So here’s a yarn to get your head around: critics are attacking a knitting influencer online for naming her dyed wools after “words that are meant to protect marginalized folks”.
As originally reported by BuzzFeed, Maria Tusken’s Instagram blew up after she released a new line of skeins called “the Polarized Knits collection” on Wednesday. The dyed wools had names such as “Micro-aggression”, “Gaslight” and “Em-ocean-al labor”.
“Will you be donating any of the proceeds to any of the marginalized communities that this language and attitude harms?” wrote one angry follower. Another accused Tusken of bullying, saying: “I’m trying to figure out how a woman co-opting words that are meant to protect marginalized folks is not bullying???”
Now, there is some context to this latest kerfuffle. While many of us don’t wake up every day wishing the world of knitfluencers was more diverse, people have been talking about racism in the knitting community for some time. Tusken herself was pushed to the forefront of this debate last year, when she defended another knitfluencer who drew ire after going to India and blogging about her “year of color” (yikes).
Tusken took a break from Instagram and posted a YouTube video about how concern over “a very intense social justice issue” (read: racism) had “started infiltrating Instagram”.
But her standing up for the “silent majority” of knitters who didn’t think racism was a problem didn’t go down that well: Tusken was accused of white fragility. It seems the Polarized Knits collection is her answer to this beef.
Some have accused her Instagram page – which is largely innocuous, featuring shots of poetry, brightly colored yarn, and poetry books –has been called an “unsafe space”, according to BuzzFeed. This may have something to do with the fact that her new collection is a collaboration with a YouTube channel called Unsafe Space, which spends its time winding up liberals – and to be honest, it looks like it is working.
There have been other complaints about Tusken, too: she blogs about Jordan Peterson and says climate change can be solved on an individual level. But honestly – isn’t this the worst story about the internet you’ve ever heard? Don’t we all have better things to be doing with our time? Or, as one of Tusken’s 12,000 followers put it: “Who knew yarn was so dangerous? 😂”
