My autumn/winter mitts have been blocked and subsequently worn for several days with much pride. It is a stash-busting project too as I used partial skeins of Lett-Lopi and New Lanark DK I had left over from previous projects. What is not to love?
Taking a decent photo of them, however, proved too much for my photography skills, and it wasn’t until this afternoon that Official Photographer went for a walk in the rain with the camera, that an in-focus photo appeared.
The pattern is free, but be warned that it needs to be tweaked in order to work. As written, the thumb increases do not match up with the colourwork and if i were to knit these again, I would go down a needle size as the mitts are a smidgen too wide across my hands despite going with the smallest size. On the positive side I can fit a pair of gloves underneath these for extra warmth.
Now to something completely different.
I first read Schrödinger’s Rapist – or a Guy’s Guide to approaching Strange Women Without Being Maced a couple of weeks ago and it has been on my mind ever since. In a strange way, the blog entry manages to explain exactly what it feels like being a woman and make me aware that this is how it feels for me. Honestly, I do not think about my body or my gender most of the time. My body is just there as a vehicle for my brain and, well, I have never felt like I was part of any Special Sisterhood. And yet, that blog entry made me finally acknowledge to myself that being a woman is not like being a man. I’m in my early thirties and I finally admitted this to myself.
Deep down, though, I must have known and sought to protect myself. During most of my twenties I hid in baggy black clothes. At one point I even preferred being severely overweight to having a healthy weight and receiving attention. Today I wonder why, although I have some residual fear of walking on my own in remote places and I never go outside at night unless someone is with me. For someone who is not all that aware of her own body (and, believe me, having a body never ceases to confound and surprise me .. especially after I have walked into yet another door or stumbled), I do seem to be aware of the dangers connected to having one.
After reading the initial blog entry, I wound up reading the long Metafilter thread/response. Nattie’s response was particularly thought-provoking and I found myself nodding to several points she made – and surprising myself by being able to nod. I need to think a lot more about this and work out my own response. Somehow this feels like an awakening.
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Interesting link. But what the author fails to acknowledge is that most potential rapists are found in the private, not the public sphere: rapists are, in fact, the minor acquaintance that offers to walk you home, your boyfriend of just a few days, your trusted uncle — and much more rarely the eejit that shouts at you from a van, or stares at you on a train. Perhaps, indeed, at home he is someone *elses* rapist — but he is probably not yours. The street is sometimes not a great place to be as a woman, but my own feeling is that the only way to take control of the hideous gender politics of public spaces is for us to occupy them as and when we like, to walk bravely at night without fear, and to remind the fools that remark on our tits or legs, or why we aren’t smiling (one of my *favourites*) that they have a voice and a brain and are much more than a sex object. I have a number of loud and withering put downs I use when these c*cks approach me, and I very much enjoy using them.
November 1, 2009 @ 6:03 pm
@Kate: It is true that most potential rapists are people you know and trust. One example from my teenage days springs to mind: a girl from a year below me was raped at a school sleepover and the rapist was her boyfriend/classmate’s father. I still remember that. I also remember how the judge was close to giving a lenient verdict because the 13 y/o girl wore makeup in her court appearance and somehow that explained why the rapist might have thought it okay to rape her. I was very upset by that but could not articulate why.
You wrote a good entry about being a pedestrian some time ago and I read it wondering why I appear unable to assume similar control of the streets. I think it is partly my strange relationship with my body, partly my invisible and tiny disability, and partly the fact that I will be marked out as Other as soon as I open my mouth. In short, I let fear rule me. I admire loud and withering remarks – but I am the quiet sort and often cannot think of a suitable response (or even figure out why I’m offended) until hours later.
Clearly I have some way to go yet.
November 1, 2009 @ 6:44 pm
Goodness me, that judge deserves much more inventive punishments than my paltry powers of imagination can devise. Horrendous.
I feel like I’ve always been a feminist. I learnt it in the playground, in which the girls and boys at my school interacted in a really gendered way. What sealed it for me, I think now, is being called a ‘whore’ when I was about seven, by a boy of the same age. I’d never heard that word before, I didn’t even know what it meant, I had to ask my friend. And it made me feel dirty. From then on my girl’s body, at that point not really that different from his boy’s body, became something that made me vulnerable.
November 1, 2009 @ 9:35 pm
Also, in case you weren’t aware of it: Hollaback UK: http://hollaback-uk.blogspot.com/
November 1, 2009 @ 9:45 pm
I love the background for the mitts. It is the perfect picture of autumn!
That post you linked to was so great and thought-proving, esp all the comments and links from those, etc…I managed to spend a few hours looking through today. It is so sad that a small (but shockingly huge) number of bad apples have made it so miserable and scary for women, and then for the potentially nice guys out there. The other day a friend (driving) was honking to get my attention (I was walking), and he couldn’t understand why someone wouldn’t turn to look at a man honking at them!
November 2, 2009 @ 12:18 am