keryx: (kills fascists)
keryx ([personal profile] keryx) wrote2007-07-16 08:05 pm
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somebody wrote a fatshionista post just for me!

It was ostensibly just costume photos from a member of the Detroit PURE group (and dude! they have THIRTY people!), but it sparked a couple of dismissive comments about cultural appropriation followed by some more investigative ones followed by some really unfounded notions that PERFORMANCE IS NEVER ACTIVIST.

That's right, people. Art? Is just about some person's "self-expression". O RLY? Have you no education in the history of performance? [Okay, yeah, I know I'm being a cultural snob here, but on what planet is protesting the One True Activism and art a sideline activity? It's not like art-as-protest is either new or dead. Hello? LiveEarth? Like, last week? I don't get how someone could be so clueless on this subject.]

The comment thread has: misunderstandings of tribal bellydance, debate about what's "real" fattivism, disparaging remarks about art, snark about "sisterhood", questions about cultural appropriation (and a hint of Orientalism, but I think maybe that was just me). It's like lj-feminist came to hang out on [livejournal.com profile] fatshionista just to entertain me!

On a serious note, I do get that people who find bellydance troublesome have probably gotten tired of explaining why by now. Just because I don't get tired of examining that particular fish doesn't mean others are obliged to. But, really, people? If you're gonna bring it up, do you have to be such a dismissive ass about it? In my experience, people often haven't given thought to the cultural implications of dance shit, but they're pretty open to questioning it.

[identity profile] we-are-pliable.livejournal.com 2007-07-17 12:35 am (UTC)(link)
The comments in [livejournal.com profile] stupid_free are worth checking out, as well.

[identity profile] keryx.livejournal.com 2007-07-17 03:24 am (UTC)(link)
Oh, wow. Internets, you spoil me! It's not even my birthday!

[identity profile] attrice.livejournal.com 2007-07-17 04:11 am (UTC)(link)
heh, when I first saw that post, I was kind of waiting for the obligatory appropriation discussion.

And I totally get why people have questions and concerns and all that, but honestly these days I get so tired of having these big meta discussions about race and culture and white supremacy where 98% of the people in the discussion are white, ya know. Makes me think back to my early feminist days where I was always the first one to jump all over people for those kind of things. Makes me shudder to think about myself as so completely self-righteous all the time.

[identity profile] keryx.livejournal.com 2007-07-26 03:04 am (UTC)(link)
I will say a decent chunk of the fatshionista crowd is not white - I've learned not to make assumptions about commenters' race in that community. BUT. A lot of the same people who jump all over race also get all pissed off when people talk about sexism. ARGH.
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[identity profile] belladonnalin.livejournal.com 2007-07-17 09:24 pm (UTC)(link)
On a serious note, I do get that people who find bellydance troublesome have probably gotten tired of explaining why by now. Just because I don't get tired of examining that particular fish doesn't mean others are obliged to. But, really, people? If you're gonna bring it up, do you have to be such a dismissive ass about it? In my experience, people often haven't given thought to the cultural implications of dance shit, but they're pretty open to questioning it.

*nod* The people who are all "oh, why do we have to think about that?" bug me, but they don't seem as common as the ones who just say "Well, it's appropriation, and I KNOW you haven't thought about it and blahblahblah".

Especially when they just don't BELIEVE people when they say that they have thought about that, that their group is considering and thinking about those issues.

There are a lot of belly dance groups here that have ABSOLUTELY NO internal critique about the implications of an entirely white group of women doing this kind of dance and knowing nothing about it (especially problematic, I think, in Egyptian, which claims a cultural lineage in a way that tribal doesn't). But those people aren't the ones who are at PURE, either, at least for the most part.

[identity profile] keryx.livejournal.com 2007-07-26 03:11 am (UTC)(link)
Word. I am also really not down with examinations of what art is and is not allowable by people who appear to neither make nor consume it. That probably makes me a classist by default (just because of the class associations with art in this country, not that they're logical), but people getting all hypercritical about shit they don't even guess at understanding... why? why do that? I don't get it.

[identity profile] cutegaychick.livejournal.com 2007-07-31 04:48 am (UTC)(link)
Aww but you were so nice about it! If I were a little less PURE, I'd have said

"Boy, I'm sorry. It must be hard to appreciate art and beauty and fun when the chip on your shoulder is as big as the stick up your ass. I hope you feel better soon!"

Actually, I did try to say that but the community is friends only and hell, I didn't want to add those crazy people to my friends list.

[identity profile] keryx.livejournal.com 2007-07-31 10:57 am (UTC)(link)
It's actually a pretty effing awesome community. It's just LJ - sometimes people who have perfectly valid points have them in enormously jackassy ways.

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