In the era of the Social Justice Warrior, everyone is expected to walk on egg shells. They simply demand everyone live according to their rules at all times, and don’t you ever, EVER question the orthodoxy one iota.

At a literary convention, fiction writer Lionel Shriver raised a thoughtful point challenging the SJW’s logic-bending, bigoted, racist nonsense of “cultural appropriation.”

If you haven’t heard of it, “cultural appropriation” is the insane idea that your genes and your life experiences define the only things you can do in this life without being offensive. Asian? Don’t you dare perform traditional African drum music. Male? Don’t you dare put a female character in your screenplay.

It’s as racist and bigoted as it gets, straight from those supposed defenders of equality.

Anyway, here’s how a livid SJW writer responded to Shriver in the Guardian:

What did [Lionel] Shriver say in her keynote that could drive a woman who has heard every slur under the sun to discard social convention and make such an obviously political exit? Her question was — or could have been — an interesting question: What are fiction writers “allowed” to write, given they will never truly know another person’s experience? Not every crime writer is a criminal, Shriver said, nor is every author who writes on sexual assault a rapist. “Fiction, by its very nature,” she said, “is fake.” There is a fascinating philosophical argument here. Instead, however, that core question was used as a straw man. Shriver’s real targets were cultural appropriation, identity politics and political correctness. It was a monologue about the right to exploit the stories of “others”, simply because it is useful for one’s story.

Wow. Sounds kind of serious, doesn’t it? Of course, normal people understand Shriver is correct: it’s impossible to tell what is fair game for “appropriation” and what isn’t.

In text of the speech, Shriver mentions a student party at a college where the organizers were accused of cultural appropriation due to the wearing of sombreros:

Curiously, across my country Mexican restaurants, often owned and run by Mexicans, are festooned with sombreros — if perhaps not for long. At the UK’s University of East Anglia, the student union has banned a Mexican restaurant from giving out sombreros, deemed once more an act of “cultural appropriation” that was also racist.

This brings up a recurring battle among fiction writers.

Dragon Award-winning fantasy author Larry Correia has battled the SJWs in science fiction and fantasy for years now. He’s got a stake in this, since his award-winning novel Son of the Black Sword, an awesome read, borrows heavily from Indian culture.

About this … “discussion,” Correia offered:

Basically there are a group self-appointed thought police who are just looking for a reason to bitch at authors, and scaring people into falling in line makes them feel important. They use Cultural Appropriation like a hammer to bash authors. In reality these people are basically useless, and can be ignored (or better, mocked) but many authors don’t realize that or they don’t like confrontation. So they self-censor and stifle their creativity to avoid giving offense. Except you can’t avoid offending the perpetually offended.

Absolutely.

Correia, for example, has been accused of being racist, sexist, and a rape apologist — despite no one ever being able to produce a single word written by Correia that was racist, sexist, or defended rapists. Really — they’ve tried! One contributor to the Guardian crowdsourced a witch hunt against Correia. It came up empty.

Further, Correia used to teach classes to women on how to shoot rapists in the face. As an apologist for rape, he kind of sucks at it.

Ironically, the fact that many of the same people whining about cultural appropriation are also the same wankers complaining about a lack of diversity in fictional characters.

SJWs wonder why no one takes their concerns seriously. I wonder why.