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.
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.
Indeed.
Having commonly been bred by the great postmodern apathy of the tolerant, meandering civil religion, the superior moralist plays a subtle internal game too. S/he appeals to the inherent superiority of the cause rather than him or herself, thus becoming its bent Jesus: I am alternative and I am but here to serve for I am good. See my alternative goodness – on this social media, typically, or in this paid academic enclave – and do likewise.
On this platform whole dynamics are affected and built and off we go into a semi-formal movement as the woke congregants who no longer walk in the darkness or a prior moral, social, cultural, and institutional framework. And being thus fortified and reinforced, we shall be loud and active and justified and you shall bow not to us but to our movement for it is good.
I reckon that’s how they peddle it, justify it, and inflict it. When you inspect it you see that it is a collective force, the tyranny of both minorities and majorities, and how it spreads.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_civil_religion
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.
Nice model railroading club you have there, would be a pity if something happens to it.
Stage 1 – Just one of the guys: A nerdette turns up at the club. She’s passionate about model railroading, and she’s so appreciative of having things explained to her. Social cohesion and hierarchy start to dissolve as the members compete to signal their romantic compatibility or to display their chivalry.
Stage 2 – Feminist territory marking: The nerdette, or one of the new female members she’s paved the way for, starts to make suggestions about how to make things “fairer”, or more “inclusive”, or more “representative”. A split emerges between the members who are fully under the female influence and the members who just want to talk about steam engines like they were happily doing until six months ago.
Stage 3 – The scandal: Somebody finally works up the courage and makes an awkward pass at the nerdette at the Christmas party, or somebody is caught on phone video complaining about how the women are ruining things.
Stage 4 – Artillery support from the media: “Model railroading, with its fetish for rebuilding the world on more orderly lines, its hero-worship of white male engineers, and its erasure of female and colonial perspectives, has long been a bastion of reactionary dudebros. This hasn’t discouraged a growing cohort of female enthusiasts from their determination to drag the hobby out of the 19th century into the 21st. The backlash has been predictable and sometimes violent…”
And being thus fortified and reinforced, we shall be loud and active and justified and you shall bow not to us but to our movement for it is good.
As Aisha said to Muhammad: “I feel that your Lord hastens in fulfilling your wishes and desires.“
The less basis there is for indignation, the more pleasurable the scolding becomes. It’s a twisted power dynamic, a form of gaslighting.
That.
That.
One small mercy is that the more unlikely the context – in this case, the world of knitting – the more obviously contrived and dysfunctional the woke-lings seem. This doesn’t appear to inhibit them, of course – they seem quite shameless – but it does make their behaviour, and motives, easier to spot.
What Ivor said. Precisely.
Re my The Thrill of Yarn tag, I’ve updated it with this item, which seems somewhat relevant, and which features Heather Marie Scholl, an “artist and activist,” whose creative efforts, such as they are, “examine white women’s roles in the establishment and maintenance of white supremacy through… embroidery techniques.”
On the bright side, knitters have sharp objects with which to defend themselves. The train guys are helpless. You wouldn’t want to use a $5K model train to slap a SJW upside the head.
Nice model railroading club you have there, would be a pity if something happens to it.
Vox Day (Sci-Fi writer Theodore Beale) had a whole series of posts a couple of years ago about how SJW’s try to take over normal peoples hobbies via ‘Entryism’. One of the signs to look out for is if someone tries to introduce a Code of Conduct. He recommends that anyone who tries this should be expelled immediately.
He also has a useful short guide on what to do when you’re attacked by SJW’s.
Re my The Thrill of Yarn tag…
Speaking of which, didn’t you also once post about the woman who pulled yarn out of her lady parts in a dramatic display of performance artistry?
Where I work, we have many, many different computer systems. Each and every one has a Code of Conduct attached, to which you must agree, as a condition of access, every time you use the system. Not every day—every time. If you use it 20 times a day, then you click “I Agree” 20 times a day. I don’t know if this is SJW or CYA, but it sure is silly.
Didn’t you also once post about the woman who pulled yarn out of her lady parts in a dramatic display of performance artistry?
Oh yes.
So I did.
A shocking oversight on my part.
[ Sounds of hasty tag attachment. ]
It’s so much fun being part of a mob, any mob. And as David points out, it gets even better if the mobbing victim cooperates.
It seems that the internet encourages such behaviour. The other day, I watched a YouTube movie, then read the comments. The first commenter said something like “It started out well, but then it lost its plot and tempo, and the last hour was boring”. Obviously, the other commenters couldn’t accept such vile criticism, and the name calling started at once. IIRC, the guy’s mother and various bodily parts were mentioned. I have no deep insight to offer, just a question:
WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH SOME PEOPLE?
WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH SOME PEOPLE?
I don’t know about YouTube commenters, but many of the woke-lings in the piece above presumably went to universities where this pernicious horseshit is shovelled daily into the hair of new arrivals.
Clearly, some of it sticks.
I work in the tech sector with quite a few actual Indians, I cannot imagine ANY of them getting offended at this. It’s a matter of SJWs arrogantly projecting their bizarre racism onto others.
(side point. I too object to the use of the term ‘bitches’ in the comments. I shared my home with an actual bitch for years until she passed away last year. One couldn’t ask for a more loyal companion)
Didn’t you also once post about the woman who pulled yarn out of her lady parts in a dramatic display of performance artistry?
Oh yes.
So I did.
A shocking oversight on my part.
[ Sounds of hasty tag attachment. ]
Oddly, that’s the post I thought was the instigator of that tag! So many things I cannot unsee…and I keep coming back for more.
Further to the topic at hand, the madness is spreading: on the same day David posted the Quillette article, I found this posted at Ricochet – more woke knitting insanity. WTF??
https://ricochet.com/597143/im-barefoot-and-hopping-mad/
Also, while this intersectional/woke/SJW insanity does attract a large number of mean-girl types, some if it is coming from men. I find it interesting that these same feminist mean-girl types who would have an absolute cow over the Patriarchy and Man-splaining have no problem at all when this crap is initiated by men and directed at women. I guess if you’re on the “correct” side, you can get away with anything.
Trans bitch?
It might be more accurate to say “how the person purported to feel,” there ain’t no outrage like confected outrage.
My wife works for a top tier Ivy leage university. They got this guidebook by a faculty member about the things you’re not supposed to say to visitors from other countries, like ask where they’re from, or customs, food etc. somehow that’s terribly offensive.
I’ve worked in foreign countries on projects, and I can say that I NEVER felt offended when people asked about life in the US, food, entertainment, sports, even politics etc. We always had a great time discussing things. Nor did I ever try to pretend to be a local.
What is wrong with those who feel that it offensive to discuss those things?
“What is wrong with those who feel that it offensive to discuss those things?”
They will not enact the labor to explain. 😉
Alternatively, “you know why it’s wrong.”
We always had a great time discussing things
When my daughters were small, I hosted Japanese students when they came on summer group excursions (they stayed for about 7 weeks). It was an awesome experience for both the student who stayed in an American home (to sharpen their English conversational skills) and for my daughters to have a “big sister” who shared with them Japanese culture.
I did it for five summers – it was exciting and no one was “offended” by the mutual questions.
They got this guidebook by a faculty member about the things you’re not supposed to say to visitors from other countries, like ask where they’re from, or customs, food etc. somehow that’s terribly offensive.
The people who insist on these woke protocols act as if they themselves had never had to get to know someone with, at least initially, some pretty simple, even dumb, questions.
A couple of years ago, I was at a family party, to which a niece had brought a Spanish exchange student who was staying with her. It was a large gathering and the young woman looked a little daunted and left-out. Her English was fairly limited and my Spanish non-existent, so our conversation, such as it was, was fairly basic. In between offering her drinks and sandwiches, etc., and several awkward smiles, I distinctly recall asking some pretty inane questions. I like to think she understood that I was trying to make her feel welcome. Rather than just a dumbass with no conversational flair.
What is wrong with those who feel that it offensive to discuss those things?
Am I the only one who remembers when such a rule came from conservative people? And it was liberals who were all about getting to know other cultures and such? I remember when Mexican restaurants were becoming popular in the US. Mexico was not associated with fine dining back then. It was mostly liberal types (and I mean that in a good way) who were most enthusiastic about tacos and burritos. Of course, there are some subjects that should be avoided.
The train guys are helpless. You wouldn’t want to use a $5K model train to slap a SJW upside the head.
When my brother and I were wee Muldoons, little did we know that by hooking up the Lionel transformer wrong and assembling track with the power on (don’t ask why) we invented the Taser, but then so did most of the kids in the neighborhood, so I think any attempts to get a retroactive patent would be futile.
Helpless these guys are not, I imagine they have much more sophisticated tools they drag with them than we did. Still, I’d pay to see the battle between them and the Woke Knitters.
I was at a family party
Heh. I was at a funeral for an old college buddy yesterday and his cousin gave part of the eulogy. They had grown up in the same neighborhood and she mentioned a game that they used to play as kids called “German Spotlight”. It was basically a form of freeze tag that they played at dusk (think of WWII prison escape movies). Anyway, she felt she had to apologize or some such for the impoliteness (or something) of it. I unfortunately (I say “fortune” but I suppose it’s just my own idiot brain to blame) got distracted by who she was addressing. I mean I was pretty sure she was joking but then again I wondered if she was afraid it might have offend a Jew…or maybe a German…or maybe someone whose dad had been a POW…stupid, I know. But there I was.
Am I the only one who remembers when such a rule came from conservative people?
I’m an old fart and I don’t remember that. Then again, I was born in Los Angeles and lived my whole life here and Mexican cuisine has always been ubiquitous. My family’s fave Mexican restaurant was established in 1923.
Then again, I was born in Los Angeles
Well between Pittsburgh and South Florida, I don’t think I saw a Mexican restaurant until about 1974 or so. But then they…ahem…exploded. At first I thought it was a local phenomenon in South Florida as there was an extremely popular commercial for Taco Viva that ripped off Clint Eastwood’s character in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.
Helpless these guys are not, I imagine they have much more sophisticated tools they drag with them than we did. Still, I’d pay to see the battle between them and the Woke Knitters.
I could do a lot of damage with a craft knife and soldering iron.
I think your vulnerability to this comes from how dependent you are on the people who care about this guff. Nice lady who makes her money to other hipster women needs to placate the Gods of Social Justice since if they get a rep as a racist no-one buys from them. Railway modellers are older and more pragmatic. If you sell the little widget we need we don’t care about your views on insectionality or Brexit.
We might just give them an angle though. http://www.gaugemaster.com/search_results.asp?searchstring=adult%20preiser%20scale~~%ACoo%AC~~scale%20category~~1241~~category
This was tweeted in response to a particular symptom of the personality cult infecting the Labour Party, but it’s nevertheless apt:
https://twitter.com/SnoozeInBrief/status/1097220283604312065?s=19
Everything the Left touches, it destroys.
Now you’ve appropriated their mission statement.
So I once had a casual acquaintance with the woman who was chief engineer for the SR-71 flight quality program at NASA Dryden Edwards Air Force Base.
My favorite saying of hers: Perfect safety is for those who don’t have the balls to live in the real world.
A few years ago I looked her up on the web. She was long retired, and was running a hobbiest … knitting business.
Now I wonder just what Mary would have to say to these nasty folks. There would probably be casualties 🙂
There are 1415 actual activists in the US, inclusive of all issues and causes.
Perfect safety is for those who don’t have the balls to live in the real world.
SJWs are never going to be the people who act alone taking risks and ”fly” without a safety net of a mob of equally weak and self-indulgent bullies standing behind them to beat the crap out of their targets and support any necessary ”victim” plays if their chosen target does fight back and applies necessary ‘therapeutic’ treatment.
things you’re not supposed to say to visitors from other countries, like ask where they’re from, or customs, food etc. somehow that’s terribly offensive.
Mass immigration being a fact on the street and a moral foundation (it’s Who We Are), the rules for dealing with foreign visitors (where you break the ice by mentioning obvious differences) may have been subsumed into the rules for dealing with new fellow citizens, whose foreignness white people aren’t allowed to notice.
According to the latter rules, if you ask a new fellow citizen where he’s from and he mentions the next town over, you are never to ask the follow up question “where are you really/originally from?”. Your curiosity is not welcome. You’ve belittled the foreigner by noticing that he’s a foreigner. He may even be a refugee on the run from the secret police of his country of origin, and your interrogation has retraumatized him.
If mass immigration is a good idea (which it isn’t, but anyway), it’s not going to run more smoothly by forcing whites to walk on eggshells around foreigners. If somebody has an accent that places their origins in Texas, it’s fair game for icebreaking teasing, but if somebody has a foreign accent, they’re allowed to be insulted if you bring it up. That’s crazy.
Speaking of being allowed to mention foreign food customs, Park Ji Sung, a Korean player for Manchester United, had a song sung about him by the fans – “Park park, wherever you may be, you eat dogs in your own country. It could be worse, you could be Scouse, eating rats in your council house.” It’s definitely a degrading thing to say about poor people from Liverpool, but evidently it’s within the acceptable limits of football fan mockery. But a lot of the YouTube commenters seem to think the dog comment is racist against Koreans. A quick google search confirms that Koreans do eat dogs. Why is it racist to mention it? And if Koreans didn’t eat dogs, it’s so much the better an insult because it mixes them up with the Chinese. Evidently the fans don’t think Koreans are exempt from the mockery that they dole out to every player, and that seems like healthy multiculturalism to me.
buy a Hornby Hogwarts Castle and find inner peace.
Don’t.
It’s the gateway to madness.
Anyway, these passive aggressive progressive modern knitters are weak compared to the Ancient Greeks – for instance, the Thracian King Polymnestor (pleasingly a mere two letters away from ‘Polyester’!) had his eyes gouged out by two knitting needles. Or what was that myth about the whole town of Ancient Greek women stabbing soldiers to death with their knitting needles?
But a lot of the YouTube commenters seem to think the dog comment is racist against Koreans. A quick google search confirms that Koreans do eat dogs. Why is it racist to mention it?
Hopefully it won’t matter because if the left is nuts it would be codependent to engage it on race or any other projected but ostensible value.
The left hollers VEGANISM!
The right hollers BARBECUE, HIPPIE!
The left shrieks SEXIST!
The right shrieks ANTI-SEMITE!
The left shrieks EQUALITY!
The right co-opts MLK and civil rights.
The left insists RACIST!
The right wages an intellectual American civil war, conflicting federalism.
Evidently the fans don’t think Koreans are exempt from the mockery that they dole out to every player, and that seems like healthy multiculturalism to me.
“Healthy” to the left, correct?
Because at the present rate in 20 years the right becomes the left, which is to say, a collective, reactionary morality with no regard to the values and principles that build cultures that protect rights and the higher principles. Instead it’ll be another identitarian movement with no discernible values.
Employee resigns, employee gets mob to try and shut down employer.
Ok, it’s Portland, but still.
Employee resigns, employee gets mob to try and shut down employer.
The sense of satisfaction – or rather, of power – may not be lasting, but I’d imagine it’s quite intoxicating. Especially if you’re someone who wishes to inflict vengeance on the world.
The mention of model railway enthusiasts and their immunity, or otherwise, from Social Justice Warrior infiltration, brought to mind what happened to the atheist community.
The atheist community used to pride itself on saying things like “You’re offended? So what? You don’t have a right not to be offended, and taking offence is not an argument.” Then Elevatorgate, in which a man made a gauche attempt to chat up a woman in a lift at an atheist conference, happened, and suddenly, if you were a woman, taking offence absolutely was an argument, and such a good argument it ended all discussion. Organised atheism now looks like Sunday School, and Christopher Hitchens is spinning in his grave.
.. employee gets mob to try and shut down employer.
The left is very well organised and has been very successful using these tactics. The fact is that those who act tribally will always defeat people who act individualistically. Until there is a price they have to pay for behaving like this, why would they stop?
The sense of satisfaction – or rather, of power – may not be lasting, but I’d imagine it’s quite intoxicating. Especially if you’re someone who wishes to inflict vengeance on the world.
She will go on to do this to others.
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 been said here (and elsewhere) before, but it never hurts to repeat. This form of woke piety and the lashing out at contrived heretics is a positional good.
https://iea.org.uk/blog/the-economics-of-political-correctness
That’s why the wokelings can, nae, have to find even more absurd (to us normies) things to get outraged about and to rain down their vengeance upon transgressors. Anyone can be against actual racism (of, say, the KKK type). That doesn’t give anyone extra-special or unique status. Banal offenses that everyone mostly agrees are offensive are valueless as signals of true virtue.
Thus, knitting in India MUST be treated as the highest crime imaginable; and since no one else (who is in his right mind) thinks that, that announcement and marshaling of mush-for-brains back-up forces to pummel the unwoke violator of “this new rule I just made up” gives the instigator(s) a higher positional status (at least within her own circle, or maybe only within her own mind).
Humans, being social animals, generally seek positive and higher social status. Thus, woke piety will only gets worse, IMO, until a critical mass of people devalue such pieties such that they are eventually unwanted.
Employee resigns, employee gets mob to try and shut down employer.
I’m trying to decide if I have any sympathy for the business owners. On the one hand, yes, victims of a malevolent mob, but on the other hand at some point we have to ask what they should have expected:
“[Camila] wanted Ristretto to host a “Reparations Happy Hour,” which would involve stationing white people at the front door to buy patrons of color a coffee.”
People who want to talk about knitting online shouldn’t have to deal with lynch mobs. But if you run a hipster cafe, in Portland, and hire SJWs into middle management then the “oh, woe is us” becomes just a little bit disingenuous.
In this particular case it seems like there’s a small number of named individuals who are in dire need of being sued into penury for libel and tortious interference. It won’t save Ristretto – it’s a scorched earth strategy – but it may cause the next lynch mob to think twice.
It’s a game for budding sociopaths.
Alex, the Douche who started the struggle session, personifies the sociopath label. Someone in the thread comes to the knitter’s defense and Alex responds:
No one is “bashing” Karen.
…except Alex and later Sarah and then a slew of others.
Intent and result are two different things.
…and Alex demonstrates both.
have a seat if you’re here to white knight for Karen
…and leave me to my uninterrupted bashing of Karen, oh, and my white-knighting of the entire anonymous Indian population.
And then the aforementioned Sarah says:
Your post upset some of my friends who aren’t white…
…so apparently Sarah is a sadist. Knowing full well the post will upset some of her friends (something I don’t actually believe)Sarah shows it to them anyway. Friends don’t purposely upset friends unless, once again, they are sociopaths.
Projection seems to be a big part of the SJW’s MO, though I imagine it flows naturally out of narcissisim and sociopathy.
“…and it would be a poor show on my part if I witnessed the way they feel trodden upon and didn’t speak up.”
Malice wrapped in piety. It’s very in right now.
It’s noteworthy how often these sorts resort to cliche word salads. ‘Take a step back’ from ‘white knighting’, they’re not here to perform ’emotional labour’, and so on. It’s a sign of intellectual laziness and weakness, of course – but also a very cheap, bargain-basement way of mischaracterising your opponents. Disagreeing with the treatment of a person is hardly ‘white knighting’. Engaging in dialogue and disagreement is necessary for understanding – it’s hardly demanding ’emotional labour’ from someone. And how about the disingenuity of coming and judging a person guilty of the sin of racism, and then dismissing all disagreements with ‘I’m not here to perform emotional labour’? Transparently silly.
“One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kinds of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted—and you create a nation of lawbreakers—and then you cash in on guilt.” —Atlas Shrugged
Daniel, you’ve misread the article.
Camilla, of the Reparations Hour, is the sacked employee who started the witch hunt.
The owners are being targeted for the temerity to oppose SJWs outside of business life.
In re: the Ristretto Roasters story in Quillette linked above: The article, written by the wife of the owner of the coffee roasting and café stores, tells a compelling story of a small business being torn apart by a Ctrl-Left mob led by a narcissistic little tw … twerp with an axe to grind, wholly lacking any anything resembling human empathy (If they go out of business, they go out of business. I don’t care.). This cretin’s antics cost the business a large contract, so we’re told, that might do the business in before the time it can be renegotiated.
Sad and unfortunate and, yes, possibly enraging story. However, in reading the comments, I noticed that this same business was quite ready, willing, able, and did play that same virtue-signaling game (opting not to do a large amount of business with) another Portland small business that came within the crosshairs of the perpetually offended coterie of malcontents.
I hope they have learned the proper lesson from all of this. But it’s hard to feel 100% sorry for them, since they once participated in doing to someone else what is now being done to them.
“Do not do to others that which is hateful to you.”