Though personally I would be inclined to err on the side of caution, because I’m pretty non-confrontational. I don’t have to be pissing too many people off before I question whether what I’m doing is worth it. And, as noted, the people complaining have to be members of the actual culture claiming injury.
And I’m mildly ironically amused by your free cat/dog example. My workplace allows people to bring their dogs to work. Many large dogs. I (apparently alone) have a phobia. But the company owner is the one who started it, so fuck me. So yeah, I can understand a minority being bothered by the action of a majority - and can even think they have a point!
(Unnecessary note: My dog/workplace problem is not an example of cultural appropriation.)
That’s the failure of your analogy, not mine. You were the one who introduced the use of another culture’s actual things
Yes, we are talking about people copying or imitating designs, practices, dress modes and other ill-defined cultural artifacts.
That isn’t what I’m saying. I’m saying that an actual physical item that belongs to someone is of a different category to an idea or a design or a practice.
No, there are some items that are very important to me. That importance is intrinsic to the item itself and not to a copy.
The great artworks of the world have had all that done to it and more. To the point that they are viewed as cliched and divorced from their original context. You know what? it does not diminish the power or meaning of the original at all.
kicked?you leap from the copying of an item or practice to actual physical harm. Do you not see how such incoherence harms your argument?
It is not “similar” at all. They are free to be bothered and offended and people are free to moderate whether they copy or not. As long as no-one is being oppressed or harmed and the copying is done within legal parameters then I suggest the benefit we get from such cross-pollination far outweighs any “offence” that people take.
Yes, yes, we get it. You’re taking the boring old “I’m such a badass that I’m incapable of comprehending how a person could be justifiably offended by anything other than having their own specific personal possessions stolen” argument. We’ve heard it before.
It’s a stupid argument.
The reason it’s stupid is that you don’t get to tell people when they’re allowed to be offended.
It’s really that simple.
I’m sorry to have confused you. Let me see if I can clarify this.
You don’t get to tell people when they’re allowed to be offended.
The perpetrator of an act doesn’t get to tell the people they’re doing it to whether they’re allowed to be bothered by it or not.
This holds whether the act is kicking, cultural appropriation, smashing the actual pieta, or setting people’s hair on fire.
I suggest that I have never heard of a single example of cultural appropriation where the culture in question has been offended about it that provided any benefit. At all. Ever.
You’re waving around fictional and theoretical benefits as an excuse to justify being an asshole to people. Or at least you appear to be arguing for that position.
It’s actually my goal in life to offend you. You, personally. I now feel fulfilled!
I suppose that I have no real problem with people who grin a sly grin and say “Hell yeah, I’m appropriating your culture to fuck with you. Suck it!” I mean, yeah, that’s not super-polite, but at least they’re being honest. I am NOT thrilled with people who deny the the existence of the very concept of cultural appropriation because they’re hedging their bets against future occasions when they might want to do offensive things and don’t want to admit that people who will call them assholes then might have a point.
Cultural Appropriation is a stupid term used by stupid people with a profound lack of understanding of the history of humanity and how cultures interact, adopt and grow.
That being said, there are still stupid people doing stupidly offensive things they shouldn’t be doing.
Maybe it’s because people see articles like this. Take the first one on that list - “Elle U.K. thought Katy Perry inspired baby hairs” So, how is this cultural appropriation? Who has appropriated what culture? White people can’t wear baby hairs or whatever?
Possibly, but the correct argument to make here would be “Are any significant percentage of black people really bothered by people slicking their hair down and people not knowing who started it?”, not to leap to the assumption that just because some of the smoke appears to be from smoke bombs there’s no such thing as fire.
I agree. So, if someone thinks something is cultural appropriation, shouldn’t they have to produce some sort of evidence that a significant percentage of the people from that culture are offended or bothered?
If you actually read the part of my post you quoted you would see…
I do not seek to tell people they should not be offended, just that “offence” is not necessarily a good reason to stop doing something nor does it necessarily make the person causing the offence “in the wrong”. It is a mad, slippery slope. There are so many beliefs, actions, art, that personally offend me and yet I would not dream of asking people to stop doing them unless it was causing me material harm. Religious beliefs and practices cause me no end of offence but I don’t demand people stop holding them or doing them and I suspect you’d vilify me if I did so.
and now that I’ve pointed it out to you I’m sure you’ll have the good grace to admit I’m not doing that.
correct
hands up children…who can tell me which is the odd one out of these four things?
Ask a Napolitan about pizza, food in general will provide you will lots of examples, and music, and art, dance, fashion, design. No culture on earth is created by fiat out of whole cloth everything we eat, read, watch, hear, do and wear is the result of mixing of ideas, copying, adaptation, synthesis etc. and the human race is much the better for it. I’m against any attempt to make slow down that process or make it taboo.
If they want to convince other people that it’s an example of cultural appropriation, you mean? It probably wouldn’t hurt. (Though of course it won’t sway the minds of those who refuse to admit that they -or anyone else- could possibly be offended by anything.)
If they want to convince themselves, well, you said they already think it’s cultural appropriation so they probably won’t require much convincing. But before they start making noise about it they should probably look around a bit at who else seems to think it’s important. I personally don’t think that the liberal left is entirely full of hot air, as some do, but the potential for overreaction to imagined slights on behalf of others is a risk you face when you strive to be empathetic to your fellow humans.
So the argument you’re making isn’t that people shouldn’t be offended or that they aren’t offended, it’s that you don’t give a flying fuck if they are?
I’m not sure this is actually a problem for agreeing that cultural appropriation is real or can be clearly and reasonably defined. You simply would be in the position that you don’t give a flying fuck about whether you’re appropriating anything because the ends justify the means, in your opinion.
Okay. You’re just telling the offended people to shut up and stop pestering you with their petty problems.
Or, well, you would be doing that if you happened to commit some sort of cultural appropriation that brought the hordes of offended people hammering on your door. I have no particular reason to believe you that you’ve actually done anything like that personally.
The odd one out is the smashing of the pieta, since that one hasn’t actually happened in real life. But since I was just trying to make an obvious point obvious I assumed that wouldn’t be a problem.
Stop and reread what I said for a moment. The critical clause is “where the culture in question has been offended about it”, and I don’t believe for one fine hairy second that any significant portion of the cultural spread you’re talking about occurred over the kicking and screaming of the borrowed-from culture. The vast majority of cultural spread happens without any problems like that, and that’s all fine. Some aspects of it are markedly less fine, like for example the prevalence of the ‘savage indian’ with headdress and tomahawk in american culture, and you know what? That shit isn’t all that valuable a part of society. We can afford to lose that tiny bit of so-called popular culture. This would not mean that we have to throw out all the rest of culture, because obviously.
Your position seems to be that a huge percentage of cultural blending and drift offends people. If that were true, then your position would be valid; I would agree that we could not afford to drain off the bathwater because it would sweep the baby away with it. However I think that the baby is sitting in a millimeter of dirty water and there’s nothing to lose by trying to drain it as much as possible.
Well, crap! I guess my effort to humorously dodge a effort to fallaciously imply that cultural appropriation isn’t important via flippant turn of phrase has been stymied. Cultural appropriation is fictional after all!
Well, unless he was talking about setting people’s hair on fire being the unique one. Depending on the type of cultural appropriation we’re talking about, it’s the only one that involves setting people’s hair on fire.
No, that’s too harsh. I try not to offend, I don’t live to offend but I also believe strongly that society is all the richer for the amalgamation of culture, art, music, food, design, sports, activities…heck…all the things that make up society. And that no one has a divine right to demand that theirs is not copied or modified so if someone is offended when I take their tribal designs and create my own art from it…yeah, tough. I have no real sympathy.
As I made clear in my other posts, when material harm is caused or items stolen or destroyed then that is different but I don’t believe that such things are included when using the term “cultural appropriation” and as such it appears to me to be a bullshit term. A lazy pejorative label used to shut down debate and put the those accused of it in the position of having to defend their actions. It is very easy to throw it into any situation and so much harder to actually do the work of showing that harm has been done (and no, to me offence is not harm)
And, again, claiming that any significant percentage of “the amalgamation of culture, art, music, food, design, sports, activities…heck…all the things that make up society” occurred over objections of the source culture is such a giant pile of laughable bullshit that it makes it hard to take anything else you say seriously. If that’s really a central and critical part of your position (and it kind of seems to be), you’re going to have real problems selling your point.
Look, that business about “material harm” and “items stolen or destroyed” is just noise in the signal at this point. Let’s cut it out - I’m sure you’re willing to decry the mass slaughter of innocents too, but it’s irrelevant to this discussion. What we are very definitely talking about how people might not like to see their important cultural iconography misused (in their opinion), and how little you care about the feelings of others, apparently.
It’s an interesting picture you paint, where people successfully “shut down debate” by exclaiming that their culture has been disrespected. From what I’ve seen it starts debate, as voices are raised agreeing with or dismissing their protests. And yes, sometimes the thing being protested against is promptly removed and/or apologies are issued, because whoever it was that inadvertently committed the offense either isn’t an asshole, or has business or political reasons not to want to appear like an asshole. And sometimes the people being protested against argue and debate and the objections continue, or maybe they ignore everything and the objections either continue or fade out.
I’d like to reiterate, once again, that I’m only talking about cases where the members of the allegedly offended culture actually are offended. In cases where there are just loud white people being offended “on their behalf”…well, somebody’s still being offended, so I image things would still play out in one of the above ways. But it wouldn’t really be cultural appropriation.
