The hypocrisy of critics of knitting women was on my mind again while reading the Knitting as Dissent article. It seems like they would all be naked without women during the boycotts. The paragraph about Lillian Wald teaching people how to knit in order to make money specifically spurred my thought that it is a real privilege to be in a place to criticize knitting or even knowing how to knit. The ones who disparage it do not have to worry about income or how to provide for themselves, so they make judgements rooted in both sexism and classism. The same men who diminished knitting as a useless feminine activity were the ones who, according to the article, turned around and said that buying massed produced knitted items during the world war deprives women of meaningful work. That rhetoric is hypocritical, and conveniently lets the men ignore women’s contributions to society and activism only when it is convenient for them.
Knitting as Dissent
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