i hear the voices when I'm dreaming

For those of y'all in the US:

Text RBG to 50409, or to resistbot on Messenger, Twitter, or Telegram, to send a petition to ask our leaders to wait for inauguration day to choose a Supreme Court nominee, following the precedent set four years ago

I'm cynically not sure how much good it will do (or how necessary given who my representatives are) but it felt better than doing nothing.

Edit, mainly here and not in comments because I didn't want to ruin editability of Alex's updates, lol -- And yes, it's high demand right now GEE I WONDER WHY ahem. The text version had me queued for maybe an hour, but it eventually let me do it.)

It is kind of boggling just how bad white people -- and I am including myself in that! -- are af discussing racism.

There has been a ... thing ... in the online community, beginning with a kerfluffle where a (white) blogger posting an enthusiastic but badly phrased thing about traveling to India, and leading to a very important discussion about racism, both in general and in the knitting world both online and off. The discussion itself is kind of complicated and multi-platform (bouncing between blogs and Instagram and Ravelry and Twitter and who knows what else) and it is bigger than the blog post about India but the blog post, and peoples' reactions to it, are depressingly enlightening. Because from white peoples there has been a lot of "oh, she didn't mean it in a racist way" or whitesplaining hoe it wasn't actually racist (because intent is totally magic) or "some people get upset about anything these days" or "my friend from India didn't think it was a problem" (because people from India are a monolith?) or whatnot. And in the larger discussion, white people going "I can't even open my mouth without getting jumped on and told I'm evil" and ... well. Stuff.

And I'm not immune. I had some of the same initial thoughts. Wanting to find ways to explain the blog post in a non racist way. Thinking, before I was aware of the depth of the conversation (I had seen only a piece here and here without the larger context) that it was an unnecessary kerfluffle rather than something of deep importance, and not bothering to look deeper. I didn't say any of it, but I thought it, because ... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Whyyyyy.

(Rhetorical question. Yes I am familiar with the concept of white fragility and stuff. Don't really want to get into that here, which I know is a reflection of privilege -- I can distance myself from racism discussions in ways that POC, especially BIPOC, can't -- but eh.)

And some of the stories of BIPOC and knitting racism have boggled me equally much. People being harassed and/or ignored in yarn stores, or asked if they're sure they can afford that yarn; featured designers being largely white, and models ditto; BIPOC people feeling unwelcome in a community that purports to be inclusive. It makes my heart sore that the yarn community is as racist as it is, and also that I was so deeply unaware of it because it didn't affect me; and at the same time I know that how I feel about this is less important than the perspectives of those being actually involved.

I wish I could make a promise that I will be as anti-racist as I can, except that I know that I will fail. I wish I could make a promise that I would react with grace and honest apology if called out for racism that I speak or perpetuate, except i know I'm more likely to make an ass of myself, because white people suck st this. I wish my wishes and unspoken promises actually changed anything, but ... I'm not really that important.

I have been productive, this weekend, at designing knitwear with a political bent.

( background )

You know the "Obama is the Ant Christ" meme?

Yeah, I designed a hat..

(Marked as mature for potential offense value, not because it contains naughty bits. I've still gotten a few outraged comments, but mostly they get deleted immediately.)

It occurred to me that the ant motif would make a good hat for any budding entomologist; I plan on designing/releasing that version, separate from the political version except in addition to "hat with ants marching around the brim" version, I want to do a more complicated design where the ante actually spiral around. (Which probably involves 8 segments each starting at a different chart row, though I'm going to have to do some jiggering so the end of round jog gets incorporated.). So basically easy mode and hard mode.

Ant hat will get tested, though. It's only smartass response-to-drama patterns that I post asap.