Feminist Knitting | The Press

Still wrongly associated with domestic work, knitting has long taken on a political and feminist dimension, recalls the collective essay Knitters and lacemakers, published these days. Overview of the militant posture of handling needles, sometimes an act of patriotism, sometimes a gesture of protest.

Knitters of the French Revolution

They were nicknamed the “rabids” or the “guillotine furies”, saying that they dipped their knitting in the blood of those who were guillotined. However, in history, it is the name “knitters” which has become established to designate this group of women of the people who attended the debates of the National Convention, during the French Revolution (1789-1799), while knitting. Although they left few physical traces of their actions, these women shook up the codes of the time, according to Marjorie Charbonneau, doctoral student in art history at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM) who interested in the revolutionary period.

“These women, who had to knit at home, sometimes for a job, sometimes out of necessity to clothe the whole family, had the affront of bringing their work, private, into a public space,” she emphasizes. They were women from the private space who moved into the male public space. They destabilized the codes of the genre, that’s for sure. »

Although they were not allowed to participate in revolutionary debates, they attended to keep up to date and even went so far as to express their opinion with “oh! » and “ah!” “. Because these avant-garde women had real demands, notes the historian. “They fought for the defense of black people, against slavery. They wanted to have access to divorce, to the separation of property. They didn’t know it yet, but they had the hope of seeing social equity between men and women, which ultimately did not happen. »

Listen to an interview given by Marjorie Charbonneau on Radio-Canada

Spy knitters

A century later, we find knitting discreet, but present, at the heart of two conflicts that set the world ablaze. During the world wars, women knitted to support and warm soldiers going to the front. Rarely seen without her knitting bag, the first lady of the United States, Eleanor Roosevelt, encouraged American women to participate in the Second War effort by organizing a “Knit for Defense” tea at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York in 1941.

However, women played an even more important role, using knitting as a covering. While some knitted around the stations and listened, others used their know-how to inform the Allies of Nazi positions. By mastering the knit and purl stitches, they encoded, in Morse language, the positions of the troops and the movements of trains. Perhaps they were inspired by Molly Rinker, who, during the American Revolution, transmitted information to George Washington’s troops by hiding scraps of paper in bales of wool!

“I find it magnificent that this power of knitting, a gentle power, goes further than the French Revolution,” says art historian Marjorie Charbonneau.

Who is Agathe Dessaux?

A feminist textile artist who creates unique creations, Agathe Dessaux also launched the artisanal ready-to-wear brand La Gang d’Henriette (the first name of her grandmother) to “perpetuate the matriarchal tradition”. It offers knitted, vegan and naturally dyed accessories, including balaclavas.

The Pussyhat against Trump

More recently, although ultimately rejected by some feminists as not inclusive, the Pussyhat Project movement’s pink cat-eared hat has become a symbol of women’s opposition to former United States President Donald Trump, after his election in 2016. After he boasted of “grabbing women by the pussy”, they marched in large numbers during the Women’s March in 2017, wearing this hat handmade called “Pussyhat”.

Discover the “Pussyhat” knitting pattern (available in French)

Graffiti knitting

Trees covered in colored tubes, statues suddenly dressed in woolen clothes: knitting-graffiti is a subversive and peaceful practice present in several cities around the world. If this art form aims to break with the monotony of public space, certain groups use it as a political weapon. In 2013, the Les Ville-Laines collective, now dissolved, covered the base of a pillar of the Turcot interchange with knitted squares to protest against the reconstruction plan. One of the members of the collective, the artist Karine Fournier, still devotes herself to knitting-graffiti through her Tricot Pirate project.

Visit Karine Fournier’s website

Sue Montgomery’s scarf

Campaigning for gender parity by knitting? This is what the former mayor of the Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce borough, Sue Montgomery, did. In 2019, the elected official began knitting a scarf during municipal council meetings. A little to escape the monotony of the speeches, but above all to document the speaking time of men and women. Using red thread when a man speaks and green when it was a woman’s turn, she knitted a scarf that was much more red than green, even though 31 women and 34 men sat on the city council.

Read Rima Elkouri’s column “The Revenge of Knitting”

Knitters and lacemakers

Published by Éditions Marchand de Feuilles, Knitters and lacemakers is a collective work in which the authors Lucile de Pesloüan, Audrée Wilhelmy and Perrine Leblanc as well as the artists Karine Fournier and Agathe Dessaux participated. A quilt of texts which, once assembled, paints the portrait of a practice which, sometimes meditative, sometimes demanding, is much more than a pastime.

Sources: Wikipedia, The National WWII Museum, The New York Times, The Press, Pussy Hat Project, The power of knitting (Loretta Napoleoni)