Cultural appropriation and other explosive topics

phoenix linked to this very intelligent essay by Martin McGrath: Poor ould Ireland, again. The piece rather won my heart in the intro with a highly nuanced take on Said and the cultural appropriation question. The bulk of the essay is a scathing review of a trashy paranormal romance set in what is explicitly described (by the author, not the reviewer) as a "Disney theme park" version of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. If you're personally affected by these things, I do recommend pausing before you follow the link to decide whether you're really in the mood to read it. I haven't read the book discussed, but I found the surrounding commentary about why this kind of writing is a problem really fascinating.

Particularly in the light of the so-called Great Cultural Appropriation Debate of Doom that was all over LJ a few years ago. I am aware that some factions in that imbroglio held the opinion that it was not legitimate to discuss cultural appropriation of one white ethnic group by another white ethnic group. Or at least classified as white according to current USian racial politics. I do respect where that view comes from, but for one thing I believe that it's important to consider tensions between different white-coded groups (even if you choose not to call it racism or cultural appropriation or consider these issues objectively less important than racism by Euro-Americans against African-Americans). Also I think the GCADoD as an event is now long enough ago in the past (although of course the issues raised are still important) that I'm not "derailing" by wanting to talk about something related that's not specifically about American PoC.

Coincidentally, delux_vivens recently pointed to a collection of answers to the question: How do you Write Science Fiction on a Post-Colonial World? There's a really wide spectrum of answers to this, which pretty much covers most of the mainstream positions taken during the GCADoD. So if you weren't on LJ at the time and you'd like a recap in the form of a series of fairly measured, academic-ish comments rather than a huge sprawling blog imbroglio with a lot of people getting very emotional, that's a pretty good place to start. You've got the whole range from Jaymee Goh, who takes a pretty uncompromising attitude: I think anybody asking this question really needs to interrogate themselves further on their reason for asking it, and uses a lot of contemporary social justice buzzwords, which many may find offputting. To Jeffrey Thomas who comes across as almost a caricature of the aggrieved / defensive white writer side of the GCADoD: he's arguing against the position that absolutely nobody is asserting that you're only "allowed" to write about people from exactly the same background as yourself, that he knows lots about Vietnamese culture cos he had sex with a Vietnamese woman, and anyway writing about other cultures is no different from writing about mutants or aliens. I have no idea whether Thomas is actually white, mind you, I'd never heard of him before I read that selection of responses, but he's come up with a pretty impressive one-paragraph summary of one of the main strands of opinion on Cultural Appropriation. He only missed claiming that he only cares about good writing, not about the skin colour of authors or characters.

And circling back to the original topic, one of the responses is from Farah Mendlesohn, an SF critic I have a whole lot of respect for, who writes an amazingly insightful and succinct piece about internal and external colonialism in the history of the British Isles. Worth scrolling through to find hers; I'm afraid there aren't any direct links to individual responses. Again, it's about tensions and violence between different groups of white people, so you find that kind of analysis offensive, don't bother to read.

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This is only related in that it similarly has a nuanced take on a rather inflammatory issue, and people who feel very passionately about the issue may not be receptive to the nuance. redbird linked to Natalie Reed, a highly intelligent writer and activist about trans and other QuILTBAG issues, talking about the "born this way" frame for talking about rights for sexual minorities.

Reed has a very interesting take on the current cotton ceiling debate, which seems to be about a conflict between the rights of trans women and the rights of cis lesbians. Or perhaps a conflict between people's rights to be taken seriously as sexual beings, and the rights of individuals to complete autonomy over whom they want to sleep with. I agree that these rights aren't directly in conflict at all, and we need to find a way to talk about the issues without setting them in opposition to eachother.

One of the long essays I keep meaning to write is about the whole nature versus nurture thing. In short I think that culture is very much a key part of biology, and I strongly agree with the view (I think I got this from Steven Pinker, but it might have been some other popularizer of genetics) that genetic traits are in fact much more easily modifiable (if one should find that desirable) than cultural attitudes. But in case, Reed is really talking about rhetorical frames for discussions of sexual rights, more than about the reality of what influences sexual desire. She makes the rather strong statement that the concept of sexual orientation has itself become a harmful force, and I think that's probably over-stating the case, but I have a lot of sympathy for where she's coming from. Well worth reading, IMO.