spinning yarns out of molehills

I took up crocheting a few months ago. It’s a bit non-gender-standard, what with me being male and all. (That’s not why I did it. I did it because it let me make something I wanted to make.)

At a friend’s suggestion, I signed up to a crafting community website specializing in crochet and knitting. After logging in, I was greeted with the real, members-only splash page proudly brandishing the site’s trademarked catchphrase: “where my stitches at?”

I don’t know what to think. Is this offensive? Can I find it offensive? Is it too small a deal to matter? All five people on the site’s “About” page are women. They had to have done this on purpose. They had to have known where it comes from. Is this worth acting on? Is this worth worrying about? Would I just come across as a white knight protecting the poor, stupid minorities because they’re too plebeian to comprehend the problem in its entirety or too feeble to address the matter themselves?

During the election season, one of the longer discussions I witnessed concerned how to handle issues that don’t affect you directly. One camp felt you should step back and give priority voice to those people actually at the heart of the matter. After all, they’re probably better educated about the issue. Plus, if you screw up, they pay the price and you don’t. That leads to sloppiness and irresponsibility.

The other side insisted you should make everything your business and get equally, fully informed and involved in all issues that reach public ballot. For one, being unaffected directly doesn’t mean you’re not affected at all. (Take public education. So what if you don’t have kids? Education laws will still impact you when you interact with today’s schoolkids as tomorrow’s adults.) Plus it’s your duty to improve society as a whole. That means justice for everyone, not only you. Homosexuals would not have gained the legal right to marry via initiative if they were the only ones to vote yes on that issue. Likewise, there’s no way the Nineteenth Amendment would have passed if the only “appropriate” responses from men were to vote nay or abstain.

A little web searching on avoiding White Knight Syndrome and being a proper “ally” turned up Doctor Frances Kendall’s article, ”How to Be an Ally if You Are a Person with Privilege” has some plausible-sounding advice, including a) yes, take action, b) do it in conjunction with the people you’re helping rather than going off solo. But she also says to uplift discriminated groups for the ultimate benefit that their increased participation will bring to everyone, including you, rather than because it’s the Right^TM thing to do for them. Wham! Right-wing right hook out of nowhere. I must admit I did not expect that.