Jumping onto the scishow knitting fiasco (I say that as if I didn't just talk extensively about it on reddit already) as a knitter/crocheter AND a scientist whose proudest work was making nanofibers for tissue regeneration, I have a lot of beef with the misogynistic fabric (see what I did there) the video was cut out of.
My work on tissue regeneration is simply put, making teeny tinny super super thin fibers while simultaneously organizing them into what would somehow mimic the micro-environment in which skin, and , later on predominantly, joints are naturally in (aka your knees, elbow, shoulders, etc, but mostly knees) so that it promotes the skin to recover better from burns or joints to recover from various type of joint injury or arthritis.
My knowledge of how fabric was formed from loops/knots helped me greatly in predicting the outcome of my work so I was able to spend less time guessing. Heck, my knowledge in baking also helped me greatly in designing the research method.
These predominantly female hobbies gave me the tools to advance medicine and there's nothing frivolous about that. My grandma hobbies are what would, hopefully, one day help someone's aching grandma, and maybe even help her regain the ability to skip to her favorite local yarn store and I think that's beautiful.
