The pseudonym "Philo Vaihinger" has been abandoned. All posts have been and are written by me, Joseph Auclair.

Wednesday, May 2, 2018

No safe places for white people

PC police are so utterly full of shit.

Prom Dress That Caused a Furor in U.S. Draws Head-Scratching in China

Those dresses are beautiful and perfect for spring.

My mother had one, many years ago, along with a pair of pajamas with a similar flowery, Chinese look.

When Keziah Daum wore a Chinese-style dress to her high school prom in Utah, it set off an uproar — but not because of its tight fit or thigh-high slit.

After Ms. Daum, 18, shared pictures on social media of her prom night, a Twitter user named Jeremy Lam hotly responded in a post that has been retweeted nearly 42,000 times.


Do people agree with this troll or do they think he's an asshole, I wonder.

Maybe he was kidding?

“My culture is NOT” your prom dress, he wrote, adding profanity for effect.

“I’m proud of my culture,” he wrote in another post.


“For it to simply be subject to American consumerism and cater to a white audience, is parallel to colonial ideology.”

Other Twitter users who described themselves as Asian-American seized on Ms. Daum’s dress — a form-fitting red cheongsam (also known as a qipao) with black and gold ornamental designs — as an example of cultural appropriation, a sign of disrespect and exploitation.


You have to wonder whether this vomit is actually the product of an alt-right tweeter flying a false flag, deliberately stirring the pot.

Cultural appropriation?

Is that like when Yo Yo Ma plays the cello?

When the Tokyo Symphony plays Mahler?

The very concept is a racist attack.

And the target is always somebody white.

Actually, it is everybody white.

A point that has not escaped commenters actually living in Asia.

When the furor reached Asia, though, many seemed to be scratching their heads.

Far from being critical of Ms. Daum, who is not Chinese, many people in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan proclaimed her choice of the traditional high-necked dress as a victory for Chinese culture.

“I am very proud to have our culture recognized by people in other countries,” said someone called Snail Trail, commenting on a post of the Utah episode by a popular account on WeChat, the messaging and social media platform, that had been read more than 100,000 times.

“It’s ridiculous to criticize this as cultural appropriation,” Zhou Yijun, a Hong Kong-based cultural commentator, said in a telephone interview.

“From the perspective of a Chinese person, if a foreign woman wears a qipao and thinks she looks pretty, then why shouldn’t she wear it?”

If anything, the uproar surrounding Ms. Daum’s dress prompted many Chinese to reflect on examples of cultural appropriation in their own country.

“So does that mean when we celebrate Christmas and Halloween it’s also cultural appropriation?” asked one WeChat user, Larissa.

Others were quick to point out that the qipao, as it is known in China, was introduced by the Manchus, an ethnic minority group from China’s northeast — implying that the garment was itself appropriated by the majority Han Chinese.

In its original form, the dress was worn in a baggy style, mostly by upper-class women during the Qing dynasty, which ruled China for more than 250 years, until 1912.

It was only in the 1920s and ’30s, when Western influence began seeping into China, that the qipao was reinvented to become the seductive, body-hugging dress that many think of today.

For many cinephiles, it has become inextricably associated with Maggie Cheung, the actress who wore a stunning array of cheongsams in Wong Kar-wai’s 2000 film “In the Mood for Love.”

These days, it is rare to see Chinese women wearing qipaos in the street.

Western “fast fashion” has taken over, though the qipao has made something of a comeback among some official figures, like the country’s first lady, Peng Liyuan.

“To Chinese, it’s not sacred and it’s not that meaningful,” said Hung Huang, a Beijing-based writer and fashion blogger, in an interview.

“Nowadays, if you see a woman wearing a qipao, she’s probably a waitress in a restaurant or a bride.”

The Dems rightly accuse the GOP of harboring and even toadying to white racism.

And the GOPsters rightly accuse the Dems of harboring and toadying to anti-white racism, though the extent is by no means the same.

White racism is in the very heart of Trumpism.

Anti-white racism, though to a degree reflexive in nonwhite - especially black - Democrats, was neither a selling point nor an agenda item in the Obama White House, nor any other Dem administration.

Dems castigate the GOP as the party of traditionalist patriarchy - the word "misogyny" is more often used - but Hillary exemplifies perfectly and in person the misandry of some Dems.

All part of the sharpened polarization of American politics.

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