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hogposting wrote

Towards the end of the episode they were discussing a writer who got fired for a comment on cultural appropriation along the lines of:

As writers, aren't we supposed to be imagining what it's like to be someone else and then writing that story? Shouldn't we be seeing which writer can appropriate culture the best? We could even give out an award for it!

That strikes me as a pretty narrow, good-faith comment on the subject. Maybe you disagree with it, but there's a world of difference between that and some blatantly bigoted right-wing troll, so it makes sense to treat the situations differently.

And while they didn't detail what exactly the difference between the two situations is, I think it's reasonably clear: it's a mix of how egregious the original comment was and whether that comment was made in good faith. Seems like the intuition was OK even if they didn't articulate it all that well.

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MissPiggyOnRollerSkates wrote

I saw another person point out that Joseph Boyden, the novelist they were writing about, actually has a more complicated relationship to representing other cultures. He claimed to be First Nations person, wrote novels about First Nations people, won awards for First Nations writers, and spoke out publicly on issues relating to how it is to be First Nations in Canada, but . . . he isn't actually a member of any tribe. It's possible that he has some First Nations ancestry, in the same way my granny claims that we have Miami heritage back in the mists of time, but tribal membership isn't based on blood quantum and that ancestry, whether it exists or not, doesn't give anyone insight into what it's actually like to live as a minority in Canada or the US. Joseph Boyden wasn't cancelled for writing fiction. In fact, several First Nations leaders said that they were aware that his claim was a sham, but as long as he was just writing fiction, they didn't give a shit. They started caring a whole lot though when he started speaking more publicly and politically and was contradicting what actual First Nations people were saying. He wasn't canceled for writing novels, he was canceled for naming himself the spokesman for a group he doesn't actually belong to.

Sorry, this is getting really long, but it's something I really care about. I love reading fiction, and I agree that it is a good exercise to attempt to imagine someone different from yourself; it helps you see other people as full people, not just NPCs that you encounter in the show that you're starring in every day of your life. HOWEVER, Joseph Boyden was wrong to pretend to be a minority in an attempt to stand out from the crowd of other novelists, and was especially wrong to try to speak for (and contradict!) people that have actually lived the experiences he has only imagined.

To get back to the Chapo episode, I'm not saying that they were deliberately disingenuous in telling Boyden's story that way--I didn't have that information on the tip of my tongue either, until someone else reminded me of it. You can't just remember the details to everything all the time. What I am accusing them of is speaking too glibly about situations that they maybe should have spent a minute researching before taking a stance on.

And now I'll climb back off my soapbox.

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