as small as a world and as large as alone, the idea of cultural appropriation completely...

12:07pm June 24, 2014

Anonymous asked: the idea of cultural appropriation completely disregards what culture is, how it develops and changes, gets interpreted and reinterpreted all the time. it's one of the best examples for what is wrong with sj today - this idea that we need to censor and silence everything that might possibly be offensive to someone. the danger here is that real actual problems of real actual people get put on the backseat for the sake of an ideology driven group dynamic witch hunt

There is an actual thing that cultural appropriation refers to. And that actual thing is awful. However, most of what gets referred to as ‘appropriation’ on tumblr, is not appropriation, or at best is borderline. I’ve seen people say that making or eating food from another culture is appropriation, when sharing food between cultures is generally a point of pride in every culture I’ve ever been part of or participated in such exchanges with. (There may be food that it would be appropriative to eat, something on the order of Communion wafers, but that’s a rare exception.)

Real cultural appropriation is doing something like going into a culture where the religious ceremonies associated with that culture are closed to people outside that culture, learning those ceremonies through subterfuge, and then going out and charging people money to participate in fake versions of those ceremonies. That sort of cultural theft happens to indigenous people a lot and it’s 100% real and 100% awful.

But on tumblr, 'appropriation’ has come to mean doing anything at all from any culture. (Including practicing religions from other cultures, in situations where the religion is not closed to outsiders and never has been.) And it’s also been used in settings that don’t even make any sense, like all these disability contexts everyone keeps bringing up. It is not appropriation to use a wheelchair for any reason whatsoever. A wheelchair is just a vehicle, it’s not some special cultural object owned only by disabled people and sacred to us. In an ideal world, anyone could use one for any reason without getting any crap for it, just like a bicycle.

Same when I hear it’s 'appropriative’ for people to use communication devices if they’re not 100% nonverbal. First off, very few people are 100% nonverbal, including people (like me) who are medically labeled nonverbal. Second off, people should be able to use a communication device for any reason at all. Nondisabled people should be able to use communication devices if they just feel more comfortable with them, if they’re shy, if they have a sore throat that day, if it helps them organize their thoughts better. I once lent a spare communication device to a highly verbal person who had laryngitis. Technology should never be reserved only for disabled people.

At any rate, I might disagree with you a bit, because I do think cultural appropriation is real, and awful. But I do agree that most of the time when people talk about appropriation on tumblr, they’re not talking about appropriation. They’re trying to draw boundary lines that don’t exist, can’t exist, and have never existed, whether between cultures, or between disabled and nondisabled people, or other situations where appropriation doesn’t apply.

I’ve always been tempted to tell people, “You’re appropriating the concept of appropriation.”

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