Is knitting an Anti-feminist act?

Let's set the scene: America at the beginning of the 20th Century, and despite their suffocating corsets that created the prized Gibson Girl physique, women are on the move, literally--they are fishing, biking, golfing, playing tennis and riding in those new automobiles. And there's a war raging between the Suffragists fighting for Women's rights, and the Anti-Suffragists who think it's enough that women are queens of the domestic sphere. What are their weapons? Pointed sticks--specifically knitting needles. According to Anne Macdonald's No Idle Hands: The Social History of Knitting, knitting for the Suffragists was exactly the kind of thing keeping women in chains, quiet, silent and occupied in the home. For Haryot Cahoon, a "forward woman" Suffragist, real women don't knit, and it's time to drop all those stitches and do something important:

"A vast amount of drudgery is sugar coated with economy . . . If you wish to knit lace because you have more time on your hands than you know what to do with, you are the very one the world needs, with your youth and your energy and your industrious spirit . . . [Don't] puzzle your brain over 'knit one, skip one, purl one, drop one.' Drop them all! That's best!"

Haryot Cahoon, quoted in Anne Macdonald's No Idle Hands: The Social History of American Knitting, p. 181.

The "Antis" or Anti-Suffragists were quick to characterize their opponents as "a sisterhood of cranks who wear grey woolen underwear and number seven shoes and whose skirt and waist don't meet in the back" (Macdonald, p. 178). Knitting wasn't drudgery--it was magic for the Antis, "mysteriously 'feminine,' a bit of sorcery beyond the mere ken of males" (p. 182). The battle ended with a real war--World War I, where once again every woman, and yes, even man and child, picked up their pointed sticks to "Knit For Sammy" and save the world, or at least a lot of American feet. Even the "Rocky Mountain Knitter Boys" of Mapleton, Colorado stopped throwing spitballs for a while and declared "Knitting's the best thing ever to steady your nerves" (p. 235).

We are glad to say goodbye to corsets, but we are grateful to the Suffragists for our rights and to the Anti-Suffragists who kept the magic of knitting alive--we'll take our rights with our knitting, thank you. We want the freedom to do what we want--whether that's knitting or making Michele Lee Bernstein's fabulous Lemon Orzo Pasta Salad, or something else. We say, do what you want! That's best!