(One of the interesting things about starting on this is explicitly realising that I think of my childhood in fairly well-defined eras
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The female fibre arts was, I think, harder for my mother to deal with. Her mother had been an expert, producing exquisite hand-embroidered tablecloths with matching monogrammed napkins. My mother had had to learn those skills as right and proper for a girl to do, symbolising all those feminine virtues of quietly producing time-consuming, overlooked masterpieces. She didn't like it, she had no particular aptitude, I suspect there was quite some friction between her mother and her over it.
My mother was puzzled at my (much later) interest in fiber arts. I think the puzzlement was also somewhat gender related. Which was interesting because while I was growing up I always thought of her as the person who pressured me to be feminine. But looking back on it, really all she did was pressure me to dress "appropriately," which meant dresses and skirts and other items of female clothing, which I have always hated. Her own clothing style has always been tailored, but she doesn't have very many traditionally feminine interests at all.
Re: Genderhuh? Part two: Textiles.pir_anhaMarch 5 2005, 07:23:56 UTC
fabric is an as-good-as two dimensional euclidean substance, but to turn it into clothes, you have to make it approximate non-euclidean surfaces, both spherical and hyperbolic, usually in the one garment.
that is so very cool. in more than one way -- that you saw this back then already, and that your parents had left you sufficient freedom from being molded into a girly mindset so you could experience this.
it took me half a lifetime to get to that point. it's an extremely cool place to be.
Re: Genderhuh? Part two: Textiles.aquaeriMarch 7 2005, 10:52:47 UTC
I don't think I saw it in that way at that time. Mind you, I didn't recognise a lot of the things I was doing as mathematical - for example, I deduced that there was a fixed relationship between the diameter and circumference of a circle when I was about seven years old, but it didn't occur to me that it was maths, or something that might have interested anyone else in the past, and be well-studied.
But I think it was important that I could be free to enjoy what I enjoyed about textiles, and that by the time I learnt about non-euclidean geometry I could recognise the connection, and also that there might be some gender bias.
Non-euclidean geometry tends to be presented as weird, counter-intuitive, and harder than "rigid" geometry. I suspect it's quite likely that "textile geometry" is harder than "blocks geometry" for people (typically male) brought up with blocks and taught to ignore textiles. But I'm not convinced it's intrisically harder, and because of culture and gender stuff, it's impossible to determine at least at the
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My mother was puzzled at my (much later) interest in fiber arts. I think the puzzlement was also somewhat gender related. Which was interesting because while I was growing up I always thought of her as the person who pressured me to be feminine. But looking back on it, really all she did was pressure me to dress "appropriately," which meant dresses and skirts and other items of female clothing, which I have always hated. Her own clothing style has always been tailored, but she doesn't have very many traditionally feminine interests at all.
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that is so very cool. in more than one way -- that you saw this back then already, and that your parents had left you sufficient freedom from being molded into a girly mindset so you could experience this.
it took me half a lifetime to get to that point. it's an extremely cool place to be.
Reply
But I think it was important that I could be free to enjoy what I enjoyed about textiles, and that by the time I learnt about non-euclidean geometry I could recognise the connection, and also that there might be some gender bias.
Non-euclidean geometry tends to be presented as weird, counter-intuitive, and harder than "rigid" geometry. I suspect it's quite likely that "textile geometry" is harder than "blocks geometry" for people (typically male) brought up with blocks and taught to ignore textiles. But I'm not convinced it's intrisically harder, and because of culture and gender stuff, it's impossible to determine at least at the
Reply
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