Cultural Appropriation - Tumblr Posts

The conversation surrounding cultural appropriation has been so severely mutilated by white “allies” that the original intention behind that conversation has become almost unrecognizable in most social contexts.

We recognize that high school Native mascots do not accurately represent the richness and diversity within Native cultures. Join us as we condemn racist mascots, and declare our Native children People, Not Mascots.

Heard someone say once "imitation is the engine that drives cultural innovation"...

as a general rule. if what we’re calling ‘cultural appropriation’ sounds like nazi ideology (i.e. ‘white people should only do white people things and black people should only do black people things’) with progressive language, we are performing a very very poor application of what ‘cultural appropriation’ means. this is troublingly popular in the blogosphere right now and i think we all need to be more critical of what it is we may be saying or implying, even unintentionally.

What Native people say about the use of sage: you can use sage, but you cannot smudge as nothing you are doing (waving sage around) is actually smudging. Smudging is a ceremony and you are, we promise, not smudging. Please buy sage from either us, or someone who sources the sage from us. White sage may not be considered endangered by the US government but corperate sourcing is making it difficult for us to source sage for our own religious purposes. Let alone to sell it.

What white people hear: never use sage ever, don’t ever buy it, don’t own it, don’t even look at it.

Look, y’all. There’s a couple of facets to my talk today.

1) Yes! You can buy sage! You really, truly can! Buy it from either native sellers (go to a powwow! Eat our food, buy our stuff, watch some dancing!) Or buy it from a seller who sources the sage from native people. Pick one. And no, buying it from 5 Below doesn’t count.

2) you CANNOT smudge. This isn’t just you “shouldn’t”— this is a YOU ARE INCAPABLE OF SMUDGING. Waving a sage stick around your doorways IS NOT SMUDGING. It is smoke clensing. Smudging, depending on the tradition and tribe, could easily have dancing and drums involved. You, as a white person, do not have the cultural BACKGROUND to even know how it works. At all. Period.

3) please, for FUCKS SAKE, stop making posts here on tumblr where you tell other white people about cultural appropriation and what they can and cannot do. Please stop, your license has been revoked because none of you bother to get the facts right. We native people are FULLY CAPABLE OF DOING IT OURSELVES. Consider instead: a) reblogging our posts where we talk about it! We’re here! We have made posts!! b) Making a post that states what we said and then LINKS BACK TO US. Screenshot with a link if you must. Stop centering your own voices in these conversations. You are already centered in everything, stop centering yourselves in a native space.

I’m tired of this nonsense, y’all.

Thanks for coming to my TedTalk ™

She just conducted a social experiment and they easily proved her point

Even my white aunt was like "wtf no" when I mentioned it to her. Although I will say this chaos was partially instigated by an indigenous girl claim she it was her new deity, she even proved it with her reservation ID?? And then she got all pissy because every other indigenous practicioner was telling her to cut her shit

I dont wanna become one of those tumblrs whose only good posts are of other people's brilliance, but for all the witches on here, holy crap, who is actually doing this?

And her follow up video is her talking about how this video was flagged and taken down on Instagram because some white witches got offended. It's informational! Who's out there working with w3nd*gos and sk1nw@lkers like they're deities or house hold spirits???

So, for a my baby witches and fellow newts (new witch, the preferred term), don't do this. Firstly, it's fucking disrespectful and secondly, super duper fucking dangerous.

Witchtok is wild. Her vids also made me realize that tumblr is superior to both tiktok and Instagram, if only because @staff is only 200 people and they don't have time to flag all the messed up content.

Hi! I'm sorry to bother, but I have a question. I have a friend who looks white (blonde, light skin, green eyes) but was actually born and raised in India by her Hindu parents. She practices Hinduism and only recently moved to the states. She still wears traditional clothing, but the other day she posted a picture of herself in her traditional clothes and got a lot of hate for it, people saying it was cultural appropriation. She's bummed out about it and is now questioning her ethnicity. Help?

1. All those people screaming cultural appropriation at her are ignoramuses who are basically saying, “Wow, you don’t look like my ill-informed, narrow-minded stereotype of what people from this region actually look like!” and “I actually subscribe to horrible, reductionist stereotypes that Indian people can only have dark hair, skin and eyes. Light hair? Green eyes? European (origin) only!” 

This is gonna be a tad long, because it’s gonna delve into biology and history- and it’s because I hope people realise how artificial the US paradigm of race is. It’s woefully incompetent at understanding the biological diversity of our species because it is a social construct. Modern scientists and historians generally refuse to categorise people on the amount of melanin they have because it’s just reductionist and oversimplistic- what they do is classify people by their geographic origin, linguistic and cultural ties. 

2. India is an EXTREMELY diverse continent. It’s so genetically diverse that the only place more genetically diverse is the African continent, aka, the birthplace of humanity. And this is a big deal. I’ll explain why.

Surprise! People inhabiting an extremely large country that has more than 2000 ethnic groups, members of all the world’s religions, been the site of multiple ancient civilisations, been on the major crossroads of human migration and trade for thousands of years come in multiple colours!

Presently, the most widely-accepted theory of our origins is the Recent African Origin, or Out of Africa Theory. This holds that originally, humans first appeared in Africa, thus all of us have African ancestors. All modern non-Africans are descended from much smaller groups of people who migrated out of Africa, anytime from 65,000 to 125,000 years ago. How do scientists know this? By looking at our DNA, in addition to fossil and archaeological records. They discovered that the differences in the DNA of non-African peoples like say, a German a Japanese and a New Zealand Maori was far less than the genetic differences between people from different African ethnic groups. (Somali, Dinka, Yoruba, San, Kikuyu, Luo etc- I’m BARELY scratching the surface)

What this meant was that Africa had to be the original, diverse genetic pool where modern humans first appeared. Everybody else outside of Africa today is descended from much smaller groups of people who left Africa at various times- and that ancestral genetic “bottleneck” is why people who appear to have very different heritage (e.g European vs East Asian) actually have far less genetic variation than the various African peoples.

So, India being the second most genetically diverse place on this planet is a big deal- it’s basically second only to THE CRADLE OF HUMANITY. That’s why I’m pretty convinced your friend can have blonde hair and green eyes and still be 100% Made in India.

3. Now, the genetics of India itself.

Genetic studies have shown that if you take a modern Indian from any part of India, no matter how dark or fair they are, his or her lineage will consist of mixing from two main ancestral groups. One is the Ancestral Northern Indians (ANI), and the other the Ancestral Southern Indians (ASI). You may have heard of the ancient Indian caste system which put a lot of social pressure that prohibited marrying outside your caste. Caste discrimination is banned today, but old attitudes do persist. However, even this caste rigidity wasn’t so 4000- 2000 years ago. ANI people married ASI pretty freely, so that’s why every modern Indian has heredity from both groups. So, already to start off, you got quite a fair bit of diversity hidden in people’s genes. 

And the next interesting part to explain why it IS possible for Indians to have features stereotyped as “European” is because while the ASI seemed to be genetically unique to the Indian subcontinent, the ANI people are genetically related to Middle-Easterns, Europeans and Caucasians (and I mean this not in the sense of “white” as often used in the US, but the actual region of Caucasus, which borders Europe and Asia).

You mentioned she looks “white”- and the American-understanding of “white” being hurled at her by those people screaming cultural appropriation are actually ignorantly treating “white” as synonymous with “European-origin”. In reality, it’s completely useless in the realm of biology. Biologically, there is actually no real dichotomy where “European” suddenly ends and “Asia” begins. 

As I earlier pointed out, well, we’re all kinda related. And it’s not at all earth-shattering that some people from India look like they’re of “European-origin”. Because modern Europeans, Central Asians and the Ancestral Northern Indians are all believed to be descendants of a group of people called the Proto-Indo-Europeans. It’s believed they lived around 6000-7000 years ago. Some modern people that are descended from the Proto-Indo-Europeans are French, Germans, Iranians and Pashtuns (a major ethnic group in Afghanistan).  It’s even been found that Europeans and Indians shared a gene for fair skin from a common ancestor- which is why there ARE people who look like your friend. Naturally, fair skin is just relatively rarer in India vs Europe because more parts of India are located in hotter regions. Therefore, there’s more selection pressure for darker skin which has more melanin to protect from the sun- making fair skin rarer, but still possible. 

(This is a map of the Kurgan Hypothesis, which is currently the most popular theory for how the Proto-Indo-Europeans migrated from their homeland to settle Europe, Central Asia, Iran, India and Turkey etc)

Saying Indians are descendants of the Proto-Indo-Europeans is NOT the same as saying they’re of “European origin”. For example, think of the Proto-Indo-Europeans as like the “mother” of Europeans, Central Asians and the Ancestral Northern Indians- they’re like “sibling” groups, not descendants. The original Indo-Europeans were not “European” in the modern sense. I am clarifying this because plenty of colonial-era scientific racism tried to attribute ancient India’s achievements to “European who left Europe for India”- you might have heard the phrase “Aryan” thrown around in Nazi Germany, which was used to mean “blonde hair, blue eyes”. Nazi scientists and historians also abused it to explain away the sophistication of non-European civilisations in Ancient Egypt and India. In reality, ”Aryan” is derived from the ancient Sanskrit word “Arya“ which means “noble”. Sanskrit is an ancient language still used in classical Indian texts, and is of Proto-Indo-European origin. For example, the name of the country “Iran” actually means “land of the Aryans”- it was the names ancient Iranians (another people descended from the Proto-Indo-Europeans) gave to what others called the Persian Empire for more than a thousand years before the Third Reich. 

(Sanskrit manuscript)

Furthermore, many languages we often separate as “European” and “Asian” like German, English, French, Italian vs. Hindi, Farsi (Persian), Gujarati, Punjabi, Pashto, Sanskrit etc are ALL classified by linguists as belonging to the same Indo-European language family- which all evolved from the original language the Proto-Indo-Europeans spoke. See how artificial the Europe/Asia dichotomy really is, in terms of human genetics and origin of cultures? 

4. Finally- there’s plenty of modern proof that the region we call Europe today does NOT have a monopoly on producing people with blonde hair, fair skin and green eyes.

This is Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, a popular Indian Bollywood actress who is also known for her striking blue-green eyes. She’s 100% Indian- she was born in Mangalore, India to Indian parents. 

This is a couple at their wedding- the lady on the left is Indian, from the Southern Indian city of Hyderabad. Her husband is Ethiopian.

This is a photo of a boy and a woman who is likely his mother, taken in Turkey.

This is a girl from Darfur, Sudan- an area that has more than 30 ethnic groups.

This is a Nuristani girl. The Nuristani people are an ethnic group from Afghanistan. 

5. And in the first place, what makes up a person’s identity IS NOT JUST HOW MUCH or HOW LITTLE MELANIN THEY HAVE.

Tell your friend she is 100% Indian, because what makes up her identity is not just how she looks. Identity is what feels most natural to her, and if that identity is indeed very intertwined with major aspects of Indian culture- then well, she IS Indian and noone can say otherwise. 

Those people had no right to make her feel awful and “not-Indian enough” because it’s clear she identifies as such due to actually being born there and also practising major aspects of Indian culture. The best example I can think of to explain this is how in the US, people sometimes use the term “Latino” as a race category, with the stereotype that all latinos must have tanned skin and dark hair. In reality, it’s more of a cultural identity. The are fair haired-latinos and darker-skinned latinos whose ancestors included the African slaves brought to the Americas four hundred years ago. But what really makes them “Latino” or “Hispanic” is their upbringing- growing up in the environment of Latin America, which is culturally a syncretic fusion of Amerindian, African, Spanish, Portuguese and other European influences. 

(This is the Brazilian football team that won the 1970 World Cup- you can see Pelé- second from the bottom right. He is an Afro-Brazilian. If you look at his teammates, you can see how latinos come in ALL COLOURS.)

6. Your friend should not be questioning her identity, but those people attacking her should be questioning their utterly myopic worldview. The history of human genetics and migrations makes it abundantly clear how DIVERSE India is- so it’s perfectly possible for her to be Indian but have blonde hair and green eyes, even if it may be less common. 

7. On a more general note, I cannot stress this enough to everyone- DO NOT GO AROUND ATTACKING PEOPLE for “cultural appropriation” when you are NOT even from that culture in question and/or don’t actually know in detail the history and genetics of that region.

If you suspect cultural appropriation: DO YOUR RESEARCH FIRST or ASK SOMEBODY you know who actually belongs to that group. You may be attacking mixed-race people or people like the anon’s friend, who simply has features that are less genetically dominant- blonde hair shows up less easily in countries with a bigger pool of people with dark hair because dark hair is dominant. Even if her parents had dark hair, it’s possible they both carried a recessive gene for blonde hair that was suppressed by their dark-hair gene. Their child would be blonde if she happened to get both copies of the blonde gene instead of the dark hair gene.

Also, even if you think the person isn’t of that group, please bear in mind they might have been invited to dress in that clothing by a friend, or because they’re at an event. (I.e let’s say, at an Indian wedding)

I can’t stress how infuriating this “white knight” complex is. Speaking as someone pretty familiar with colonialism, I’ve had people who didn’t grow up in my culture condescendingly insist that if I’m okay with somebody doing something from my culture, it’s “self-internalised oppression”. I’ve studied African colonial literature, and the way people insist on defining what people should be alright with is very reminiscent of 19th century imperialists high-handedly saying, “oh, we have to bring the light of civilisation to save those backwards colonial subjects from themselves!”

This is Reese Witherspoon, wearing a kimono in Japan, where she is being taught by JAPANESE people how to perform the traditional tea ceremony. This is not reducing a culture to a caricature because she’s actually learning stuff respectfully and wearing a bona fide kimono.

Fighting against cultural appropriation is to prevent cultures from being cheapened, made into jokes, sexual fetishes or ugly caricatures. Part of returning power to people to define themselves is ALSO by allowing them to set the parameters of what they want to share with others- and many cultures are perfectly willing to share aspects that are non-sacred or do not have to be earned. So, for example, do not go around insisting a Japanese person should not be allowed to teach non-Japanese people to wear a kimono- because a kimono, unlike a Navajo war bonnet (akin to veteran’s medals), is something anybody can wear. Recognise this difference.

While seeking inspiration for my graduation dress, it dawned on me the origins of cultural appropriation. I was to be honest, quite upset that I could not wear the beautiful designs of cultures outside my origin for fear of misappropriation and yet, I was consoled by the fact that I had the culture of my origins to tap into (Chinese-Indonesian). Certain dominant cultures do not have this. I am by no means making a mockery of these cultures or giving them leeway for cultural misappropriation, but I profess, feeling some form of pity for them and maybe irony. I guess, these cultures were too busy stealing the works of other nations and forgo developing their own.

A traditional cultural garment expresses an identity through clothing, which is usually associated with a geographic area or a period of time in history. It can also indicate social, marital or religious status. The clothing is used to represent the culture or identity of a specific ethnic group, it is also known as ethnic dress, ethnic wear, ethnic clothing, traditional ethnic wear or traditional ethnic garment. Such clothing often come in two forms: one for everyday occasions, the other for traditional festivals and/or formal wear.

The catrina is a traditional cultural garment. Its culture. It's not a costume. Its traditional clothing wore in a traditional festival/holiday that's associated with a period of time and a political and social denunciation of hypocrisy.

Its not worn everyday because it's a festival traditional garment and thats the whole fucking point.

This

Is

Not

A

Costume

It

Is

Mexican

Culture

Reading lots of beginner witch tips and one thing that seems to keep coming up is Cultural Appropriation and Closed Practices, and it got me thinking as to why people even feel tempted to get into cultures they're not already involved in.

It seems like it's predominantly a White American problem, which seems similar to how predominantly White Americans were really really into those DNA testing kits a while back, which a lot of those people seemed to be using to try to, once again, connect to cultures ther have to part in otherwise.

Now I know lots of people have (rightfully) compared colonists to invasive species that wreaks absolute destruction on the environments they're introduced to, but if we take that a step further and look at culture itself as a type of environment - in that it provides a very important type of nourishment to its participants and is shaped by those participants - it kinda starts to look like Modern America is more like a cultural desert (i.e. capitalist hellscape) where many of the specimins in that "biome" are severely undernourished and are desperately seeking nutrition elsewhere, and are then becoming invasive to those cultures with a strong tradition and herritage.

Not saying that anyone should be "accomodating" to those people because of that though. Like, I understand why the spotted lantern fly is DECIMATING MY GRAPE VINE but I'm still gonna smack the shit out of it because that one Does Not Belong in this ecosystem. But maybe if America as a whole would be less obsessed with Money and Power we could pour some proverbial compost on the arts and humanities instead. Like, mow down all the kudzu vine and mulch it to feed the food plants. Or something.

And maybe that analogy can be extended to situations like "Person is born into culture A, but they need more Spirit Vitamin B than is provided in culture A, so they are drawn to culture B"

What am I even talking about. I don't know why I wrote this.

native appropriation, ft. the ice cannibal

do not tag as: "horror", "gore", "long post", or any variant of the name of this creature (even censored) okay to tag as: "ice cannibal", "cultural appropriation", "racism", or any variant of native-targeted racism

i do not want this tagged as "horror" or "gore" because i'd like for people who are not native to see this post. i apologize for preferring it to not be tagged as such, but this is an important post that i'd rather not be glimpsed over due to content warnings.

before reading: please do not tag this or reblog with unnecessary comments. this includes reiterating what i said and white guilt ("i'm so sorry i never knew"). i do not want apologies; i want action. i do not need to hear you say you will change; just do it. i do not want to see tags saying "it's so hard, but i try not to say it." it is a word. simply do not say it. i apologize to those who have a screen reader saying this to them, but i will be censoring the original names of the ice cannibals (however, i will be putting in the vowels missing for context). i am only mentioning these names censored so that there is no confusion as to who these are. do not tag my post as their names.

i will continue to contact people who do not respect my wishes and block if i am not listened to. i screenshot all behavior for later usage, if anything were to come up.

summary: please stop aestheticizing, romanticizing, and sexualizing native creatures- especially evil spirits. please stop using our beliefs and creatures as parts of your identity and aus. it is tiring, racist, and disrespectful. when dealing with evil spirits, it is also very dangerous.

here is the link to my original version of this post.

content:

what are ice cannibals, and what do they look like?

what are some examples of ice cannibals and appropriation?

why is it inappropriate to refer to the ice cannibals by name and to incorporate them into your identity?

what is a good replacement for ice cannibals in media, if one enjoyed their "aesthetic" without knowing it was racist?

--

the ice cannibal is an evil spirit from commonly algonquin beliefs. they are highly associated with that of other nations as well, and go by different names. the one they are most commonly known as is the w*nd*g**g (i, e, o, a). in other nations, they are also known as ch*n**k (e, o, o), w*t*k*w*k (i, i, o, a), and k*w*hq*y*k (i, a, i, i). (i repeat myself once again, do not tag this post as these names. please tag it as "ice cannibal" if you must. i feel disgusted simply typing these words censored. i am only putting them here so there is absolutely no confusion as to what i am speaking of.) their stories vary from nation to nation, but their relativity within these main stories tend to overlap in many cases. in these stories, people become ice cannibals through committing sins (most notoriously cannibalism, hence the name "ice cannibal.")

the most common descriptions of them (in order of named creatures) are listed as:

The apperance of a ... is huge, monstrous, and made of or coated in ice, but the human it once was is still frozen inside the monster where its heart should be...

(the next two are virtually the same, but refrain from commenting on their physical depiction, but rather how they become ice cannibals through sins, particularly cannibalism.)

The appearance of a ... is huge, monstrous, and made of or coated in ice. In some Cree stories, looking directly at a ... will leave a person paralyzed and helpless against it. ...'s heart is said to be made of ice, and the monster can only be permanently killed if its heart is completely melted.

(sources: 1, 2, 3, 4) (archive 1, 2, 3, 4) - this site also lists these creatures under the monster type as explicitly "ice cannibal", hence my reference to them as such on this post.

another set of descriptions to take into account is from this site. however, it is possible to take this with a grain of salt; this website is ran by the canadian government, and this article was written by a white man. there could be credibility to this information, but i am unable to confirm nor deny this at the moment.

Sometimes, ... are described as exceptionally thin, with the skull and skeleton pushing through its ash-coloured, mummy-like skin. Other stories describe the... as a well-fleshed giant who gets proportionately larger the more it eats. According to other legends, the ... has pointed or animal-like ears with antlers or horns sprouting on its head. A ... eyes have been described as sunken or glowing like hot coals. Sharp and pointy teeth, extremely bad breath and body odour are also often traits of a ... .

it is important to take these descriptions into account when we go over how people appropriate the ice cannibals.

the essential "awakening" of ice cannibal myth within "modern" tales (read: by those who are not native) stems from stephen king's pet sematary (1983) and the girl who loved tom gordon (1999). it takes place as an antagonist. while it is not described (as i have read in my research, as i will not be reading it for my own comfort), this is what essentially broke the conversation for ice cannibals outside of native groups.

the bastardized depiction of the ice cannibal is seen here. you can see the difference between this and the original is that these ones do not even appear to be ice cannibals. the earliest depiction i can find of this are from the 2001 film by the same name as these monsters (uncensored algonquin name), directed by larry fessenden. while i cannot elaborate for this movie- as i refuse to see it- it is depicted in this trailer (archive) (tw for paranoia and flashing lights). the most recent depiction of this is in the 2021 film, antlers (directed by guillermo del toro). it is not depicted in the final trailer (archive) released in 2019, but by googling the title with the word you will find the image after a little diving. i will also be refusing to watch this movie and will not go further than google searching for my own comfort.

here are some images of the bastardized and colonized ice cannibal:

[IMAGE ID: there is a set of two images, each depicting what is thought to be an ice cannibal. they look different than previously described. the one on the left is a black, lanky figure with a deer skull and trees in the background. the right one is an emaciated humanoid figure with antlers peeping from its head, staring down. /END ID.]

these are some examples of appropriation of the ice cannibals. some more recent ones can be found upon tumblr with an easy search, as seen here:

(source archives: 1, 2, 3)

[IMAGE ID: there is a set of three images. each of them are screenshots from tumblr posts and a page from a tumblr desktop blog. the first image is by user "termcoiningtime". this post consists of a flag, which is described as "w*ndidawngender (e) is a neurogender describing gender impacted by trauma caused by the w*nd*g*s (e, i, o) in until dawn" the second image is a screenshot by user "cryptidgenderoftheday". this is an image of an ice cannibal with the aforementioned bastardized depiction, and is captioned as "today's cryptid gender: the w*nd*g*" (e, i, o). the third image is a screenshot from user pronoun-provider which contains a set of pronouns. these pronouns use the explicit word for ice cannibals. /END ID.]

here is an example of the ice cannibals being used improperly for a "monster au", especially for that of a group of racist minecraft youtubers.

the usage of these spirits in such a way and the open usage of their proper name is inappropriate for at least two reasons:

their name gives them power. by speaking their name, especially in the cold or while in snow, you are more likely to summon them to you

the bastardized depiction puts an aesthetic to the ice cannibals, and makes them seem less foreboding. it makes them appear in a way that isn't horrifying.

a way that you could relate this to is how depictions view the "devil." they see him as true evil, and by saying his name you are letting him into your world. this is the only way that there is a similarity between the two.

let's say you like how the ice cannibals look in their bastardized form. i cannot stop you, but i can give you an alternative that is not racist: the leshy (especially the witcher 3: wild hunt depiction). while the leshy is only one being who shapeshifts, it is commonly depicted in a way similar to the were-deer that is the bastardized ice cannibal.

[IMAGE ID: two images side by side. they both depict a leshy, which is a slavic forest spirit. it has a skull and antlers in both of them and a treelike body. the first is found from pinterest, and the second is from the witcher wiki. /END ID]

I have such guilt on this subject

for the record. being birdkin is -not- permission to wear anything close to a head dress. 

; Personally I don't use fae/faer but I wanted to reblog this since it was interesting to read, plus could be helpful !! :]

On fae/faer pronouns and cultural appropriation

HOW IT STARTED

I had a handful, a very small handful but more than two, responses in the Gender Census feedback box telling me that fae/faer pronouns are appropriative. The reasons didn’t always agree, and the culture that was being appropriated wasn’t always the same, but here’s a selection of quotes:

“Fae pronouns are cultural appropriation and are harmful to use“ - UK, age 11-15

“I’m not a person who practices pagan holidays but, my understanding is that pronouns like fae/faeself are harmful because the fae are real to pagans and is like using Jesus/jesuself as pronouns“ - UK, age 11-15

“I know you’ve probably heard this a million times, so has everyone on the internet, but the “mere existence’‘of the fae pronoun feels really uncomfortable for some of us. I’m personally not against neopronouns like xe/xim, er/em and the like, I am a pagan but apart from the, imo most important, reasoning of that pronoun being immensely disrespectful, I worry as an nb about people who banalize the usage of pronouns ’'for fun”, and I’m quoting what some people have told me.“ - Spain, 16-20

“I don’t agree with fae/deity pronouns just from a pagan perspective it’s very disrespectful to the cultures they come from. Like Fae are a legit thing in many cultures and they hate with a fiery passion mortal humans calling themselves Fae to the point of harming/cursing the people who do it“ - USA, age 16-20

“only celtic people can use far/ faers otherwise it’s cultural appropriation, many celts have said this and told me this“ - USA, age 16-20

So that’s:

❓ Someone who doesn’t say whether they’re pagan or Celtic.

❌ Someone who definitely isn’t pagan.

✅ Someone who is pagan.

❓ Someone who doesn’t say whether they’re pagan or Celtic.

❓ Someone who doesn’t say whether they’re pagan or Celtic.

So, just to disclose some bias up-front, I am English so I’m not Celtic, but I do live in Wales so I am surrounded by Celts. The bit of Wales that I live in is so beautiful in such a way that when my French friend came to visit me she described it as féerique - like an enchanting, magical land, literally “fairylike” or thereabouts. Coincidentally I have also considered myself mostly pagan for over half of my life, and I can’t definitively claim whether or not the Fae are “part of paganism” because paganism is so diverse and pick’n’mix that it just doesn’t work that way.

To me the idea that fae/faer pronouns would be offensive or culturally appropriative sounds absurd. But also, I am powered by curiosity, and have been wrong enough times in my life that I wanted to approach this in a neutral way with an open mind. Perhaps what I find out can be helpful to some people.

So since we only have information from one person who is definitely directly affected by any cultural appropriation that may be happening, the first thing I wanted to do was get some information from ideally a large number of people who are in the cultures being appropriated, and see what they think.

~

WHAT I DID

First of all I put some polls up on Twitter and Mastodon. [Edit: Note that this post has been updated with results from closed polls.]

I specified that I wanted to hear from nonbinary Celts and pagans, just so that the voters would be familiar with fae/faer pronouns. I asked the questions in a neutral way, i.e. “How do you feel about…” with “good/neutral/bad” answer options, instead of something more leading like “Is this a load of rubbish?” or “are you super offended?” with “yes/no” options. I provided a “see results” option, so that the poll results wouldn’t be skewed as much by random people clicking any old answer to see the results. And I invited voters to express their opinions in replies.

Question #1: Nonbinary people of Celtic descent (Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, the Isle of Man, and Brittany), how do you feel about non-Celtic people using the neopronoun set fae/faer? [ It’s good / No strong feelings/other / It’s bad ]

Question #2: Nonbinary pagans, how do you feel about non-pagans using the neopronoun set fae/faer? [ It’s good / No strong feelings/other / It’s bad ]

The Twitter polls got over 1,100 responses each, and the Mastodon polls got over 140 responses each. With a little bit of spreadsheetery I removed the “N/A” responses to reverse engineer the number of people voting for each option, combined those numbers, and recalculated percentages.

Obviously this approach is not in the least scientific, but thankfully the results were unambiguous enough and the samples were big enough that I feel comfortable drawing conclusions.

Celts on fae/faer pronouns being used by non-Celts (561 voters):

It’s good - 42.5%

No strong feelings/other - 44.0%

It’s bad - 13.5%

Pagans on fae/faer pronouns being used by non-pagans (468 voters):

It’s good - 47.2%

No strong feelings/other - 39.5%

It’s bad - 13.3%

Here’s how that looks as a graph:

The limitations of polls on these platforms means that we have no way to distinguish between people who have more complicated views (”other”) and people who have “no strong feelings”, so we can’t really draw conclusions there. If we stick to just the pure positive and pure negative:

Celts were over three times as likely to feel positive about non-Celts using fae/faer pronouns than they were to feel negative.

Pagans were over three and a half times as likely to feel positive about non-pagans using fae/faer pronouns than they were to feel negative.

So Celts and pagans are way more likely to feel actively good about someone’s fae/faer pronouns, even when that person is not a Celt/pagan. That’s some strong evidence against the idea that fae/faer pronouns are appropriative, right there.

~

CORRECTIONS

To be clear, I haven’t done any research about the roots of fae/faer or the origins of the Fae and related beings, but my goal here was to get a sense of what Celts and pagans think and feel, rather than what an historian or anthropologist would say.

On the anti side, here were the replies that suggested fae/faer either is or might be inappropriate:

“I only worry that not everyone understands the origin of the word outside of modernized ideas of fairies.“ - pagan

“As a vaguely spiritual Whatever (Ireland), I think a mortal using “fae” as a pronoun/to refer to themselves is asking for a malicious and inventive fairy curse (on them, their families and possibly anyone in their vicinity, going by the traditions). I have not heard of this term before, so this is an immediate reaction from no background bar my cultural knowledge of sidhe/fae/term as culturally appropriate. My general approach is people can identify themselves as they want.“ - Celtic

So we’ve got a pagan who’s wary that people who use fae/faer (and people in general) might not have a fully fleshed out idea of the Fae. And we’ve got a Celt who doesn’t mind people using fae/faer personally, but based on what they know of the Fae they wouldn’t be surprised if the Fae got mad about it. No outright opposition, but a little concern.

There were not a lot of replies on the pro side, but not because people weren’t into it, judging by the votes. There were a lot of “it’s more complicated than that” replies, many of which repeated others, so quotes won’t really work. Here’s a summary of the Celtic bits:

“Fae” is not a Celtic word, and Celts don’t use it. It is French, or Anglo-French.

“Fae” can refer to any number of stories/legends from a wide variety of cultures in Europe, not one cohesive concept.

There are many legends about fairy-like beings in Celtic mythologies, and there are many, many different names for them.

The Celts are not a monolith, they’re a broad selection of cultures with various languages and various mythologies.

And the pagan bits:

Paganism is not closed or exclusive in any way. It might actually be more open than anything else, as “pagan” is a sort of umbrella term for non-mainstream religions in some contexts. A closed culture would be a prerequisite for something to be considered “appropriated” from paganism.

From my own experience, pagans may or may not believe in the Fae, and within that group believers may or may not consider the Fae to be sacred and/or worthy of great respect. (I’ve certainly never met a pagan who worshipped the Fae, though I don’t doubt that some do.)

And then we get into the accusations. 🍿

“this issue wasn’t started by Celtic groups or by people who know much about Celtic fae. It was started primarily by anti-neopronoun exclusionist pagans on TikTok.“

“[I’m] literally Scottish […] and it’s not appropriative in the least and honestly to suggest as such is massively invalidating towards actual acts of cultural appropriation and is therefore racist. Feel like if this was actually brought up it was either by some people who seriously got their wires crossed or people who are just concern trolling and trying to make fun of both neo-pronouns and of the concept of cultural appropriation and stir the pot in the process.“

“It wouldn’t be the first time bigots falsly claim “it’s appropriative from X marginalized group" to harass people they don’t like, like they did with aspec people when they claimed “aspec” was stolen from autistic language (which was false, as many autistics said)“

“It’s been a discussion in pagan circles recently … People were very quick to use the discussion as an excuse to shit on nonbinary people.“

“I think it would be apropos to note that the word “faerie/fairy” has been a synonym for various queer identities for decades, too. The Radical Faeries are a good example.“ (So if anyone has the right to [re]claim it…)

A little healthy skepticism is often wise in online LGBTQ+ “discourse”, and some of these people are making some very strong claims, for which I’d love to see some evidence/sources/context. Some of it certainly sounds plausible.

~

HOW DID IT START?

I had a look on Twitter and the earliest claim I can find that fae/faer pronouns are cultural appropriation is from 18th February 2020, almost exactly one year ago today. Again, tweets are not the best medium for this, there was very little in the way of nuance or context. If anyone can find an older claim from Twitter or Tumblr or anywhere else online, please do send it my way.

I have no idea how to navigate TikTok because I’m a nonbinosaur. (I’m 34.) I did find some videos of teens and young adults apparently earnestly asserting that they were Celtic or pagan and the use of fae/faer pronouns was offensive, but the videos were very brief and provided nothing in the way of nuance or context. For example:

This one from October 2020 with 29k ❤️s, by someone who I assume is USian based on the word “mom”?

This one from December 2020, that says “I am pagan and i find it rather disrespectful. It’s like using god/godr or jesus/jesusr.” That’s probably what inspired the feedback box comment above that refers to hypothetical jesus/jesusr pronouns.

If anyone is able to find a particularly old or influential TikTok video about fae/faer pronouns being appropriative I’d really appreciate it, especially if it’s from a different age group or from not-the-USA, to give us a feel for how universal this is.

For context, fae pronouns were mentioned in the very first Gender Census back in May 2013, though you’ll have to take my word for it as the individual responses are not currently public. The word “fae” was mentioned in the pronoun question’s “other” textbox, and no other forms in the set were entered so we have no way of knowing for sure what that person’s full pronoun set actually is. This means the set may have been around for longer. The Nonbinary Wiki says that the pronoun set was created in October 2013, as “fae/vaer”, later than the first entry in the Gender Census, so I’ll be editing that wiki page later! If anyone has any examples of fae/faer pronouns in use before 2013 I would also be very interested to see that.

~

IN SUMMARY

Obviously I can’t speak for everyone, as the Twitter polls are not super scientific and they only surveyed a selection of Celts and pagans within a few degrees of separation of the Gender Census Twitter and Mastodon accounts, but I can certainly report on what I found.

For a more conclusive result, we’d need to take into account various demographics such as age, culture, location, religion, race/heritage, etc.

As far as I can tell based on fairly small samples of over 400 people per group, a minority of about 13% of Celtic and/or pagan people felt that use of fae/faer pronouns is appropriative.

A much higher number of people per group felt positive about people who are not Celts or pagans using fae/faer pronouns. The predominant view was:

It can’t be cultural appropriation from Celtic cultures because fairy-like beings are not unique to Celtic cultures and Celtic cultures don’t call them Fae.

It can’t be cultural appropriation from pagan cultures because paganism is not “closed” or exclusive in any way, it’s too broad and open.

~

If your experience of your gender(s) or lack thereof isn’t described or encompassed by the gender binary of “male OR female”, please do click here to take the Gender Census 2021 - it’s international and it closes no earlier than 10th March 2021!

Thank you! Thanks you for this!!

The only thing I've ever heard about cultural appropriation is Tumblr posts with people shaming or yelling at people for doing things on this list - causing me to find the whole concept UTTERLY ridiculous!!

This was really helpful in helping me understand the original motives behind it.

Cultural appropriation is real and can be very harmful, but Tumblr en masse has grossly misdefined it. Here are some examples of what isn’t cultural appropriation:

- Eating food from another culture - Properly practicing a religion from...

so fun story from a year ago, demonstrating that I grew up without a tv and don't particularly care about celebrities

Girl of a race I cannot remember (which I feel super bad about rn) in an internet video: people trying to look like my race take away our identity by influencing others to believe that this is what a white person looks like; the Kardashians for example-

Me, completely bewildered: the Kardashians are white?????

alright I found the video.

for all the people butchering the nazi signs, i agree with you, but the Indian holy sign is actually the same symbol. So, if you ever see the symbol, understand what context it is in before crossing over a perfectly alright and holy symbol.

(left: hindu // right: nazi)

reblog, please. help me spread this.