I’ve received a 10 day suspension on Ravelry. My offense is calling BS on slandering people as “white supremists”. And it is in fact bullshit. Casey and company are liars. I suspect that they cribbed their little manifesto, with an eye towards California’s laws on the Internet. They claim this is not about purging conservatives. That is exactly what they are doing. And they are doing it in support of the Democratic party. They claim that they don’t want conservatives goaded into posting political items, which would result in a ban. That is not only what they want, it is exactly what they are working for. These people are not the gatekeepers of the craft community. And we cannot allow them to politicize our craft and profit from our participation.
If you are a vendor, I want you to know I am heartsick over this. You have your little business that you’ve put heart and soul into building. You know full well that the Internet mobs love nothing more than to shut your business down, should you get out of line. You would be wise to keep your head down, stay neutral and look for other places to advertise. We still buy patterns, yarns and other items and we want to support your business. I have some ideas on reaching the larger vendors, which I will share here in the next week.
If you are on Ravelry, it is time to leave. I know that you would like for this to blow over and continue enjoying the conversations over there. The site you knew is gone. They have temporarily shut down new members. I can assure you, from what I’ve seen on Twitter, that the site will be hit with a crop of social justice warriors, ready to support them. They don’t know how to knit and they don’t care anything about our crafts. It’s political and the site will become even more political over the next few weeks. If you continue to support Ravelry, you support libeling people over their political point of view. And do not think for a minute that the folks that run Ravelry give a damn about people of color or the LGBT community. They care about you only as long as you support their politics. Stray from the party line and you will be purged too.
Craft is the thing that we do when our lives are falling apart. It is what helps us hold it together when the money runs out, when a loved one is in the hospital, when our marriage fails or our children are in a mess. Craft is the thing we do when we celebrate. It is the baby sweater or the wedding shawl we make by hand. It is a way that we show people that we care about them. It is too important to allow people to politicize it. We should link arms and support each other and insist that all voices be heard. We should not be demonizing or purging people from our ranks. It is wrong and you know it.
I’ll be adding more to the site as I work on this. Feel free to contact me if you want to share your thoughts. I moderate comments, so don’t think that you will be able to slander me on my own site.
The internet is full of dead links. Make Ravelry one of them.
I am so in agreement with you. We are going into an election cycle and all these sites want to control the narrative because Orlando this past week scared them. Social media reaches too many to allow facts, challenges to Trump being right about anything. They will not worry about news media…this will instead expand to anywhere conservatives go on the web…especially women. They want to make their messaging appear to be overwhelmingly normal and right!
I really had no choice but to dump my Ravelry account. I’m damned if I’m going to patronize a site that insults me to my face.
I’ve never been active on the forums; I just basically go there to find patterns. Unfortunately, there are some designers whose patterns are only available via that site. Hopefully, they will eventually sell them elsewhere.
The owners are well on their way to turning Rav into one giant toxic hate site. They fail to see the irony of touting as “inclusive” a place where showing the slightest support for the President of the United States is forbidden, but posting patterns for Trump voodoo dolls is not only permitted, but encouraged.
I will have to dump mine as well. I won’t put up with slurring people as racist.
God bless you for refusing to be marginalized. Fiber arts attracts a certain type of personality (strong and independent) and it was easier in years past to focus on the craft and the skill and leave the politics out of it. (Although I once was lectured by a young lady about the oppression my great-aunts suffered under the patriarchy as farm wives of the 30s and 40s. Yeah, no. A woman who can build a road, repair a wheel or feed a threshing crew is not a woman who will stand for oppression. And their silent death glare if the husband or sons stepped out of line was legendary in its efficiency.) I can only hope that the diaspora of conservative and libertarian crafters from a site such as Ravelry will result in a greater explosion of websites and forums where we can teach and learn, experiment and design, and celebrate our diversity without fear of silencing by those who have decided to close their minds to the greater world waiting for them.
What a great post! And yes, those farm wives didn’t think of themselves as victims. They were just too busy 🙂
We just can’t allow this. Most folks are tired of the politicization of everything. We have to just agree to disagree on politics and support each other where we can.
Great post. I take it you deleted your account.
Not yet. I slogged through downloading my pattern purchases this morning.
Excellent post! I wrote them and deleted my account yesterday. I was already mad about the “India Trip” comments and wrote them about that, too. No response. Haters.
My husband keeps telling me to write them. I haven’t deleted my account yet. I’m working on something and I have a few folks I want to say goodbye to. The more responses I read there, the less I want to be around those people.
I hope the something you’re working on is something to damage these fascists. I can’t imagine you staying as you said doing so supported libeling people, but please let us know if there’s a way to take the wind out of their revenues. They do have a substantial advertising revenue. I found their 2010 rates, and they do well.
It seems some of their designers and advertisers stand with them. Vickie Howell and Donna Drachunas come to mind. Bristol Ivy came out on FB with a proRavelry screed as well. I don’t think these designers are so worthy of support. As for dyers, they’re in on it too..Lady dye yarns LLC is one I found with no trouble, and LYS are on board (MUSE2320Fiber, Aster and Vine) I’m sure more will crop up, but I haven’t FB’d all of them. If they support these tactics, they do NOT deserve continued support.
The problem is that it’s hard to tell who their advertisers are. It’s easy to pick out the small companies, but harder to tell if they support this.
I think FB is a good start. Some have been very vocal, Bristol Ivy has promised to donate money to come cause or other if people stop following her. Some of the big guys, Knitpicks, Little Knits, Bluprint, have not commented at all. Brown Sheep, Bartlett are, from what I’ve gleaned, pretty conservative and are safe. Many of the designers are very lib, but I’m not sure they are full tilt fascists.
The smartest plan for these businesses, from my point of view, is to keep their mouths shut and start looking for some place else to advertise.
People have this idea that we will just go back to the way things were on Saturday. There are a lot of people who care nothing about the craft that are just waiting to join up and show their support. It will get ugly.
Many are not so bright
Even when you try to explain this, they don’t get it. The experienced people don’t really need Ravelry. Fill it up with people that are there to make a political statement and there’s less reason to stay. Fewer people, less advertising revenue. Also known as “get woke, go broke”.
I’d love to see the site fail over this. I’ll be glad when planetpurl comes back.
My new post is about that. We need to step away from social media. We need to use the tools to create places on the internet where folks can be civil again.
A few have achieved this, but not crafters. There used to be two perfume sites for fanatics like myself. One was Basenotes and the other was Perfume of Life, now defunct. The defunct one loved being political, Basenotes banned it and exists. Yes, you could celebrate Pride week, but you couldn’t name call, yes you could celebrate your holidays, but you couldn’t denigrate anyone else’s.
Perfume of life started to get very ugly over American politics, and people left. A site with a decreasing circulation cannot make the same money for it’s owner. The owner called it a day. Basenotes thrives.
So it can be done. I detest the pussyhead people but I think the hats were great as they infantilized themselves, still No MAGA, no Pussyheads should be the rule. I don’t think I could ever go back to Ravelry due to their name calling, unless it was taken over by a different group altogether.
PLanetPurl had a bot attack and is rebuilding, it may be a sane option.
I followed a link to someone’s blog. She is a weaver. She is weaving a caricature of Donald Trump. This is simply not normal behavior. Normal people don’t obsess about an election for three years. They get on with their lives.
I’d heard about the perfume site. I still see no reason why we can’t just agree to disagree on politics and go on with our lives. Do people really want more of this? Do you want to have to make every single decision through the lens of political correctness?
My friends and I are deleting our accounts. We hardly go on Ravelry anymore because of the continued assault. I learned from early membership not to speak up, but my eyes still read the injustice and this last bit by Casey was the final straw.
Thank you for being braver than most. We just wanted to knit and create and learn and share. Silly people.
It shouldn’t be brave to stand up against slander. It’s disheartening to see how many people are okay with this.
As Shandiss said, we must “refuse to be marginalized”. Bristol even said she was pretty pleased we were being marginalized, so a poor designer caught in a crossfire, she ain’t.
As for why someone would waste their time weaving a caricature, they’re unstable I guess. There seems a lot of that going around, and women are in the forefront. As you stated it’a “mean girls” thing.