Sanctimonious SilentAgony
Feminist, marxist, queer theorist, lesbian, egomaniac, mom.
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Some of you might remember the stupid tumblr fight I got in last week, I dunno. The argument the person made was that white people should consider that some common activities are insulting to other cultures, specifically travelling to third world countries and majoring in things like Asian studies, and some common activities are actually appropriative, specifically yoga, and tattooing.
I responded to this person with agreement on most points. Making a career of studying another culture or people is belittling. I often tangle with people who would like to study gays. I can’t travel to most third world countries because I’m openly gay, but if I could, I wouldn’t, because it’s objectifying and patronizing for the same reasons. In some areas, it’s a double insult as we are often ambassadors of the nation that caused the shitty situation acting like we’re now saving it from itself.
However, yoga and tattooing is where we parted ways and the argument ended hilariously with them blocking me and calling me a white supremacist. Now there are certainly ways to do yoga that are appropriation. If you don’t believe in reincarnation or any of the spiritual accompaniment of Hinduism, then fuck’s sake stop acting like you do just because you like yoga. Yoga class does not equal church, or spiritual temple, or anything like it. Tattoos can also be appropriative. When white people tattoo things on their bodies like Chinese characters they can’t read or understand, tribal markings from tribes they’re not a part of, or various other spiritual statements from other cultures in whose subjugation their lives are complicit, that’s appropriative.
Cultural appropriation is when one culture materially benefits from the subjugation of another culture and then, to add insult to injury, adopts its traditions and claims them (and the benefits of their practice) as their own. However, not every action or expression that has roots or popularity in another place in the world, even when that place is currently suffering under the thumb of our place, is appropriation. Acupuncture, for example, came to the United States not because we literally went overseas and stole Chinese people, but because Chinese people who emigrated here brought it with them and started acupuncture businesses. Though there are white people who have learned how to do acupuncture, the businesses are predominantly owned by Chinese immigrants, the white acupuncturists are primarily taught by Chinese teachers, and it’s generally still seen as a Chinese art. Chinese people still own it and dominate the industry. Acupuncture has not been appropriated.
If it does some day become appropriated, which is surely possible as demand will probably outstrip the supply of first generation immigrants, then how will we know? Well, first of all, we won’t recognize it as a Chinese tradition. Secondly, we’ll recognize predominantly non-Chinese American teachers of acupuncture as authorities. Third, it will have changed from its original form.
This is arguably the case with yoga and tattooing. That’s not where the argument goes wrong. The problem is that the person who wrote the post failed to recognize that there is a vast difference between consumer and creator.
Copyright law is a good way to understand appropriation. When an author writes a book, millions of people, including members of the author’s culture and members of other cultures may read and enjoy the book. When a person writes a book, it is a reflection of themselves, their experiences and by proxy, their culture. When a person reads and discusses a book, they are learning, sharing, and enjoying somebody else’s art and labor. Likewise, when a person attends a yoga class, gets a tattoo that is an expression of themselves, receives acupuncture treatments, or reads a Rushdie novel, they are consuming the work of another. They are taking part in the expression of themselves or somebody else, but only as an audience. They are neither claiming it as their own nor selling it.
If I take the Harry Potter books and scribble J.K. Rowling off the cover, change a few of the spells, and remove the giants from the books altogether, I’m claiming her work as my own. In plagiarizing, I am appropriating J.K. Rowling’s work. If I take a yoga class and learn a deeply spiritual Indian symbol then scrawl it on my body and call it my religion, I’m appropriating. If I teach yoga classes and conclude the hour with a smug “namaste” as though it were a tribute to the creators, I’m appropriating. If I am not a person of Asian descent and I am teaching a class about Asian culture as though I were an expert on it, I’m appropriating. I am usurping the ownership of the author of the book, tradition, skill, or art, and claiming it as my own.
When a person consumes knock-off fashion, plagiarized books, and whatever else, they are not plagiarizing. The distinction is clear. Appropriation is not synonymous with consumption.
So I hope that clears my argument up. Of course the argument was stupid for a number of other reasons, but I thought this particular concept warranted explanation.
Thanks for reading.
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Link reblogged from A Radical Transfeminist
Radical feminism is a platform for gender equality which includes, among other things, the belief that most gender is performed. As a radical feminist, I believe that gender roles are artificially created, that most dimorphism is affected rather than mandated by nature, and that the divide has been pushed beyond all reason to the express benefit of men. This is what we call the patriarchy…
The patriarchy has the same persistent negative impact on trans women as it does cis women. Society tells them that they are more acceptable when they present in a feminine manner and worth less as a person when they fail to please the eye. The rigid physical standards applied to women cause trans women inordinate amounts of stress. The sex classing of women and requisite caste system of the class (more commonly known as varying degrees of fuckability, or even more commonly as a scale from 1 to 10) has inhumanely relegated trans women with a certain remaining organ to the undesirables. They are expected to be content with either fetishization or pity fucking, along with [fat and disabled] cis women…
… a post-patriarchal world – more specifically a post-gender role world – would necessarily have eliminated almost every trait that divides men from women. Things we think of as masculine or feminine would no longer be associated with men or women and would no longer even be recognizable as masculine or feminine. Masculinity and femininity would lose all meaning…
If the contention of radical feminism is that neither behavior, nor presentation, nor physical appearance should make or break the difference between men and women, why draw the line at the word “man” or “woman?” The very words will become nonsensical and impossible to define. Sure, there will still be some natural hormonal division, but when people can safely, permanently, and completely alter these differences at will, why deny it? When women and men are socialized equally, what will anyone have lost? What will anyone have gained but the right to define themselves, the right for which radical feminists so arduously fight?
The only things I’d add are the necessity for continued access to treatment for physical sex dysphoria, as also argued by radical feminists like Andrea Dworkin:
Every transsexual has the right to survival on his/her own terms. That means every transsexual is entitled to a sex-change operation, and it should be provided by the community as one of its functions. This is an emergency measure for an emergency condition.
If that bothers gender abolitionists who think it will be unnecessary after gender abolition, maybe question that “after” - this may be one of those 500-year plans - and also, hey, if it’s unnecessary and all sex oppression has been abolished, I wouldn’t worry about people taking it up.
And I also want to note that gender abolition (I’m sure that Heather is with me here, but I’m clarifying for the benefit of the commentariat who always misinterpret this aspect of gender abolition) won’t be achieved by some kind of all-powerful radical feminist gender police but by the gradual lifting of the massive existing gender coercion. It’s more like gender coercion abolition. And if there are “true” genders beneath all that coercion (though I’m skeptical) this will uncover them, like archaeology.
Finally, the word “caste” has specific meanings in certain racial/cultural contexts and I don’t think can or should be simply brought across by white women to describe the subdivision of women outside of those contexts, even in a metaphorical sense. If women oppressed in those contexts want to use the word to make connections between struggles, that’s obviously a completely different deal - I’m talking about its appropriation by white women whose lives aren’t affected by a caste system.
I love getting reblogged by radtransfem <3
When I took my college sociology classes (yes, arguably not 100% correct about everything all the time, but a place where I learned nonetheless) the term “caste system” was used to describe a number of American constructs. I suppose they did this because it was a good way of getting an idea across. Efficient communication. An interesting argument could be made as to whether this is appropriation, but I certainly meant no offense.
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I’m so not clicking them. She’s so ridiculous. Don’t even link me. Just stop. *headdesk*
Ok, so instead you would rather read/hear from a person who thinks that the opinions of the MRM “don’t matter”; who describes the MRM as a “hate group”.
Oh sweet honey child. The things you don’t understand.
No, they *know* it’s a hate group. Because it is a hate group. Here’s a link for you.
You can call me “sweet honey child” all day and hope that your head shaking and bullshit patronizing language will make you correct, but nothing will change the fact that MRAs are a hate group.
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Link reblogged from Oh, the hu-manatee!
For those deeply and truly concerned about being anti-racist and checking their shit…
How prepared and comfortable are you with the notion that even if you do everything right, some PoC/non-white/Indigenous people will never trust, like, or love you? That some may always hate your whiteness and…
I’m totally okay with PoC not liking or loving me and okay with them resenting my privilege. I don’t know why they as a group should like or love me anyway. I don’t expect anyone to like or love me unless there’s a personal connection. If they’re my partner and they don’t love me because I’m white, there’s a problem, otherwise I don’t really get the question.
And I can understand not doing Asian studies or whatever, too. I’d hate it for the same reason I get pissed off when people want to study me as a gay person. I’m not a sample to stick under your microscope. I can’t travel to a lot of countries where my whiteness might threaten the morality of my being there anyway because again, gay.
But I don’t get the yoga and tattoo thing. Sure, there are offensive ways to do it. You can get tribal tattoos and Chinese characters that you don’t know the meanings of. You can go to yoga every week, collect statues of Ganesh, and then act like some master of reincarnation. But tattoos on their own and yoga on its own are just things people do, and it would be almost impossible to pinpoint ownership. You can say “non-white” people invented tattoos, but which non-white people? When? Back in the Savannah? Common ancestors? Was absorbing yoga part of occupying India? Did America have anything to do with that? When England did, did they implicate all white people? Or was it Indian entrepreneurship, selling local health innovation outside of its borders? Does the person who wrote this post understand that “England” and “America” colonize and terrorize white parts of the world, too, and do not speak for “white”?
My questions were rhetorical and you could have answered your own questions via google. Here is my post about why tattoos are appropriative. The yoga question should be answered by someone from that culture.
My answer to the tattoo question shows that far from being impossible to prove ownership, it took five minutes of googling to find out where white people got their current tradition from. Yoga, I’m sure is just about as easy. The fact that you think shit stolen from PoC just ‘happens to be something that white people do’ is so fucking colonialist is actually makes me want to vomit.
I understand, better than you, it seems what england and america do. And I really don’t give a fuck what white people do to other white people. At all. Not even a little bit. Don’t care.
And why is ‘white’ in scare quotes? You don’t think whiteness is a thing? That there are white people? Why not? Are you upset or mad that someone is pointing out your race and all the evil appropriative shit that it has done?
The problem isn’t that you don’t understand what England and America do. The problem is that you think England and America are synonymous with white. Yoga and tattoos are no more synonymous with PoC than oktoberfest is synonymous with white. PoC as a whole no more own things that were invented by PoC than white people own things that were invented by white people. The world isn’t that easily divided into color.
My personal racial background includes primarily Irish, Scottish, Native American, French, and German background. Literally 3/4 of my ancestry was the victim of colonization by England and the other 1/4, well I don’t even know where to begin with French and German history. Half of my relatives came to the United States because a priest in Ireland took pity on them as England’s political prisoners in 1910. You know, when Ireland was fighting against England’s colonization.
Because it’s tumblr2012, I’m now simply “white” and I’m apparently colonialist and nobody ever heard of “branding” or “marking” in ancient gael and celt cultures anymore and I totally stole my Latin tattoo in Times New Roman from PoC.
I will happily admit that I now benefit from white privilege. I will readily admit that it is possible that, just by BEING WHITE I can be racist. But I will not acknowledge that this includes some sort of obligation on my part to agree with shitty arguments.
Because when it comes to social justice, apparently the new wave is in brushing away specifics, in returning to a time where we can decide that we know a person deep down by the color of their skin. Because I’m white, it’s literally appropriative when I don’t discriminate based on the creator’s color in choices of music, fashion, and art, and racist when I do.
When your idea of appropriation doesn’t make any god damn sense close up, you need to change it.
You realize that you are the one who brought up england and america, right? My OP didn’t say shit about those countries.
Lol.
You think I’m trying to get you to *agree* with me? That I’m making *arguments*?
You aren’t worth the time or the effort.
You fucking crackers seriously think that everything belongs to you.
As to your racial background, forgive me if your claim to be Native American, with none of the specifics you so value, seems like complete and utter bullshit.
I like how you try and equate cracker experiences with PoC ones, especially after I said that I couldn’t care less what white people do to other white people. Seriously. No one gives a fuck.
You know shit about racial politics. You don’t understand how history works and your ‘arguments’ are basic as fuck.
I’m officially blocking you because I don’t have time for your white supremacist bullshit and am only posting this reply so people can point and laugh at you.
And by the way, NOT mentioning England and America is completely ignorant of the fact that, other than the Danish, nobody else was really going around being all colonialist.
So that’s all you bud. Being all colonialism = white instead of colonialism = america/england/denmark. I know you think it’s cute to generalize white people, but it’s ignorant as all fuck.
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Link reblogged from Oh, the hu-manatee!
For those deeply and truly concerned about being anti-racist and checking their shit…
How prepared and comfortable are you with the notion that even if you do everything right, some PoC/non-white/Indigenous people will never trust, like, or love you? That some may always hate your whiteness and…
I’m totally okay with PoC not liking or loving me and okay with them resenting my privilege. I don’t know why they as a group should like or love me anyway. I don’t expect anyone to like or love me unless there’s a personal connection. If they’re my partner and they don’t love me because I’m white, there’s a problem, otherwise I don’t really get the question.
And I can understand not doing Asian studies or whatever, too. I’d hate it for the same reason I get pissed off when people want to study me as a gay person. I’m not a sample to stick under your microscope. I can’t travel to a lot of countries where my whiteness might threaten the morality of my being there anyway because again, gay.
But I don’t get the yoga and tattoo thing. Sure, there are offensive ways to do it. You can get tribal tattoos and Chinese characters that you don’t know the meanings of. You can go to yoga every week, collect statues of Ganesh, and then act like some master of reincarnation. But tattoos on their own and yoga on its own are just things people do, and it would be almost impossible to pinpoint ownership. You can say “non-white” people invented tattoos, but which non-white people? When? Back in the Savannah? Common ancestors? Was absorbing yoga part of occupying India? Did America have anything to do with that? When England did, did they implicate all white people? Or was it Indian entrepreneurship, selling local health innovation outside of its borders? Does the person who wrote this post understand that “England” and “America” colonize and terrorize white parts of the world, too, and do not speak for “white”?
My questions were rhetorical and you could have answered your own questions via google. Here is my post about why tattoos are appropriative. The yoga question should be answered by someone from that culture.
My answer to the tattoo question shows that far from being impossible to prove ownership, it took five minutes of googling to find out where white people got their current tradition from. Yoga, I’m sure is just about as easy. The fact that you think shit stolen from PoC just ‘happens to be something that white people do’ is so fucking colonialist is actually makes me want to vomit.
I understand, better than you, it seems what england and america do. And I really don’t give a fuck what white people do to other white people. At all. Not even a little bit. Don’t care.
And why is ‘white’ in scare quotes? You don’t think whiteness is a thing? That there are white people? Why not? Are you upset or mad that someone is pointing out your race and all the evil appropriative shit that it has done?
The problem isn’t that you don’t understand what England and America do. The problem is that you think England and America are synonymous with white. Yoga and tattoos are no more synonymous with PoC than oktoberfest is synonymous with white. PoC as a whole no more own things that were invented by PoC than white people own things that were invented by white people. The world isn’t that easily divided into color.
My personal racial background includes primarily Irish, Scottish, Native American, French, and German background. Literally 3/4 of my ancestry was the victim of colonization by England and the other 1/4, well I don’t even know where to begin with French and German history. Half of my relatives came to the United States because a priest in Ireland took pity on them as England’s political prisoners in 1910. You know, when Ireland was fighting against England’s colonization.
Because it’s tumblr2012, I’m now simply “white” and I’m apparently colonialist and nobody ever heard of “branding” or “marking” in ancient gael and celt cultures anymore and I totally stole my Latin tattoo in Times New Roman from PoC.
I will happily admit that I now benefit from white privilege. I will readily admit that it is possible that, just by BEING WHITE I can be racist. But I will not acknowledge that this includes some sort of obligation on my part to agree with shitty arguments.
Because when it comes to social justice, apparently the new wave is in brushing away specifics, in returning to a time where we can decide that we know a person deep down by the color of their skin. Because I’m white, it’s literally appropriative when I don’t discriminate based on the creator’s color in choices of music, fashion, and art, and racist when I do.
When your idea of appropriation doesn’t make any god damn sense close up, you need to change it.
You realize that you are the one who brought up england and america, right? My OP didn’t say shit about those countries.
Lol.
You think I’m trying to get you to *agree* with me? That I’m making *arguments*?
You aren’t worth the time or the effort.
You fucking crackers seriously think that everything belongs to you.
As to your racial background, forgive me if your claim to be Native American, with none of the specifics you so value, seems like complete and utter bullshit.
I like how you try and equate cracker experiences with PoC ones, especially after I said that I couldn’t care less what white people do to other white people. Seriously. No one gives a fuck.
You know shit about racial politics. You don’t understand how history works and your ‘arguments’ are basic as fuck.
I’m officially blocking you because I don’t have time for your white supremacist bullshit and am only posting this reply so people can point and laugh at you.
Oh please rebutt me more with your powers of derision. My kryptonite! My kryptonite!
I’m Iroquois. 1/8. Registered. Ass.
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Link reblogged from Oh, the hu-manatee!
For those deeply and truly concerned about being anti-racist and checking their shit…
How prepared and comfortable are you with the notion that even if you do everything right, some PoC/non-white/Indigenous people will never trust, like, or love you? That some may always hate your whiteness and…
I’m totally okay with PoC not liking or loving me and okay with them resenting my privilege. I don’t know why they as a group should like or love me anyway. I don’t expect anyone to like or love me unless there’s a personal connection. If they’re my partner and they don’t love me because I’m white, there’s a problem, otherwise I don’t really get the question.
And I can understand not doing Asian studies or whatever, too. I’d hate it for the same reason I get pissed off when people want to study me as a gay person. I’m not a sample to stick under your microscope. I can’t travel to a lot of countries where my whiteness might threaten the morality of my being there anyway because again, gay.
But I don’t get the yoga and tattoo thing. Sure, there are offensive ways to do it. You can get tribal tattoos and Chinese characters that you don’t know the meanings of. You can go to yoga every week, collect statues of Ganesh, and then act like some master of reincarnation. But tattoos on their own and yoga on its own are just things people do, and it would be almost impossible to pinpoint ownership. You can say “non-white” people invented tattoos, but which non-white people? When? Back in the Savannah? Common ancestors? Was absorbing yoga part of occupying India? Did America have anything to do with that? When England did, did they implicate all white people? Or was it Indian entrepreneurship, selling local health innovation outside of its borders? Does the person who wrote this post understand that “England” and “America” colonize and terrorize white parts of the world, too, and do not speak for “white”?
My questions were rhetorical and you could have answered your own questions via google. Here is my post about why tattoos are appropriative. The yoga question should be answered by someone from that culture.
My answer to the tattoo question shows that far from being impossible to prove ownership, it took five minutes of googling to find out where white people got their current tradition from. Yoga, I’m sure is just about as easy. The fact that you think shit stolen from PoC just ‘happens to be something that white people do’ is so fucking colonialist is actually makes me want to vomit.
I understand, better than you, it seems what england and america do. And I really don’t give a fuck what white people do to other white people. At all. Not even a little bit. Don’t care.
And why is ‘white’ in scare quotes? You don’t think whiteness is a thing? That there are white people? Why not? Are you upset or mad that someone is pointing out your race and all the evil appropriative shit that it has done?
The problem isn’t that you don’t understand what England and America do. The problem is that you think England and America are synonymous with white. Yoga and tattoos are no more synonymous with PoC than oktoberfest is synonymous with white. PoC as a whole no more own things that were invented by PoC than white people own things that were invented by white people. The world isn’t that easily divided into color.
My personal racial background includes primarily Irish, Scottish, Native American, French, and German background. Literally 3/4 of my ancestry was the victim of colonization by England and the other 1/4, well I don’t even know where to begin with French and German history. Half of my relatives came to the United States because a priest in Ireland took pity on them as England’s political prisoners in 1910. You know, when Ireland was fighting against England’s colonization.
Because it’s tumblr2012, I’m now simply “white” and I’m apparently colonialist and nobody ever heard of “branding” or “marking” in ancient gael and celt cultures anymore and I totally stole my Latin tattoo in Times New Roman from PoC.
I will happily admit that I now benefit from white privilege. I will readily admit that it is possible that, just by BEING WHITE I can be racist. But I will not acknowledge that this includes some sort of obligation on my part to agree with shitty arguments.
Because when it comes to social justice, apparently the new wave is in brushing away specifics, in returning to a time where we can decide that we know a person deep down by the color of their skin. Because I’m white, it’s literally appropriative when I don’t discriminate based on the creator’s color in choices of music, fashion, and art, and racist when I do.
When your idea of appropriation doesn’t make any god damn sense close up, you need to change it.
-
Link reblogged from Oh, the hu-manatee!
For those deeply and truly concerned about being anti-racist and checking their shit…
How prepared and comfortable are you with the notion that even if you do everything right, some PoC/non-white/Indigenous people will never trust, like, or love you? That some may always hate your whiteness and…
I’m totally okay with PoC not liking or loving me and okay with them resenting my privilege. I don’t know why they as a group should like or love me anyway. I don’t expect anyone to like or love me unless there’s a personal connection. If they’re my partner and they don’t love me because I’m white, there’s a problem, otherwise I don’t really get the question.
And I can understand not doing Asian studies or whatever, too. I’d hate it for the same reason I get pissed off when people want to study me as a gay person. I’m not a sample to stick under your microscope. I can’t travel to a lot of countries where my whiteness might threaten the morality of my being there anyway because again, gay.
But I don’t get the yoga and tattoo thing. Sure, there are offensive ways to do it. You can get tribal tattoos and Chinese characters that you don’t know the meanings of. You can go to yoga every week, collect statues of Ganesh, and then act like some master of reincarnation. But tattoos on their own and yoga on its own are just things people do, and it would be almost impossible to pinpoint ownership. You can say “non-white” people invented tattoos, but which non-white people? When? Back in the Savannah? Common ancestors? Was absorbing yoga part of occupying India? Did America have anything to do with that? When England did, did they implicate all white people? Or was it Indian entrepreneurship, selling local health innovation outside of its borders? Does the person who wrote this post understand that “England” and “America” colonize and terrorize white parts of the world, too, and do not speak for “white”?
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I’m so not clicking them. She’s so ridiculous. Don’t even link me. Just stop. *headdesk*
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The female in this video is clearly a female. I’m a professional heterosexual with the ability to discern female characteristics with high precisionBest comment ever on my recent youtube video
