I'm gonna get in trouble, I wanna start a fight

[labellementeuse]

Unpopular feminist opinion: that some feminists enjoy knitting does not render knitting a feminist activity. Discuss.

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Comments

[jackandahat]

To buy enough yarn - just "enough", not anything nice, nasty scratchy acrylic, to make me a jumper, would cost £6. Doubling, then rising sharply after if I want something actually wearable.

I can buy a jumper in Primark for a fiver. Now granted - it's not high quality, and Primark has their issues, but it is a jumper, it will keep me warm in winter, etc etc. And I can't afford to buy a "high quality" one, so the fact they exist doesn't factor into my decision.

So really, you could argue that it's classist to say yarn + labour is cheaper - not only does it put a tag of zero on my labour, but it also assumes the cost of what I would be buying in store is much higher. (I'm not calling you classist, but I'm saying if the argument could be made, it could easily go in that direction.)

[melannen]

I didn't really expect this to be the bit that got the most discussion, but I suppose I should have. :D

I was basing this on: I can walk into the average "discount" store in my area (which would be Wal-mart/K-mart here - that is, a large chain store that sells mostly cheaply made imports at low prices) and buy a pound of worsted weight polyester for ~$10 (US), which is enough to make a basic sweater (to exactly the sizing and styling I want.) I can walk into the same store and buy a ready-made sweater for ~$10, although generally I'd be looking more like ~$15-20 at the low end if I'm paying the discount store's full retail and want any selection at all (though it will still be a fairly low selection at that price, and for women's clothes, not much range of sizing, either.)

If I intensively bargain-shop (sticking to major sales and clearance racks, keeping an eye on the even lover-end shops like closeout discounters and thrift shops) I could probably get a sweater for half that, but I could also probably get the yarn for half that, and having the ability for intensive bargain-shopping is another complicated thing!

So, yeah, for me, it comes out very close to even, except that I will probably like the $10-for-yarn sweater much more than the $10-store-bought one, and a little bit of online international/interregional comparison looks about the same, at least in places that have stores with full websites. And no, that doesn't include labor, but the issue of pricing labor for craft goods is so complicated. One way to look at it is: if I had money I could probably buy a brand-new hand-knit sweater of the same quality I could make with the $10 yarn for $100-$200. So I prefer to say it's not putting a price of zero on the labor, it's putting a price of $90 for the labor, which is more than the kyriarchy is willing to pay me for the same work, and under better working conditions.

And I know a lot of people who craft and refuse to sell their work because they couldn't sell it on the market for what the labor's worth, and refuse to undervalue their labor. But they are more than willing to put it into a gift economy which does not undervalue their labor even if it values it differently than a capitalist economy would. This is not the same as refusing to value the labor. Insisting that monetary exchange is the only possible way to mark value is also classist. ;p

[jackandahat]

*nods* It's basically just the difference in what's the norm for your area - you can buy yarn for the price of a sweater, I can't, so we see things differently.