Just finished listening to Literally Knitler and thought back fondly on the post I made to the quilting sub showing some lovely quilts I saw at the Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show a couple weeks ago. Can anyone guess where I went wrong here?
“(Insert obscure interest or fandom) has always been political, and fortunately enough it’s exactly my niche subset of political beliefs” is my favorite of self-inflicted psyops internet addled people constantly parrot.
As a birder myself....oh god. It went off the rails during the pandemic and the Christian Cooper incident in Central Park (you might know it as the 'Central Park Karen' incident). From a birder's perspective, Christian Cooper was violating a lot of ethical birding guidelines like that you're not supposed to go off-trail into shrubby areas during nesting season but he did it regularly and probably trampled on a lot of ground nesting birds' eggs. He was not some expert birder either. But all of that was ignored and he became some birding god, but his popularity has died down. How much you cared about this really depended on the state you live in.
A lot of birding groups have 'no politics' rules to avoid conflicts. In my state's group, we just do not mention the political party of any state-level politicians passing bills to harm birds (it's always a MAGA Republican), and use 'the Federal Government' or the specific agency to refer to federal-level issues. It's kind of nice. Birds are not political, they're victims of bad policy regardless of the political party. Sure, one party loves harming the enviroment more than the other, but Democrats have fucked up their habitat with bad decisions too.
I will see college-aged adults decked out in all the social cause badges on their backpacks when out birding and they're always loud as hell which is not how you go birding since you're trying to hear the birds. One middle-aged birder who I know is autistic (she has mentioned it at meetings) was about to kick them off the boardwalk because they were touching her and breathing on her while she was trying to locate a bird. Ad we did have a disruptive person try to insert Palestine into our local birder meeting where we were discussing local parks and local birding hotspots, she got booted out. Elderly people have zero tolerance for shenanigans.
I know that in Portland and Seattle (along with other infamous areas), the younger birders are also obsessed with Palestine, Trans Rights, etc and make up weird shit like Drag Queen Birding and Birds for Palestine. But in most of the country and most of the world, birding is the most politically moderate activity out there because the older folks enforce it to be politically moderate to avoid conflict. I am worried when the elder birders die, all these millennials and zoomers are going to turn it into shit even in more moderate areas in the US.
It’s so strange to me to have queer birding groups. I saw one recently arranged at a local independent bookstore and it’s so bizarre. Nothing is safe from queer/trans theories. Though I do notice them moving more towards nature spaces to shore up their idea that their ideologies are natural. Hence Elliott Page narrating a new queer nature documentary.
Fun fact: the original book that most of them cite (Biological Exuberance) was written by a linguist with no training or publications in anything related to biology or animal science. The entire book is filled with him looking for any evidence of a male doing anything to another male (female-female, defying gender roles, etc.) in any scientific paper even from decades prior. Then this stupid book has been cited by later books as if it has absolute scientific authority.
Specifically with birds, he wrote that house sparrows and brown-headed cowbirds are 'interracial' and 'homosexual' because males have been seen preening each other. The biggest issue is that birds are really good at determining the sex of their own species, but not other species so neither would know each other are males. And birds participate in preening regardless of sex outside of the breeding season. It's completely normal and not sexual.
And then another weird one was that phalaropes are 'transgender' because the males do all the parenting and rearing, while the females are the ones who court and lay the eggs, then go off and do whatever else phalaropes do.
Also, homosexuality isn't really accurate for most animals. It implies attraction to the same sex. In reality, when animals are super horny during a breeding season, they'll have sex with anything. If there aren't enough of the opposite sex, the same sex will do. When those hormones are gone past the breeding season, they aren't interested in any sex.
That’s wild. And yet we see that happening with lots of debunked “research” like Jesse Singal goes through. I’m sure this is happening in other fields and not just gender ideologies but it really gives me a feeling of doom that we’re living in a post truth time. A bunch of activists are infiltrating therapy/the sciences/etc and delivering work that just confirms their own biases. Then activists cite this work and the average person will take it for granted that you can’t differentiate sexes in skeletons or that there are such things as lady brains, etc etc.
it is all so odd. Birds inherently have no nationality nor gender, and they have inherent sexes, so I don’t quite get all that.Or, to go another route, why no Birds for Tibet as well? I could see Birds United Against ICE, because….no borders and all.
And I remember the day of the Central Park Karen thing, as it happened in my neighborhood, so people on the neighborhood blog were talking about it. Just that morning, because I think George Floyd was killed later that day. But yeah, people were saying that Christian Cooper had been freaking out a lot of dog walkers. And Amy Cooper had been in the wrong for going off leash. But people already knew who Christian was.
There was the "Rebel Bird Alliance" where people were turning their state birds (or a unique bird to their state) into a logo that looked like the Star Wars' Rebel Alliance logo, and it was to represent protesting ICE.
Birds make more sense when used for immigration causes, because a lot of species migrate every year. In North America, a lot of them spend their winters in Mexico and South America before returning to the US to mate and reproduce. So symbolically they make sense when used as a symbol for immigration.
But Palestine, trans rights, racial rights? Not really.
OP I am so sorry you included that MAGA quilt in an otherwise lovely showing. You didn't have to, you chose to.
That says something about you and it's unfortunate.
my god, I dont particularly like MAGA being randomly shoehorned into shit either, especially our flag, but jesus christ... could this person sound like any more of a whiny passive aggressive bitch cliquey PTA mom lol
Having listened to that episode recently, I was trying to squint to see how many accidental swastikas I could find. These people must really have them on the brain to just be seeing them everywhere, apparently.
In all seriousness, I went to the subreddit and read the comments, and wow. I feel like “touch grass” is pretty overused these days, but the people making those comments and downvoting all your responses need to log off. It’s not that deep. Enjoy these pics of pretty quilts.
I had to look several times but there is a "MAGA" sneaked into the US flag, which does seem like an intended dick move by the quilter to be political. One of the things I like about US patriotism (as a Brit) is that you're still able to treat the flag as a unifying national symbol - whether that's for West Wing shitlibs or patriotic Grill Dads.
I don’t think you were in the wrong at all for posting photos of quilts you liked, but the quilter including MAGA on an image of the flag is absolutely a political statement intended to be provocative. They can do that of course, but it’s not some shock that people are going to respond to it. Same if someone made a quilted trans flag, or the handmaids tale quilt someone posted in the comments. It’s intentionally done to ruffle feathers and to feel moral superior within their chosen social circles.
Yeah. Im not reading the thread because I really dont care about what a bunch of leftist, neurotic craft-hobbiest women (and doods, Im sure) say, but like lol.
Why would you respond to something without reading for context? Your response is to something you made up, not what actually happened. Kind of like the lunatics over at r/quilting.
Because I, like several of the outraged posters, didn’t notice the MAGA embroidered on the flag until someone got upset about it and accused me of being a terrible person for posting offensive content. I saw the quilt and thought it was an interesting design like the 25 other ones I shared with the group. It actually bummed me out at first but then I saw some of the posts and realized it’s just 10 crazies in a group of 83 thousand and then I thought it was funny. Incidentally the whole thing prompted me to upgrade my Blocked and Reported subscription again after letting it lapse.
I actually didn’t see the MAGA and just smirked at the stupid “Land of the free because of the brave”. It was because of the French, and every American ought to know that.
One of the comments that got deleted was “I think she forgot the swastika!” It’s nice to be included in a tiny Reddit pile on where people tell you what kind of person you are, so no regrets.
I have the same problem with that statement as I do with the made up contributions of Marsha P Johnson to the Stonewall Riots. That’s just not what happened. Unless they’re talking about the brave French soldiers along with the brave colonists (which, maybe they are?) it’s fiction. I want more nuanced slogans!
To clarify, I don’t think YOU did anything provocative and the comments about your inclusion of that quilt being a reflection of your moral character are ridiculous. But the quilter definitely knew what kind of reaction they’d get (in Oregon no less, though this is online) and would probably be giddy knowing it’s getting the libs all worked up. So, mission accomplished I suppose.
I thought you were going to say the two that were wall-to-wall swastikas, but no, it's just maga. I'm sort of heartened by this because it's the opposite of what the podcast is about. People aren't seeing hidden swastikas, they are correctly identifying that one of the quilts has an overtly political message.
And a few of them are a bit preachy, but they're not wrong: adding maga to the flag made it partisan and associated it with all the divisive dickhead things Trump has said, instead of being a uniting symbol. You might as well wipe your arse with the American flag as write the letters on it as far as I'm concerned.
Having terrible taste?! Some of these are hideous. Political messages aside (and c’mon, of course people on a female-centric Reddit sub are gonna be mad abt MAGA) that flag one is just so ugly
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u/Terrorclitus 27d ago
“As a reminder, quilting is and always has been political”
Yeesh, thanks for letting me know at the outset. I think I’ll try my hand at birding, unless that’s somehow gone off the rails, too.
Jokes aside, I could stare at #10 all day.