Real Men Knit
Tuesday, May 29th, 2007Tags: Soapbox, Video
Before I get to the knitting content… Aren’t these cute? I swear this is the last time I post about Threadless. But come on, they reprinted Rocketbird! Yay.
This is a new one, and I am so so buying. OMGOMGOMG.
For putting up with my love for Threadless, here’s a video called “Real Men Knit”:
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/2jYa_rJyG18" height="350" width="425" /]
And now, on to the commentary.
Unfortunately, the only two video responses on YouTube either said “ha ha that must mean real men are gay/insipid women, ha ha” or “ha ha instead replace knitting with farting, lol omg bbq.” I think the whole point of saying “real men knit” is to say “real men don’t let themselves be tied down by old-fashioned gender roles,” but I guess you can’t expect everyone to be open-minded about that.
It’s kind of sad that knitting is sort of a stigma that both men and women now have to live down. Oh, for the days of the 1920s, when women were allowed to knit, and their husbands gave them monthly allowances of $20-$25 that they could spend on soap and ribbons and powder for their noses. Now that was a time when everything about being a woman was stigmatized, so at least you knew where you stood. Nowadays, we’re allowed to be strong and powerful, but only if we do men’s work. Women’s work, not so much. You housewives, you go away and watch Oprah and fold the laundry while we get the real work done.
Strangely, the tagline is “it’s not just women’s work, in fact, it never was.” As a matter of fact, for quite a while it was women’s work, so why are they ignoring that history? Do they think that they have to completely disassociate all femininity from the craft before it can become palatable to men? That’s not very fair to men, if that’s true. From now on, why not say it’s “human’s work”?
I get frustrated when male knitters sometimes make a big deal out of the fact that apparently men knit first or something like that. it’s like can’t we have SOMETHING thats ours?? I have no issues with men who knit, I don’t think we need to make a big deal out of gender period!
Comment by pixieMay 29, 2007 @ 12:09 pm
Hear hear!
They actually didn’t knit first, now that I think about it. Although making fishing nets was technically called “knitting,” anyone who looks at the way that it’s done can tell you that it’s not “knitting” the way that people refer to it now. Net-making is all about making knots; otherwise, any tear would completely destroy a fishing net and cause it to unravel. There’s a needle, yes, but it’s more a shuttle than anything else. There’s also a second needle that’s used as a prop for a knot being tied, but it’s not used in the same way as we do.
Comment by EveMay 29, 2007 @ 1:19 pm
Hey, I like Threadless, too.
Comment by naomiMay 30, 2007 @ 4:47 pm
[...] Posted Sheepishly Friday, June 1st, 2007 Categories: Yarn Porn and Other Stuff Porn I know I said I would no longer post about Threadless, but they have been on a serious sheep binge lately. Check out one of the shirts they just [...]
Pingback by Needle Exchange » She Posted SheepishlyJune 1, 2007 @ 1:32 pm
[...] because they aren’t cool. Which is lame, and more of the same that angered me about the video from this post, which decided that in order to be attractive to men, the link between knitting and femininity had [...]
Pingback by Needle Exchange » The State of Fairs*December 2, 2008 @ 5:18 pm