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This is what Grease Rag means to me.
My whole life I’ve been intimidated by certain things that boys are encouraged to play with at a young age. Fire, knives, rope… I’ve slowly worked on conquering these things. MY DAMN SELF. No one in my family taught me how to build a fire, no friend ever showed me knife skills, no one ever taught me any knots. Access to knowledge and experiences like camping are not something I ever really had and I am so proud of myself for being open to learning outside skills. I’ve learned so much through my own study, and inviting friends to share their skills with me. I feel powerful!
I have felt powerless when camping and the dude I was with told me I was tying something up wrong, or tried to teach me a knot and I was slow to get it, or acted like their gear was too precious for me to practice with. I have felt powerless when finding an overwhelming amount of information on the internet, almost exclusively by white men who condescend with language like “common sense,” implying you are dumb if you don’t know what someone definitely taught them.
I feel powerful with Grease Rag. I asked people to come over and skill share about rope. I admitted that I just googled stuff and have been studying the past few days, but have very little skills. Everyone was just as excited as I was to learn, and were completely unfazed in my gaps of knowledge and awkward teaching techniques. THIS MEANS SO MUCH TO ME.
The cult of expertise dictates we must be experts to be valid. To be enough. We can’t dabble, have questions, or screw up, or we aren’t “real.” Grease Rag has helped me tear down that expectation of perfection that has kept me from learning about rope (and so many other things) because of my fear of failure.
FUCK THE CIS PATRIARCHY. GREASE RAG FOREVER. FTW LIBERATION NOW.