28/11/24 (It’s Black Friday!)

Okay so it’s Black Friday tomorrow? I think? I wouldn’t know, I’m not American…

Anyway, this post is just a short one, because I wanted to let you know I’ve deactivated all my books from Etsy. It’s my Black Friday offer to you all.

I’ve been selling stuff on Etsy for over a decade, on and off – it’s a website for selling handmade stuff, original designs, and vintage junk treasure. I mostly used to sell cute plastic laser-cut jewellery on it, and recently have used it to sell my self-published art books. Generally, business is slow, but it doesn’t cost a lot to run, and I personally didn’t have that problem where they were refusing to send people their earnings a while back… are they still doing that? Hmm. Maybe I should have done this sooner.

I’m aware that things on Instagram in the general crafting community can get a little… intense (look up #diversknitty for more), and it’s really easy to get sucked into spewing hatred around the internet when you’ve got the wrong end of the stick… but when I can pretty quickly find an original post from a designer sharing work that’s supporting or promoting Palestine, removed by Etsy because it’s “promoting / glorifying violence”, I’m convinced. Maybe I shouldn’t be so easily… and the items in question have apparently been reinstated but, to be honest, I’ve been looking for an excuse to leave Etsy for a while anyway. I just did a small search on Etsy and found stuff flying flags for both Palestine and Israel, and well, wow. I’m not sure which is more alarming – the pro-Israel t-shirts threatening gun violence and glorifying combat troops, or the barbie pink ladies tee with “Zionist” printed on it in the barbie font. I sincerely hope these listings are actually scams that are taking money off zionists and redirecting it to Palestine. Sure, there’s stuff on the pro-Palestine side that’s a bit on the nose too (the red hats with MAKE ISRAEL PALESTINE AGAIN on are real), although most of the items for sale in red, green, black and white seem to me to have a peaceful beauty common to many of them, and are using words like peace and freedom and hope. They are images of flowers and birds and woven fabric, soft, complicated things made by hand.
It might be easy to look at the pages of pro-Israel merch and the pages of pro-Palestine merch, and see that well, Etsy are allowing both, so they’re being neutral, right? but it’s also not hard to slide the filter up from behind your eyeballs and remember who’s committing genocide (it’s Israel) (sorry I just want to be really clear!). If Etsy’s systems are deactivating watermelon shaped badges, I don’t want anything to do with them anymore, and if Etsy are complicit in helping Israeli makers and designers to craft-wash and art-wash genocide, I really don’t want anything to do with them anymore.

So! time to make a terrible business decision and lose out on pre-Christmas sales? Like with a lot of my thoughts around Israel/Palestine and genocide generally, it’s complicated, but it’s also simple: I don’t want to be selling my work on a platform that’s allowing the promotion of the occupation of Palestine, so I won’t. If you’d like to buy a copy of one of my books, please get in touch on the contact me page of my website. Bye bye Etsy 👋

Jessie x

Links!
No links today I’ve got a busy day tomorrow and you know how to use the internet.

Actually! one link! two links! I’m part of a group of folk organising a fundraiser for Medical Aid for Palestinians – It’s in Hawick, Scottish Borders, on 14th December – we’ve got some wonderful musicians lined up, and you can get your tickets here. If you can’t make it, you can donate straight to MAP! ❤️