If your image of a knitter is some grandma, softly repeating “knit one, purl two,” you haven’t been paying attention to the resurgence of what Vox calls “fiber arts,” Why the word “knitting” is deemed inadequate for the art of knitting is unclear. It could be because hipsters need a new word for everything, to distinguish it from what grandma did, or it lacked the prestige new wave knitters needed to validate their importance.
Still, knitting was a wonderful craft. Until it turned into a vicious cesspool of hateful outrage.
On January 7, Karen Templer, a knitting designer and owner of the online store Fringe Association, published an innocuous blog post on her website entitled “2019: My Year of Colour,” in which she enthused about her forthcoming trip to India.
Templer was very excited about her trip to India and wrote of it with huge enthusiasm.
I’ve wanted to go to India for as long as I can remember. I’ve a lifelong obsession with the literature and history of the continent. Photos of India fill me with longing like no other place. One of my closest friends [when I was 12] and her family had offered back then that if I ever wanted to go with them on one of their trips, I could. To a suburban midwestern teenager with a severe anxiety disorder, that was like being offered a seat on a flight to Mars. … Then about six weeks ago, the opportunity presented itself—a chance to go with a friend who’s been. … I said yes. And I felt like the top of my head was going to fly off, I was so indescribably excited. Within 48 hours, three of those friends of mine who are so much better travelers than me—but who are all equally humbled at the idea of actually going to India—also said yes. There has hardly been a single day since that I haven’t said in disbelief, either in my head or out loud, I’m going to India.
This is normally where one’s friends share her excitement and wish her well, which they did for a bit. Then the scold appeared.
One of the first people to attack Templer was a user named Alex J. Klein who wrote:
Karen, I’d ask you to re-read what you wrote and think about how your words feed into a colonial/imperialist mindset toward India and other non-Western countries. Multiple times you compare the idea of going to India to the idea of going to another planet—how do you think a person from India would feel to hear that?
I’m going to take a leap here, and say that Klein wasn’t Indian and wasn’t expressing his personally hurt feelings about his country or heritage. Rather, Klein was one of those white knights, allies, for whom finding some reason to attack a perfectly nice and normal expression of happiness and positivity for being said in a politically wrong way.
Templer responded by explaining her excitement, and noting that her Indian friends found nothing troubling in her enthusiasm. Naturally, this compelled Klein to double down, because anything else would have made him a complicit racist.
Instead of asking your Indian friends to perform more emotional labor for you and assuage your white women’s tears, maybe do some reflection on how your equation of India with an alien world reinforces an “other” mindset that is at the core of imperialism and colonialism.
Whereupon the mob descended to destroy Templer for . . . being excited to go to India. Templer’s supportive friends then flipped on her, suddenly aware of how she was literally Hitler and probably wore a MAGA hat to sleep at night.
As Vox “explains,” knitting is apparently a hotbed of racism.
But even though the stereotypical image has gotten younger over the years, the community is still perceived as very white. Part of that is a problem of access: Mahon points to the expense, especially if you’re buying high-quality or indie-made yarns (hand-dyed or luxurious yarn can be around $30 a skein, and depending on yardage, you’d need at least three to four skeins to make a sweater). “And it just keeps getting more and more expensive and elitist, until only other white women can keep up,” she said.
So “free” yarn is the next right, along with “free” education and “free” medical care? There’s more.
But another part is pure “marketable aesthetics,” says Yoo. “At some point, those super-blue filters came through, and then the minimalism came through, and then the not showing who you are, the cup of coffee, ball of yarn … spaces could become whitewashed without you really noticing.” The popular look was to focus on the knitting, not the person doing the knitting, which made it easier to forget what that person looked like. And sometimes, when followers were reminded, they showed their prejudice.
Whitewashed? As in white people took pictures of themselves and they turned out to be white?
Rose said she noticed the whitewashing of the community when she’d post a photo of herself, or part of herself, after long stretches of only showing yarn or other images. “I just noticed the space was easier to navigate when I didn’t show who I was, because then you wouldn’t assume that I was a black person,” she said. “When I didn’t show myself, people would assume that the picture was from a white person. That’s when I knew it was really whitewashed.”
Was Rose adored when her race was unknown, but shunned when her skin color could be seen? It doesn’t say so, and if it did, that would be terrible and shocking. It only says she “noticed the space was easier to navigate” when her race was unknown, creating some mysterious sense of the nefarious while saying nothing at all.
What did this complaint of “whitewashing” have to do with Karen Templer’s excitement over her trip to exotic India? Enough, apparently, for Klein to incite the mob to rip her to shreds until she admitted her wrongthink and begged for mercy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4-pexSVWzM
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And high-end clothes can cost thousands, therefore people of color go naked. Luxurious homes can run into 8 figures, therefore people of color sleep in the gutter.
What kind of non-thinking is this? Can these people not hear how ridiculous they sound?
Rich or poor, it’s good to have money.
““And it just keeps getting more and more expensive and elitist, until only other white women can keep up,” she said.”
Keep up? Today I learned that knitting is a competitive hobby where you have to keep up with the latest material and color meta in order to produce a viable sweater.
The power creep with each new yarn release is just ridiculous. Probably better off switching to Warhammer 40k and saving a lot of money.
So many of his songs fit.
I knew every word on that album….back in the day. I don’t know if our lovely host was going this deep in with his song choice…but when i got to the part of the ass-scold doubling-down on the excited young lady, (and at the same time noticing the song pick), the line …” then he raped her and killed her and took her home” came to my metaphorically masticated mind.
Apparently there are more and more people who dropped a stitch while becoming ‘educated.’
It’s a fascinating dynamic to see white people not only scolding her while non-white & Indian friends cheer her on and come to her defense, but then those same white people also literally warning her multiple times not to talk to her Indian friends about it. Who is really the colonizer here?
And the facility of their jargon to flip rationality on its head (“emotional labor” is one of my favorites). Credit where credit is due.
That follow-up scolding about “white women’s tears” was bizarre. She was happy and excited! What tears were there except for the ones Klein would eventually cause?
I do so love how the grindingly obvious has become somehow obscene. How would Indians feel about being compared to another planet? Probably unsurprised. After all, wouldn’t the average Indian think of going to the United States in the same terms? It’s literally on the other side of the globe, accessible only by modern conveniences and wealth. Hopelessly out of reach for most until recently.
What a profoundly stupid time to be alive.
They buried the boy by the river,
A blanket over his face—
They wept for their dead Lieutenant,
The men of an alien race—
They made a samadh in his honor,
A mark for his resting-place.
The Judge was quick to quote Gunga-Din, so I’ll have to fall back on The Grave of a Hundred Head.
If knitters are as high up on the shitlord scale as Kipling, they’re in good company.
SHG,
Though I’ve belted you and flayed you,
By the livin’ Gawd that made you,
You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!
All the best.
RGK
As you’ve seized Kipling, I’m left to sail into the setting sun on the Ruby Yacht of Omar Khayyam.
SHG,
A thunder of jets in an open sky, a streak of gray and a cheerful “Hi!” A loop, a whirl, a vertical climb, and once again you know it’s time for . . . .
All the best.
RGK
Your erudition never ceases to amaze.
Responding to such comments as Mr. Klein’s is like trying to explain to a barking dog that you intend no trespass. My grandmother taught me that the best way to deal with some vexations is to allow them time to dry up and be blown away.
Not feeing the trolls only works with trolls. The mob picks up its own steam.
I always tell the barking dogs that I intend to trespass, and what are they going to do about it? But I tell them that from outside the fence, and then I don’t trespass, and they get all frustrated. Years ago, I had a yard with a chain link fence, and my old alley cat baited a barking dog in the next yard over until he tried to lunge through the fence and got his head stuck. Then she just smacked his head back and forth like a speed bag until he was finally able to back out of his predicament. Dogs are stupid.
And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.
I was a small town midwestern teenager who never even saw the ocean until after I graduated college. A few years later, I had the chance to travel to China, and felt the same way Templer did about going to India. Had any of my “friends” reacted to my excitement in such a disgraceful manner, they wouldn’t have been my friends any longer.
Frankly, I think Templer just learned a valuable lesson about how social media “friends” are not actually your friends. I hope she heeds it and acts accordingly.
Unfortunately, Templer is too busy groveling before the mob to learn this lesson on this go-around. In fairness to her, I think that most civilians fold the first time an outrage mob descends upon them. The mob takes advantage of most people’s decency, and they, thinking that they had inadvertently given offense, apologize.
The only people who don’t apologize are those who are (1) assholes, or (2) have seen this scenario play out before on social media and know that a public apology will only be used against them, or (3) both. Our host may be in category 3.
Two lessons exist here. First, never publicly apologize to an outrage mob because the apology will be used as Exhibit 1 at your coming public show trial. It is better to simply go down fighting.
Second, the outrage mobs keep having to move into new hobbies like locusts because eventually people in a given hobby see that there is no point in interacting with them. What’s next, stamp collecting or tiddlywinks?
Seeing the original blogger’s responses to the criticism she got in the comment section of her post, I can’t help admiring her never-failing politeness and courtesy and even temper and sincere desire for a constructive dialogue, no matter how much her critics failed to show any of these. The response, however, seemed to be endless escalating attacks, as nothing short of a ritual apology in the proper social-justice jargon of the moment (“BIPOC” seems to be popular with this particular group of activists) would be accepted (and maybe not even that).
Just more “bow to the hat on the pole.”
“Swear allegiance to the flag
Whatever flag they offer
Never hint at what you really feel
Teach the children quietly
For some day sons and daughters
Will rise up and fight while we stood still”
— Silent Running, Mike and the Mechanics
In a position of weakness, one might have to behave in that manner for survival, to fight another day. In any other posture, bowing to the hat is a mistake which only helps people who should not have power to build their power. While you have a choice, never bow to the hat, no matter whose hat it is.
I think that she can ritually apologize till the cows come home, but she will be always be treated poorly as a “badthinker” if she wants to remain associated with the group attacking her from this point forward. The purpose of these attacks is never to rehabilitate the target (which is why it is a bad idea to engage these mobs at all, unless your job is on the line), only to downgrade and diminish the target for the moral/mental benefit of the attackers. Templer sounds like a very polite and nice lady, who is getting a rude exposure to social justice.
[Ed. Note: Deleted. Promote crap at reddit. not on my dime.]
The vehemence of your deletion could give the other viewers and commenters the impression that I tried to recommend someone at Breitbart or some alt-right website, given the subject matter of the post. Could you at least agree with me that I was not attempting to promote alt-right crap on your site?
Completely accurate. There was nothing remotely alt-right about it.
This is pretty much how he does all deletions, except the terminal ones which are accompanied by the “don’t come back.” Regular readers will not read extraneous assumptions into the deletions.
In fairness to her, the shop attached to her blog is how she puts food on the table.
Prophetic words in the post:
“Since our ability to feed and clothe ourselves right now depends entirely on the continued success of Fringe Supply Co., she’s always taunting me about what will happen when I figure out how to screw it up, which of course she feels certain I’ll do. “
My last words before they put me under for the scarfing were “Please, just not the black knitter!” Now I have a lot of black knitter friends, they’re all good people, but when it’s your only scarf, I can’t take the chance on someone who hasn’t been able to afford the very best yarns to practice their craft.
….AND what are you gonna do when the Knit Raiders start mucking around with the message lawyer fashion is conveying?
Start accepting knitted caps for retainers or sporting bespoke knitted socks?
You better start thinking ahead….
Maybe a nice pink knitted cap?
Or the Knit Pickers (every time they are down in the dumps, they get a new hat).
Nothing like getting needled by a knitter.
Or feel the desire to stick one in one’s eye.
Well, if anyone can make a silk purse out of this experience…
My gramma knitted me an afghan (can we still call them that?) and gave it to me when I was born. It turned 44 on Monday.
Happy afghan day, J.