gemmaem
1yr ago
I probably wouldn't apply "cultural appropriation" to either of those things. As I understand it, a kimono is not sacred and has no strong restrictions on when it can be worn, and people should go ahead and wear one if they want to. I'm less sanguine about "Redskins" but that's because the term is sometimes considered offensive, not because of appropriation. Different issue entirely.
We are all, to some extent, entitled to draw upon the cultural richness of the entire world.
There are caveats, here. If you're drawing on something sacred, or something that has a specific meaning, then part of respecting the culture you're working with can be not diluting that sacredness or meaning by repurposing it for other, more frivolous ends. And in general, especially if you're drawing on people less well known than you, I think there is a moral duty to give credit to the people you are drawing from. Both of these caveats are based on my view of the morality of the situation and you are entitled to reject them if you choose.
There is also the caveat that if the thing you are using is more recent, then it may be subject to copyright or trademark law.
Beyond that, though, I think it's good to use each other's stories. In the specific case of Ariel, I think (a) pretty much everyone is entitled to Hans Christian Andersen's work at this point, and, (b) Disney get to do what they want with their own IP, although I'm unimpressed by the cash-grabbing aspects of their recent spate of live-action remakes.
Disney is, at the very least, legally entitled to the work that they pay people to produce. They may not be morally entitled to do whatever they want with it, however. I, for one, would certainly hope that they would feel some duty to respect their employees' creative work, and would be open to arguments that cash-grabbing remakes fail in this duty.
I do not think that changing a white character to a black one in the course of those remakes is in any way outrageous, however, and it is certainly not more outrageous than the existence of the remake in the first place.
gemmaem
9mo ago
Hey, you know I’ll always hear you out on this subject. I didn’t think I was defending “whiteness” terminology, though, to be honest. My main concern, in this conversation, is the comparison with Hanania. This thread contains a lot of minimisation of his rhetoric. Establishing that Hanania’s pseudonymous writing is worse is important to me because to say otherwise is to misinform about Hanania.
See you in other parts of the internet!
gemmaem
9mo ago
What exactly are you pushing me for, when it comes to using “whiteness” to describe the set of effects that being white in a racist society might have on people? I think it’s bad terminology and people should stop using it. Are you asking me to conclude that everyone who uses such terminology actually intends white people harm? Because, if so, I don’t think that’s true. Alternatively, you might be asking me to be outraged, in order to campaign more effectively for people to actually stop. I am not sure if my outrage would actually be helpful, though.
There are a lot of situations in which a more measured argument would be more persuasive. After all, most people who support such terminology believe that outraged people are mistaken about its meaning. By not being outraged and instead taking people at their word, I might well have a better chance of changing people’s minds. I’ve not tried to make this argument, but I am pondering whether I should engage more with people to my left, now that this place is becoming less interesting to me.
gemmaem
9mo ago
I’m intrigued that you conflate “HBD believer” with “believer in coercive eugenics.” Seems like there are a lot of people in this thread defining that term in very telling ways.
gemmaem
9mo ago
Mm, fair enough. There’s still a part of me that balks at phrasing like “practising homosexuality is a lifestyle with health consequences,” in that it seems to consider “practising homosexuality” as a single thing that can be considered risky in itself instead of looking into the underlying causative relationships. But this may be influenced by the disgust with which the word “lifestyle” is sometimes deployed in this specific context, rather than any analogy with other contexts. “Having a full time job that requires you to sit down all day is a lifestyle with health consequences” would probably not stand out to me in the same way, even though this, too, is a causative chain that can be somewhat interrupted by, for example, taking breaks in which you are mobile.
gemmaem
11mo ago
I nevertheless appreciated the quote from an activist saying they thought it was stupid, tried to shout over it, and don’t want it to represent the movement. That’s a much more sensible response.
gemmaem
1yr ago
Male power fantasies in fiction are still very common, I think you'll find. There's an entire section of literary criticism in which the ur-narrative is The Hero's Journey. Being the Son of Heaven or some other kind of Chosen One comes standard.
Reality is, ultimately, its own check on these things, I think. Most women know they aren't actually queen of very much. Time comes for us all, and most of us grow. Some of us still like to imagine being Batman now and then while we're at it, and that's okay.
I think it might actually be harder to mock women for not being powerful just because, unlike men, we're not failing in our gender role by lacking power. Which isn't fair to men, that they should be mocked for not aligning with a gender role, but I think some of the difference that you are seeing actually comes from there.
gemmaem
1yr ago
As I understand it, the word "transgender," in current usage, specifically means someone who considers themselves to actually be a gender that is incongruent with the one they were initially sorted into. So, you've got no problem with trans people's gender expression. The thing you have a problem with is that they are transgender.
gemmaem
1yr ago
You bring up some interesting issues. I think it's worth clarifying that my use of the word "intrinsic" doesn't preclude social influence on desire. So, if someone sees a trans person, and they never had a desire to be trans before that and never would have without having seen it and known it was possible, but they do still want to change their gender now that they know that they can, just as a want-in-itself, then that would still count as an "intrinsic" desire, in the sense in which I am using the word. The cause of the intrinsic want is not relevant, provided that the desire for a particular gender is a desire for that gender rather than wanting the gender as a tool on the way to something else.
So, for example, if some of those Iranian trans women would never have wanted to be trans if they could have simply been homosexual, but, over time, they've adopted their female identity and now it feels like their own and they've come to like that identity in and of itself, then that would count as a socially-mediated intrinsic desire, by my definition. Whereas, an Iranian who is living as a trans woman but who would transition back to male in a heartbeat if they could just be homosexual does not have that intrinsic desire, and indeed I think many people who generally support self-ID as a measure would still concede that such a person is not "really trans" -- because they don't really want to be, not for itself.
social pressure, contagion,
If you want to be trans solely in order to make your friends accept you, then that's not an intrinsic desire for a gender. But are there really people who would transition solely for that reason? It seems far-fetched. On the other hand, people can sometimes manufacture genuine desires, in order to fit in. Kind of like the difference between wearing jeans because that is the socially acceptable costume and you don't want to be questioned, on the one hand, and wearing jeans because you have absorbed that you feel socially comfortable in them and now they just feel "comfortable" in themselves, even when no-one is watching. The former is not an intrinsic desire; the latter could be.
misdiagnosed mental illness
Yeah, this is an interesting one. If you think that transitioning will improve your mental health, but you don't actually want to be the other gender as a thing in itself ... yeah, could happen, some mental illnesses make people latch onto solutions indiscriminately.
I think some people would want to say that a person like this is still close enough to "really trans" if the transitioning does actually help. I'm not sure that I would, though. Honestly, the more I explore these edges, the more I find myself feeling like "intrinsic desire" actually does describe something important about what it means to be trans. Mind you, I am not, myself, transgender in any way, and I hesitate to present myself as an authority on a subject that hinges so closely on the personal experiences of others.
In and of itself, none of this addresses the question of whether we should attempt to reduce the prevalence of an intrinsic desire to be another gender, of course. Whether or when to police the existence of such intrinsic desire is also a separate question; proponents of self-ID would say "don't ever," but some might be willing to move to a different standard if they still believed that intrinsic desire itself would be respected under that standard.
gemmaem
1yr ago
Is there some reason why you think he's not actually squeamish? I'm not familiar with him as a writer.
gemmaem
1yr ago
By this reasoning, new voter ID laws would be just as illegitimate, since these also change the rules. Is that a conclusion you're comfortable with?
This is of course even more true if the voter ID laws are deliberately written so as to include forms of ID that Republicans are likely to have (such as gun licenses) and exclude forms of ID that Democrats are likely to have (such as student ID).
gemmaem
10mo ago
I dunno, in some ways "you know this deep down but you've convinced yourself otherwise" is even more infuriating than a simple "you're lying for social approval." At least the latter can be easily dismissed. The former always feels like the person talking to me is trying to undermine my best judgment by making me doubt myself.
gemmaem
1yr ago
The left does get a lot of unpleasant rhetoric aimed at it, you're not wrong about that. Frankly, if the norms applied to the woke left were applied across the board, this place would be a lot less pleasant for everyone (Including the woke leftists, whom I think would promptly become subject to a yet worse standard, because some inequities are unavoidable. I say this as a long-since-resigned woke leftist feminist with intersectional influences. Frankly, as someone near the bottom of the congeniality ladder I would prefer that the median not slip further down).
If this was a discussion about "Why do people not approach Catholicism respectfully?" then I think your post would be acceptable, because it would be on topic. Unpleasantness as a side effect of honest explanation is unavoidable, sometimes, around here. But this was, instead, a discussion about how to survive when your views are unpopular. Moreover, it was a discussion specifically instigated to try to help those people feel more at home and deal with it better. "Have different views" is not a good suggestion, in that context, particularly since breadth of viewpoints is something this forum is supposed to encourage.
gemmaem
1yr ago
Sex education has been controversial for years. Calling it "grooming" is new, and this form of demonization didn't get used before it was specifically the LGBT content that people were angry about. I think it's reasonable to suspect that this tenuous claim of sex/sexuality/gender-related education leading to pedophilia did not just happen to occur when the controversy was about LGBT topics instead of about sex education more generally.
gemmaem
1yr ago
I am cautious about New Zealand's euthanasia law, and in fact voted against it in the referendum that made it law, but I do think one good measure that it instituted is that no doctor can introduce the idea, when dealing with patients. They are only allowed to discuss it if the patient chooses to bring it up.
This isn't foolproof -- an exhausted family caregiver or malicious beneficiary of the will could still bring it up with the patient and, potentially, try to coerce them into going along with it. But it does, I hope, prevent the creation of a class of doctors who routinely recommend it.
gemmaem
1yr ago
I think those are basically the rules I am calling for. Admittedly, I will still complain if you say "problem of grooming" and I think you are talking about something that isn't deliberately trying to make it easier to sexually abuse children, but I would not report such comments, I'd just argue back.
gemmaem
1yr ago
I am certainly against teachers making suggestions about their students' underwear, that is messed up and should not have happened.
gemmaem
1yr ago
Well, note below that I'm not trying to outlaw reasoned explanations of why a given act is abusive or likely to prepare someone to be abused. We can still discuss why porn is inappropriate for 5 year olds.
gemmaem
1yr ago
Yeah, I never have posted any pictures of my chest, so I guess that means I'm also male :P
gemmaem
1yr ago
Here's the BBC on the subject.
When Diddy asked him again to stop [selling 'white lives matter' shirts], West replied: "Ima use you as an example to show the Jewish people that told you to call me that no one can threaten or influence me."
...
He followed up with a message saying: "I'm a bit sleepy tonight but when I wake up I'm going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE The funny thing is I actually can't be Anti Semitic because black people are actually Jew also.
"You guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda," he added.
It's classic anti-Semitism, not disguised and not any sort of edge case.
What sort of proof would you suggest? You're asking the winner of every election -- regardless of party -- to prove that voter fraud didn't happen. So, for example, what should Donald Trump have had to do after the 2016 election to justify taking power?
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