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fspades posted:I don't hate leftists, I'm a leftist. I hate what passes as leftism over there and their silly blogs and campus communities. The global warming example (and it is just an example) was given to show you how far you people are up on your own asses, and how little motivation you have to actually change something. Be true to yourselves; who are you trying to discipline when you complain about cultural appropriation? Why are you policing leftists on a message board like a snotty student when global warming exists?
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Mar 25, 2015 15:38
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OwlFancier posted:Do you have a suggestion about how one might realistically enforce laws if "I don't recognise the validity of your legal system" was an acceptable defence? Look here old chap, either we take the land of the savages since they didn't register a deed with the records office in London when they came here 1,000 years ago; or cats and dogs will live together, people will eat each other on the streets, and there will be no laws at all!
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Mar 25, 2015 17:11
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Ghost of Reagan Past posted:It's just a quick example of some other way beyond something being symbolically important that it could be problematic. It can be insensitive because it's taking someone's language and turning it into a fashion statement (you probably wouldn't get the word 'water' tattooed on you in this case, would you?). It's not meant to be the worst case of appropriation, it's just the first obvious case that occurred to me. Plenty of people use gothic-style or calligraphy letters in their tattoos because it's more aesthetically pleasing to them than fixed-width sans serif font. Saying "well, you wouldn't have gotten that tattoo if the artist was only willing to do it in some console font" is kind of obvious.
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Mar 29, 2015 06:19
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hakimashou posted:Can we apply a "reasonable person" standard? Somehow, I agree with the guy who wants to genocide all Russians. What the hell is happening to me, am I going to start nodding along to Rush Limbaugh now? icantfindaname posted:Okay, so what I've learned from this thread is that minorities don't get to decide what their own culture and heritage is, that racism and orientalism are cool as long as the objects of them are far away (but if some of them are actually living in the US they don't count) and white people have decided it's fine, and that things like 'language' and 'writing' are not elements of culture that are important or worth protecting Is there any kind of standard for how few members of this minority care about something and how consequential it is? A lot of black people get offended at blackface, and those stereotypes actually do a huge amount of harm so ignoring them and doing it anyway is lovely. But if a few Asian-American guys don't like my tattoo, am I a jackass if I don't care? I'm living abroad right now and learning Chinese, but if I wanted to get a tattoo saying something in my new language, that's bad because someone in LA might not like it? I like languages. I like learning languages. Treating the writing system of my fourth language (Chinese) as something sacred and holy, but see my second or third languages as an ordinary writing system that it's okay to tattoo seems way more orientalist to me. I probably wouldn't get an Afrikaans tattoo because it's not particularly pretty, so I guess I'm stuck appropriating someone else's culture. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 21:00 on Mar 29, 2015 |
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Mar 29, 2015 20:33
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I guess then I'm not sure of the usefulness of the term "cultural appropriation." It seems to lump a lot of good, neutral, and bad things together. And the bad things already have terms to describe them like "bigotry" or "mockery" or "desecration" or "erasure", so I don't really see what a kind of umbrella term is good for other than creating confusion. Humans are imitators and social creatures, if we see a good idea, we're going to imitate it. If we want to talk about how cultures and ideas and traditions get spread when we talk about appropriation, sure. But making the basic, basic phenomenon of humans copying other humans into a pejorative, well, like I said we already have pejoratives for the bad ways of imitating others.
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Mar 29, 2015 21:20
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Obdicut posted:Why are you evaluating it for 'usefulness'? Is 'racism' a useful term? I haven't seen any objections, at all, to 'cultural appropriation' that couldn't be levelled at 'racism'. Well I guess I would say that criticisms of racism as not a thing are all bullshit, and are done by people determined not to understand the term  Obdicut posted:It doesn't lump anything good together with anything, no. Can you come up with something that's cultural appropriation and is 'good'? I don't mean good for the person doing it. Well, let's see, what's your definition: Obdicut posted:That's not what cultural appropriation is. It's inauthentic, misjudged, disrespectful, out-of-context imitation.  ?  ? These are certainly sacred symbols repurposed to have a different meaning, so I don't see how they wouldn't qualify, unless "downtrodden minority" is part of the definition. It's certainly inauthentic, certainly disrespectful, certainly out-of-context, "misjudged" is perhaps a bit too subjective. Obdicut posted:Do you get why someone who went to China and learned Chinese getting a Chinese tattoo wouldn't be cultural appropriation? You didn't respond in any meaningful way to my explanation. Yeah under your definition, sure. But it seems to require a bit of mind-reading, since in that case if you see a random white person with an Asian tattoo, you can't immediately tell whether it's offensive. Unlike say, blackface, which is always offensive. Can it be oppressive or harmful if one can't decide whether he's just been harmed or not without investigating (serious question, please educate me if so)?
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Mar 29, 2015 21:42
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Popular Thug Drink posted:if someone is offended, then they're offended. cultural appropriation is just one way to explain why a person might be offended. why do you think you have to validate whether someone's emotional reaction is valid or not? Well I don't, obviously. But I do have to decide whether to care about someone else's offense. Christian offended that I held hands with another boy? Don't give a poo poo. I'm not going to say they're not offended. Obdicut says there is a distinction between someone who speaks Chinese getting a Chinese tattoo and someone who doesn't. But a third party looking at it wouldn't immediately be able to tell whether it's cultural appropriation or not, under his definition. But if you can never tell whether people you see on the street are being offensive or not without investigating, then what exactly is the harm?
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Mar 29, 2015 21:48
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Obdicut posted:Nope. They're only powerful because the artist actually understood the symbols. This seems really obvious to me. drat, this is a really, really good point. I'm going to have to take a break and think over what you've said now, thanks 
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Mar 29, 2015 21:56
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wateroverfire posted:The other day I saw american-style ketchup in the grocery store and, on behalf of my gringo SJW bretheren, I was offended. Don't feel too bad, ketchup is an offense to everyone.
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Mar 30, 2015 13:47
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on the left posted:See http://www.reddit.com/r/caucasianchinese for true stories of microaggressions faced by Caucasian-Chinese people in China (the reddit was made to troll the Asian American subreddits) This is beautiful. Mostly for the Chinese people calling them out on being racist white supremacists shits.
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Mar 30, 2015 15:09
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on the left posted:How is it white supremacist to lampoon racism that the posters in that sub encounter every day? Even by the idiot's definition of racism (power+prejudice) it wouldn't count. "Some Nazi shitbag" posted:Take a look at the symptoms of Autism sometime, and you will learn american chinese but much more prevelant in our home country, chinar. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 15:17 on Mar 30, 2015 |
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Mar 30, 2015 15:14
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on the left posted:All that stuff is true though, albeit humorously exaggerated. okey-dokey
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Mar 30, 2015 15:52
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SedanChair posted:Would you care to post some of these pieces? http://www.everysingleMLKspeech.org/ Take that, liberals  I'm too real for you.But seriously is there some Conservative Talking Points newsletter on how to ignore minorities that everyone reads? IF minority says "Hey this bothers me" THEN go "pffft, Tumblr" and you don't have to think about them anymore! VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 09:50 on Apr 1, 2015 |
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Apr 1, 2015 09:36
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blowfish posted:More seriously, the problem with stupid internet leftism is that 15 year old idiots who only know to shout "check your privilege" at anything they don't like after having read suitably outraged blog posts will eventually grow up to be maladjusted adults in positions of responsibility who still have no clue what to do in the real world when shouting "check your privilege" does not work. Fifteen year olds have always had foolish political opinions since ever, why is this go-round the herald of the apocalypse?
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Apr 1, 2015 13:23
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TheImmigrant posted:Homophobic, I know, not trying to pick up men equally. Yes, it is. And when we finally outlaw homophobia, it will be illegal for you to discriminate against male sexual partners, as it should be. And the best part? Even though you've figured it out and can see it coming, no one will believe you about the gay agenda until it's too late, Cassandra.
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Apr 2, 2015 17:18
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This is a pretty solid burn on the Roman Empire I've got to say.
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Apr 4, 2015 05:26
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Mmhmm, what a fresh new perspective.
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Apr 16, 2015 08:23
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Omi-Polari posted:It just comes across as bread and circuses. It's about celebrities, Grammys, products in shopping malls -- those are the examples of cultural appropriation I see trotted out most often. Like Iggy Azalea was something of a hate figure for a little while among quite a lot of people on the online left. I'm not exaggerating. But she actually seems like a really good example of how appropriation perpetuates inequality to me. Here you've got an art form that was invented and refined by black artists, and a pretty white woman comes along, copies it, and starts making far and away more money than anyone in that genre ever had before. Why not use this as a perfect example of how the money flows, not to the creative pioneers, but to the first person of a skin tone palatable to the majority that was able to imitate it successfully. It's an example that is immediately accessible to anyone who has hears of her, why do you think it's a strange one to pick? Yeah, she's just one example and in the grand scheme of things it doesn't really matter how much money Iggy Azalea gets. But it's one instance of a pattern that's repeated all the time and everywhere: the achievements of people of color are co-opted to benefit whites so the benefits of them can be transferred to and enjoyed by the white majority while the communities that created them are left impoverished.
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Apr 16, 2015 09:03
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While of course you're right that it isn't "strictly true" that every white rapper makes more money than every black rapper, but that's not a very useful way of evaluating trends. Is it "strictly true" that every white applicant always gets hired over every black one? Is it "strictly true" that every white defendant escapes the death penalty and every black defendant gets a capital sentence? Is it "strictly true" that every gay couple is rejected by landlords in favor of a straight couple? No, no, and no, but that doesn't mean these trends don't exist. As for James Franco, well, I'd say the role of gay people in contributing to the fashions and tastes that are overall an aspect of the wider culture is a bit more complicated. For a counterexample, consider the criticism that Madonna gets for vogue: copying a style from the underground gay scene and profiting from repackaging and selling it to a middle America that is willing to buy it only when it's sold by a straight woman. The people who created are shoved aside, because to America they are worthless, but America is perfectly willing to enjoy what they created as long as they can feel that their money and attention are going to someone "worthy". VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 10:33 on Apr 16, 2015 |
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Apr 16, 2015 10:31
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Why do you have to take reductio ad absdurdums as equally problematic situations? Those situations are by definition different, so we should expect to treat them differently. Is it sexist if I go visit an old friend and bring their daughter I've never met a Cinderella doll? Sure. Is it necessarily a problem in this case? Well, no, it might turn out she really likes Cinderella and would have wanted that even if I had asked first instead of assuming. Or it might disappoint her and send her a message that this is what girls are "supposed" to want. Should we treat this kind of mild sexism as equally bad as if I threw out every résumé with a woman's name on it? No we shouldn't, that would be pretty hysterical and stupid right?
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Apr 16, 2015 11:08
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Can't some examples be bad and some be minor? It might be sexist of me to open a door for a woman, but it would be pretty ridiculous of me to go "well well feminists, it doesn't harm a woman when I do that so I guess sexism doesn't exist"
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Apr 16, 2015 11:30
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1980's America would have rejected an openly gay performer regardless of how good his art was because filthy homos. Clearly this is the fault of gay people for being too lazy to be superstars or something.
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Apr 16, 2015 13:37
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Liberace was closeted his whole life, and Freddie Mercury danced around the issue. Are you really trying to imply homophobia wasn't real in the 1980s?
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Apr 16, 2015 13:59
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The Lakota were the real Nazis all along...we fought the wrong 1940's war.
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Apr 16, 2015 14:08
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The implication was that gay people didn't make vogueing popular because...idk too lazy or drug-addled or something, and they needed straight people to come in and show em how it's done. Silly faggots, if you stopped sucking dick for half a second and worked a day in your lives, you would have been selling the albums! I guess much the same way that blacks just weren't good enough to be rock stars so whites had to come along and show them what a real performer looks like. Were there any blacks with the star power of Elvis, nope checkmate libtards, minorities are poo poo.
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Apr 16, 2015 14:14
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TheImmigrant posted:Liberace's sexuality was obvious in the 80s. Freddie Mercury's even more so. Coming out of the closet wasn't really a thing yet then, not for celebrities. This is the point. No matter how obviously flamboyant Liberace was, he still had to lie about it his whole life and keep up a front of denial. He had every reason to believe coming out would destroy his career and had to pay lip service to being straight so straight society could look the other way if they wanted. That's the whole thing behind 'passing': if you're valuable to hetero society in some way, then if you at least pretend you're not gay, they pretend not to notice so they can enjoy your art without having to admit a filthy sodomite has enriched their lives. Now let's compare that to the career prospects of a gay man from the club scene.
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Apr 16, 2015 14:24
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wateroverfire posted:IDK. Elton John, Boy George, both were out during the 80's and had big success. Freddy Mercury. There were others, too. Not saying that prejudice wasn't a thing, of course. Combing through to find one or two gay performers doesn't prove anything. You're always going to find a few exceptions when you're talking about trends, so what. There were also popular black music acts in the 1950s, that doesn't mean racism wasn't a huge influence or that record companies and the population as a whole didn't elevate white performers over black innovators in general. If you're admitting that there was a lot of prejudice and openly gay people had huge obstacles in industry that straight people didn't face (and the successful ones had to start out closeted), then you're already agreeing with me. What is your argument? The Temptations existed, therefore no white performers imitated black artists and got greater financial rewards because of their race? VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 14:34 on Apr 16, 2015 |
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Apr 16, 2015 14:31
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Truly it is a just world.
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Apr 16, 2015 14:43
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What's the thrust of your argument. Because right now it sounds like "well yeah sure, some runners had their ankles chained together for the race, but there's a lot more to winning a race than not being chained, maybe all the unchained straight white people were just better runners anyway" E: Vogue was just an example of a trend. If you recognize the trend exists, then why quibble about whether Madonna is a good example of it or not, ultimately that's unknowable without a time machine, but we can look at the whole context around this and other examples and see that powerful people making money off of the uncredited work of unpopular minorities happens and is bad. Which you seem to except, so why blow all this smoke about this or that specific instance? VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 14:54 on Apr 16, 2015 |
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Apr 16, 2015 14:48
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Omi-Polari posted:I just don't see much actual evidence that black artists are being passed over for white ones in 21st century America. I mean, if you look at the Billboard Hot 100 it's hardly whitewashed. It also tends to vary, there are sometimes more white artists on the Top 10, a lot of times actually fewer. Sometimes no white males, etc. Sometimes no whites at all. So if you're going to posit a zero-sum relationship then you need to demonstrate it. You already agreed there was a trend though when you accepted that this problem has existed even in living memory with rock and roll. So is racism just over now? You're sounding like my dad "well yes there was discrimination in the 60s, but then Martin Luther King happened so obviously any black person questioning our post-racial meritocracy is just whining". You can't divorce what's happening from the context of a racist society in which it exists. You asked why people talk about Iggy Azalea: I told you. Now you're asking for...what...a signed record company contract stating "we are promoting you because you are white and we are huge racists"? Omi-Polari posted:Well, I'd stick up for Madonna, too. I think she vogued because she had deep admiration for her gay fans, who reciprocated that. And I think her approach to female sexuality is akin to how a lot of gay men (I count myself here) see their own experiences. In any case, a lot of gay artists have done very well remixing her music. Hey I like Madonna too. The point isn't whether Madonna did something bad. The point is what does it say about a society that require(d?) gay culture to be divorced from its roots and acted out by a straight woman before it was acceptable to like it and purchase it, while the actual inventors of it are marginalized and ignored for being too threatening to suburban sensibilities. Omi-Polari posted:Well, I see it as kind of a manufactured controversy. I remember one of big social media blow-ups of the day a few weeks ago was Beyonce being passed over for Beck at the Grammys. Okay, I don't know what kind of struggles Beyonce has had to deal with in her life. But she had the #2 best-selling album or something like that last year. Beyonce will be fine. Basically the left is spending a lot of time organizing around defending multi-millionaire celebrities in a struggle against other multi-millionaires and then wonders why no one wants to join them. No, liberals are not spending a lot of time on this. Hillary's campaign will not mention this, Obama is not talking about this, the most public civil rights campaigns aren't talking about Iggy Azalea. Appropriation is really limited to academic discussions or obscure liberal blogs, so it kinda seems like you're just seeking out conversations to get annoyed about. There's a pretty amusing irony in complaining that other people are talking about "weak sauce" instead of important stuff...from someone who is spending time complaining about what conversations liberals have. America is a big country with 300 million people. There are going to be lots of subjects brought up all over the place and something doesn't have to be the most important thing ever to be worth talking about. "Aren't there more important things" is just a way to shut down conversation. Aren't there more important things than shutting down conversations?
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Apr 17, 2015 15:40
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^^^^^^^^^^^ Jesus dude get a new gimmick, you've made the same lovely joke like a dozen times.
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Apr 17, 2015 15:42
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Omi-Polari posted:But I don't think it's a subject of obscure liberal blogs. It's a recurring topic in most major liberal websites and newspapers. The Washington Post talks about it on the op-ed pages, Slate, Salon, Vox, et al. Which leads to a discussion of the incentives of the digital economy. And yes, it's probably true that I'm as guilty as what I'm describing, but I also think I know what I'm talking about. Yeah, exactly it's relegated to opinion pages and blogs. This isn't something taking attention away from major campaigns about bigger issues. I wouldn't worry that this is poisoning liberalism: anyone who goes and reads a Salon opinion piece and says "well I was liberal, but this article was so awful I'm just turned off of civil rights now let's start keeping down the blacks and gays" is just looking for an excuse to justify their racism and bigotry. It's like all the people who say, "well I was never racist, but seeing Obama race-bait about Trayvon Martin is making me that way!" No, they were just always racist. Omi-Polari posted:The Effectronica meltdown is underway 
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Apr 18, 2015 01:53
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blackguy32 posted:This whole conversation has been poisoned from the start. The opening post was a concern troll of epic proportions. After a while it just gets exhausting having new people come in the thread spouting off the same bullshit tired "just asking questions" poo poo. Yeah it's the same people who bring up pointlessly piddly bullshit to distract from the real problems anytime a minority wants to talk about something. How can you say treating women differently from men is bad? I opened a door for a woman today because she's a woman. Am I sexist? Am I a horrible chauvinist wife-beating piggy sexist? I must be, how shall I mutilate myself to atone for my sins of being a man and opening a door, what suitably horrific torture would be enough to satisfy you, god you liberals are so shrill. And then Effectronica says "yes kill yourself" and their persecution complex is validated. I knew those scheming minorities want to spit-roast all God-fearing white Republican men!
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Apr 18, 2015 03:15
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TheImmigrant posted:Who is the minority here who wants to talk about it? There's Vanilla Ice and his gun, and what I assume to be mostly Americans who don't even own passports. What's so ridiculous about his conversation is that it's a bunch of America-centric theoryheads with no life experience prescribing experience and Correct Thought for the people they fetishize. Well this is the reason I've steered clear of the topic of stuffed manicotti or whatever: I have a hard time figuring out who is being harmed in this situation so I haven't commented on it ever since Obdicut set me straight about this issue with, "Don't be a dick. Think about what you're doing: are you being a dick? Then stop. If not, then okay." I think cultural exchange is good, in a context of equality and mutual respect. If one group is getting hosed over, that's bad. In the case of cultural appropriation, that happens when a dominant group sees something creative and interesting invented by people who are despised and ignored, but rather than appreciating it, prefers to buy it when its repackaged and sold by the right kind of person. It's more of a comment on society. It's not that Iggy Azalea is a bad person for making hip hop, it's that Americans would rather see a pretty white woman up on stage. She has some catchy hits and some cool videos, nothing wrong with liking that. But if you like that and you're buying her music then, hey, maybe look into who her influences were, what artists came before that weren't promoted as heavily, maybe you'll find something there you like and support those artists too, you know? TheImmigrant posted:I actually appreciate you, because you are often thoughtful. What I really deplore is the tendency of the cultural left to eschew any criticism of anyone who strikes a leftist posture. Give me a break - this oval office Efflux is a racially-determinist supremacist; a total primitive. I'm not defending E's shitposts and tiresome, distracting insults. It's just, well, if you want to have a serious conversation, you'll talk to someone who is being serious. If you want to set up a strawman and dismiss the whole issue, you'll talk to some goofball in a Guy Fawkes mask.
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Apr 18, 2015 04:14
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CarrKnight posted:This seems like an even more problematic definition. I think you're missing the point of that article. The author talks about white women wearing saris as a fashion statement, as a dress-up occasion. But if an Indian woman wears one to her office job, that's considered unprofessional and she's judged for it. A white celebrity wears one and "oh she's so interesting and cosmopolitan, good for her" but people actually from that culture are looked down upon and even penalized for wearing it. If the prejudice against foreigners and foreign dress and customs in America didn't exist, and these things were commonly done without comment or stigma, then a white woman wearing a sari would be as unremarkable as wearing an Italian suit.
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Apr 18, 2015 04:30
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Well let's see: should I, as a man, refuse any raise until I solve the gender pay gap first? Should we ban men from getting promoted until all inequality is solved forever?wateroverfire posted:Wouldn't a white woman wearing a sari to her office also be considered unprofessional, or am I missing something? Well that's kind of the problem right? I can go to India and wear a suit and be taken seriously. An Indian woman who gets a job here and wears clothes from her culture is seen as clinging to some absurd costume.
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Apr 18, 2015 04:42
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CarrKnight posted:Exactly. Right, but talk about the problems and oppose injustice regardless of whether you benefit from it or not. E: And if someone says "Hey that's a sacred item to me, would you mind maybe not wearing a cheap plastic version and painting your face like an idiot mockery of me for your ball game", perhaps you think to yourself "hmm, what's more important, my sportsball spirit or not pointlessly being an rear end in a top hat" VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 04:51 on Apr 18, 2015 |
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Apr 18, 2015 04:45
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Taking a second to think about whether your actions are hurting other people before you do something isn't some totalitarian Stalinist oppression, it's basic manners taught in kindergarten.
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Apr 18, 2015 04:52
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Clipperton posted:effectronica's giant tantrums have been the heart and soul of this thread and it's nice of you to pick up the slack now s/he's in cat jail but idk man it just isn't the same Kill you're parents
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Apr 18, 2015 05:05
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rudatron posted:Ah, but there's an assumption there: that the 'new wave' is of less value than the original. What the gently caress is Christianity but 'New Age' Judaism? All culture is imitation. Like I said before, if there were some unobtainable core, some 'essense', then the imposition would fail so long as it wasn't basically by force. That it can still happen I think suggest the opposite, there is no value in some specific meaning. And this talk over 'white mans shamans' or 'cultural sellouts', I can't regard that with any more respect than I do with the idea of 'race traitors'. Christianity is kind of a weird example, because one of the main aspects of 2,000 years of Christianity is, after taking a sect of the Jewish religion and making it into the state religion of the Roman Empire, turning around and forcing Jews to assimilate and punishing those who don't with an endless series of pogroms and ethnic cleansing.
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Apr 18, 2015 05:09
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