Hilarious Self-Censorship by Karen Miller
Karen Miller, who to my astonishment I found was actually a published fantasy writer, penned the following astonishing comment, as karenmiller, (http://jaylake.livejournal.com/1692287.html?view=15231359#t15231359) onto lakeshore's journal.
... the thing for us Australian writers is that the Aboriginal people don't want us using their stuff. And given that theirs is a living, breathing, current culture, my feeling is that if they say, Hands off please, to not respect that is the height of arrogance. By a very long way we've not always done well by the indigenous people of this country -- to leave their spiritual and creation beliefs alone is the least we can do. Being a writer doesn't give me carte blanche to take what I like from these people just because there's no law to stop me. And certainly not under the convenient excuse that I'm an artist and all is fair game to me in my exercise of artistic expression. That, to me, is indeed the height of cultural appropriation and unseemly insensitivity and distasteful privilege.
Now, stop and consider what she's saying. Her argument is that a group of people who don't look like you have the moral right to tell you, because you look kinda like a group of people some of whom were mean to some of them, what you may or may not write about them, their culture, or incorporating beliefs from their culture. And that you are morally bound to obey their dictates in this regard.
She's so blind to the concept of "liberty" that she assumes you'd need the "excuse" of being an "artist" to make the other culture "fair game" -- she doesn't even get that it's her right as a human being to say whatever she likes. She think that you have to belong to some sort of special professional group simply to have the normal right to freedom of speech!
Such people are already enslaved in their own minds. They just haven't yet had a master come along and fasten the physical shackles.
... the thing for us Australian writers is that the Aboriginal people don't want us using their stuff. And given that theirs is a living, breathing, current culture, my feeling is that if they say, Hands off please, to not respect that is the height of arrogance. By a very long way we've not always done well by the indigenous people of this country -- to leave their spiritual and creation beliefs alone is the least we can do. Being a writer doesn't give me carte blanche to take what I like from these people just because there's no law to stop me. And certainly not under the convenient excuse that I'm an artist and all is fair game to me in my exercise of artistic expression. That, to me, is indeed the height of cultural appropriation and unseemly insensitivity and distasteful privilege.
Now, stop and consider what she's saying. Her argument is that a group of people who don't look like you have the moral right to tell you, because you look kinda like a group of people some of whom were mean to some of them, what you may or may not write about them, their culture, or incorporating beliefs from their culture. And that you are morally bound to obey their dictates in this regard.
She's so blind to the concept of "liberty" that she assumes you'd need the "excuse" of being an "artist" to make the other culture "fair game" -- she doesn't even get that it's her right as a human being to say whatever she likes. She think that you have to belong to some sort of special professional group simply to have the normal right to freedom of speech!
Such people are already enslaved in their own minds. They just haven't yet had a master come along and fasten the physical shackles.