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There is a phrase for writing that fails that test, one that long predates the present controversy. It’s called bad writing: offensive, yes, but offensive because it is sloppy, lazy, inaccurate. That sort of laziness is not just disrespectful of the subject — and it is right that the rest of us should be more conscious of how hurtful that can be, and the harm it can cause — but disrespectful of the reader, whose judgment is swift and terrible as the closing of a book. Again, I know of no one who would disagree with this.

So if we are all agreed, why are we fighting? Because in fact we are not all agreed. Scaachi and I may be as one in defence of the idea that cultural boundaries are not absolute and inviolable, that writers should be free — in fact, encouraged — to write on any subject they like but accountable for the result, but alas not everyone is as reasonable as we are. There are plenty of people who regard any use of one culture’s artifacts, customs and expressions by another as objectionable in itself, and any attempt to set a story in another cultural setting as anathema, no matter how respectfully treated or accurately observed. Here’s Janet Rogers, Mohawk/Tuscarora writer, on Canadaland: “Write about how my reality affects you, don’t write about me. Write about your relationship to Indigenous issues, communities, and experiences; don’t write as if you are me. I’m here. I can write my own stories.”

Well. We can debate whether, as this implies, there is such a thing as a property right to a “reality,” or whether there are only a fixed number of stories that can be told about a place or a people. Or rather: can we debate it? Can we even debate whether we can debate it? Because most of the present controversy is not about cultural appropriation itself, but about the unacceptability even of taking a contrary view on it — a view, that is, such as the one on which Scaachi and I are so firmly agreed. That view may be right or it might be wrong; it may be important or it may be trivial; it may be relevant or it may be beside the point. But it’s a view, held in good faith. And we are at the point now where people are losing their jobs for expressing their views.