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SarahM's avatar

Many 'domestic' tasks/pleasures are very meditative, indeed. Elizabeth Gilbert spoke beautifully about aesthetics and creativity in the domestic sphere in a interview in On Being a few years back. Lost of nuanced and important stuff in your conversation that I will read and consider further. I believe pre-industrialized revolution that for working people the task division wasn't quite so pronounced. And the more we can explore the concepts of femininity and masculinity as unique categories of expressing humanity, separate from body parts, and in each person in different mixes, we can get out of the boxes of gender expectations that are prisons for all.

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Tara's avatar

As a longtime knitter and sewer and a person who loves to make baked goods, I appreciate this so so much! I came up in the DIY, early-Etsy movement of punk craft shows ( I left my job to sell handmade yarn! I built a business!)…and it felt like an aspect of my feminism. (See: Bust Magazine and Debbie Stollar’s knitting books)

To see the tradwives/homesteaders kind of..colonize the world of craft/baking/gardening on the internet has been such a bummer.

(I would love to read a study of this timeline! Did early Etsyers become homesteaders? Is it the younger generation who grew up with their moms or older sisters stitching and bitching?)

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