Allowed? Are people getting arrested because they’re wearing obnoxious costumes?
Speaking of “outrage,” I do believe you’re getting a bit hysterical, what with all this slippage into outraged claims about things that aren’t actually happening. Just why is it that this topic winds you up so much?
If you ensure that the manufacturer can no longer sell the item , you are not allowing the potential customer to wear the costume. If someone shows up with the costume anyway, I don’t know what your plans might be. It would depend on your personal level of outrage. What I have posed below is an example of that sort of outrage. Not over a particular offensive costume, but over the suggestion that people learn to lighten up a little in their outrage over what other people might wear.
Dude, not only are you getting hysterical, you’re willfully blinding yourself. They chose to stop selling it. No one forced them to stop.
There’s “sexy corn” and “sexy pizza rat.” Clearly there is no lower limit for “sexy” costumes.
I let you decide:
I think only the other three costumes cropped off the bottom of Rebecca Cohen’s “sexy costume” ideas image are unlikely to actually get made: sexy fetus, sexy tampon and sexy late-stage syphilis.
Not only that but if someone really wants to wear a sexy handmaid’s tale costume, I’m pretty sure Jo-Ann Fabrics will sell them enough red and white material to make one of their own.
Perhaps sometimes dressing up in a costume that appropriates another culture could help people realize that. You know, like how a lot of early blackface was a way for white artists to discover a way to express their emotional side in a way that their own culture did not allow, or how dressing as an ‘Indian’ as a kid made me curious about the real culture and story. Not to say criticism isn’t valid, but perhaps Halloween is a great time to explore these issues.
By mocking at first enslaved people and then second class citizens, contributing to perceptions that helped to maintain white supremacy. But as long as white people got to explore their feelings…
Often, people make choices under coercion. This choice seems to have been made to placate the outrage mob, in the hopes that they will focus on someone else. A coerced choice is not a free choice. When a shop owner chooses to pay protection money, they are doing it out of fear.
Out of interest, how would you suggest that the protesters engage in free speech without upsetting your beliefs?
@archstanton @beauwillamson Here ya go, tolerate away.
Oh good lord. Your hysteria has become absurd! Surely you’re just driving trollies at this point.
Oh noes, another mafia, tweeting their demands for protection money!
O that there was someone who could save those sexual assault apologists!!
MAFIA GUY: “Nice little business you have here. Sure would be a shame if someone took to social media to complain about how the goods you are selling tastelessly appropriate imagery from a celebrated feminist novel to normalize the very sexual objectification that the novel was written to challenge.”
I picked the two most egregious examples of genuinely offensive costumes I could think of, not to troll, or because I’m tone deaf to the conversation, but because I think there is value in trying on masks, and then more value in getting a nuanced critique thrown at you for making an inappropriate choice.
Some of the conversations around cultural appropriation seem to suggest that white people could never get any real value from experiencing other cultures. There was a recent case of a campus yoga class getting canceled over concerns about cultural appropriation- and the Indian community response was- “yoga was gifted to the west by our equal culture”.
You could buy the red minidress and the cloak at any Halloween store, and the hat would take about 10 minutes to make. Hell, you could do one out of craft foam. It’s like one accessory away from any generic “devil” costume; it’s hardly elaborate or complicated and no one can possibly have one unless Yandy sells it.
Obviously, anyone can protest whatever they feel sufficiently outraged about. I am questioning whether it is appropriate to be so outraged over the minor decisions other people make in their lives.
Clearly, targeted outrage can be used to exert some level of control over what people are allowed to buy and sell. A company could refuse to honor the demands, but that could lead to more negative attention and increased levels of protest.
A more important issue might be that those people expressing their outrage have an outsized influence on commerce and culture simply by virtue of their being the loudest and angriest, and the fact that they are willing to try to impose their beliefs on the rest of us. And they are very concerned about the minutiae of other people’s lives.
I don’t disagree, however, slapping on blackface is hardly “trying on a mask.”
I don’t there is necessarily much wrong with experiencing other’s culture, But, much like visiting a house of a friend or a stranger, one should come with humility and respect, for instance not slapping on black face paint and acting like a drunken jackass. An individual listening to or appreciating another culture is entirely within the realm of acceptability, however. Even working with artists across cultures to make something new and different… Slapping on black face paint and acting like a drunken jackass is not that.
I must be overly tired today because I’m going to argue even though I agree with the spirit of what you are saying. It is exactly like putting on a mask and the physiological effect will be similar - a dislocation from the wearers self-identity. Now, to agree with you- it’s definitely not only putting on a mask. The dislocation could make room for some genuine insight into a different human view. It could lead to empathy. Especially if the donning brings on some pointed reactions. So I’m in no way saying it should be tolerated-- mostly I’m just blabbing because I didn’t get enough sleep and my pedantic mind gets the upper hand when I’m tired.
I’ve been trying to see the positive side of absolutely everything lately as a reaction against a flood of rote criticism. I’ll stop now, but thanks for the conversation.
Great.
Can you point to one point in history where blackface has led to greater empathy? Even with the case of Tropic Thunder?
Okay.
There is no positive side of oppression. None. Only people who aren’t the direct victims of oppression believe this to be the case. There is no upside to women being imagined as less capable, more fragile, and emotional, instead of as a group of individuals, who are varied and unique. There is no upside to African Americans being imagined as somehow different (meaning lesser than) than whites. There is no upside to Mexicans being coded as job stealers, drug dealers, and rapists. There is no upside to Asians being imagined as bad drivers. Etc, ad nasuem.
I’m sorry if that’s “rote” to your mind, but maybe you should listen to people in pain instead of brushing them off as tedious time wasters. Maybe if society would listen with empathy and make changes to be more inclusive and compassionate, you’d get to stop hearing us boring nags harp on about being treated like shit, since it apparently is nothing more than an intellectual exercise, devoid of actual consequences, because it has no impact on your life.
Sorry to fucking bore you. Take a nap.
