All things not being entirely equal

I'm taking a MayMester class on Gender and Women's Studies. Right now we're still back in the Women's Suffrage movement era learning about the struggle to get the vote, but today we watched a film called "Killing Me Softy 3" which shows a lot of magazine adverts on how women are sexualized to sell things. To go along with the film we had to bring in a magazine so we could analyze adverts ourselves.

With a choice between Torchwood Magazine and Knit.1, I went with Knit.1. (the Torchwood Mag only has ads for Lost Mag, and Supernatural Mag anyway...)

And after the film I had a chance to flip through Knit.1 with an idea of what we were looking for... And was actually really impressed. Especially since Vogue runs it, and after a movie worth of scrawny models half dressed, Knit.1 was really refreshing.

There's young ladies, old ladies, blonds, brunettes, a college girl in pj pants, some guy from SNL, a guy designer in a clothing warehouse/design shop, a guy in a tie, guys in hats; you get the picture. There's everyone.

And that world famous model pose, with the girl in a chair sprawled with her legs spread? That's actually a guy in this magazine. And it's more sensual than sexualized.

So, anyway, long story of analyzing magazines short, there's obviously guys in the knitting magazine. Modeling stuff. But they're also in there as designers or talking about themselves knitting. The guy from SNL knits. Two of the knitting blogs I like to here go to guy's blogs. Then there's this article. I know two guy knitters on IRC, and one of them is teaching me to spin.

So, we're in class learning about equality and objectification and rights and my female classmate leans over my shoulder to look at my knitting magazine and scoffs. And I'm like 'what' and she's like 'they're knitting'. In the sort of tone where you'd say 'they're eating. WITH THEIR FINGERS!'. And I'm like 'so?' and she says guys shouldn't knit, or guys don't knit, or something equally insane. Clearly they do. And she says she knows, because she saw a guy on campus knitting the other day and she laughed at him.

Part of me is like THERE'S A GUY KNITTER ON CAMPUS?! and the other part is like aren't we in equality class? Aren't we all equal? I forgot how men knitting is a sign of the apocalypse and madness... I know sexism goes both ways, but part of me really really wants to stand up for the rights of guy knitters. Not that John Brinegar really needs me to fight his fights for him, he's kinda big and grrr looking.