Queering the Subversive Stitch

Making time: Knitting as temporal-material entanglement

“…4. Reductive views of knitting have implications for men who knit (McBrinn, 2021), and the reading of knitting I present in this article also aims to counter discourses that have variously ignored them orby contrastvalorised them beyond proportion, re-marginalising women who knit in the process (e.g., Wood, 2022). 5.…”

Stitching masculinities, stitching stories: Men’s quiltmaking experiences 1970-2020

“…In terms of professional artists, many men have utilized textiles as a medium of expression including Michael James (quilts), Gavin Fry (embroidery), and Mark Newport (knitting) (McBrinn, 2015;Myzelev, 2012;Peterson, 2003). Needlework has also been a leisure activity for men, especially in the 20th and 21st centuries, through which they have made quilts, knitted scarves, and created decorative embroideries (Gregory, 2016;Kelly, 2014;McBrinn, 2021).…”

“…Men's personal and professional pasts as needleworkers were obscured when concepts of femininity and masculinity were developed and refined in the 18th and 19th centuries (McBrinn, 2021;Parker, 1984). 1 Parker (1984) explained that the "feminine ideal is an historically changing concept of what women should be, while the feminine stereotype is a collection of attributes which is imputed to women and against which their every concern is measured" (p. 4).…”

“…Masculinity was conceptualized as encompassing the whole man, including his physical appearance as well as the characteristics of his soul, and this stereotype gained strength from "the existence of a negative stereotype of men who not only failed to measure up to the ideal but who in body and soul were its foil, projecting the exact opposite of true masculinity" (Mosse, 1998, p. 6). Therefore, in true masculinity, there was no room for needlework, and masculinity came to be defined through rejecting it (McBrinn, 2021).…”

“…While the separation of spheres was a phenomenon situated primarily in White, urban, middle-and upper-class life (Rotman, 2006;Fehlbaum, 2016), its ramifications in reinforcing the feminine and masculine stereotypes for later generations, especially regarding needlework, were significant. Men as needleworkers became a situation that occurred out of necessity and existed only in spaces where there were not women to complete the tasks, such as when sailors were away at sea (McBrinn, 2021). In addition, the implication developed that if a man practiced and enjoyed needlework, he must be gay, and this stereotype has been perpetuated decade after decade through books, movies, and television shows (McBrinn, 2021).…”