Leafpaths_Lioden

Pardon my spam as I upload all my babies. 😊

Dumisa (supposedly Zulu for “praise” or “honour”) was my first attempt at creating a lion themed around a specific event to showcase on the Lioden Wiki.  She doesn’t really have any purpose other than to grab the attention of players on the homepage during the December event.

One girl is a Ebony and the other is a Velvet.

Both girls are clean.

I’ve been thinking about this blog post for about a year now, and now seems around the right time to write it.

I was setting myself up at a craft fair last month when someone paused by my stall, looked at my stock and said with an uncertain smile; “Knitting? That’s a bit unusual for a man, isn’t it?”

It is, by no means, the worst reaction I could have received. I smiled back a bit awkwardly and explained that yes, some people may think so, but my dad had taught me and my brother to knit when I was very young and I’d never found it odd.

I didn’t explain that I was a trans man. I didn’t say about how I honestly considered giving up fibrecrafts during the darkest days of my transition because of attitudes like that. I said nothing about the history of knitting, about the men-only knitting guilds and about how the perception of fibre crafts as “women’s work” has historically tied in to its devaluation as a craft following industrialisation and mass consumerism and about the ridiculous misogyny that shift signifies.

I’ve been on testosterone for 22 months now, and I’m happy that I mostly pass, though rarely as a straight man (which would be boring anyway). However, I have noticed a definite trend; the one thing that seems to get me most misgendered isn’t my voice, or my face, or my chest, even when not wearing a binder.

It’s my knitting.

Yup - even with two weeks worth of stubble and a sore throat, people look at me knitting and think “ah, yes, a young woman knitting merrily along her way, why she even has a beard like my dear old Grandma.”

It’s silly. It’s silly when people address knitting circles or craft groups as ‘ladies’. It’s silly when I’m told to apply for a women’s enterprise award because “everyone in this craft group should apply,” despite the group including numerous cis men. It’s silly when almost every pattern book has a men’s section which includes the sentiments of “here’s something nice to make for your boyfriend!”

It’s silly. Stop it.

Knitting - and crochet - are only gender-biased because we made them so, just like everything else.