It’s time for white gay men to confront cultural appropriation
Avoiding blackface and Native American headdresses at Halloween is only the first step. Kristian Reyes on why white gay men need to stop co-opting parts of other cultures that suit them.
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It happened when Laganja shrieked “yas, mama”.
It happened when Alexis Michelle had us wincing at her pebbled Native American outfit, complete with diagonally placed hunting bow headpiece.
And it happened when the beloved Raja strutted full throttle down the runway in a Native American headdress.
Cultural appropriation. It happens time and time again in the gay community, and queens on RuPaul’s Drag Race are far from the only perpetrators.
Culture can be messy, it can be fluid, and at times, it can be shared, but let’s get on the same page when it comes to what actually defines cultural appropriation.
Cultural appropriation occurs when we co-opt aspects of an underprivileged or minority culture and divorce it from its roots for the purpose of costume, fashion, ridicule, or profit.
At times, it’s hard to see cultural appropriation in action.
Take for example parties themed around the ‘Day of the Dead’ (Día de los Muertos).
What we as non-Mexicans perceive as a creative Halloween theme is in fact a 3000-year-old month long celebration of the dead, involving food offerings, rituals, and the construction of alters to family and friends who have died, with absolutely no connection to Halloween until the West deemed it so.
Such is its significance, UNESCO put the day on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2008. Pretty big deal right?
Yet the West has managed to colonise, butcher, and tokenise its cultural significance.
For many in the gay community, all it takes is a ‘Day of the Dead’ themed party around Halloween for guys to fall down that slippery slope of cultural appropriation, and they often defend themselves with a self-declared justification around cultural appreciation.
Cultural appropriation also involves stealing the vernacular of other cultures.
As someone who identifies as culturally diverse (though I prefer the terms ‘wog’ or ‘brown’), it’s heartening to see white gay guys embrace shows like Pose and Drag Race which celebrate queer people of colour (QPOC) and their narratives.
Those shows demonstrate that when we centre the experiences, stories, and creativity of people in our community who don’t often get the same platforms as us, we widen our scope for empathy and get to reflect on our own privileges within the LGBTI community.
It’s a beautiful shared process of cultural appreciation and connection.
What sits uncomfortably though, is the Laganja effect. By that, I mean the ways in which white gay men co-opt parts of black culture that suit them – like black colloquialisms.
It has brown boys like me cringing when we hear inauthentic accents or an inappropriate turn of phrase from white mouths.
Queer black writer Audre Lorde wrote, “If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive”.
As gay men, we have created our own vibrant community of cultures that we fiercely protect from the distortions of the straight world and the straight media.
We rightfully defend our identities when we are portrayed as anything less than loving, deserving humans. However, part of appreciating other cultures involves actively avoiding caricature and costume.
Aligning ourselves in the gay community with other minorities is about recognising that culture, whether gay or ethnically diverse, does not happen in a vacuum.
Our cultures are connected to oppressive systems that marginalise us, that dehumanise us, and that profit from us when there is a buck to be made.
In championing our own human rights as a community, it makes sense to look to the other marginalised groups in society like culturally diverse and Indigenous communities and extend our hands of understanding, instead of being complicit in appropriating aspects of their culture we find fashionable or cool.
For us in the gay-stream, mostly white and cis community, it’s going to take a level of cultural humility and divestment from whiteness to tackle cultural appropriation beyond avoiding blackface and Native American headdresses.
Our starting point should be an openness to listen to, and connect with, what other cultures believe is important to their sense of identity.
From this point, we can reflect on our missteps and pivot towards new trajectories of queer culture that don’t mimic or denigrate cultural minorities, and which seek a future of accountability to systems of power and privilege.
I wonder where the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence stand on this issue.
I understand why wearing a significant spiritual item (native American head dress) is disrepectful…but the rest of this article…
Should I not listen to Amy Winehouse?
Stop wearing mocassins?
Now this is really going to age me!
As a very young gay man in Sydney during the late 1950s – we were illegal at that time and could go to prison simply for being homosexual!
I well remember travelling on the tram up to The Cross after work on a Friday – or at any other time for that matter. We had our own “language”! We could talk openly (& loudly) about every taboo subject, including talking about other passengers – their looks, their apparent ‘endowment’, what sort of sex we hoped to get, you name it we talked openly about it and any seemingly straight people did not have a clue what we were talking about. The words we used have long-since been absorbed into the general language and I can’t remember what those words were. If I could then the GLBTIQ Community could demand that the rest of society stop using our ‘language”!
As I said before this is Political Correctness gone stark, raving mad.
I can appreciate this being said for important things such as significant outfits or rituals/holidays.
But if you’re going to say linguistic diversity should not be encouraged, you’re out of your damned mind. Saying that people are not permitted to act or talk a certain way based on the colour of their skin is generalizing and racist.
Going to cocktail parties and being a soccer mum isn’t whiteness, just like speaking in slang or wearing baggy clothes isn’t blackness. It is all related to the area one grew up in. A white boy growing up in a ghetto has as much right to talk the talk and walk the walk as anybody else, and a black man in the suburbs can be as snobby and pretentious as he wants.
I mean, what you’re saying is literally as ridiculous as saying “Yeah, well, you’re not Chinese, so it’s cultural appropriation of you learn the language, sorry~”. You can dance around all you like. But that’s exactly how you sound and it is exactly the same thing.
To draw such attention to cultures being separate entities is to build barriers that support people to judge others first and foremost on skin colour and cultural background. You make individuality take back seat to a bunch of dead people’s traditions.
To say that I, as a gay man, have to act the same way as other gay men is just as bad as me saying that you, as a person of colour, must act in accordance to other people of colour. Or that I as a white man am not allowed to have friends of colour, since all whities are racist. Or you, as a person of colour cannot have white friends, since all black people are criminals.
This kind of identity politics creates cultural divides and causes racism and homophobia to get WORSE. I agree that some parts of cultures should not be borrowed, yes. But to say that the colour of skin automatically forced you to be part of a culture is racist. Country and community determine culture and personality. Not the colour of one’s skin or sexuality.
We’re all humans, we’re all people. Let’s stop using ridiculous prefixes and suffixes and just see each other as humans. Not evil whities, or evil blacks, or evil yellows.
Humans who are more than the melanin in their skin, more than what’s in their pants, more than what gets them turned on and more than where they come from.
Our pasts and our homes shouldn’t determine who we are, and we shouldn’t LET them determine it. You are more than your culture. You are more than your colour. You are more than your sexuality.
You are you, and you are beautiful for who you ARE not WHAT you are or where you come from.
Love yourself for being you. Not for being part of a group.
While I certainly appreciate the thoughts and sentiments put forward I worry about the way in which these arguments are constructed.
We fight to remove barriers in opportunity based on race, culture or sexuality yet this article deems certain actions or references only appropriate if you have the correct skin colour. This is the same attitude we are fighting against.
Would it not be more productive if a cultural symbol was used by any person (not just white) not belonging to that culture that we use that opportunity not to demonise them, but to educate about the meaning behind the symbols they utilise.
You can not fight segregation with segregation.
The same argument as struck above should stand on its feet alone. For example if a black man was to wear traditional British or nomadic attire would this not also be seen as cultural appropriation. However if this argument was placed I believe there would be a certain uproar due to a white person telling a black man he may not dress in that way. An argument is only ever as good when appropriated to see if it still holds weight.
Let’s also not forget, in some examples, say a white woman wearing a traditional Chinese outfit. To my knowledge the Asian population is greater than the white population. In this case, white people would be the minority. Is is still cultural appropriation when a minority mimics a majority?
It is always better to invite someone to the table, rather than cast them out of the house.
Some food for thought.
I’ve been waiting for ‘cultural appropriation’ to reach Australia.
I’ll take it seriously when there’s a crackdown on tatto parlors inking all the cool kids with asian symbols.
Should we avoid restaurants themed around minority cuisine, music by minority or foreign artists, give up second and third language lessons?
Am I being an inauthentic white man by enjoying and participating in Australia’s culturally diverse community?
Could the author or anyone define what is meant by ‘white gay men’. I am uncertain if I fit into this box.
White gay men = homosexual males of European descent that can pass for straight. They are seen as class of people that are privileged, despite being part of a minority group that has in the recent past been oppressed and discriminated against by western societies.