"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?'

and I don't think it transfers smoothly from the US to the UK ( re. Previous issues with lack of class and the concept of indigenous) but it has made me think a bit more deeply

I think it was telling that of the academics that were interviewed, most appeared to be from the US.

As others have said, the progressives from the US seem to have a huge blind spot regarding their own position of privilege as US citizens and an ignorance of European history beyond bad white racist patriarchal colonialism.

The little rainbow flag has disappeared from Ravelry...

I thought the young working class girl from Bristol was very articulate without using any buzz words or jargon, my father's family come from a similar background with many disadvantages and discriminations, i could tell you so many stories, definitely gives me a different perspective on "privilege".

I guess the rainbow can’t stay there all year as then it can’t be ostentatiously slapped on the front page for Pride month/season.

returns to self flagellation

Well I am definitely going to avoid yarn shows, for a start.

Well that’s quite tantalising, @nibdedibble

They (the writer and her wife/?business partner) are based quite locally to me, apparently. But I don’t know them or imagine our paths are likely to cross.

I went to Woollin this year and hugely enjoyed it, I'll definitely be going back next year.

"Work on your biases" or "check your thinking" is pure Cultural Revolution stuff. It seems to me that proponents genuinely think that "whiteness" and "white fragility" is causing and perpetuating racism.

But of course it's not. This is bourgeois, decadent thinking from those who've never been exploited.

Only by redistributing wealth can we eliminate the real problem of racism; the racial divide that is the global divide. And we can only do that by working together in solidarity. Not witch hunting each other.

It's madness.

Just caught up with this thread, bloody hell, mind blown. I witnessed the IG meltdown in May of a small, independent sewing pattern, accused of cultural appropriation - the Kimono issue linked to upthread.

It just looked utterly batshit to me, with one or two posters mobbing the account with outrage and then the pattern company, basically consisting of two women, formally apologising over and over again and begging forgiveness.

Though it was just very odd at the time. No idea this was all going on.

Meanwhile, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer. I'm so sick of this decisive woke bullshit. This whole thing is awful.

Someone mentioned Evergreen College up thread, here's a link to the documentary. I was gobsmacked. The behaviour seems very similar to this. It helps no one.

Oh yes, I've seen that, stressful just watching it, let alone actually being there.
I keep having imaginary arguments in my head with the aggressors but i can't seem to imagine winning them!

Re: cultural appropriation...

When does cultural cross-pollination become cultural appropriation? Surely, the sharing of ideas across racial and cultural boundaries is one of the things enabling us to live in a multi-cultural society as it helps bring people together from different backgrounds.

And is it only applicable when white people do it- e.g if a black American knitting pattern designer puts out an Aran jumper pattern, can she be accused of culturally appropriating it because she's not of Scottish heritage?

It depends on the power relationships between the two cultures. The dominant culture appropriates.
The US view is that race trumps everything in terms of who dominates, of course - they are blind to the possibility that things are not always that simple.

I suspect that multiculturalism, in that it was a government policy of social engineering, is not supported by critical race theory or whatever it's called.

I seem to recall there used to be anti-racism ads (in Aust) saying stuff like "look past my black skin... I'm a person too" or "see me as a person not just a person with different coloured skin".

I had a woke friend venting to me about her white colleague's white fragility micro-aggressions because the colleague said to her "I just see you as a person, not as a [nationality in Asia]". Yet in my view the colleague has been acculturated to say such a phrase by being brought up here. Now it is 'harmful' speech. The consequences are that people are most likely walking on eggshells around my woke friend (who has led a class privileged life) and less likely to want to work alongside her and other POC.

Is the concept of culteral appropriation a useful one? It just seems to lead to arguments (usually between privileged people)

It depends on the power relationships between the two cultures. The dominant culture appropriates.

Can you imagine if this idea had existed historically?

Arabs would not have been 'allowed' to 'appropriate' zero from India. We Europeans might have been 'allowed' to but would never have known about it. There'd be no modern science. No internet. I wouldn't be typing this right now............

I agree terf, they are putting people off.

They strike me as extremely lacking in life experience. Look at the Scottish couple, formerly lecturing others about wrong-speak and now in the dog house.

What’s happened is you have well-educated, affluent white people who’ve done a bit of reading around race and now feel they have “seen the light”. They now look down upon other white people who haven’t “seen the light”, quite forgetting that a) they were in the same boat until recently and b) they have huge advantages over many people in this country in the first place. There is no humility, too much pride and then the inevitable fall. And it goes back to the social class thing I think you mentioned before terf. They are oblivious to it!

I find the whole idea of cultural appropriation absurd. If something is done to mock the other culture there is a problem, but if it is done out of love or admiration for the other culture, why does anyone get offended?

The Chinese didn't have a problem with this, but some westerners did.
news.sky.com/story/rihanna-accused-of-cultural-appropriation-over-harpers-bazaar-china-magazine-cover-11763566

It depends on the power relationships between the two cultures. The dominant culture appropriates.

How does this work in relation to the outrage over the 'kimono' pattern? It's become a common term garments with wide rectangular sleeves and a belt, kind of like how a dish made in a spicy gravy is referred to as a curry, whether it's Japanese or Thai or Indian or made by a white person in Norwich. I don't think it's stealing or lessening the cultural value of Japanese kimono.

@ as asian lives in asian country
majority native(?) asians don't care about such thing.
that's western thing.

And also, if we're talking about power relationships between cultures- Japan is a powerful and wealthy nation with a large number of successful cultural exports. There's a big difference between them and, say, Native Americans, who were subjected to genocide and had their culture aggressively stamped out by a colonial force.

The woke don't seem to be that self-critical of their appropriation of Manga and Hentai (don't Google this at work) culture.

Good point about power relationships. How do we measure this? GDP? Military Strength? The USA is at the top for both, but China, Japan and India (and France) are above the UK in both of these rankings. So presumably it's OK for the British to call their kimono-style jackets kimonos, but for Americans it's cultural appropriation.

GDP
United States (GDP: 21.41 trillion)
China (GDP: 15.54 trillion)
Japan (GDP: 5.36 trillion)
Germany (GDP: 4.42 trillion)
India (GDP: 3.16 trillion)
France (GDP: 3.06 trillion)
United Kingdom (GDP: 3.02 trillion)
Italy (GDP: 2.26 trillion)
Brazil (GDP: 2.26 trillion)
Canada (GDP: 1.91 trillion)

worldpopulationreview.com/countries/countries-by-gdp/

Military strength ranking
www.globalfirepower.com/countries-listing.asp

Not only do we have to find how to measure between nations, we'd have to decide what appropriation is within nations.

In the UK England is the dominant culture, so is it OK for me as a Scot to wear a bowler hat but not for an English person to wear a kilt? Do I to drink gin but the English can't drink Scotch? That might kind of fuck up our economy, whisky is big business