I'm RT'ing my own reply to a thread, and I'm gonna start a new thread, because I really do want to discuss these subjects and I really am sad to see how this dialogue has turned. https://twitter.com/abbysyarns/status/1284990631392288774

Anybody who knows me will attest I'm constantly stumping for fair wages and better wages for people in all kinds of fiber arts pursuits.

I still feel like the core of what I personally took away from the start of this discussion has been derailed.

I grew up learning serious fiber arts techniques from Indigenous women and girls who have never had, and probably never will have, access to anything like the USA's fiber arts scene, or the things for sale within that scene.

And yet.

Those same women are -- I'll just say this -- fetishized by a lot of very wealthy white women, including some of my customers and even colleagues, including some people who I genuinely like, but who I sometimes feel like I can't quite reach about this.

What I read at the start of this whole dialogue, beginning with what Yelley said, was frustration about how it feels to know there are so many women who are categorized as lower-class, who know they'll never be able to be part of that scene.

You know where I've seen this a lot? At fiber arts events, where there's a whole hotel full of generally well-off white women who are thrilled to be with like-minded person who share their interest in fiber activities -- and people who work there, who are excluded.

I have almost never done a fiber event at a hotel in the USA where housekeeping staff weren't Latinas, many of whom knit, crochet, and potentially do other fiber things to boot.

Sadly, relatively few event attendees even NOTICE those knitters etc.

I've seen this since I was a little kid in lots of parts of the fiberverse in the industrialized world. I've seen it take lots of forms.

And yeah. I do think there are subgroups in fiber which are exclusive and snobby. And in the past couple of years...

...I have also seen some of those very subgroups make a whole lot of noise about being inclusive.

Except it's noise that feels a lot like lip service if you know a lot of people who will never be in those crowds.

And sometimes, yeah, it hits race and class lines.

So for me it's really disappointing that this discussion of it, this time, has turned yet again to discussion of whether or not we can charge living wages in fiber arts. Because, even as that's one of the axes I am CONSTANTLY GRINDING, well...

...it's just one shallow piece of the surface of the giant mass of failure in terms of economic justice in fiber arts.

One TINY SHALLOW PIECE.

It's one that's super near and dear to my heart and that I've spent a lot of time talking about.

But you know what?

We DO NOT TALK ABOUT the fact that there really, truly, is this intense exclusivity thing for a lot of white women for whom fiber activities are leisure pursuits.

And we don't talk about it, mostly because those are the women who spend money in this scene.

Because a lot of the topics I teach involve doing fiber stuff in ways that are low equipment and thus often low cost, it turns out a lot of people who spend money on my content are actually not that wealthy.

And you know what else?

Those aren't the folks who tend to complain about yarn, fiber, classes, patterns, content, experiences, being priced at a sustainable living wage.

And sadly, after about 45 years of going to industrialized world fiber events, I've reached some hard conclusions...

...and among them is this:

There really ARE rich white women who want their fiber scene exclusive, upscale, posh, and white, except for the folks they're fetishizing, who aren't really their peers, of course.

And that's what I wish we were talking about, instead of again concluding this is about whether or not it's okay for (mostly women) working in fiber to earn a living wage.

The thing is, that's a much harder conversation, and much scarier.

Hell, I'm scared to have this thread. Like, truly, I am. I'm afraid of what it'll mean for me financially.

But on the other hand, yesterday I went out and up into the mountains for the first time in 5 months. And on the way back, masked and cautious, I visited...

...a handful of women weaving in their country homes by the side of the very rural mountain road, and we talked about weaving and their animals and how they were doing in the pandemic, and what yarns and fibers folks were using, and...

...every single one of those women, who spoke only Quechua and not even Spanish, who didn't have money, insisted on sharing their meals and giving me and my family food from their crops and treating us like peers and colleagues who came by to talk about weaving.

So I really can't say *nothing* when I know, I KNOW, that there really is this class and money clique dynamic in the industrial world fiber scene.

Nothing about this is that simple, but... I want us to have the conversations, finally, really, deeply.