For decades, owing to an incident in early childhood, I've been mildly ashamed of my interest in power tools. At my public elementary school in Dallas in the early 1970s,
Ok, let's stop right there. We can already see where this tripe of an article is headed. She's female, in elementary school, in Texas, in the 1970s. She gets embarrassed out of woodworking and feels less than a woman her whole life, etc.
Ok. I realize that a lot of women equate their womanhood with doing feminine things, but honestly people - if you HAVE a vagina or otherwise identify your gender as female, YOU'RE A WOMAN.
That's what bothers me about this article. I'm glad she got empowered finally, yadda yadda fucking yadda. But way to stereotype about how women suddenly become men if they like to work with their hands and it ain't knitting. Fuck that noise. And Fuck Slate. And Fuck Me for even reading that shit!!
ADDED BONUS!!
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No, you can't quit your day job to make quilts.
*jumping off a bridge now*
I don't get it... I thought the article was about DIY, and discovering how to do things with your hands again, something that many of us in the western world don't do enough of anymore. Yeah, there's some personal anecdotal stuff about her experience, and some musing about stereotypes and gender. I guess the 1st paragraph might seem offensive, but the last paragraph seems like it at least means to be empowering:
ReplyDeleteThat’s not to say that every woman should take up her grandmother’s canning. But if we are going to give up such traditional competencies, then we should at least replace them with a few, less traditional, hands-on skills. Many men get to have jobs and families and still enjoy that makeshift shop in the garage, where they can lose themselves in a function and share their expertise with their kids. Whether knitting or wielding a welding torch, women should insist on no less. A thumb, after all, is a terrible thing to waste.
I would really like to checkout the book she references... Shop Class as Soulcraft: An inquiry into the value of work. Read an interesting article by the author awhile back. Strong arguments towards reevaluating what we consider work, and doing things that are constructive and useful and fulfilling, instead of the weird ethereal info work or service jobs that many of us do.
ReplyDeleteHi Pilot, welcome back.
ReplyDeleteWhat I find offensive about this "DIY" article is the multiple references to "acting like a man" and "not being a woman" if one is discussing using hand tools!
I understand gender normatives, but this one was so over the top that I was sick from the first paragraph. It's anti-feminist because her very definition of DIY is being a man instead of a woman. That's not empowering. It's deluded sexism.