Faster and better

This never fails to happen at least once when I'm demo-ing either spinning or weaving. I'll be doing my thing and chatting and explaining it to people when a man comes up (it has only been men) and stands and watches thoughtfully for a few minutes. He then approaches to interact with me and says, "I could automate that." There is rarely any variation of how this happens. It caught me off guard at first, now I'm ready for it. My usual response is to ask, "Are those store bought clothes you're wearing?"

"Yes..."

"Well it looks as though someone beat you to it." I reply with a smile. 

The more this happens, the more annoyed I am by it. I have wondered at my emotional reaction. I know the men don't mean anything by it. They don't know that I have heard the same comment more times than I can remember. They are usually friendly and not mean spirited, but it has started to grate. I couldn't put my finger on why. 

I couldn't until today when I read this passage in one of my current books.

"She [Deborah Valona who is working on a large scale Armenian needle lace project in honor of the Armenian women lost in the genocide] recalled her grandmother showing her how to do the stitch in her grandparents' kitchen in Fresno, California, when Valona was eleven years old. Her grandfather, who was a mechanical engineer and graduate if MIT, walked behind them and very casually said, 'I could make a machine to do that faster and better." Valona was stopped in her tracks by his comment and recalled, 'I had a huge surge of rage at the incredible disregard for what my grandmother did and the disregard for the history of women's work and for his own mother and grandmother and the lineage that they brought from Armenian to the diaspora. That flamed me in a kind of way that created a sense of mission to challenge the hierarchies of value that exist in academia and the contemporary art world.'" (p. 131, With Her Own Hands: Women Weaving Their Stories by Nicole Nehrig)

It was the phrase, "the incredible disregard" that helped me understand my annoyance at the men's comments. By pointing out that what I was doing could be mechanized, it implied on a very deep level that what I was doing wasn't valuable; that the skill and artistry involved were of no matter. What did matter was a usable product made as easily as possible without regard to quality. My emotions were reacting to being made to feel irrelevant. 

Will I continue to demo? Yes. Will I continue to lightly point out that someone else has already created the industrial revolution? Yes. Will I add in a question about whether they can find value in creating something by hand? Possibly, depending on the person and the situation. But understanding why the comment bothers me allows me to navigate it in a more productive way.