bcholmes | It's Nice that You Listen; It'd be Nicer If You Joined In (Reply)

some chick says
thank you for saying all the things I never do
I say
the thanks I get is to take all the shit for you
it's nice that you listen
it'd be nicer if you joined in

So, as it happens, I find myself following two conversations that have no direct relationship with one another, but which seem to be echoing each other in interesting ways.

One of these conversations is the Great Cultural Appropriation Debate of DOOM, Part II (or are we on to Part III yet?) I'm sure that people who are on my friends list who are connected to fandom and/or WisCon are intimately familiar with this debate. If you're not in that category, Angry Black Woman provided this context:

A few years ago at WisCon (the feminist SF convention) there was a panel about Cultural Appropriation that sparked an online discussion about the topic that is generally referred to as the Great Debate of DOOM. This was partly due to the wide-ranging nature of it (over 20 blogs, I believe) and due to the great abundance of wank, ignorance, and utter fail on the part of some participants.
At every WisCon since, there have been other CA panels that attempted to fix the issues raised by the first. But it was clear to those of us who have these conversations and panels all the time that a 45 minute or 90 minute debate/discussion/whathaveyou was not going to get really deep into the topic.

and Ambling Along the Aqueduct has a good round-up of highlights of the conversation to date. Many people on my friends list have made really good contributions to the conversation (w00t especially to sparkymonster and her Links for Clueless White People and other things she's said!) I also think that this post is full of important things that pasty people should know.

So that's one conversation. Me, I'm a pasty white person who grew up in a pasty white mostly homogeneous small city without tons of awareness about topics of race. But in this conversation, I find myself nodding in agreement with the people like kalmn and sparkymonster and badgerbag. Some of those people, like sparkymonster and badgerbag, I barely know. I know of them through WisCon, and that's really the limit of my relationship with them. But when these people speak, I'm, like, "Yeah!"

So then there's this other conversation I've been watching.

I belong to a mailing list of approximately 150 people who are interested in the intersection of trans-ness and spirituality. This is a community that I feel deep bonds with. I'm very close to several of the people in that group, and view several of them as found family. I met up with that community at a very unhappy time in my life, and they helped me out of that.

(I'm also forced to be careful about what I say on this topic -- we have rules on the list about taking information off-list, but I got permissions to talk generally about the conversation).

Several days ago, someone brought up the fraught topic of the native term, "Two-Spirit". Someone basically said, "hey, I was reading this site that admonished non-native folk from appropriating the term 'Two-spirit'; whaddya think?"

And, well, this seemed to play out pretty much like you'd expect. The responses range from "we're all part of humanity; it's all good" to "dude, we totally need extra language, and besides, the word is English." What I don't feel like I've seen on the list is someone saying, "Yeah, the original assertion is totally pointy and we need to come to terms with it, which might well mean expunging 'Two Spirit' from our trans/spiritual vocabulary." And I'm suddenly all, "aaaaagh! Why aren't I saying anything?"

Several years ago, someone quoted from this chapter in Starhawk's book, Webs of Power:

In today's diverse and changing world, we experience and learn from a multiplicity of cultures and spiritual traditions. Out of the encounters between the East and the West, the developed world and the indigenous world, out of the revisioning of history and the re-envisioning of the sacred that arose from the women's movement, new rituals and spiritual traditions have arisen and old ones have changed form. The edge where different systems meet is always fertile ground, in culture as well and nature. But for that meeting ground to remain nurturing to all traditions, issues of entitlement and authenticity need to be addressed.
Cultural appropriation as a concept arose from the Native American and First Nation communities, who grew angry at people taking rituals, chants, myths and sacred objects out of their contexts, diluting their meanings, and sometimes profiting off of them or sometimes claiming authority and expertise they hadn't earned.

It's interesting to think about the ways in which the cultural appropriation with respect to writing and cultural appropriation in terms of spiritual practice are different. One of the things that I repeatedly hear said is that no one is saying, "white people can't write characters of other cultures or races"; one can point to really good texts like, Writing the Other by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward. Become aware. Learn about issues of representation.

But there are some very clear voices saying, "hey, white people, you don't get to practice this tradition or call yourself by this name." I think those voices are important to listen to.

And here, I don't think I can avoid mentioning my own problematic position as a practitioner of a religion that's not part of the culture of my birth. And there's a ton I could talk about on that topic, but I suspect that this isn't really the right time, and I'm also hyper-aware of how many conversations like these quickly devolve into those annoying "white confession" moments.

(I remember one of the cultural appropriation panels at WisCon -- well before the Great Debate of DOOM -- where one panelist seemed to want to use the panel to confess her own experience with cultural appropriation. I don't know if she was looking for absolution, or recognition of her new position of awareness. Whatever it was, it wasn't really helpful to the panel.)

But back to my mailing list, and the cultural appropriation debate. I think I'm being an idiot by not saying something. Part of me is too open-minded. I know a lot about where the members of that group are speaking from, and I grok it and am partially sympathetic. And part of me knows that the topic of trans spirituality is hard to talk about -- I've never really been able to find the words to describe what that's all about for me, so the urge to clutch at language from other cultures that seem to comprehend that a bit... well, I understand that. But I know that it's problematic, and I need to say that.

Gar. I'm gonna sit here and make incomprehensible noises for a while.

While I'm on the topic, I'll mention these suggestions from Starhawk to people who are approaching the spiritual practices of other cultures: