheck and have my eyes open to the fact that there could be some context they are completely ignoring. If the Guardian et al are also covering the same story I'll get some idea of the different takes and make up my own mind. Note I am not saying that the truth always lies between two extremes.

Some publications make it easier than others to establish the actual facts of what has happened/is happening buried in 'what this means'. (I used to play a game with the Metro paper of reading the headline then scouring the article for some nugget of actual fact and comparing what actually happened with the headline).

We have to remember why the far right are jumping on these issues - it’s certainly not the same reasons I have an issue, and our general outlook is not the same.

I agree with this - I doubt very much that feminism is at the forefront in some of the publications - so I do keep it in mind, but I'm not going to ignore the issues just because of that.

I’d like to credit anyone trying to unpick all this with the intelligence to see the potential bias in any journalistic piece about it.

Yep, that's pretty much what I was trying to say!

(BTW before anyone moans about Wikipedia I fully recognise that it has a bad editor bias problem - that's pretty much irrelevant to my point though)

You said it much more eloquently, popehilarious

Kate Davies and her DH have the absolute right to distance themselves from any discussion about this they don’t find helpful. She’s built a huge brand while keeping her values and desire to promote a certain style of knitting, the culture surrounding it and an ethos of thoughtful crafting the same as when she started.
I’ve met her at shows and the thought of her not feeling able to attend because of this is abhorrent.
She’s also been through this before. Criticised for only showing a heteronormative wedding (her own) and the knitted pieces created for her and her DH to wear. Also, rounded on because not all her designs suit all sizes, to which she wrote a very good rebuttal about her own physical difficulties after her stroke and that no one of any size should be assuming things about anyone of a different size.

With all due respect, even as a white man who is openly gay man and has HIV, he still has more privilege than a non-white gay man with HIV. He doesn’t get to storm into the diversity debate to police the way people of colour fight for social justice in the knitting / craft world. To make a point about this community - a lot of Asian / African women (men) learn how to knit / crochet / sew from an early age as all types of clothesmaking are often part of their family business but it’s often really difficult for them to be represented at fairs / events in the US and Europe even when their work is excellent. If they happen to be gay too then they tend to not be able to get represented at all.

with all due respect, hounding a person with MH issues to the degree this man has been hounded for saying something you don't like is not OK.

That’s interesting, Saucery. The repeated (unwarranted) criticism of KD is very telling. It does sound like there may be a commercial motive behind this. In certain spheres, social media makes it very easy to tear down your competitors, in a way that hasn’t been possible before. I looked into the YA fiction links that someone posted on this thread yesterday, and that is very much the case in that field.

in fact, regardless of MH issues, it's not OK. With all due respect

Oh undoubtedly, Teddybear45. Coining a hashtag then huffily demanding its use be restricted was never going to go down well and I think the backlash surprised him. Then that backlash caught fire and spread out to people who stocked his stuff, who hired him for workshops and he is effectively blackballed from earning a living.
He does have a place at the diversity table, however and it’s harder earned than the places taken recently by privileged white crafters and business owners scrabbling after the Crafty £.
Would I have bought from him if the hashtag poem is where it stopped? Maybe, maybe not. It was high handed and out of order to try and limit its use to what he originally intended it for.
Would I buy from him now to show a bit of solidarity and help keep him in the crafting arena? Definitely.

The phrase ‘she can’t do right for doing wrong’ is very apt for KD, GCAcademic!

I don't think 'trying to limit the use of a hashtag' ought to be a punishable crime, personally.

He doesn’t get to storm into the diversity debate to police the way people of colour fight for social justice

Why do you call it 'policing'? Genuine Q. From my reading he was expressing his opinion and asking people to be kinder (or whatever you want to call it). Policing implies some kind of power to enforce, like moderators etc, - is this specifically because it's "his" hashtag (I agree he can't own or dictate how it's used)? If he hadn't come up with the hashtag would it not be policing?

And how is it different from someone saying "he doesn't get to do X"?

In certain spheres, social media makes it very easy to tear down your competitors, in a way that hasn’t been possible before. I looked into the YA fiction links that someone posted on this thread yesterday, and that is very much the case in that field.

I am, for professional reasons, much more familiar with the 'debate' tagging in young adult fiction than that of the knitting world. Frankly the whole thing is a disaster. All it is doing is putting the target market off the genre altogether. The rate they are going no will be able to make a living writing young adult fiction because books written to 'woke' standards are dull as fuck and people are voting with their feet.

tagging? Not sure where that came from, raging is the word!

As a sometime knitter who spends more time wishful thinking on Ravelry than actually knitting, I've found this whole thing totally depressing.

Kate Davies is massively talented and has built her whole brand on a deep knowledge of the Scottish Highlands tradition of knitting, employing local people and using local yarn and colours. Plus overcoming a massive stroke in her 30s. She's a hero!

For me, and I'm sure many others, this intense knowledge of a historic knitting culture was part of the appeal. So, it's not going to be very diverse, but then it's all about one particular tradition of knitting.

One designer, who I also liked but thought wasn't as talented as Kate, seems to have completely turned on her, her twitter feed is full of posts about TWAW and less and less about knitting.

Some of us just want to knit!

For me knitting has introduced me to lots of diversity - Latvian mittens, Russian shawls, Peruvian yarns, Turkish slippers just off the top of my head. I've learned all about what knitting meant to various cultures of women and men. Plus it's a sphere where young and old women can talk to each other freely and have something in common. My elderly DM is in loads of knitting groups and it kept her going when she was seriously ill.

Knitting is a broad church of people and there isn't one best diversity in it but many.

I’m a knitter and I’ve been watching all that’s been going on and it’s a total shit show.
Brands and designers that don’t follow the script are destroyed.
I’ve stopped buying from some brands because of what has been going on, the Scottish designer (who I don’t want to name) has been one of the worst and ironically then her wife writes an article and doesn’t get it proofread and pisses off a lot of people.
The owner of Ravelry comes out as trans, so I’ve also stepped back from that as well.

I don’t agree with this “you fall into this category of person so you don’t “get to have an opinion on X”. You can say whatever you want. Anyone can. There may be consequences for doing so from social disapproval to arrest to prosecution but the fact remains..anyone can say what they like.

The sewing stuff is tin-eared as well.

Yes, the article saying going to India was like going Mars was off. But the reaction was totally OTT.

Sewing has had problems for ages, especially with body-diversity. One of the major reasons people sew is to get stuff to fit them - but even in the pattern world everyone is thin. I followed several black female sewing blogs for years as they were the only ones out there writing and teaching what it was like to sew and adapt patterns for a bigger body. Diary of a Sewing Fanatic was pioneering for this - and she doesn't spend her time slapping other people down for making different choices, just points out the issues she is experiencing and makes masses of amazing clothes.

One of the major reasons people sew is to get stuff to fit them

ah, that makes total sense about some of the body positivity obsession

Yep, there are some curvy sewing bloggers out there making some minging clothes but it is absolutely forbidden to say anything negative about their choice of pattern/print/fit/possibility that they have diabetes etc.

However some are just facing the fact we live in an age of obesity, they are big and making some super clothes.

@AnnaMagnani I'm very hapy to read you say that. It reflects my own experience. I want to say "That really does make you look odd" but can't, as it is totesbad

So I trawled for ages before finding Diary of a Sewing Fanatic!