[Sensitive question] Is there cultural appropriation in gaming?

[Celebrim]

I'm the next thing to a Social Justice Warrior; more precisely, I am a Social Justice Cleric.

I've got no interest in discussing your banal little examples, which - if they are to be given any credit at all - amount to "Be considerate and respectful toward others". Well and good, but you don't need a wishy-washy vague and inaccurate term like "cultural appropriation" to express that idea, and you express that term better by saying, "Being considerate and respectful to others." Most importantly, where your arguments have any meaning at all, they address only what is not particularly controversial about showing respect and are not actually arguments against what I said however long winded that they may be - seeing as I also said "I'd generally object to making some cultural analogy, regardless of the culture involved, solely for the purposes of mocking, belittling, or denigrating some group." Likewise, the speaker I linked to also points out blackface is wrong, so we are in agreement on that - but not over whether the problem with blackface is that it's cultural appropriation, because it isn't. By going on and on and on and on about what there is no real argument about, you are simply prevacating and dissembling. SJW's are continually raising the red herring, continually lying to themselves and others that all they are saying is, "All we want is people to be respectful to others." But in all your long response you don't address any of my actual complaints, or really anyone's actual complaints against political correctness, and what you are really saying is, "If you don't agree with me, it must because you don't believe you need to respect people of other races." This is not to put too fine a point on it, horse dung. I hope you are simply unaware of your deceitfulness and are self-deceived, and that by your many words you are mostly confusing yourself.

But you did, quite inadvertently I'm sure, cut to the heart of the matter when you claimed to be a "Social Justice Cleric". This is the most truthful admission you made in the whole big pile of crap, because this is precisely the impulse that lies at the heart of "political correctness". The SJW's aren't really warriors, so much as a self-appointed priesthood. The reason that they prefer such vague terms as "cultural appropriation", and the reason that their arguments are filled with so many contradictions and double standards is that clear thinking is of no use whatsoever to a self-appointed priesthood. If the arguments were clear and understandable and free of double standards, what use would you have of a priesthood? If the rules were clear, anyone could follow them. The mendacity and sloppy thinking is a purposeful and critical feature of "Social Justice" and "Critical Theory", since it means that in order to be righteous in the eyes of the priesthood, regardless of your intention and your purposes and your actions, you must first go and beg of a blessing from the priesthood, who will then be empowered to order you to perform whatever absolutions and prostrations that they desire before your work is deemed sufficiently free of sin. And if you don't go and receive a blessing, then regardless of how you behave, some fault can always be found in what you do. It doesn't escape my notice that there is basically no difference between what SJW's are likely to approve of, and what they find fault with, beyond that the makers of one and not the other have prostated themselves in homage to the SJW's.

Not only does your sort promote a doctrine that leads only to racism and strife, not only is it filled with deceit, but it is motivated by a very special sort of arrogance. I no more will defer to your perfidy and hatred than I would set here and fail to denounce some member of the KKK spreading their hatred. You are not worthy of civil dialogue because you don't engage in it yourself, and because your doctrine is ultimately murderous, hateful and evil. No clearer proof of that is that in all your long essay, you never seemed to notice that all you reserved for yourself was the right to condemn others, but at no point could you put your finger firmly on how you ought to behave - and even repeatedly admitted you'd not follow your own dictates for which you accuse others of whatever ism furthers your own self-righteous sneering. You never fail to go around accusing others of being Nazi's when they disagree with you, but politically correct is just English for Gleichschaltung. We already have a word for 'politeness'. Political correctness is about as far from the impulse of being considerate as a thing may be. Social Justice Cleric, indeed. We have a word for that already though - it's commissar.

 

[Max_Killjoy]

IMO, there's no such thing as "social justice". Guilt and innocence are not collective. A person is not responsible for the actions of others based on accidents of birth.

 

[Celebrim]

IMO, there's no such thing as "social justice". Guilt and innocence are not collective. A person is not responsible for the actions of others based on accidents of birth.

Hence, the reason that the whole concept is inherently racist. All the "politically correct" movement actually is, as it pertains to race, is a resurrection of every particular of the worst of 19th century racist philosophy cloaked in new language. There are one to one parallels between what the SJW's believe and what the KKK believes. Every time I have to listen to one of them, I'm reminded not only of arguing with white supremacists in the school yard, but of Gandalf's reception by Saruman, when he answers Saruman's words by saying something like, "I've heard all these words before, coming from the mouth of Sauron's emissaries."

 

[Mallus]

Some question!

But if I squawk out some made-up vaguely-Cantonese-ish wing-wong gabble, and I'm in effect sneering at Chinese language, as if anything other than English is baby talk - then yeah, that's disrespectful.

Is Engrish automatically disrespectful? Or the related tradition of rather, ahem, decorative use of English in Japanese consumer products?

If you understand how a veteran would get angry seeing a civilian wearing a military uniform with a Purple Heart, as a Halloween costume, not having earned that Purple Heart the hard way; then you should be able to understand, by direct analogy, how a Cheyenne person would get angry at someone wearing an eagle-feather bonnet, without having earned it the hard way.

What about someone dressing as a Catholic priest? What about dressing as a Catholic priest with the intent of social critique, subversion, and mockery? Let's say you're going to a Buñuel-themed Halloween party.

If "earned" is important, what about a surgeon costume?

I've played many characters with military background, modern and fantasy and other settings. I don't know military culture from direct personal experience; I've never served. I'm probably getting some things wrong, misinformed by movies and whatnot. (At least I know not to "lock and load"; with a bolt-action rifle, load and THEN lock the chamber.) So, reversing the SJW argument, I'm appropriating military culture, any time I play a commando or a Starfleet crewmember or a Roman centurion. I don't belittle the military in the process.

What about playing a character based on someone from Catch-22? Or a PC who channels General Jack D. Ripper from Dr. Strangelove? Pointed criticisms of a culture aimed above the level of an individual wounded vet.

And speaking of Star Trek - it's an imaginary quasi-military. One whose militarism is frequently belittled/undermined - by the protagonists. Rarely is a hard military option the right choice in the Federation (with the exception of certain actions undertaken by one Benjamin Sisko).

edit: I need more coffee before I try to answer the OP's question. Persnickety questions are easy, more careful reasoned responses are hard.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

IMO, there's no such thing as "social justice". Guilt and innocence are not collective. A person is not responsible for the actions of others based on accidents of birth.

Maybe.

But they may be on the hook for correcting the issue, especially if the issue is ongoing and they or their sub-segment of society continue to benefit from said ongoing issue to the detriment of others.

Or, to put it differently, an individual may not be guilty of the original offense, but by allowing the injustice to continue and benefiting therefrom, he or she has committed a new punishable act. In a sense, this would be analogous to the crime of being an accessory after the fact OR aiding and abetting.

 

[Black_Pearl]

It's a role playing game. If we only ever played what we are in real life it kinda limits us to always be what we are born. I don't want to change who I am permanently but a little role play as something else is the fun part. My personal taste is to try and do it with some accuracy; accents, knowledge, behaviour. I however would never judge/belittle someone who causes offence accidentally.

It's a game using imagination, and imagination let's some things that don't or can't happen occur in an intangible way. Words are said across a table in a room, are those words heard outside the building? No, the only people it matters to are the people in the room, a room can be walked out of.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

(Thanks for dragging the thread back on topic.)

 

[Morrus]

I've got no interest in discussing your banal little examples, which - if they are to be given any credit at all - amount to "Be considerate and respectful toward others". Well and good, but you don't need a wishy-washy vague and inaccurate term like "cultural appropriation" to express that idea, and you express that term better by saying, "Being considerate and respectful to others." Most importantly, where your arguments have any meaning at all, they address only what is not particularly controversial about showing respect and are not actually arguments against what I said however long winded that they may be - seeing as I also said "I'd generally object to making some cultural analogy, regardless of the culture involved, solely for the purposes of mocking, belittling, or denigrating some group." Likewise, the speaker I linked to also points out blackface is wrong, so we are in agreement on that - but not over whether the problem with blackface is that it's cultural appropriation, because it isn't. By going on and on and on and on about what there is no real argument about, you are simply prevacating and dissembling. SJW's are continually raising the red herring, continually lying to themselves and others that all they are saying is, "All we want is people to be respectful to others." But in all your long response you don't address any of my actual complaints, or really anyone's actual complaints against political correctness, and what you are really saying is, "If you don't agree with me, it must because you don't believe you need to respect people of other races." This is not to put too fine a point on it, horse dung. I hope you are simply unaware of your deceitfulness and are self-deceived, and that by your many words you are mostly confusing yourself.

But you did, quite inadvertently I'm sure, cut to the heart of the matter when you claimed to be a "Social Justice Cleric". This is the most truthful admission you made in the whole big pile of crap, because this is precisely the impulse that lies at the heart of "political correctness". The SJW's aren't really warriors, so much as a self-appointed priesthood. The reason that they prefer such vague terms as "cultural appropriation", and the reason that their arguments are filled with so many contradictions and double standards is that clear thinking is of no use whatsoever to a self-appointed priesthood. If the arguments were clear and understandable and free of double standards, what use would you have of a priesthood? If the rules were clear, anyone could follow them. The mendacity and sloppy thinking is a purposeful and critical feature of "Social Justice" and "Critical Theory", since it means that in order to be righteous in the eyes of the priesthood, regardless of your intention and your purposes and your actions, you must first go and beg of a blessing from the priesthood, who will then be empowered to order you to perform whatever absolutions and prostrations that they desire before your work is deemed sufficiently free of sin. And if you don't go and receive a blessing, then regardless of how you behave, some fault can always be found in what you do. It doesn't escape my notice that there is basically no difference between what SJW's are likely to approve of, and what they find fault with, beyond that the makers of one and not the other have prostated themselves in homage to the SJW's.

Not only does your sort promote a doctrine that leads only to racism and strife, not only is it filled with deceit, but it is motivated by a very special sort of arrogance. I no more will defer to your perfidy and hatred than I would set here and fail to denounce some member of the KKK spreading their hatred. You are not worthy of civil dialogue because you don't engage in it yourself, and because your doctrine is ultimately murderous, hateful and evil. No clearer proof of that is that in all your long essay, you never seemed to notice that all you reserved for yourself was the right to condemn others, but at no point could you put your finger firmly on how you ought to behave - and even repeatedly admitted you'd not follow your own dictates for which you accuse others of whatever ism furthers your own self-righteous sneering. You never fail to go around accusing others of being Nazi's when they disagree with you, but politically correct is just English for Gleichschaltung. We already have a word for 'politeness'. Political correctness is about as far from the impulse of being considerate as a thing may be. Social Justice Cleric, indeed. We have a word for that already though - it's commissar.

Calm down. Whether or not you agree with somebody, once you start personally insulting them, you're officially off the rails. The conversation was largely civil - if presenting differing viewpoints - until this post where you decided a particular poster needed to be personally attacked.

And in general, please, folks, please stick to the RPG-specific topic at hand, and not drift in general politics. It's a borderline subject as it is, without escalating it into rants outside the specific subject matter. Keep it to RPGs, please.

 

[Janx]

--snip to rewrite and get on topic ---

Getting back on track. I think roleplay, wearing costumes, other people's hats and writing fiction is about seeing things from a different person's perspective.

Maybe we get it accurate, maybe we just get a laugh. Maybe it's based on stereotypes, because ultimately we as humans operate on categorizing things.

It is a part of being human. It is a part of practicing empathy. Barring situations where there is obvious intent to be hurtful, outlawing it (the extreme end of where people are worried PC stuff is going) would damage us. We wouldn't be better for it as a society.

So yeah, that means you can play as Robear, the Ursine Gypsy, a blatant stereotype of swashbuckling romantic rogue plagiarized from cliches of Romani.

Doing so doesn't mean you hate gypsies. Just that you were inspired by them. And unless actual gypsies were rounded up and shot, you didn't do any harm.

It might be you don't get any insight into the Romani culture from that character. or you might research, and Robear slowly changes from comedic bear to a deeper character. That's the opportunity that should not be squashed. That's the point of trying on other people's hats.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

And unless actual gypsies were rounded up and shot, you didn't do any harm.

In the context of Robear, probably not. But I can't agree as a generalized principle that we need concern ourselves with only physical harm.