dramaticallyawesome asked: I’m not sure I can say that you’re comforting. You made my friend cry, and that’s not fair. She wasn’t trying to create a new myth, she was just making a story. People do that all the time. I can link you to a comic on deviantart that has some made up Norse myths, for example. It’s only offensive if you try to make it so. I don’t want to start anything; I just think that it’s not nice to make the teen cry, especially when it seems like you share similar views. (anti oppression, car singer, etc.)
Did I give the impression I was trying to comfort her? Comforting people who refuse to engage with their own racist behaviour isn’t on my list of priorities.
Keep your links. I don’t give a damn about some random deviantartist who decided to invent Norse myths. A white person who decides to invent a demonic Hindu creature is not “just making a story”; they are engaging in a long tradition of white colonization, co-opting, and appropriation of Hindu culture.
“ It’s only offensive if you try to make it so.”
That is a patently ridiculous thing to say. The whole construction of “offense” as something that people choose to feel is ridiculous, trivializing, and insulting. I didn’t MAKE her post her racist drawing, I didn’t MAKE her respond with such callous disregard.
Your friend found my response to her to be offensive. Does that mean she made it so? What kind of double standards are you proposing exactly?
As for “making the teen cry”, I can’t even take that seriously. Being told that she did something racist is the worst thing in this whole situation, right? Far worse than her actually DOING something racist, of course.
If your friend truly believes in anti-oppression, she would understand that she shouldn’t help herself to the cultures of people she has a lot of privilege over and is not a part of. She would do some research in order to present her ideas in a respectful and non-harmful manner. If she falls down on this, when called out by a member of that group, she would listen to their critique, apologize, and try not to do it again. She would attempt to grasp that it’s not just one little doodle; it’s one more fucking cavalier insult built upon hundreds of years of oppression, misrepresentation, and cultural appropriation. She would understand that she has caused pain in this exchange and that her tears are just another disgustingly common way that white women who have fucked up attempt to make themselves the victim of any situation.
Am I clear enough? Your friend has already, due to my “rudeness”, decided that she will never ever EVER bother to research the peoples and cultures she co-opts. Is that fair?
LOLOL I love how dramaticallyawesome UNIRONICALLY compares playing in Norse mythology to playing with a real, living, existing religion. A religion of over a billion people. But I guess those people don’t matter, and so their religion is actually just some fun mythology for her artist friend to play around in.
Young artists really need to understand that being an ‘ARTIST’ does not exempt them from the real world. Their thoughts and actions have consequences just like everyone else. Being an ARTIST is not a free pass to Ignorant Happy La la Magicland. In fact, being an ARTIST means you should be even more sensitive/aware of your world than the plebians around you. As an ARTIST, that’s YOUR responsibility to investigate and process and think. As an ARTIST.
