An anonymous friend in my inbox (which seems to be a very busy place… I’m new to this platform so please allow me time to decide how/if I wish to publish or reply to those) asked me to write about cultural appropriation. I have many thoughts that will have to be dispersed through a few posts. (The angry hijabis in my inbox aren’t going to happy. Neither are the people who followed me thinking I’m a liberal feminist, but I don’t care.)

Essentially, this post aims to break down the similarities and differences between the trend known as “cultural appropriation” and the ideology behind the transgender movement, specifically behind male humans who self-identify as women. I will explain my reasons for this below.

Let’s start with cultural appropriation, then. Here’s the definition I took from Wikipedia, which I realize can be flawed by I’m trying to retain some sense of neutrality by using the first available option when I Google English search “define cultural appropriation”:

Cultural appropriation is the adoption or use of the elements of one culture by members of another culture. Cultural appropriation is sometimes portrayed as harmful, framed as cultural misappropriation, and claimed to be a violation of the intellectual property rights of the originating culture. Often unavoidable when multiple cultures come together, cultural appropriation can include using other cultures’ traditions, fashion, symbols, language, and cultural songs without permission. According to critics of the practice, cultural (mis)appropriation differs from acculturation, assimilation, or cultural exchange in that the “appropriation” or “misappropriation” refers to the adoption of these cultural elements in a colonial manner: elements are copied from a minority culture by members of a dominant culture, and these elements are used outside of their original cultural context—sometimes even against the expressly stated wishes of representatives of the originating culture.



I want to focus on this part: “The adoption of these cultural elements in a colonial manner: elements are copied from a minority culture by members of a dominant culture, and these elements are used outside of their original cultural context.”

This really gets to the problem with cultural appropriation: Members of a dominant group use cultural elements of another group without the proper respect for where those come from.

For example, I’m Iraqi. Henna is really popular in parts of Iraq, and across Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. My own family has used it before for specific ceremonies, like weddings, but also just for fun sometimes.

Now, henna is has become a trend in lots of places. American women might wear henna to a music festival because they think it’s beautiful. On one hand, it’s flattering that other people think this part of our culture (which is, admittedly, part of our own beauty ritual) something they want to copy.

But, on the other hand, Iraqi people might face discrimination for performing our own cultural ceremonies that Americans can do for fun. For Americans, henna is a fun trend, but for Iraqis, it is a part of our culture. Since the American army has killed so many Iraqis in the recent past just for being Iraqi, you can see where this might be hurtful.

However, I want to stress something here that is not very popular with the liberal feminist crowd. Cultural appropriation is a symptom of a bigger problem. It is a demonstration of existing racial power structures. In other words, cultural appropriation is important in that it can hurt feelings and point to these power structures, but it is not in itself violent.

If no Americans wore henna at Coachella this year, the United States still would have invaded Iraq. If no white people had dreadlocks, black people would still be disproportionately killed by police. If Selena Gomez stopped wearing the bindi, South Asian women would still be called “dot heads.” If no white people wore “Aztec prints,” the empire would still have been invaded and destroyed by the Spanish.

When people are socially, politically, or economically rejected, it is hurtful to then distort their cultural symbols without addressing those problems.

That is why I label the word “colonial” as imported here. In this sense, people from an oppressed culture cannot appropriate the dominant culture. In fact, it should be unsurprising that people act in accordance with the dominant culture, since it is dominant.

I’ll use myself as an example. I partake in a lot of “Western” cultures, from speaking English and Spanish to watching American and British television to wearing Topshop when I have the chance. However, I am not appropriating these cultures because I don’t have the institutional power to do that. Part of the reason many Iraqis know English so well is because of colonialism and invasions by English-speakers. The idea that we could appropriate those cultures is laughable! Iraqis don’t perform Western cultures for fun, but for survival.

As we will later analyze further, this is the same reason the declarations of transmen do not have the same impact on society and its structure as the declarations of transwomen. A woman cannot “appropriate” (this is the wrong word but we’ll get to that too) the demeanor of a man because women do not have the same institutional power to steal the culture of masculinity, which privileges men, in such a way.

But again, appropriate is not the correct word. Masculinity and femininity are not cultures. They are collections of traits that cultures have assigned to people based on their genders. Genders are the social expectations assigned to people based on their sexes. Human males are boys and men and expected to perform masculinity. Human females are girls and women and expected to perform femininity.

Masculinity and femininity can change through different cultures and therefore cannot be cultures themselves. For example, in present-day Egypt, wearing makeup is expected of women. But in ancient Egyptian culture, both men and women wore Egypt to be considered beautiful.

It is the belief of myself and many other gender-critical feminists that men and women should be able to express culturally masculine and feminine characteristics because they’re arbitrary to begin with. There is nothing to suggest biologically (or even historically) that female people should enjoy wearing makeup more than male people. If men feel happy wearing makeup, they should wear it! If women don’t want to wear makeup, they shouldn’t have to!

But we cannot pretend these choices are equal or equally empowering. Women in the West had to fight against the patriarchy for their rights to wear pants in the workplace. Why did they want to in the first place? Because masculine characteristics indicate maleness, which is the dominant sex and carries more power with it.

I’m sure Western men who wear skirts in the workplace (without calling themselves trans) exists, and good for them. But we cannot pretend women’s reasons for desiring to perform masculinity and men’s reasons for desiring to perform femininity are the same. Women have to imitate maleness in some situations to be taken seriously or even to stay safe. Men also have to be “masculine” in order to claim the most of their maleness, but when they choose to perform femininity, it’s not for the purpose of claiming some power they did not have before.

This is because women are not the dominant sex. Women are not more powerful than men. We might have characteristics assigned to us that some men find desirable, and they’re welcome to perform those. For example, crying when you’re sad can actually be a really healthy outlet, and it’s a shame men are told not to cry. Men might even help subvert the current oppressive power structure by doing things like this. But, men have no institutional power to gain by performing femininity.

But here, we reach the major difference between cultural appropriation and transgender ideology. People of the dominant culture who appropriate another culture are not claiming to be members of that culture. Transwomen are men who perform femininity and then claim to be women.

The issue is not men acting feminine, but the declaration that acting or feeling or identifying as feminine makes a person a woman. Feminism has actually been more generous than cultural discourse in how it has actually encouraged people of both sexes to break gender barriers in order to break down the entire system.

Take the Rachel Dolezal case as an example. The problem was not that Rachel Dolezal culturally appropriated. Cultural appropriation is a problem, but people do that all the time. The problem is that she claimed performing certain stereotypes changed her entire identity.

The reason the Dolezal case is exceptional, and made so many people angry, is because she claimed that because she “felt” black and she “acted” black, she was black. It wasn’t specifically the adoption of stereotypes that upset people, but the idea that performing those stereotypes could actually change who she was.

We recognize that is nonsense for a few reasons:

Race is visible. Even though educated people know there is no biological difference between the brains of people with different races (just like there is no biological difference between the brains of people with different sexes) we can still see that society is constructed in many ways around the color of a person’s skin (and other traits that define race), just like we can see society is structured in certain ways around a person’s biological sex. Rachel Dolezal tried to change her appearance and there were great debates (and laughs) on television over whether she was “passing.”

Black people have a socialization that white people just don’t have. Rachel Dolezal didn’t grow up with the idea that her ancestors were slaves in her country, or that they immigrated from African colonies, or that she has to be careful around police because they might suspect her of doing something wrong because of her skin. (Just like men do not have to grow up with the collective conscious that the people of their sex before them couldn’t own property or file for divorce, or have to worry about going out late at night because a man might rape them.)

Liking black culture and embracing black stereotypes doesn’t make someone black. Lots of white people enjoy rap music made by black people about black issues, but they aren’t black and they don’t claim to be. (Lots of men enjoy wearing dresses but they aren’t women and they don’t claim to be.) When black people embrace rap culture they are sometimes called thugs and even killed while unarmed, but white people don’t usually have those problems.

Oppressed people don’t have the option to just stop being oppressed. Black people cannot “identify” as white to stop the police from shooting them. Women cannot “identify” as men to stop men from raping us.

But for some reason, we allow male people to enter into the oppressed group of “women.” We allow them into our women-only spaces, like bathrooms, domestic violence shelters, and women’s universities. We change our language to accommodate them, using terms like “people with vaginas” instead of “women” to describe pressing issues like FGM. We tell them that by “feeling” like a woman and embracing a set of gender roles, they have the same experiences, or are even more oppressed than us.

All of this directly interferes with the liberation of women. If we cannot define ourselves as an oppressed class, or if anyone is permitted to enter or leave that class at will, then women cannot claim we are oppressed. If women cannot name that oppression, we cannot fight the patriarchy.

Transgenderism is not men acting in traditionally feminine ways. It is men saying that these actions, or the desire to do these actions, make them women. This is why it is uniquely dangerous. It frames womanhood as a set of feelings and actions based on those feelings rather than a specific oppression based on biological fact.

People of certain cultures are not oppressed because they “identify” as that specific culture. They are oppressed from the time they are born because society assigns them this “culture” and determines certain social, political, and economic factors through that. When other people then steal that culture for themselves without the associated oppression, it’s rubbing salt in the wounds.

Women are not oppressed because we “identify” as women. We are oppressed from the time we are born because society assigns us “womanhood” and determines certain social, political, and economic factors through that. When other people steal femininity for themselves and claim it makes them women, it mocks the oppression we have been through.