I'm a feminist but..?

Totally wondered that myself. It's getting pretty bad in here lately......

 

My Caucasian parents are involved in the local Bengali community. Ironically, my mom was ASKED to wear a sari. They treat it as a compliment and sign of respect to them as a people group.

 

This topic rarely ends well, and it tends to involve 90% of the same people, on the same side with the same arguments. I'm not sure if the goal is to prove one side right, or to convert that 10% who stay at the sidelines.

 

I'm gonna try to end this topic well.

As some of the people in this thread have already mentioned, there are some folks who don't care if you culturally appropriate them. And others do feel sensitive about it.

Bottom line: if you culturally appropriate, then yes, you will be putting some people off. To consider it an affront to an entire race is to ignore the individuals who make up that race. Whether or not you culturally appropriate, it's not a good measure of your worth as a human being or your moral character. Same goes for those who call others out on their "oppressive behavior." At the end of the day, I think the people who you claim to be sticking up for would rather appreciate direct donations than your valiant theoretical support.

 

I found a really interesting blog post a while back explaining one Indian girl's perception of cultural appropriation and why she doesn't like it. Essentially, she wrote that she'd faced discrimination from a young age for wearing clothing related to her culture (sari's), bindi's, and henna - and was teased for being different. She wrote that she was angry now that the same people who had teased her - mainly white people - wore her culture's clothing, bindi's, henna etc as a fashion statement and no-one ever comments on them for doing so. She also pointed out that if she wants to wear her own culture's clothing now, she sometimes gets treated differently or verbally abused along the lines of 'go back to your own country'.

So essentially, I think that she meant cultural appropriation was wrong, because often it's Western society adopting other culture's identity as a fashion statement, but then holding the double standard of telling the original culture's owner that 'you're in america now, you need to act Western,' etc, and are against them wearing their own cultures clothing.

 

Well, she isn't exactly any better by generalizing it as if everyone who are white and "culturally appropriates" are inconsiderate jerks. The problem isn't that people are appropriating her culture, the problem is that people can be jerks.

Culture is a concept, you cannot own a culture. No one is more or less entitled to express themselves a certain way. Thinking that you can have equality and freedom when at the same time being against cultural appropriation is contradictory. To believe that it is possible is to lack cognitive dissonance.

 

Exactly...

 

I think we're all just delusional enough to think we can convince the other side.

 

This subject really should be dropped from the boards. This is a LGBT site but quickly becoming pseudo TUMBLR. When thread after thread is being opened on this subject, and ends poorly every single time, people need to stop addressing it.

The more this goes on, the less respect I have for the people participating in it. Myself included.

 

I enjoy these threads. They're fun to talk about.

I like debate, and arguments even. Keeps the brain alive, makes ya think.

Besides it highlights one very important thing about the LGBT community

We're all connected, but we're not the same

Some of us are christians, some atheist. Some feminist, some not. Some this, some that.

When we have these arguments it's a rather explosive reminder that being LGBT doesn't fit into some stereotype. We're all way different in some ways.