Category Archives: knitting

I don’t have a pussyhat on my needles, though it seems I should…

I get it, I generally support it, and I definitely believe that everyone who can should march, speak out, do what they can to preserve and improve our rights.

I hate that women have been assigned pink, but it’s too late to change that now, and at least pink has a wide range of cools to warms so leaning lavender to peach can take away some of that insipid pale petalness.

I like that there’s a physical thing that people can make that shows solidarity and better yet, is practical.

I even unraveled a few red and pink things in my shallow unravelers stash, and was planning to dive into the deep stash end for a skein or two of dusty rose cheap stuff I got to felt, to make a pussy of my own and perhaps a few to pass along…

But then I started to get itchy and it wasn’t from the wool. And I got chased out of a ravelry group for saying grown women in kitty ears was a pet peeve of mine though I still supported the project…

I’m staunchly non-conformist (I usually put these posts out on Wednesdays in rejection of “Wordless Wednesdays”), I don’t really follow trends (some knitting patterns aside), I never felt the need to dress the same as my friends, and I automatically tune out  when I hear something along the lines of “let’s all wear…” It just stinks too much of follow-the-leader conformity, everyone wearing tiaras at a hen party, women in outings all in red hats, and cliques in high school. But there is a male equivalent – Shriners in fez hats, Lions in vests – and a genderless one – identical t-shirts for a fun run or charity project, so groups of any kind do adopt uniforms of a sort – it’s stupid, but it can happen to anyone. So I understand that there are some positive aspects of visually joining the crowd in terms of team-building and positive uniformity in certain circumstances, but wearing pink hats while marching isn’t the point – marching is the point. Being a woman is the point. Someone mentioned wearing the hat at the march would show to others that you were there to march, but most women who identify as female look like women, and if you’re a woman walking down the middle of the street in DC next Saturday with a bunch of other women, then it’s highly likely that you are marching. So I don’t buy that one – wearing one out and about if you can’t be on the streets, or before or after can show support and awareness, so I get that and support that.

Some have issue with the word “pussy” which is just asinine. I don’t have patience or tolerance for those who take words too seriously (except for the truly few hateful and/or racist ones). Except out of the wrong mouth where it can be a bit lasciviously lewd, pussy is generally playful and has the male counterpart of weenie (or maybe dick and prick in some contexts). We need nicknames for things, and pussy is somewhat accurate in terms of describing a furry thing – I’m also fond of the nickname “mouse” found in hard-boiled dick novels (or was that just Mickey Spillane?) but the scale is off for that one too – guinea pig or dwarf rabbit is perhaps more accurate. But if you say you’re mouth is tired from eating dwarf rabbit last night, then folks would just think you weren’t a very good cook…

But back to my feminist itch – I can’t quite scratch it – I feel a bit of what’s being said in this article but not the whole. I do hate seeing grown women in kitty/bear/deer/any ears – anything that would look cute on a baby – and I hate that kinderslut style from the ’90s, and more recent babydoll dresses especially modeled in a knock-kneed inward-facing toe pose, and women wearing baby powder scented things – and I hate women calling each other girls – grown women have left their girlhood, and anything that diminishes our matured state doesn’t help our situation. But in this case, it works because of trump’s use and abuse of pussy – I get that, and the pussyhat needn’t have ears, just be pink, so only part of the itch is about the infantilization of wearing a second set of knitted ears.

But I think most of it falls in a realm I can’t quite explain… Women often do for others at the expense of themselves. We feel like we could and should always be doing more. It’s not enough that we show up to march, we also must spend hours making a hat to wear at the march. Or we’re less inclined to do something or speak up unless others are doing so too – perhaps more the former than the later though…

What I’d most like to see is that these hats were for men – women don’t need to don a hat to say they’re women and they’re still getting the shit end of the stick – but we don’t see outward signs of support or recognition of our still shitty side of things from men.

So dudes, don the pussy!