The Knitters Know

[Perknose]

Ravelry.com, a social network for knitters and crocheters, has 8 million members. This Sunday, they announced, quite politely and in as accommodating a manner as possible, that they'd had enough and they were taking out the trash:

New Policy: Do Not Post In Support of Trump or his Administration
Sunday, June 23rd 2019

We are banning support of Donald Trump and his administration on Ravelry.

This includes support in the form of forum posts, projects, patterns, profiles, and all other content. Note that your project data will never be deleted. We will never delete your Ravelry project data for any reason and if a project needs to be removed from the site, we will make sure that you have access to your data. If you are permanently banned from Ravelry, you will still be able to access any patterns that you purchased. Also, we will make sure that you receive a copy of your data.

We cannot provide a space that is inclusive of all and also allow support for open white supremacy. Support of the Trump administration is undeniably support for white supremacy. [bolding mine]

Policy notes:

• You can still participate if you do in fact support the administration, you just can’t talk about it here.
• We are not endorsing the Democrats nor banning Republicans.
• We are definitely not banning conservative politics. Hate groups and intolerance are different from other types of political positions.
• We are not banning people for past support.
• Do not try to weaponize this policy by entrapping people who do support the Trump administration into voicing their support.
• Similarly, antagonizing conservative members for their unstated positions is not acceptable.

You can help by flagging any of the following items if they constitute support for Trump or his administration:

• Projects: Unacceptable projects will be provided to the member or made invisible to others.
• Patterns: Unacceptable patterns will be returned to drafts.
• Forum posts: right now, only posts written after Sunday, June 23rd at 8 AM Eastern
• Profiles: Please do not flag profiles yet if the only banned content is an avatar or avatars. There is not yet a flagging system for those.

Much of this policy was first written by a roleplaying game site, not unlike Ravelry but for RPGs, named RPG.net. We thank them for their thoughtful work. For citations/references, see this post on RPG.net: https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/new-ban-do-not-po...

^^^ It seems they'd grown tired of his racism and his . . . yarns.

 

[Amused]

Some background:

 

[sactoking]

This is a clear FREE SPEECH violation by a private party and just another example of butthurt libtard knitters creating safe spaces from all of the winning.





/s

Yes, I know free speech doesn't apply to private spaces.

 

[JSt0rm]

and our trump supporters think they are being oppressed here.

 

[BoomerD]

I saw this a couple days ago. Good for them.

 

[darkswordsman17]

and our trump supporters think they are being oppressed here.

But look at the oppression! First they come for the knitters, then the bakers (oh shit they were already trying!!!!), next they'll be coming for you!

 

[Greenman]

Apparently knitting is a much more serious business than I thought.

 

[MovingTarget]

Apparently knitting is a much more serious business than I thought.

Its fiber arts in general. A lot of them also crochet or cross-stitch. Never underestimate the determination of somebody with the willingness to stab something hundreds to thousands of times just to create a neat patturn.

 

[Paratus]

Apparently knitting is a much more serious business than I thought.

Historically it’s been serious bid ness

 

[Victorian Gray]

Apparently knitting is a much more serious business than I thought.

A lot of life seems to be.

 

[soulcougher73]

Good,for them. The less places to spew hatred, racism, bigotry, WP the better.

 

[RY62]

Good for them. A site where people of different beliefs, faiths, cultural backgrounds, etc could come together, with a shared interest, to communicate with one another, learn from one another and see that they actually have more in common with one another than the political differences that are designed to keep them divided would be a dangerous place. Let the few keep the many divided.

 

[Greenman]

Historically it’s been serious bid ness

That flag wasn't knitted.
At this point I can't come with a fitting insult to hurl at you, so just consider yourself properly chastised and we'll call it good.

 

[Greenman]

Its fiber arts in general. A lot of them also crochet or cross-stitch. Never underestimate the determination of somebody with the willingness to stab something hundreds to thousands of times just to create a neat patturn.

I'd guess that kind of single minded determination does spill over into the rest of one's life.
The brawls when they get together in the real world must be epic.

 

[sandorski]

Where can I post my MAGA doily now?

 

[ImpulsE69]

Fully okay with this. It's their forum their rules, not a free speech issue. If those people want a hate knitter forum, make their own that people can hack

That being said, my wife said that forum is cutthroat.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Meh, sounds like a reasonable decision

 

[ch33zw1z]

That flag wasn't knitted.
At this point I can't come with a fitting insult to hurl at you, so just consider yourself properly chastised and we'll call it good.

Are you trying to chastise someone for not knowing something? LOL...ok, and it's Pararus nonetheless, LOL!

 

[pmv]

Sounds like an entirely reasonable decision...though it's pushing it to claim that it's not 'taking a stance on politics'. Implies a rather limited concept of what 'politics' is.

Apparently knitting is a much more serious business than I thought.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tricoteuse

Tricoteuse (French pronunciation: [tʁikɔtøz]) is French for a knitting woman. The term is most often used in its historical sense as a nickname for the women who sat beside the guillotine during public executions in Paris in the French Revolution, supposedly continuing to knit in between executions. Amongst the items they knitted was the famous liberty cap or Phrygian cap.

 

[zinfamous]

At least the knitters know how to take out the garbage.

 

[Greenman]

Are you trying to chastise someone for not knowing something? LOL...ok, and it's Pararus nonetheless, LOL!

Do you ever pick up anything less subtle than a punch in the face?

 

[Greenman]

Sounds like an entirely reasonable decision...though it's pushing it to claim that it's not 'taking a stance on politics'. Implies a rather limited concept of what 'politics' is.




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tricoteuse

Tricoteuse (French pronunciation: [tʁikɔtøz]) is French for a knitting woman. The term is most often used in its historical sense as a nickname for the women who sat beside the guillotine during public executions in Paris in the French Revolution, supposedly continuing to knit in between executions. Amongst the items they knitted was the famous liberty cap or Phrygian cap.

I'm curious to see how this works out for them over the next year. It seems like knitters would lean more right than left.

 

[SMOGZINN]

I'm curious to see how this works out for them over the next year. It seems like knitters would lean more right than left.

My bet is that most knitters are relatively apolitical and won't care about this either way. My guess is that anyone that causes too much trouble about all this will simply be banned and the rest of the knitters will continue on talking about knitting.

 

[Homerboy]

I'm curious to see how this works out for them over the next year. It seems like knitters would lean more right than left.

My bet is that most knitters are relatively apolitical and won't care about this either way. My guess is that anyone that causes too much trouble about all this will simply be banned and the rest of the knitters will continue on talking about knitting.

I think you'd be wrong about that assumption. I'm guessing there are two very wide ends to the spectrum here. Knitting has the old generation (your moms and Grandmas) and then the new generation of (as the simple minded would say) "hipsters" who knit. Fiber art is a HUGE thing in the "hip" generation and LOTS of them knit/crotchet/needlepoint/sew etc. You can apply political leanings to each group as you see fit...

 

[pmv]

I'm curious to see how this works out for them over the next year. It seems like knitters would lean more right than left.

I really have no idea about the politics of knitters.

But I would imagine they skew towards being female, and in the US women have traditionally leaned more Democrat than do men. On the other hand, perhaps there are racial, class and generational correlations as well, and those might go the other way, so who knows?

There was a brief fad here for 'guerilla knitting', when various bits of street-furniture suddenly acquired knitted overcoats. I would guess those people are hipsters, with a leaning to a particular kind of 'left'.