Discover Top Posts Tagged with #sci show

AITA: Is Sci Show the AH for the knitting episode?

So, yadda yadda, because you're not going to read my profile. I have a BA in anthropology concentrated in systems, which includes gender, sexuality, race etc. I have a love of watching documentaries. I'm NB. And unlike a lot of people I'm really, really a tart when it comes to accuracy. I'm also pretty nerdy overall. BTW, coming from a family of scientists doesn't make you a scientist. lol I'm not pulling a Trump. Just like being a biologist doesn't make you a physicist. I'm also a general crafter... I've done knitting, crocheting, clothing design, etc. Much of it is on this blog. I also create knitting patterns for myself on the fly.

I have watched Sci Show episodes before and was following them since the beginning until... they fucked up on the trans episode and the autistic episode. And I stick to the GNC and ND solidarity. They *didn't* correct or apologize for those episodes and those were far more damaging. I also quit after some of their anthropology videos... which irked me.

I get zero profit from doing this unlike established Youtubers who can rage.

That said, this will include the following sections:

The original typed out script

The edited script

Why both sides were wrong.

So my ruling for this is ESH. And I'll break down why.

Ruling: ESH

Name of episode: Physicists Don’t Understand Why Knitting Works

Writer: Samia Bouzid (female)

Script Editor: Amy Peterson (female)

The title card at the end breaks down the majority are actually female, not male. Not sure of the gender assignments and I don't want to be the AH that assumes based solely off of names. NBs often have super gendered names.

Episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTLvD6-X8WQ

You can copy-paste it, I'm not going to encourage chasing.

Script (I hand typed it, I'm sorry for any typos):

One of the oldest knit objects in the world is a sock. It's about 800 years old.

It was a simple thing—a pattern of knots in a shape of a cylinder with a end toward the heel. But it was also the start of something revolutionary. A technology that could take a simple string and transform it into a useful 3D object. Now, perhaps knitting doesn't fill you with excitement. I get this. But, you know who is excited about knitting? Physicists! Because by decoding the pattern of stitches that create different shapes. They can figure out how to knit all kinds of complex 3D fabrics. Not talking about fancy toe socks. They are designing fabrics that could transform medical bandages soundproofing materials, and a whole lot more. And they sent us some so stick around for that.

[Intro]

In the 800 years since that sock was made, knitting has spread everywhere.

In fact, you're probably wearing a knit fabric right now. [Including a dress shirt, which is woven.] T-Shirts, sweaters, socks, underwear…basically anything made from a stretchy fabric is probably knitted.

And making these fabrics is simple, at least in theory.

All you do is create loops in a piece of string and pull one loop through the next, one row at a time.

You can either pull the loop from back to the front, to create a little V-shape, which is the knit stitch, or front to back to make a little bump, which is called a purl stitch. Knit and pul are the two basic stitches that make up the vast majority of all knitting. And you can mix and match the two of them to create all kinds of fun fabrics.

It's actually a little programming, but with yarn.

You have two kinds of inputs and you can combine them in an endless number of ways to make fabrics that look and behave totally differently.

Certain pattern of stitches naturally like to curve in specific ways and they do this consistently.

For instance, if you make anything with all knit stitches on its front side, [Shows fabric with all purl stitches] called stockinette stitch, the top and bottom will curl toward you, while the sides will curl away.

But even though centuries of knitters figured out how to make all sorts of patterns through trial and error, how it all works was mostly a mystery. I mean, why do certain patterns of knits and puls create folds, zigzags, or rolls?

The answer, of course lies in physics.

Researchers have figured out that the way a fabric naturally curves has to do with sort of "force field" created with all the knots in it.

Now, normally we think of force fields in the context of things like gravity, or magnets. Like, here, all these iron filings show you the shape of the magenet's force field—essentially, the area where the magnet's force can be felt.

And in a way, knitted yarn creates its own sort of force field.

This happens because wherever two piece of yarn cross each other, each one wants to be in the same spot, but they cannot be {misses out on tension?} so one strand gets pushed sown while the other gets pushed up. And each section of the yarn naturally resists being bent and stretched around the other.

So the strand that's being pushed down reacts with a small upward force, and the strand that's being pushed up creates a downward force. Ultimately, the yarn settles into the position where it's under the least amount of tension. In other words, it relaxes into the lowest possible energy configuration, just like a ball coming to rest at the bottom of a driveway.

That's why once you have made your stitches, you can stretch the fabric however you want, but the tension in the fabric will generally pull it back into its original shape. And usually, that original shape is not perfectly flat.

As you knit together patterns of knit and purl stitches, you create a field of different forces that really sculpt the fabric into different shapes. For instance, you've probably seen clothes with ridges like this, especially around the wrists or neckline. This is called ribbing, and it's made with alternating columns of knit and purl stitches, which curl in opposite directions. Ribbing is best for parts of a garment that need to be really stretchy but also come back to their original shape, which is why it's the perfect thing for necklines and sleeve cuffs. So manipulating the order of stitches and the force fields they generate is part of how you get a specific property in a garment.

But knit patterns get much more complex than that. All of these fabrics with their ridges and zigzags and bubbles, {Bubbles are created with yarn overs and other types of stitches.} were made out of some combination of knit and purl stitches. Now for centuries, knitting was more of an art than a science. But then… the physicists showed up.

In a 2025 study, a team of them, based in Philadelphia wanted to understand how a certain knitted pattern would translate into a shape. To do that, they needed to tease apart the effects of two factors: how much the fabric stretches and how much it bends. There;s a little bit of tug-of-war here, because that force field created by all the knots makes the fabric want to curve to reduce tension… but soon as a fabric curves, it also begins to stretch, which creates tension.

In its natural state, a fabric is balancing out these two sources of tension so that overall it's as relaxed as possible. Logical enough—but these researchers needed a way to model all of this. To do that, they turned to a theory that engineers use to understand how thin, curved strutures, like bridges and submarines will react to the forces exerted on them.

It's called the theory of thin shells. Now, that might seem like a reach, but it turned out to be pretty useful. They used the theory to creat a computer model that would predict how different knit patterns will behave, based on the different forces acting on them. And using this model, they were able to map out a bunch of different stitch samples that eould create all sorts of weird, intricate shapes. [Cable knit scarf] And here is a sample of some of those knit stitches. You see, like, this here. Super skinny and then you can stretch it out. That's very cool. There's like a wavy one here. This one is… I don't know. I don't know. I can't believe it's just knitting. It looks like there's a stitch in here, but there's not. If you pull it tight, it's just knits and purls.

The surprising thing is that the bends in the fabric don't always happen along the lines where you switch from knit stitches to purl. So it's actually really hard to predict instinctively what a certain stitch pattern will end up looking like, but this model can do that.

Now that's cool and all, but you might not want to make a sweater out of these patterns, and that's okay because scientists have much bigger plans. We've been good at sweaters for a while. Honestly, what are we gonna do there? They're already great. But by programming knitted fabrics to have specific properties, you can design sheets of material that can do basically whatever you want.

One potential property of fabric that researchers are especially interested in is self-folding–a propert of fabric that naturally forms ridges or creases. Now , sel-folding isn't necessarily very complex. Ribbing is actually a kind of self-folding. The columns of alternating knits and purls essentially make your sweater cuff fold back on itself once it's over your hand.

But self-folding can do a whole lot more than keep you cozy. One type of self-folding is what's called an auxetic fabric: When it expands in one direction, it also expands in the perpendicular direction… kind of like these toy balls. This happens because when you pull the fabric in one direction, you're not really stretching the fabric. you're unfolding it, almost like opening up opening up those little fortune teller paper things we had in school.

The useful thing about auxetic fabric is that different parts of it can also stretch different amounts, so if you put it around something with an irregular shape… like a person or any other item, it tends to be really form-fitting. So it could be used to make nicely fitting clothes, but it could also be used as packaging, to protect oddly shaped objects from getting damaged. And auxetic fabrics have another big advantage that has to do with the way they absorb energy.

See when you squeeze any regular material, the part you squeeze gets thinner, and the sides bulge. Just think of what a pillow does when you plop your head onto it. Auxetic fabrics do the opposite; when you squeeze and auxetic fabric, there is no bulging out the sides. Instead, the fabric actually scrunches up in all directions.

So the part you're pressing on gets extra dense instead of thinning out. This makes auxetic fabrics really good at absorbing energy. Whenever something compresses the fabric, there's just more material at the point of impact to help absorb that energy. That has all sorts of useful applications.

I mean, to go back to the idea of using it as packaging material—something that bunches up when it's compressed is basically reactive bubble-wrap. And researchers have also found that auxetic fabrics are really effective in soundproofing. Because soundproofing materials work is by absorbing lots of invisible impacts from sound waves. Researchers have already tested out some different knit patterns to figure out what designs and materials work well for keeping the noise down. They haven't made it into the real world yet, but they could one day replace some of the foam panels we use in this studio today. Auxetic fabrics aren't the only knit fabrics scientists are interested in, though. Some other researchers are eyeing this technology from the field of wearable electronics. Wearable electronics can be anything from an Apple watch to a form fitting shirt that picks up information about your body in real time. The ones that are integrated into clothing need to be able to stretch and bend in really precise ways, and simple knit patterns could help engineers level up these designs.

So, soon, knitted materials might not just be keeping us warm, but also protecting packages, absorbing noise, and helping doctors monitor their patients' bodies. And this all goes to show that modern science isn't the only way of developing sophisticated technology. Knitting evolved purely through intuition and trial and error but those knit patterns emerged from generations of knitters tipped off scientists that there might be something useful here. In the end, we have ancient skills and modern science working together to create something that neither could have done alone.

References cited in the description: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vTVpiHggYyOqIv0Ln8ji54X5iLt4vjdtoUIDX513GpQOeCDe6P2hatcj7CtWjrb30H-4wlf514dGkjS/pub

Sources (Not the images sources):

Note, that they should put them in order of when they appear in the script.

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1075050

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2416536122

https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/56019

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Alenka-Pavko-Cuden/publication/278410260_Foldable_weft_knitted_structures_with_auxetic_potential/links/5580778708ae47061e5f31a5/Foldable-weft-knitted-structures-with-auxetic-potential.pdf

https://journals.aps.org/prx/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevX.8.021075

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00405175221099670

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-46498-z.pdf

https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/penn-sas-kamien-mechanics-knitting

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1243/PIME_PROC_1988_202_020_02

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09243046.2022.2080992#d1e131

Edited Script:

Unlike the Youtubers, I did bother to look at Sci Show's references and then hunted down additional references to back up my own claims, because if you haven't learned, I'm really a stickler for making sure my assertions are correct when correcting others.

So using these resources, I'm going to not only edit the original script to make it less rage baity, but also try my best to fit it into the 10:18 timeslot.

This is purely developmental edits and some edits I have to make for time. I'm also trying to do the edits in the Sci Show style. ***

One of the oldest knit objects in the world is a sock. It's about 800 years old.

It was a simple thing—a pattern of knots in a shape of a cylinder with a end toward the heel. [It was a yarn in a pattern of loops to create a cylinder with a bend in the heel to create the toe.] {I found the original sentence sounded like word salad the first time I heard it.} But it was also the start of something revolutionary. A technology that could take a simple string transform it into a useful 3D object. [Not only a way to keep someone warm, but also a gateway to other useful technologies.] Now, perhaps knitting doesn't fill you with excitement. I get this. But, you know who is excited about knitting? Physicists! Because by decoding the pattern of stitches that create different shapes. They can Maybe you don't knit, but this old technology has interested physicists leading them to figure out how to knit all kinds of complex 3D fabrics. Not only turning a heel on a sock!Not talking about fancy toe socks. They are designing fabrics that could transform medical bandages, soundproofing materials, and a whole lot more. And they sent us some so stick around for that.

{Note this is shorter than their original}

[Intro music and title card.]

In the 800 years since that sock was made in Egypt, knitting has spread everywhere. [There were alt images and even a pattern.]

In fact, you're probably wearing a knit fabric right now. [Including a dress shirt, which is woven.]{Change image to a t-shirt. The staff must have one they ca shoot... Why use a stock image when you can use your own photography skills and pay nothing?} T-Shirts, sweaters, socks, underwear…basically anything made from a stretchy fabric is probably knitted. [This is untrue since fabric is also cut on the bias stretches.]

And making these fabrics is simple, at least in theory.

All you do is create loops in a piece of string and pull one loop through the next, one row at a time.

You can either pull the loop from back to the front, to create a little V-shape, which is the knit stitch, or front to back to make a little bump, which is called a purl stitch. Knit and purl are the two basic stitches that make up the vast majority of all knitting. And you can mix and match the two of them to create all kinds of fun fabrics.

It's actually a little programming, but with yarn.

{This can be simplified by not burying the lead.}

(Knitting is programming, but with yarn. There are two basic modes. A knit stitch where the loop is pulled back to front. It appears as a V. And a purl stitch, which is the reverse of a knit stitch, which makes a n-shaped bump. While there are other kinds of stitches, these two basic inputs make the vast majority of basic knitting.)

You have two kinds of inputs and you can combine them in an endless number of ways to make fabrics that look and behave totally differently.

Certain pattern of stitches naturally like to curve in specific ways and they do this consistently.

For instance, if you make anything with all knit stitches on its front side, [Shows fabric with all purl stitches] called stockinette stitch, the top and bottom will curl toward you, while the sides will curl away.

[These two stitches curl in specific ways. For example, stockinette [Show real stockinette] is made up of all knit stitches. The top and bottom will curl toward you, while the sides will curl away.]

But even though centuries of knitters figured out how to make all sorts of patterns through trial and error, how it all works was mostly a mystery. I mean, why do certain patterns of knits and purls create folds, zigzags, or rolls?

[But even though centuries of knitters figured out how to make all sorts of patterns through arrays of stitches, the physics wasn't well understood.]

The answer, of course lies in physics.

Researchers have figured out that the way a fabric naturally curves has to do with sort of "force field" created with all the knots in it.

Now, normally we think of force fields in the context of things like gravity, or magnets. Like, here, all these iron filings show you the shape of the magnet's force field—essentially, the area where the magnet's force can be felt.

And in a way, knitted yarn creates its own sort of force field.

{The problem with this section is that none of their sources back up this "force field" idea. And it makes it murky at best, making the clarity lower. I'm rewriting it with the science paper found here: https://journals.aps.org/prx/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevX.8.021075}

[A knit stitch follows a dictated path which interlocks it with the previous and subsequent rows. Because they are loops, they can slide freely side to side, allowing the stitches to come back to the previous shape. The stockinette stitch has a reliable curve due to friction on the yarn. Purl stitches create an opposite curve, which combined create a flat fabric.]

This happens because wherever two piece of yarn cross each other, each one wants to be in the same spot, but they cannot be {misses out on tension?} so one strand gets pushed sown while the other gets pushed up. And each section of the yarn naturally resists being bent and stretched around the other.

So the strand that's being pushed down reacts with a small upward force, and the strand that's being pushed up creates a downward force. Ultimately, the yarn settles into the position where it's under the least amount of tension. In other words, it relaxes into the lowest possible energy configuration, just like a ball coming to rest at the bottom of a driveway.

That's why once you have made your stitches, you can stretch the fabric however you want, but the tension in the fabric will generally pull it back into its original shape. And usually, that original shape is not perfectly flat.

[This, again, isn't what their source says. Here:

"A knit is made of a single yarn that follows a complex constrained path. As the yarn runs along a given row, it alternatively intertwines with the top and bottom adjacent rows. To derive the morphological and mechanical properties of the whole fabric, we do not base our model on the yarn itself but rather on the periodic geometry of the knit. The fabric can be seen as a network of repetitive unit cells characterized by the yarn self-crossing topology. The stockinette pattern shows the advantage of having a single topology such that each stitch can be associated to a unit cell (see Fig. ). We describe each cell by two vectors, →𝑐 and →𝑤, whose orientations prescribe the course and wale directions, while their norms 𝑐 =∥→𝑐∥ and 𝑤 =∥→𝑤∥ impose the local dimensions of the cell. Notice that the yarn is not attached to these topological units and is allowed to slide from one stitch to another.

We can now write the constraints on the fabric that account for the permanence of the stitch topology. Indeed, whatever deformation we impose on the fabric, the crossing points cannot interchange. Therefore, the stitch grid cannot lose or exchange cells, and every stitch always keeps the same neighbors."

Laymen's terms: The reason it's stretchy is because the points of contact can shift easily since it's a series of loops, meaning that the string can easily shift on itself and then can shift back just as easily. With a woven fabric, the crossing points are more fixed, and thus the string or yarn cannot shift easily. The reason it stretches back in a knit is because the length of the yarn, overall is fixed. ]

As you knit together patterns of knit and purl stitches, you create a field of different forces that really sculpt the fabric into different shapes. For instance, you've probably seen clothes with ridges like this, especially around the wrists or neckline. This is called ribbing, and it's made with alternating columns of knit and purl stitches, which curl in opposite directions creating a flatter fabric, but also structure. Ribbing is best for parts of a garment that need to be really stretchy but also come back to their original shape, which is why it's the perfect thing for necklines and sleeve cuffs. So manipulating the order of stitches and the force fields they generate is part of how you get a specific property in a garment.

But knit patterns get much more complex than that. All of these fabrics with their ridges and zigzags and bubbles, {Bubbles are created with yarn overs and other types of stitches.} were made out of some combination of knit and purl [a different array of arranging these loops.] stitches. Now for centuries, knitting was more of an art than a science. But then… the physicists showed up. Such crafts were ignored by physicists as only good for other fields of science. However that's changed.

In a 2025 study, a team of them, based in Philadelphia [Referring to this reference: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1075050] wanted to understand how a certain knitted pattern would translate into a shape [a 3D folded shape] {The source says: "As a method of additive manufacturing, it holds promise for a class of lightweight, ultrastrong materials. Here, we present a purely geometric model to predict the three-dimensional self-folding of knitted fabrics made only of the two traditional stitches, knit and purl."}. To do that, they needed to tease apart the effects of two factors: how much the fabric stretches and how much it bends. There's a little bit of tug-of-war here, because that force field created by all the knots makes the fabric want to curve to reduce tension… but soon as a fabric curves, it also begins to stretch, which creates tension. Given consistent tension on the yarn, why the fabric stretches and how the fabric folds.

In its natural state, a fabric is balancing out these two sources of tension so that overall it's as relaxed as possible. Logical enough—but these researchers needed a way to model all of this. To do that, they turned to a theory that engineers use to understand how thin, curved structures, like bridges and submarines will react to the forces exerted on them. {Bury the lead}

To understand how this works, physicists turned to the theory of thin shells. This model created by August Föppl and Theodore von Kármán, which is currently used for submarines and calculating cell walls. They created a computer model and this formula to predict how the knit pattern could behave based on the forces acting on them. Here is a sample of some of those stitches.

It's called the theory of thin shells. Now, that might seem like a reach, but it turned out to be pretty useful. They used the theory to create a computer model that would predict how different knit patterns will behave, based on the different forces acting on them. And using this model, they were able to map out a bunch of different stitch samples that would create all sorts of weird, intricate shapes. [Cable knit scarf] And here is a sample of some of those knit stitches. You see, like, this here. Super skinny and then you can stretch it out. That's very cool. There's like a wavy one here. This one is… I don't know. I don't know. I can't believe it's just knitting. It looks like there's a stitch in here, but there's not. If you pull it tight, it's just knits and purls.

The surprising thing is that the bends in the fabric don't always happen along the lines where you switch from knit stitches to purl. So it's actually really hard to predict instinctively what a certain stitch pattern will end up looking like, but this model can do that.

Now that's cool and all, but you might not want to make a sweater out of these patterns, and that's okay because scientists have much bigger plans. We've been good at sweaters for a while. Honestly, what are we gonna do there? They're already great. [Sweaters are awesome at keeping you warm, but scientists are looking to other applications.] But bBy programming knitted fabrics to have specific properties, you can design sheets of material that can do basically whatever you want.

One potential property of fabric that researchers are especially interested in is self-folding–a property of fabric that naturally forms ridges or creases, much like origami. [What the paper calls it] Now , self-folding isn't necessarily very complex. Ribbing is actually a kind of self-folding. The columns of alternating knits and purls essentially make your sweater cuff fold back on itself once it's over your hand.

One type of self-folding is what's called an auxetic fabric: When it expands in one direction, it also expands in the perpendicular direction… kind of like these toy balls. One study by Alenka Pavko-Čuden, from the university of University of Ljubljana and Darja Rant Professor of Civil Engineering Institute of Slovenia studied one kind of self-folding fabric called auxetic fabric. Auxetic fabrics have low density, but can hinge to flex and stretch. This happens because when you pull the fabric in one direction, you're not really stretching the fabric. you're unfolding it, almost like opening up opening up those little fortune teller paper things we had in school. (This is mixing up references and screwing the meaning.)

The useful thing about auxetic fabric is that different parts of it can also stretch different amounts, so if you put it around something with an irregular shape… like a person or any other item, it tends to be really form-fitting. So it could be used to make nicely fitting clothes, but it could also be used as packaging, to protect oddly shaped objects from getting damaged. And auxetic fabrics have another big advantage that has to do with the way they absorb energy.

See when you squeeze any regular material, the part you squeeze gets thinner, and the sides bulge. Just think of what a pillow does when you plop your head onto it. Auxetic fabrics do the opposite; when you squeeze and auxetic fabric, there is no bulging out the sides. Instead, the fabric actually scrunches up in all directions.

So the part you're pressing on gets extra dense instead of thinning out. This makes auxetic fabrics really good at absorbing energy. Whenever something compresses the fabric, there's just more material at the point of impact to help absorb that energy. That has all sorts of useful applications.

I mean, t[T]o go back to the idea of using it as packaging material—something that bunches up when it's compressed is basically reactive bubble-wrap. And researchers have also found that auxetic fabrics are really effective in soundproofing. Because soundproofing materials work is by absorbing lots of invisible impacts from sound waves. Researchers have already tested out some different knit patterns to figure out what designs and materials work well for keeping the noise down. They haven't made it into the real world yet, but they could one day replace some of the foam panels we use in this studio today.

Auxetic fabrics aren't the only knit fabrics scientists are interested in, though. Some other researchers [They are also] are eyeing this technology from the field of wearable electronics. Wearable electronics can be anything from an Apple watch to a form fitting shirt that picks up information about your body in real time. The ones that are integrated into clothing need to be able to stretch and bend in really precise ways, and simple knit patterns could help engineers level up these designs. [They are pulling from here: Samuel Poincloux1,*, Mokhtar Adda-Bedia2, and Frédéric Lechenault1]

So, soon, knitted materials might not just be keeping us warm, but also protecting packages, absorbing noise, and helping doctors monitor their patients' bodies. And this all goes to show that modern science isn't the only way of developing sophisticated advanced technology. Knitting evolved purely through intuition and trial and error but those knit patterns emerged from generations of knitters tipped off scientists that there might be something useful here. [Knitting might have evolved to show off spiffy threads and keep us warm, but as science has discovered, those knitters were also clever mathematicians and physicists, even if they didn't know it yet.] In the end, we have ancient skills and modern science working together to create something that neither could have done alone. [Together, ancient skills and modern science can work together to create more than that knitter of that sock initially dreamed could be possible.] {Sci Show likes circular endings, so I wrote one.}

Why is it ESH?

The other side, the knitters/scientists that commented, felt more like rage baiting in some cases without checking if the voracity of what they said was true before they tried to go into Sci Show. Yes, Sci-show was wrong, but they didn't check if the scriptwriters were female or not... didn't check their own facts and this made the whole thing much messier. I mean even wikipedia contradicts some of these commenters.

However, given the amount of errors on Sci Show's side, I can't let them off the hook on this either.

So let's go over some of the false claims on the other side with references.

ALL Knitting for ALL of time was a MAJORITY of women in all subcrafts.

The logic here goes something like this...

ALL knitting was done in Europe. And Europe was ALWAYS misogynistic where men did the farming and "hard muscular work" while the women did fiber crafts. And therefore, the majority of the knitting HAS TO BE DONE BY WOMEN. (BTW, Contemporary Ren fair is not history.)

Have I not gone over this repeatedly before? This is 100% a Victorian notion. And I tried to correct people but THEY COULD NOT LET IT GO.

FUCK YOU FOR BEING SEXIST AGAINST YOURSELVES and doing ZERO RESEARCH.

Let's get into the weeds of the nuances here.

Up until the 19th century EVERYONE was expected to know how to knit a sock in the lower classes.

Even Wikipedia supports this with *gasp* a man tending to his flock, in a field, knitting a sock.

1855, man knitting sock. Source Wikipedia.

http://www.nottsheritagegateway.org.uk/people/frameworkknitters.htm

Also states, men and women were expected to know how to knit.

Now, let's get to the nuances.

There were certain *types* of knitting that were predominantly done by women. Not socks, BTW, but more along the line of Fair Isle Fisherman's sweaters and Fisherman's cardigans which are known for cabling. (Ireland)

Because historians know that men and women both knit, and the historical record doesn't state which and who knit *more* we cannot definitively state who did and did not knit the earliest found garments.

Recreated socks are here: https://dar-urtatim.palazzo-giordano.org/Urtatim/Knitting/1-2.AllahStockings/EgyptKnit2.html https://opuselenae.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Egyptian-Stockings.pdf https://medievalknitting.commons.bgc.bard.edu/2023/03/23/history-of-this-sock/

Historians in all stated cases are very careful to not gender to maker of these items or to make definitive assumptions like the early Victorians were.

On the other hand, there were a bunch of women that didn't realize that there was a HUGE gender shift and assumed that things like black smithing, embroidery, etc, despite the roles from the guilds showing otherwise, were heavily gendered, which they'd been disabused of if they had even bothered to look up the London Guild system, or any of the other guild systems. Brainwashed by retconned history is something.

The only fiber art that was dominantly by women in history as far as I can find, is spinning. Mostly drop spinning, since real men used the spinning wheel if they spun (notice the sarcasm of this).

BTW, laundry, mostly women. (Ruth Goodman and Tony Robinson.)

Textiles, sewing, weaving, knitting, embroidery were done by men and women and the guild roles as far as I can find support this. The downturn from this and the rewriting of history comes later in history as well as your starched stiff gender roles.

You can find this in an old Tony Robinson documentary where he goes over the myths from Victorians and then also Ruth Goodman. They both cite primary sources. Of course the whole of History Hit on Youtube covers women's roles in actual, rather than Victorian imaginings of Medieval England. Women were doing things like making beer (ale wives) doing executions, running away from marriage matches to become nuns, reforming the Catholic Church to say God was love, metal smithing of all kinds, making clothes, etc. Things that are highly gendered now wasn't as gendered back then or even differently.

2. Scientists Shift and Stem and all of that. Historically men were Scientists...

The shift again, happened in the 1950's about Home Economics covered here:

This is where Sci Show made an error. They should have mentioned that several of the scientists they pulled from were women, and this is also where the mostly women reacting were off—they failed to understand that the studies they were citing were mostly women who were also scientists.

This makes it sticky because the wording from Sci Show made it terrible, and also the factual errors are rife from what I can find. So that does make them the AH.

BUT the commenters assuming forever and always that all knitters were ALWAYS dominated by women is pretty terrible, especially when the gender norms throughout history severely changed, so we aren't really sure 100% that by modern standards all of the men would call themselves men or all of the women would call themselves women. "Female" and "male" perhaps. And maybe I'm splitting threads or yarn here, but gender ID isn't simple, and I've covered that even in the 1800's to the 1900's it changed drastically. We don't even know if they'd call themselves GNC. And likewise gender roles, or division of labor has drastically changed over time as the subsistence has also changed.

I'm not sure Henry VIIIth would be A-OK without showing his calves off or being told he couldn't hunt.

Seriously, if the historical record doesn't support it and we don't know the gender of the knitters, and then you are trying to impose 2025 gender roles on some medieval peasant, it doesn't work well.

We've already debunked the hunting and gathering myth, so we need another repeat?

I'm just asking for an acknowledgement of this fact. How can you say "Historically Scientists have been men" with a straight face when the majority of Paleontology wouldn't exist without women? Mary Anning doesn't exist to you?

LEARN SOME FUCKING HISTORY OF GENDER.

3. The latent racism??? of some of the commenters?

The assumption that gender roles are the same everywhere and this is only about Europe irked me a lot.

Urrggghhhh... not only the only and forever, but totally forgetting that textiles and knitting and other fiber arts were in different locales than fucking Europe. Oh c'mon. Seriously, you're showing a sock with Islamic designs and won't even understand that the gender roles for the Islamic Empire were different from Victorian England? Egypt =/= Europe and assuming that the socks from a different time period were predominantly made by women is an error code.

how about

SHIT FACED IF WE KNOW WHO MADE THE SOCKS

in that time period.

I've complained before about the whole European imperialism towards gender, and this is one of those times. Because guess what fuckers, I actually went and studied up on Islamic gender for that time period. And it was far more equal than Europe during the same time period. Women were expected to read and write. They did science and math and held down jobs. Men and women in the Islamic empire made textiles according to records, which is why historians/archaeologists/anthropologists don't fucking know who made those socks. Literally, WE GOT NO CLUE.

We don't know if the sock was knit in a concentrated bazaar situation, because there were *gasp* Guilds in the Islamic empire too. It's not just a European thing (China, Korea and somewhat Japan. Japan is a bit shakier on explaining how it works). Parts of Africa where the Islamic Empire was also worked on guilds. I don't have space to explain Islamic guilds. Yes, established after the earliest sock, not after the fall of Cordoba, etc in Spain. But we still aren't sure of the system under which it was knit. Here are historians around an earlier set of garments with a Nålebinding sock.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzEwCE1vqlo

Again, notice they make sure to not gender the maker or wearer of the garments, because they don't know. And when we don't know in social sciences, we are trained to leave it blank. They talk possibilities, not certainties

So assuming that knitting, a technology that started in the Islamic empire, must be predominantly women is kinda being like well, folks ALL OF GENDER EVER WAS DONE LIKE VICTORIAN ENGLAND. And fuck no. There is evidence to the contrary for that.

This is what makes this ESH...

Yes, Sci Show should have accounted for the 1950's shift and the gendering, but the commenters also overshot it in the other direction and fucking missed out on some cool ass women in the process by erasing their history as invalid. It would have been the better argument to argue the craft has been currently preserved by women, and after the 1950's shift in science and STEM it is unfair to indicate it's not a STEM heavy activity.

Isn't history fun? You got to learn that women were always kick ass and that men, too, did so-called women's crafts until men were AHs when they called for women's domesticity. And that if you're world building you shouldn't imagine it like Victorian imaginings of Medieval England. (Because Eleanor Janega will rake you with stories of women and men who were different).

This is where cis people fuck up terribly. Because they want their gender reinforced by history, by all of culture everywhere, but neither history nor culture gives any fucks about such things in the first place. So it's easier for people to assume it always was this way. And this is a huge error. We can only extrapolate the contexts in which people lived and take a fuzzy best guess. Just like I can't say for certain that Audre Lorde might be NB, but her words make me speculate she might have been GNC.

Also, please research before you rage video. Just sayin'.

BTW, Historians should chase these knitters into actually studying knitting history.

Claiming a craft's history as inherently feminine or masculine doesn't really help gender equality that much. Stating that the current state of gender roles is ridiculous does help towards showing equality and lambasting the after 1950's division of labor and how Sci-Show played into it, would make a much better argument. And then stating that everyone should know fiber arts.

Here:

History of Knitting - Who Invented Knitting & we take a look at Knits through the ages - Knitting History & How knitting first began until n

4. Acknowledge the people that made the papers and wrote the show for Hank were predominantly female?

Writer: Samia Bouzid (female)

Script Editor: Amy Peterson (female)

Lauren Niu https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4536-4724, Geneviève Dion, and Randall D. Kamien

*** Geometric modeling of knitted fabrics

Multifunctional Foldable Knitted Structures: Fundamentals, Advances and Applications

Written By Alenka Pavko-Čuden and Darja Rant

*** FOLDABLE WEFT KNITTED STRUCTURES WITH AUXETIC POTENTIAL

Darja RANT, Alenka PAVKO-CUDEN

***

Samuel Poincloux1,*, Mokhtar Adda-Bedia2, and Frédéric Lechenault1

The statement "Until the men came along" really doesn't work when the people they cited were predominantly female, at least—again, not going to assume gender. (I did some quick googling, but I'm not sure who I found is exact, so I took a stab by name and picture.)

Yes, the assumption that science is better than art is insulting, and yes, again the after 1950's thing is wrong... but c'mon, did you check before you raged?

Conclusion:

All of this makes it ESH. Do better on both sides and read some history too. Sci Show should have cited a little history. It'll do you some good to break away from the 1950's gender mentalities and break the back of gender on both sides.

#sci show

Trending Tags

Recently Viewed Tags

#sci show