Have you ever heard of cultural appropriation?

I sure hadn't. If you are unfamiliar with the term, this is what it means:

The Holy, All Knowing, All Powerful Wikipedia Wrote:Cultural appropriation is a sociological concept which views the adoption or use of elements of one culture by members of a different culture as a largely negative phenomenon. Generally, an assumption that the culture being borrowed from is also being oppressed by the culture doing the borrowing is prerequisite to the concept.

Now I thought this was about things like minstrel shows and taking elements of a culture and using them in a mocking manner. Nope. It's about literally any interaction with a culture by someone outside of a culture as I found out today.

I was sitting in a coffee shop this morning, working on Anki. As I mentioned in another thread, lately I've been writing down most of my reviews on an actual pad of paper. I had it out when a girl (probably college aged) walked up to me and said, "You know Chinese?"

I smiled and said no, it's Japanese, and I'm no where near fluent. She asked if I was half Japanese, and I said no, I'm just interested in the culture, media, food, etc.

At this point she criticized me for "stealing Japanese culture", distorting it with my non-Japanese perspective and then propagating a diluted version of Japan to anyone I converse with, and not taking into account how a Japanese person would feel about me "idolizing" their culture. She said this behavior can even be considered racist.

What. The. Firetruck.

This was the craziest human interaction experience I've had in at least a decade. She wasn't even Japanese! (Well, this is an assumption. She appeared to be anglo.)

So there you have it, guys. Looks like I'm ruining Japan one Anki review at a time, and I might be a racist. Who would've known...

>____<

...oops did it again.

What about Japanese people who study the english language? They read english books and they watch hollywood movies, I see them often talking about Disney movies... Would this be considered cultural appropriation? xD Also Japanese borrowed kanji from China, so apparently while you review kanji you steal from Japanese culture something that is not even entirely Japanese so... xD
I think that girl is the racist one because she treats the japanese language and culture as something "other", and talks about Japanese people and Japanese culture as "them..." and "their..." like if she is talking about aliens... If you were practising Russian language I bet she had nothing to say about it ._.

You should have told her not to worry about diluting the sacred Japanese culture for others because you were stealing it and keeping it all for yourself, locked deep inside your true samurai heart.

Seriously though, not only have I never heard of such a bizarre point of view, but divulging it to a total stranger takes such a special kind of audacious ignorance I can't help but ..

"Dammit, how did you figure out my plans????!!!!????"

That wins the prize for the dumbest thing I've heard all day.

quite simply: that's what you get when your left-wing doesn't come from the communist tradition

Yup, there's people like this. She's probably never traveled abroad so she knows nothing about the world and the people she's saving from your evil cultural appropriation. I'm sure the irony is lost on her that the coffee in the coffee shop wasn't grown on a farm in Iowa by mono-lingual Ralph Nader voters.

Here's an attempt at explaining where your new friend might be coming from.

Have any of you have seen this film "Topsy Turvy"? It's about Gilbert and Sullivan, the famous musical theater duo from the late 19th-century. In the film, the two are in a downward spiral until Gilbert visits a Japanese exhibition—Japonisme being in full swing in Europe at this time—while inspires him to write "The Mikado", possible their most famous work. In the film, he summons three Japanese women from the exhibition and asks them—get ready—"to laugh". The filmmaker is lampooning this old-school the-sun-never-sets-on-the-British-empire racism: the Gilbert character is obviously expecting some kind of stereotypical coy giggle that he associates with exotic "geisha" about which he's read so breathlessly, and in the film, the three women are obviously confused and can't understand what the hell is going on even when their Japanese caretaker translates Gilbert's nonsensical request. In the end it doesn't work so Gilbert puts instructions for what he imagines is the only trait worth portraying in coy Japanese concubines: a laugh.

This kind of racism (and sexism), where a foreign culture that's supposed to be celebrated is reduced to a few ridiculous stereotypes and played off as the real thing, is I think alive and well. Disney sought inspiration from Native American cultures for a film, Pocahontas. The result was a female lead who looked just like a white person but stuck in a society that didn't understand her. Although "The Mikado" got not a single thing right about Japan, it mocked contemporary English society with evil genius. No such literary merit in Pocahontas, just a complete lack of any attempt to engage with and describe any Native American culture to a modern audience whose expertise with it starts and ends in grade school history textbooks. Similarly with Disney's Mulan. Ancient Chinese culture is plundered for a handful of easy images while a modern American story is told inside it.

Probably your interlocutor was taking a class on post-colonial or gender studies and has been thinking a lot about how some people, out of malice or ignorance, try to experience or celebrate a different culture by one-dimensionalizing it into a set of tropes from their own home culture—and just got carried away. She probably thought you were "Plastic Sensei" from this Rocket News story:

Quote:As a result of reading hundreds of books and manga and watching one too many anime over the years prior to his arrival in the country, he thinks he has a pretty good idea of what Japan—and what it is to be Japanese—is all about, and no amount of Japanese people preferring beer to sake, failing to decorate their homes appropriately during public holidays, or not being experts in some form of martial art is ever going to change that. Common traits among Plastic Sensei types include: routinely ‘forgetting’ their native language; claiming to be perfectly comfortable sitting in seiza (despite the fact that most native Japanese hate sitting like this); throwing up peace signs for every single purikura photo they’re in (but looking decidedly solemn for commemorative pics); using the ‘correct’ pronunciation of words like ‘karaoke’ and ‘karate’, even when speaking in English and to other foreigners; and never, ever, missing an opportunity to wear traditional Japanese garb for events and festivals. The Plastic Sensei is more Japanese than most native Japanese are

It'd be a strange world if we were all alike. Just carry on with your life

cophnia61 Wrote:What about Japanese people who study the english language?

No, according to these people, white people (especially if they come from the UK or the US, for some reason, the rest of Europe is 'better'... as long as they're in their own country) don't have culture, so there's nothing to steal.

These are the same idiots that say that white people should give all their money to black people because of the slave trade, because only black people were ever slaves and it was always whities that owned them.

These are the same people that say that women are 'oppressed' by everything in society, despite the fact that they have all the rights that men have, and a few allowances from their gender (default custody of children in a divorce, alimony, don't have to participate in the draft, etc).

These are the same people that want 'diversity quotas' in every business, and think that these quotas are more important than hiring competent employees (currently a big problem with tech, which is trying to force the number of women in the field as high as it can, even if it means they pass over qualified men for women without any experience). They want these quotas to be based on race, sex, gender (different thing, but really a different thing with these wackos), sexual orientation, and pretty much everything else; ignoring the heavy population bias present in all fields.

These are the same people that think that thought crimes should be a thing and that discrimination is perfectly fine as long as it's against cis-het-white-men who are able in body and mind, and in favor of everyone else.
These people think the government should give people money for no reason other than their race, sex, gender, or whatever.

This is the stupid that I see every day on the internet, which probably explains a lot about my outlook on humanity.

I'm not surprised that Asians are seen as more important than the OP (who I'm guessing is white, because this kind of person wouldn't dare criticize a black person), but, for the most part, they are pretty low on the 'oppression' scale, because they do so well in school (because that's totally not a stereotype that formed because of hard working foreign exchange students and traditional parents); they're nearly white, they're so privileged.

By the way, that's one of the buzzwords: privilege. See also: 'racist', 'misogynist', 'homophobic', 'transphobic', 'cultural appropriation', 'manspreading', 'man-splaining'. This only scratches the surface of the stupid.

These idiots are called social-justice warriors (SJWs). They regularly use bs statistics, harassment (real life, by the way, they'll doxx your ass and send death threats in the mail, call your place of business, slander you, and submit false police reports against you if you get on their bad side. But they'll start whining and complaining to mods, admins, police, or whoever is in authority in that setting if you call them out on their bs.

The reason I'm saying things so harshly? Because they've taken things too far. Remember what I said about bs statistics? Have you ever heard of the 'gender wage gap'? Did you know that the data they used was just a compilation of earnings of men and women, with no consideration for the field they were in, whether it was full time or part-time, whether they had degrees, or anything else; it was a pure average of the earnings of the men and women in the study. The false claims based on this data (that women only make about $0.70 for every dollar a man makes, for equal work), are being used to push government and corporate policies.
That 'female viagra' that got through the FDA? It was pushed through by a feminist interest group, despite it being a very dangerous and ineffective drug (at least it's heavily restricted).
They push campus policies that punish men accused of rape, without evidence or trial. And policies that push minorities through their degree (if I were one of those people that got pushed through, I'd be pissed), whether they've met academic standards or not.

They openly say that rational thought is bad, because it doesn't take people's feelings into account. Because my feelings totally dictate biological processes or physics...

Remember that guy who landed a space craft on a comet and was reduced to tears from the hate he received over a shirt his friend made him? Yep, these people.

I could rant on and on about this crap. It disgusts me to no end that people can think like this and act on their thoughts. But it wouldn't be so bad if they weren't getting what they want...

EDIT:
Oh, and institutions of (supposed) learning are perpetuating this crap in gender studies classes and 'sociology' (which is hardly a science); they've even infected psychology, to the point that, depending on the institution, you can either take a real psychology class or one that's had all the science beaten out of it, to make 'easier' (to brainwash you).

Basically, being anti-western-civilization is what they consider just.

sholum Wrote:Remember that guy who landed a space craft on a comet and was reduced to tears from the hate he received over a shirt his friend made him? Yep, these people.

Not just any friend, a female friend. That said, I'm in the sciences and me and my colleagues all wear 'conservative' dress shirts while at work. I feel that it is more professional that way. Of course I can totally respect that at the European Space Agency people have a more relaxed attitude and are able to wear what they want. Different setting and a different work atmosphere. They land things on flying rocks and I deal with people - it's all good. I just wouldn't have personally worn that shirt.

More on topic though, I've come across people like that too Creepy, just not nearly as crazy creepy. I find it's usually a jealousy issue. It's possible they were like a 1/4 east Asian heritage and were angry at themselves because they thought, justified or not, that you knew more about "their culture" than they did. The resulting frustration happened to (misguidedly) get vented at you. Or it could be they tried and failed to learn an east Asian language and eventually gave up. There could also be a touch of SJW there too, just like sholum mentioned, although I have much less experience with that. In any case, my advice would just be to keep on keeping on.

Roketzu Wrote:You should have told her not to worry about diluting the sacred Japanese culture for others because you were stealing it and keeping it all for yourself, locked deep inside your true samurai heart.

lol you sir/lady (I don't want to assume the wrong gender) are awesome! This has happened to me before as well but not while studying. I was asked what I like to do for fun

Me: well I am learning Japanese
Person: You're fluent? Speak some Japanese to me
Me: I'm learning. Meaning I'm not fluent -_-
Person: *laughing and pointing at me at this time* so...do you just watch anime all day? Bet that's why you wanna learn Japanese!

I'm not from some backwards/ white supremacist town either. This happens in LA too unfortunately where you'd think ppl are more accepting due it's reputation as a melting pot.

RawrPk Wrote:I'm not from some backwards/ white supremacist town either. This happens in LA too unfortunately where you'd think ppl are more accepting due it's reputation as a melting pot.

Really? Where I'm from, everyone thinks Californians are all jerks. Of course, so is everyone from New Jersey, and Ohio, and New York, and Florida... Wait, something's wrong here: everyone's a jerk!
Well, that explains a lot...

@REH
I don't wear that kind of clothing either (don't usually wear print, even when dressed super casually), but he wasn't called out because it was too casual, but because the shirt had sexy women on it and was, thus, 'misogynistic'.
I was very tempted to buy one after that happened though, just to aggravate anyone at the college (they're in the wrong part of the country if they're that easily offended though...)

Congratulations OP. You have had a rare, though increasingly common encounter with the IRL Tumblr. A strange beast, best avoided.

I started going to Linguistics Club at my University recently, and these people have infected it so thoroughly, I think I'll stop going after just paying for membership. Literally everything is a chance to make some Feminist, SJW nonsense point about "micro-aggressions", "cultural appropriation" and "the patriarchy".

If these people just held their awful views and voiced them occasionally, it would be whatever, but literally everything is a chance to say how every problem in the world is caused by white-males.

I can't stand these people, but they seem to gain more ground every day. Welcome to the death of Western Civilization. Its been fun.

Roketzu Wrote:You should have told her not to worry about diluting the sacred Japanese culture for others because you were stealing it and keeping it all for yourself, locked deep inside your true samurai heart.

I'm using this if/when this kind of thing happens again. Total gold.

sholum Wrote:Really? Where I'm from, everyone thinks Californians are all jerks. Of course, so is everyone from New Jersey, and Ohio, and New York, and Florida... Wait, something's wrong here: everyone's a jerk!
Well, that explains a lot...

Hahaha, that about sums it up!

sholum Wrote:...he wasn't called out because it was too casual, but because the shirt had sexy women on it and was, thus, 'misogynistic'.

Fair enough, what you say is true. I just found it amazing that in the rush to crucify him everyone seemed to forget about 1) his and his coworker's achievement and 2) that his shirt actually came from his female friend.

I honestly don't understand the various arguments on either side of the "SJW" debate well enough to pick a position on issue, but from my cursory perspective on the matter Dr. Taylor seems like a good, sensitive guy who just happens to like "hip/edgy" stuff (for lack of better descriptors). He genuinely apologized with tears in his eyes, which, as far as I'm concerned, absolved him of any guilt, real or imagined. Whether or not he had to apologize in the first place is outside my understanding (but my naive opinion says he didn't - tacky, yes. Malicious, no).

But I'm glad you brought up the "female viagra" because that is messed up. Most people have no idea what it really is and that it has very little benefit for some very serious (possible) risks. Calling it "female viagra" is about as unapt a name as it can get. [/derailed]

LOL @ the overblown reactions in this thread to "SJWs".

But, yeah, OP that is pretty ridiculous.

As someone who is another Asian nationality, this situation doesn't make it easier. If anything, I am accused of "abandoning" my own culture to try to be "another Asian". Especially since I'm not fluent in the language of my culture. I'm sure there are others who might be able to relate to this.

sholum Wrote:These are the same idiots that say that white people should give all their money to black people because of the slave trade, because only black people were ever slaves and it was always whities that owned them.

Except... no one ever says this. This is a Fox News-tier strawman. Let me guess: you think Obama is a muslim too?

sholum Wrote:These are the same people that say that women are 'oppressed' by everything in society, despite the fact that they have all the rights that men have

This isn't exactly true. On paper women can do what men can do now, but it doesn't always play out that way. Black people are also now legally recognized the same way as white people are but that doesn't mean they receive the same treatment. They are legal equals now just as you say, have all of the same rights, and yet are 3.6 times more likely to be arrested for drugs despite the fact that whites and blacks use drugs at the same rate, statistically receive 15-20% longer sentences for the same crimes as others, are and are 50% less likely to receive job callbacks if they have "non-white" sounding names.

Same rights. Very different experiences. The same thing also applies to women and in frankly very discouraging ways. Women are less likely to be promoted to senior positions and often assumed incompetent. Society shames women from going into non-traditional fields. Socially, women are prevented in various ways from starting up their own companies (some rise above these barriers, but it is infinitely harder for a woman than a man to start a business). A bank is less likely to give a necessary loan to a woman than an equally qualified male. Investors are less likely to believe that a woman is as competent as a man. A woman is socialized differently such that going to business school or being as career driven is less likely due to a higher social cost to them over men. Same thing for decision makers. It's the dichotomy where a man in a position of power is "assertive", "powerful", and a "shrewd businessman", while a woman in a position of power is "bossy", "shrill", "a bitch" when exemplifying similar behaviors. This is why talented women have to deal with lower glass ceilings and are often discouraged from fields that aren't "womanly".

sholum Wrote:and a few allowances from their gender (default custody of children in a divorce, alimony, don't have to participate in the draft, etc).

No. This is a silly MRA myth.

http://divorcesupport.about.com/b/2011/1...isions.htm

sholum Wrote:These are the same people that want 'diversity quotas' in every business, and think that these quotas are more important than hiring competent employees (currently a big problem with tech, which is trying to force the number of women in the field as high as it can, even if it means they pass over qualified men for women without any experience). They want these quotas to be based on race, sex, gender (different thing, but really a different thing with these wackos), sexual orientation, and pretty much everything else; ignoring the heavy population bias present in all fields.

The assumption that filling diversity quotas results in less competent employees is an inherently sexist one, and says more about you than the strawman you're attacking. In reality no one has ever considered hiring "less competent" employees. Diversity quotas exist so well-qualified women and minorities get their fair shake as well, and because even competence doesn't eliminate bias. Observe:

-Once, according to a Yale study, applications with randomized male and female names were presented to scientists for students applying for a lab manager position. Although the applications were 100% identical the female applicants were rated significantly lower in competence & hireability.

-In the world of classical music as well it was found that female performers were significantly more likely to be hired after they implemented blind auditions. The effect was so large that, after the switch, the percentage of females in top symphony orchestras jumped from less than 5% to 30%. Researchers have also determined that this step alone makes it 50% more likely that a woman will advance to the finals.

-African-Americans with college degrees are twice as likely to be unemployed as other graduates, and even white men with re­cent crim­in­al his­tor­ies are far more likely to re­ceive calls back than black men with no crim­in­al re­cord at all.

These are a couple reasons diversity quotas exist. As you can see competence did not help those women. I would honestly hate to be a competent women in a society that overall does not value them.

sholum Wrote:which is trying to force the number of women in the field as high as it can, even if it means they pass over qualified men for women without any experience)

I see this from time to time. A disgruntled person on the internet complaining about a company hiring "feminists and uppity women and darn black people and transgenders" instead of "the best for the job" and claiming that they're effectively firing poor disenfranchised white men for their race/gender (not true at all). Usually from people on 4chan's /pol/, coontown, and other neo-reactionary communities.

And you know what? Most of them are mediocre coders with regressive agendas who feel threatened by the skills of anyone who is different from them. They don't want progress to be made because then their skills won't look as pretty on paper. Instead of bettering themselves and learning how to be proficient, they throw tantrums and try to eliminate the competition. Also, a lot of these dudes can't handle the thought that being "the best person for the job" might not be based solely on technical skill and might include things like "the ability to communicate without stereotyping huge swathes of people" or "knowing what is and isn't professional discussion".

sholum Wrote:These are the same people that think that thought crimes should be a thing

Who thinks this? Where do they think this? Are you sure you're not repeating echo chamber derived caricatures of people you dislike?

sholum Wrote:and that discrimination is perfectly fine as long as it's against cis-het-white-men who are able in body and mind, and in favor of everyone else.

This is a silly strawman.

sholum Wrote:These people think the government should give people money for no reason other than their race, sex, gender, or whatever.

You've repeated this one earlier, and it's just as much as a strawman as it was before. The (entirely false) notion that all blacks are lazy "welfare queens" that just want to take the money of the hardworking white man is a common racist trope that conservatives just can't get enough of.

sholum Wrote:By the way, that's one of the buzzwords: privilege. See also: 'racist', 'misogynist', 'homophobic', 'transphobic', 'cultural appropriation', 'manspreading', 'man-splaining'. This only scratches the surface of the stupid.

It's not too surprising that someone with a name making fun of Jews would claim that racist is a buzzword.

sholum Wrote:These idiots are called social-justice warriors (SJWs).

If you want to talk about a buzzword, though, this is the definition of one. "sjw" is a meaningless buzzword used by people who have no desire to be taken seriously or to contribute to productive discourse. Like a true buzzword it has no standard definition. It's also the common "slur" used by racists/sexists/MRAs and so on. It basically refers to anyone who doesn't think like it's 1860.

sholum Wrote:The reason I'm saying things so harshly? Because they've taken things too far. Remember what I said about bs statistics? Have you ever heard of the 'gender wage gap'? Did you know that the data they used was just a compilation of earnings of men and women, with no consideration for the field they were in, whether it was full time or part-time, whether they had degrees, or anything else

That stat is just the overall stat. Even when you control for hours worked, education, and field significant wage gaps still exist.

sholum Wrote:They openly say that rational thought is bad, because it doesn't take people's feelings into account. Because my feelings totally dictate biological processes or physics...

Who is "they"? The icky feminists and girls? All of them? Did you interview all of them? Where is the data you used to come to this conclusion? Is there any data?

Or are you just trying to slander an entire group you don't like to push your agenda while simultaneously projecting the fact that the people who tend to have a hard-on for hating feminism often don't do so on any rational basis but rather an emotional one?

sholum Wrote:Remember that guy who landed a space craft on a comet and was reduced to tears from the hate he received over a shirt his friend made him? Yep, these people.

It wasn't work appropriate. It wasn't very television appropriate. And it definitely wasn't appropriate for a scientific announcement. It reflects badly of the organization. You don't have to be a feminist to understand these simple concepts about maturity.

sholum Wrote:Oh, and institutions of (supposed) learning are perpetuating this crap in gender studies classes and 'sociology' (which is hardly a science); they've even infected psychology, to the point that, depending on the institution, you can either take a real psychology class or one that's had all the science beaten out of it, to make 'easier' (to brainwash you).

Sociology is a science just as much as any. There are credited works in sociology going back to ancient Greek philosophers. Just because sociology often ruins the talking points of your right-wing political agenda doesn't mean it's not a "real" science.

And the rest of what you said is silly and has no citation. "Deerrr psychology classes er brainwashing us" is not an argument.

sholum Wrote:Basically, being anti-western-civilization is what they consider just.

Lol. This has to be satire.

[Zgarbas]

Wow, sholum, I was unaware that I was in the red pill section of reddit. I would suggest calming down, since this is not an MRA den (hopefully).

OP: Cultural appropriation is a thing, and though the person you met was completely out of line and gratuitously insulted a stranger for the sake of it, please don't give in to the anti-SJW trend. It's stupid and paranoid. And yeah, a lot of people who study Japanese (or just are into Japanese culture in general) do it, but she was still out of line.

I think that my most crazy human interaction would be that one guy who offered to fix my lesbianness with his penis because I was walking on the street having short hair. But somehow that doesn't seem to be a problem since it doesn't bother MRAs.

Imagining the conversation you had with this girl really made my day .

Wow Zgardbas. Didn't realise we were on Reddit at all. Nor Tumblr for that matter. You too ryuudou.

Just because somebody doesn't buy into this SJW crap, doesn't mean you can start throwing around accusations like "I bet you think Obama is a Muslim too" and still be taken seriously by anybody that isn't grinding the same axe as you, so just simmer down.

I'm not getting into this debate again either way, but sholum conducted himself with much more civility than either of you two so far.

[Zgarbas]

I fail to see any reason to take someone seriously when they casually call people beasts and claim that they're the death of Western civilisation, as you put it. Maybe the angry posts above should be the ones to 'simmer down', as you put it?

How exactly is insulting an entire field more civil than asking someone to calm down? Sholum literally called everyone in sociology (with apostrophes) idiots. I would suggest reconsidering your idea of civility.

@Ninkendo

There's no such thing as an "sjw". It's a buzzword used by internet neo-reactionaries to slander anyone who deviates from the group-think of their regressive agenda. It's a term thrown at anybody even remotely discussing race issues or women issues and daring to believe there are problems that need fixing.

Zgarbas, I'm sorry for you, that you lack self-awareness (perhaps reread your comment and see that perhaps you said more than just "calm down").

I also feel sorry for you that my expressing disdain for a set of ideas is "uncivil" to you, you must be quite thin skinned.

I'm not getting into that debate ryuudou. You can claim that SJW isn't a word (or whatever "sjw isn't a thing" is supposed to mean), but it obviously is, and it obviously means something, whether you like it or not.

[Zgarbas]

The advice to re-read your post is mutual.

I would also advise against insulting other users.

I would also advise looking up the difference between 'having disdain for a set of ideas' and 'being condescending and insulting'.

Veiled threats won't make you seem less thin-skinned, only more.

Go ahead and prove me right.

[Zgarbas]

They're not veiled threats.

Insults towards other users are frowned upon on this forum. It is an important aspect of our forum guidelines, and normally ad hominems are deleted instantly as part of our efforts to make this a more supportive community. It is neither veiled, as it is direct, nor a threat, as it is not meant to intimidate you, but to ask you to refrain from escalating your aggressive behaviour and apparent proneness to ad hominems.