In the Trump era, contentious political battles have often been fought in arenas of American life where they weren’t previously imaginable.
This week, fights about Trump came to the world of knitting.
Ravelry, which calls itself “a free site for knitters and crocheters,” announced Sunday that it will no longer allow support for President Donald Trump on its platform.
“We are banning support of Donald Trump and his administration on Ravelry,” the site announced on its website on Sunday. “This includes support in the form of forum posts, projects, patterns, profiles, and all other content.”
Ravelry went on to say that it will not delete project data, or any products that users have purchased.
In further describing the new policy, Ravelry went on to say that it is not supporting Democrats or banning Republicans or conservative politics in general. But, the site said, “we cannot provide a space that is inclusive of all and also allow support for open white supremacy.” Ravelry also disclosed that they adapted the policy from a similar one adapted by the role-playing game site RPG.net.
Raverly, per Buzzfeed , is “most popular online forum for knitting fans,” and has millions of users. Slate wrote in 2018 about an emerging trend of women who knit coming up with crafts based on their dislike of President Trump.
Vox , earlier this year, wrote about efforts to combat racism in the knitting community.
“Hundreds of people of color have shared stories of being ignored in knitting stores, having white knitters assume they were poor or complete amateurs, or flat-out saying they didn’t think black or Asian people knit,” the Vox piece said.
Raverly, which has been around since 2007 and is headquartered in Boston, both allows users to sell their projects, and to interact with others who enjoy knitting and crocheting.
The post about banning Trump support on the forum drew mixed reactions.
“A social network for knitting just made every other website look like goddamn cowards,” Bryan Menegus, a journalist, tweeted in response.
“Do not [expletive] with knitters,” writer Emily L. Hauser tweeted . “They have needles, & they know how the hell to use them.”
Others disagreed with the decision.
“Banning people in order to be inclusive of all. Do you people hear yourselves? Seek professional help,” a Twitter user said Sunday.
Meanwhile, Stacey Dash, the Clueless actress-turned-conservative political pundit, weighed in as well.
“Eh? Who wants to be a knitwit! #WWGIWGA,” Dash tweeted . Those letters are an acronym for “when we go one, we go all,” which is associated with the QAnon conspiracy theory, although Dash appears to have used the letter “I” in place of the number “1.”