Ravelry Ban

Ravelry Ban

Hey guys, I know a lot of you may not be crafty people, but please listen.

Ravelry, the largest online crafting community (of several million people), just banned all Trump support on it’s platform claiming that he is a white supremacist and all of his supporters must be the same.   Let’s start:  First off, Trump isn’t a white supremacist.  Thought I should get that out of the way.  

Secondly, you just banned the political opinion of HALF OF AMERICA.  You are saying that HALF OF THE COUNTRY are racist.  Even the ones that don’t happen to be white.  You are saying that anyone can say anything politically, except for the Trump supporters, who we say are second-class intellectual citizens based on a lie that they aren’t allowed to refute.

Thirdly, Oh Yeah!  If you complain about this, they will delete your comment.  You can’t protest, you can’t get mad, all disagreement is hate speech.  

Fourthly, Ravelry is a HUGE source of income to crafters!  It is where you buy and sell patterns, yarn, and other yarn crafting supplies.  Ravelry is also where crafting events are organized.  They are essentially saying that you can’t make income unless you agree with their false claim.  

Fifthly, this is a precedent for other sites.  After doing some research, ravelry followed in the footsteps of rpg.com, who did the same thing.  If we let Ravelry sweep people they disagree with to the side, and essentially gag a whole spectrum of viewpoints on a false claim, then where do they stop?  Other social media has tried to take down conservative viewpoints, and said the same vile things, calling people racist, bigoted, homophobic, and essentially sub-human, as if saying those things without evidence and shouting them louder when they are refuted makes you cozy and inclusive.  It’s a very us vs. them mentality, and I have to wonder if the people who make these rules are ever around people who disagree with them, or if they realized that people they knew did disagree with them would they turn them out in an instant or see common humanity? 

Again, I know this isn’t everyone’s thing, but if you could reblog or make your own post, I would be eternally grateful:  I am trying to use the hashtag notokayravelry to get things going.  Crazy knitter types can’t let injustice stand!