The Spinning Jenny is sapphic, actually.
The story you’ve been told about the Spinning Jenny is a lie.
Years of queer erasure and the narratives of straight men have hidden the true lesbian love story that is the Spinning Jenny. While your history books tell you that it was a yarnspinning device invented by James Hargreaves, this is a lie. The true inventor of Jenny? Why, Jenny, of course.
Jenny may have pretended to be careless when she dropped a spinning wheel on its side, but she was actually a mechanical genius, enabling the eight-spindled invention that would revolutionize the cotton industry.
When it came time to recruit mill workers, Jenny had a curious request: women should be the ones to operate the machines. Why? Because it takes a woman's eye, she reasoned, to understand the mystical anatomy of the Spinning Jenny. Men could not be expected to find the pressing wire.
And so it was. Hundreds of mill girls came to work, coaxing the spindles around with a firm, gentle pressure. They’d run their hands along the threads, marvelling at the soft texture of the yarn, and slide those middle and index fingers between the folds of the finished fabric to ensure their impeccable quality.
Soon, a camaraderie grew between the mill girls. Some women, especially close, would run the same machines together, hand in hand as they watched the spindles undulate. They’d stare deeply into each others’ eyes as they worked and touch each others’ hair to practice handling rovings. So often, they’d go home and show each other the benefits of increased finger dexterity, taking their new salaries and bidding farewell to their husbands before moving in together.
Men, so fed up with the sapphic paradise the Spinning Jenny had created, were quick to try and replace it. First came the Spinning Mule, because homophobes rather have bestiality than queer love. Then came the Slubbing Billy, to erase the achievements of women.
And Jenny? Many claim she didn’t exist, that James Hargreaves had no wives or daughters with that name. They fail to consider that, perhaps, James was actually Jenny all along. As with Stonewall, there will always be trans women behind every revolution; The industrial one is no exception.