Do You Want Cultural Appropriation Or Trans-Inclusion?

Your choice. Because you sure as hell can’t have both

So here’s a neat thing. Turns out you can’t simultaneously stick religiously to an argument for calling out people on grounds of cultural appropriation and at the same time be entirely trans-inclusive. Handbrake turn. What? Say that again… because a few hundred thousand of the most inclusive Twitterati just shat the bed.

But shit the bed they must — holding both positions is nonsense and here in a tiny Penguin nutshell is why.

Cultural appropriation and Transgenderism

Cultural appropriation is a relatively new term, first heading into the OED in 2017, before that we just called it ‘sharing’. However, once it was identified as a crime against humanity it had to go straight into the dictionary. So here’s your definition:

“The unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of the customs, practices, ideas, etc. of one people or society by members of another and typically more dominant people or society.”

Cracking. Everyone got that? Hold that in your brain because we’re going to be coming back to it at some point very soon… but we need a second part of the definition.

Being transgender.

So if you’re transgender and feel that you’re born into the wrong sex you can transition from ones sex to the other. Some people make a full transition and some people don’t, some people occupy a nebulous middle ground and have declared a new space of ‘non-binary’

All good so far, nothing to see here. Everyone keep moving

To keep this article simple I’m going to say that what we’re really talking about when we discuss ‘gender’ is the behavioural characteristics and public displays of women, men, girls and boys.

Or to put it another slightly more useful way. The culture of individual sexes.

And I hope now that you can see the problem inherent with arguing both positions at the same time. To be transgender one must culturally appropriate things from the sex opposite to the one you currently occupy.

Transgenderism and to some extent identifying as non-binary is all about culturally appropriating behaviours, fashion, space and mindset of a culture you weren’t born with. Let’s have a look at that again….

“The unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of the customs, practices, ideas, etc. of one people or society by members of another and typically more dominant people or society.”

Well…. shit. That’s pretty much the TERF argument against transwomen in bathrooms right there.

So when you say it’s inappropriate for Adele to have cornrows during the Notting Hill Carnival, or Jamie Oliver can’t cook pasta — and you’re applauded with a shower of twitter-based recognition. Stop. Consider yourself on the same territory as TERFs who say it’s inappropriate for people born male to wear dresses, put on makeup etc.

Same argument, different flavour.

It doesn’t sound nice, does it? Cultural appropriation of gender? But why is it any less valid than geographical culture. Spoiler: it isn’t.

So which one goes?

The term Cultural appropriation goes straight in the bin as the virtue signalling nonsense it has always been. Simple. I didn’t even have to think about that for more than a nano-second.

Why?

I think people should be able to express themselves however they want. I think we should be building a compassionate world in which the sharing of the human experience is organic and facilitated. I love learning about cultures other than my own. I enjoy it when people share their culture and (specifically) their food with me.

Because it’s fucking awesome and the world is awesome.

But in order to create such a world, we have to let go of the concept of our fixed identities. We aren’t in the same place we were 500 years ago. We got mixed up. We globalised. We shared. The landmines that constitute ‘cultural appropriation’ are being thrown out at random by people who virtue signal their own philosophical cultural solipsism.

No people are an island.

You want to create a more inclusive world? Have you considered putting everyone on edge about everything they do, say or wear? That’s going to really foster in an age of enlightenment and positivity.

And, because I’m pro-transgender people (and I am that rather than pro trans-activists, many of whom are idiots) then in the same breath I must be pro trans-race. There are many reasons why people might feel a different ethnicity to the one they were assigned by genetics. Adoption being one of them. Geography being another. Mental health issues being a third.

It may seem nonsense to say ‘this ostensibly white person identifies as Asian’ and walk away, but no more than ‘this ostensibly male person identifies as female’.

You can’t argue for some form of inclusion on genetic characteristics but not the other.

A note of caution

I think we must be careful here though. I taught a workshop in a school last week where I was informed by a beleaguered teacher that about half of year nine are currently identifying as trans. Imagine the horror and muttering when I began the class ‘good morning girls’ — because fuck it, it was an all-girls school.

Do I think half of year nine are trans? No. Do I think there is likely a trans person in amongst them? Yes. They’ve had two male students in the last five years (now both transitioned) and the senior leadership team supported them to remain at the all-girls school for Sixth Form. And they did. Against the wishes of many of the parents.

Because that’s what a tolerant and inclusive society does.

It will take time to adjust and the words ‘cultural appropriation’ must go straight in the bin. It’s time to explore what we’re really doing when we’re throwing the word around. Are we protecting our culture? Or are we just playing language-based power games? King of the Hill but on Twitter.

You’re being very flippant about culture you naughty bird.

Things that people do and have historically done for a long time are important. Having conversations about these things is vital. But they must be conversations, they cannot be ideological hand grenades to be lobbed from trench to trench in a society-wide game of last man standing.

Some people in my culture call the evening meal ‘tea’ — sometimes it allows us to identify each other when it’s not obvious at first glance. This isn’t the norm in the UK. It’s far more normal to have ‘dinner’ in the evening. I can tell you why it’s happened, but it’d be a circuitous story involving the 7th Duchess of Bedford, working conditions for the Victorian poor and the very important distinction between high-tea and low-tea.

Why am I telling you this?

My culture, like yours, is a living breathing thing developing in time and space in the modern world. Cultural appropriation is one of the tools by which it is shared, assimilated and normalised. I want a global world and that means celebrating and dipping our toe in each other’s cultures.

It means the norms of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’, however culturally defined should be malleable. It means your culture, my culture and everyone else’s culture should be up for grabs by anyone else. If someone ham-fistedly offends others by ‘incorrect sharing’ then by all means teach them the history, but let’s not pretend shaming them is progress.

When you’re trying to bring about a more inclusive world, you have to start embracing inclusion. There’s nothing progressive about protectionism.

For that reason ‘cultural appropriation’ must go in the bin sooner rather than later — that’s the Penguin verdict anyhow.

Want to read a Trans rights showdown between a Penguin and one of the top LGBTQ+ writers on this site? Sure you do.