"Get Back to your Knitting" McKay to McDonough

[V. Kid]

So apparently Peter McKay said this to Alexa McDonough. Well, I tell you one thing, it would be really nice to give him some time to knit with his rented dog in that potato patch. Meaning, send him back to Central Nova, not Ottawa. I mean seriously if this is the moderate voice in the Conservative Party, holy-moly.

http://www.cbc.ca/ns/story/ns-mackay-mcdonough20060120.html

He has claimed this is a common saying, I've never heard of it, then again I'm not from Nova Scotia. All in all though, this is a riding where the NDP finished second, with a candidate named Alexis MacDonald intrestingly enough.

http://www.alexisndp.ca/home.htm

[daleo]

1. I have heard the phrase "stick to your knitting"

In MBA language it would be rephrased as "maintain your focus on core competencies". So, I don't find it necessarily sexist that he used the phrase, but it wasn't the smartest choice of words in the circumstances.

[iverglas]

3. I agree ... kinda

I have heard the expression in non-sex-specific contexts, I think, so I'm not persuaded that saying it to a woman is always different from saying it to a man.

However ... the expression itself is kinda sexist. Kinda like saying "throws like a girl". Knitting is a very woman-specific activity, and the implication of the expression is that it's the only thing that some people are fit for, and that it's what those people should be doing rather than the big important things they're trying to do, and that tends to be something that gets said to women.

We could say of Peter McKay that him telling someone else to stick to her core competencies is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.

http://www.samueljohnson.com/dogwalk.html
"I told him I had been that morning at a meeting of the people called Quakers, where I had heard a woman preach. Johnson: "Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all."
Boswell: Life

[Spazito]

2. I find this sexist, there is no other way to interpret it given

'knitting' is accepted as a woman's activity as opposed to a male activity. It is no surprise, though, because his party is a sexist party.

[V. Kid]

4. Apparently it's an atlantic saying....

...anyways if anyone cares, while the media was spinning how much of a solid result Peter McKay recieved, he actually only won by 8 points or just over 3,000 votes.

http://www.cbc.ca/canadavotes/riding/013/

[Monkeybumper]

5. British expressions

Mind your knitting , Mind your Ps and Q's , I will knock you up in the morning .
The last means to wake you up .
Being British on my mothers side I heard all of these and others from my grandmother as a child . Since I am a male i find it funny that anyone would take any of these comments as sexist .

[V. Kid]

6. Oh, well, I live on the other side of the continent

But I don't know how being a male would make it funny that anyone would take these comments as sexist, but to each his own...I geuss?

[Pierre Trudeau]

7. would it have been OK...

... if she'd said it about him?

Alexa: "Peter MacKay should stick to his knitting."

Hm, has a nice ring to it. hee hee...

Alexa: "Peter MacKay throws like a girl."

Peter: "Alexa McDonough wears army boots."

aahh, politics is no fun anymore. Anyone remember John Crosbie serenading Sheila Copps, was it?

:P