When Bitches Gather
Kathrine Jebsen Moore explores the high-passion minefield of intersectional knitting:
She was even accused of being a neo-Nazi because she enjoys drinking Guinness.
It’s the tale of a yarn enthusiast who mentions her excitement about the prospect of visiting India, a life-long dream. And who is promptly scolded by the woke knitting community – a thing that exists, apparently – for being a “coloniser,” for harming “non-white people,” and for being “racist.” A struggle session ensues.
For many readers, the world of knitting activism may be unfamiliar terrain; but the dynamics on display will, I think, be quite familiar.
Update, via the comments:
Having read the piece, TimT and others note, “This is awful behaviour.”
Well, yes. The pieties of the woke-lings are nakedly ill-intended. It’s a malevolent little drama. But then, being woke is the latest excuse for archetypal mean girl behaviour, which may explain why “social justice” posturing attracts so many women. It’s the fashionable, statusful way to be an utter bitch. Though instead of picking on someone for having unfashionable shoes or the wrong kind of bag, they’ve seized on someone’s enthusiasm, their moment of joy, and done their damnedest to sour it.
As we’ve seen many times, woke psychology is not what it pretends. Not even close.
Update 2:
Paula adds, “I read the Quillette article and all the original post and still can’t see anything offensive. What are these people on?”
Viewed objectively, there isn’t anything to be offended by. Ms Templer describes her excitement and says that for her, a young woman with little experience of global travel, the opportunity to fly halfway around the planet is “like being offered a seat on a flight to Mars.” That’s it.
But for those inclined to recreational grievance-seeking, that’s the appeal. The less basis there is for indignation, the more pleasurable the scolding becomes. It’s a twisted power dynamic, a form of gaslighting. And for a certain kind of person, making someone anxious and confused, and then making them prostrate themselves in public – when there’s no reason to do so – is the sweetest triumph.
It’s a game for budding sociopaths.
Update 3:
And via Darleen, of course there’s more.
“Your post upset some of my friends who aren’t white…”
I’ll take Things That Never Happened for $800, Alex…
the woke knitting community – a thing that exists, apparently
They’re the ones knitting the pussy hats.
“I want to say this gently,” a comment from a user identified only as Sarah began…
As she gently sticks the knife in her friend’s guts.
This seems to be a common female behavior–or more precisely a common behavior of females of a nasty and vicious nature. No man would pretend that his viciousness was gentleness…well, maybe a soyboy.
I’ll take Things That Never Happened for $800, Alex…
Given the context, it does seem rather improbable.
It’s almost funny, though. In that, while the world of woke knitting isn’t exactly my regular beat, the pronoun-proclaiming ‘activists’ seem eerily familiar. These are people who delight in vindictiveness and reputational sabotage, and who reject polite requests for explanation as demands for “emotional labour” and therefore a transgression. Something else to punish.
Despite the theatre of piety, they’re not offended or “harmed” by some improbable affront – in this case by someone daring to be excited about an upcoming visit to India. They’re just shitty people who enjoy being vindictive and who saw an opportunity for some petty malice.
a common behavior of females of a nasty and vicious nature.
The overlap of “social justice” enthusiast and archetypal mean girl does seem quite extensive. It’s the fashionable, statusful way to be an utter bitch.
I’d like to take the opportunity to roll out the word hysteria. We’ll have to see if the internet survives.
I’ve always wanted to go to India too. Son of a bitch.
Just don’t take your knitting needles along.
“the world doesn’t owe you a patient explanation and education”
So don’t give her one. Fuck off and leave her alone. Everybody wins. Except that’s not the point, is it?
A struggle session ensues.
You can’t buy them off with an apology.
I’m just excited I got another chance to use my The Thrill of Yarn tag.
In their endless pursuit to be a ‘Victim’.
The endlessly offensive, just as endless in their search to be ‘offended’…
These are nasty, vicious sociopaths.
They need to be told to shut the fuck up, and they need to hear it ringing in their ears until they finally do.
Keyboard fascists, all of them.
What’s especially scary is how willing they are to kill your business model just for what they call doubleplus ungoodthink.
You can’t buy them off with an apology.
Yes! That’s just blood in the water to the Uber-scolds.
You have to approach a debate with an Uber-scold the same way you would approach a debate with a Scientologist about psychiatry or a debate with a Jehovah’s Witness about the Bible. You’re not going to change anyone’s mind but you sure can take the piss.
….the dynamics on display will, I think, be quite familiar.
Like I said:
https://thompsonblog.co.uk/2019/02/friday-ephemerarent.html?cid=6a00d83451675669e2022ad3c35e9b200d#comment-6a00d83451675669e2022ad3c35e9b200d
They need to be told to shut the fuck up, and they need to hear it ringing in their ears until they finally do.
Two things such specimens cannot abide: being exposed, and being refused.
https://youtu.be/PDBDi6Xq8Xg
Just ask Abu Afak.
At Ravelry, a heavily moderated discussion took place, suggesting ways in which the site should use positive discrimination to show more patterns by non-white designers.
Everything the Left touches, it destroys.
Someone emailed me, objecting to my use of the word ‘bitches’. I’m sharing some of my reply as it may be apposite.
Now back to our regular programming.
Despite their preposterous airs and claims of high-minded activism, the people mentioned in the piece, largely women, are not righteous defenders of the downtrodden. They’re just petty, classless and obnoxious, and, like so many of their fellow woke-lings, driven by spite.
THIS THIS THIS
And I think “bitches” is actually tame to what *I* would call them. I try like hell to avoid politics in some of sewing groups I follow. I’m there to look at projects and pick up tips not to be subject to another round of TRUMPSTERS SHOULD DIE!
Everything the Left touches, it destroys.
Yes. And for some of them, that’s actually what they want.
I was reading that article and thinking, you don’t get this in my hobby of model railways. Of course it’s overwhelmingly male, pale and stale with average age well into the forties and the youngsters who do take part would never get called fashionable. So we should be a ripe target for SJW hate but they have no way in so we’d all laugh them out of the room and we are quite use to ignoring what others think about us.
So tip for Millennials who want a hobby without a side order of hate, buy a Hornby Hogwarts Castle and find inner peace.
you don’t get this in my hobby of model railways.
Heh.
Woke browbeating is one of those status games that’s best nipped in the bud – say, by making it clear this shit will not go unchallenged. Of course, that’s easier to say if you aren’t hoping for the approval of the preening wretches in question.
I was reading that article and thinking, you don’t get this in my hobby of model railways.
Don’t bet the riverboat on that, they are just getting warmed up.
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.
Even amongst the rest of the bizarreness, this comment really stood out for me. “Never mind what actual Indian people think of your portrayal of their country, listen to what us white people think!” The hypocrisy and double standards really are a sight to behold.
You can’t buy them off with an apology.
Yes, and this is one of the main differences between social justice and mainstream religion. In Christianity, you confess your sins in order to be forgiven and reintegrated back into the Church; in social justice, there’s no such thing as forgiveness, and you confess your sins so that the mob can feel justified and self-righteous in inflicting the punishment they were always going to inflict regardless of what you did.
@ David: ”as the common little bitches they are, with common little motives.”
I rather like ‘shrews’ or ‘harpies’ as descriptors for such people, nearly always women, who behave in the manner of pubescent girls one sees in upper primary and secondary schools. They cluster in their little cliques and are always looking for some other girl to demean and hurt with maximum spite. As others have said such harpies never stop until their victim is totally destroyed. Such is the nature of bitches/harpies/shrews the world over.
Jim
on how your equation of India with an alien world
Strictly speaking, India is an alien world. You really have to stretch to find offense in such a statement.
You nailed it when you said, “the mob can feel justified and self-righteous in inflicting the punishment they were always going to inflict regardless of what you did.”
India either is or isn’t an alien world. If she describes it as the former, she’s othering Indians. If the latter, she’s appropriating Indian culture. Heads she loses, tails they win.
Clever.
This is yet another reminder of that great CS Lewis quote about busybodies:
http://www.utdallas.edu/~tfarage/blog/FavoriteQuotes/CSLewisQuoteOnTyrannies.html
The only explanation that seems likely to me is that Moore had been having some success with her business, and others in the knitting community had taken a dislike to her for some reason: perhaps jealousy, perhaps some other cause.
And so, a well-timed spiteful comment here, phrased in the language of woke social justice criticism…. it’s amazing what wonders a social media mob can perform, when you give them the right motivation.
Yes: some unkind words certainly do come to mind.
This is awful behaviour.
I was certainly unaware of ‘woke knitting’ as well. I presume ‘Guerilla Knitting’ exists in the UK as well (knitters go out at night and knight jumpers for trees, that sort of thing). A cute idea, though somewhat less transgressive than the name would suggest.
(Apologies. I mistook the writer of the article for the victim of woke SJWs in my first comment. Templer, not Moore.)
“Instead of asking your Indian friends to perform more emotional labor for you”
I am reminded of this reply to persistent bullshit:
https://youtu.be/Z8VD4JXUozM?t=150
“knitters go out at night and knight jumpers for trees, that sort of thing”
Jeepers, my inner sub-editor must be on strike today. I blame (shuffles through cards) global capitalism and the military-police state of Donald Trump.
David,
I’m sharing some of my reply as it may be apposite.
And a brilliant one it was, if that excerpt is anything to go by.
[applause]
“A misogynist is a man who hates women as much as women hate one another”, according to essayist and perpetual cynic H.L. Mencken.
Farnsworth,
Don’t bet the riverboat on that, they are just getting warmed up.
The very fact that the vast majority of its aficionados are male, middle-age, middle class, and white, means they WILL come after model railroading, when they do, they will do everything in their power to destroy it.
(If the radical gun-control crowd really wanted to wreck that, you’d think they use the same approach, but no.)
pst314,
I am reminded of this reply to persistent bullshit
Wait, what? A lily-white Canadian comedy troupe appropriating Chinese culture?
Fine choice.
This whole spiteful affair was reminding me of something else. I had to think back several outrages ago – the Zhao affair:
“Three-book deals. Manuscripts going to auction. Offers from the Big 5 Publishers.
These had all seemed like dreams to me. Literally, dreams towards which I could reach yet never even hope to achieve, to cross that yawning abyss in-between. Wishes from the highest star in the skyat which I could only gaze and gaze and gaze.
Until last month.
I don’t think it’s sunk in until this very moment, when I sat down to write this post — that I am going to be a published author.
I AM GOING TO BE A PUBLISHED AUTHOR!!!!!!”
SJW outrage crushed her dreams and her joyful exuberance. And now with Templer:
“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.”
Nothing offensive about this – a simple expression of joy and excitement.
That was all it took.
That’s why it all looks so spiteful: the pattern here is progressives shitting all over the dreams and excitement of other people for completely imagined crimes. It’s revolting.
That’s why it all looks so spiteful: the pattern here is progressives shitting all over the dreams and excitement of other people for completely imagined crimes. It’s revolting.
It’s fairly typical of losers and cowards who have no self-respect and have never extended themselves and taken risks. They have to insult, mock, sabotage and generally demean others to build themselves.
Jim
They cluster in their little cliques and are always looking for some other girl to demean and hurt with maximum spite.
Being woke is the latest excuse for archetypal mean girl behaviour, which may explain why “social justice” posturing attracts so many women. But instead of picking on someone for having unfashionable shoes or the wrong kind of bag, they’ve seized on someone’s enthusiasm, their moment of joy, and done their damnedest to sour it.
This is awful behaviour.
It is nakedly ill-intended. A malevolent little drama.
But as we’ve seen many times, it’s who they are. It’s what they do.
You can’t buy them off with an apology.
“Social justice” howler monkeys are, as we’ve seen, impossible to satisfy, not least because their pleasures lie in tormenting others. There will always be a pretext. The goal is ongoing deference, eternal prostration, with endlessly shifting and ever stricter conditions.
Once you apologise, they will want more.
From the article: As Jonathan Haidt, the American social psychologist, observed during a recent conversation with Joe Rogan, “It doesn’t matter what the intent was, all that matters is the impact—how the person felt.”
It might be more accurate to say “how the person purported to feel,” there ain’t no outrage like confected outrage.
progressives shitting all over the dreams and excitement of other people for completely imagined crimes
Well said. The only reaction to these people is to tell them to go and f— themselves with a wire brush.
I read the Quillette article and all the original post and still can’t see anything offensive. What are these people on?
I read the Quillette article and all the original post and still can’t see anything offensive.
There isn’t anything to be offended by. Ms Templer describes her excitement and says that for her, a young woman with little experience of global travel, the opportunity to fly halfway around the planet is “like being offered a seat on a flight to Mars.” That’s it.
But for those inclined to recreational grievance-seeking, that’s the appeal. The less basis there is for indignation, the more pleasurable the scolding becomes. It’s a twisted power dynamic, a form of gaslighting. And for a certain kind of person, making someone anxious and confused, and then making them prostrate themselves in public – when there’s no reason to do so – is the sweetest triumph.
It’s a game for budding sociopaths.
It’s my first comment and I made the front page. 🙂
Make yourself at home.
Help yourself to nibbles.
🙂
Nothing offensive about this – a simple expression of joy and excitement.
And similar comments…If I might offer another Mencken quote, “Puritanism is that nagging feer that someone, somewhere may be happy.”
One other thing of which these sorts of outrages remind me…I doubt it translated well across the pond, or much elsewhere else, but mid 20th century we had a comic strip over here called Li’l Abner. A set of characters in that strip were known as S.W.I.N.E.* (*Students Wildly Indignant about Nearly Everything). This is what a society gets when its students never grow up.
The pieties of the woke-lings are nakedly ill-intended.
…woke psychology is not what it pretends.
It’s a twisted power dynamic, a form of gaslighting.
Yes, gaslighting. Thank you, David, because that’s important.
Progressivism clearly is a disorder – and leftism is its feeder school – leftists who express half a dozen of its clinical manifestations qualify, and the whole shebang is a bent religion of sorts. The inherent dishonesty, appearances-centrism, theft, and sheer malevolent, collective force of the thing are clues.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._Scott_Peck#People_of_the_Lie
The right, such as it is, needs to get this front and center. If it does it’ll change its reaction from codependency to legitimate proactive prevention, the strategy it should have adopted at the dawning of its rights.
the pattern here is progressives shitting all over the dreams and excitement of other people
Envy and resentment are traditional and key components of leftist thinking.