This feminist blog which depends on your donations is not here to educate you!
Thanks to the anon at wank_report for the bulk of the writeup, with its singular virtues.

S.E. SMITH accuses Lady Gaga of appropriation:

It's been pointed out that she appropriates a lot of things from musical traditions created by people of colour and nonwhite people. That her work contains transmisogyny. That she appropriates the experiences of people with disabilities. These are all things that I don't think of as feminist acts—note that I am not saying that Lady Gaga is not feminist (because I don't think it's up to me to decide that), but rather that I am saying that her actions do not always mesh with the identity she has chosen to claim. The same could be said of many other people who identify as feminist, including myself, however. Let those in glass houses...

(bonus points for the excellent use of praeteritio here.)

A commenter asks for references and explanation. According to Snarky's Machine, late of the now-closed Shapely Prose, asking for sources is derailing and oppressive:

I can't be arsed to unpack and respond to your comment except to say you're trafficking in copious amounts of derailing for dummies. Your inability to "see" how Gaga misappropriates says everything about YOUR own privilege and inability to google "Grace Jones" and nothing else. If concepts are unfamiliar to you instead assuming the concepts themselves are wrong, you might want to hit up Professor Google. Because the argument, "you're wrong because I don't know what you're talking about." just does not cut it.

Comments defending that commenter get deleted (although some are reposted in the anon threads below). Mods claim to be "reviewing the situation" (i.e., pretending to do something about it). "Open thread" disappears after 20 minutes after irate commenters leave comments there. The current status is "please email the mods directly if you want to talk about comment policy", which couldn't possibly have a chilling effect--not at all.

Snarky's Machine has another reply to that initial commenter on Twitter:

Ha. I love how some weird ass creepy e-troll named whitney is stalking my feed and tattling cause I'm so mean. Who are these people.

People take refuge to complain in several threads in the sfd_anon community. (Which are now locked; possibly accessible if you're a member of the community.) Worth noting are the ones about how Bitch magazine aggressively solicits donations to support their journalism, which puts a special irony gloss on the "we're not here to educate you" rebuttal.

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franzen
2010-09-19 12:19 am UTC (link)

I admit that I only scrolled quickly through the blog post before jetting out the door, because I was a fan of Shapely Prose and the wank write-up didn't sound right to me. For my money, it's possible to discuss Gaga appropriating from singers of colour as a specific issue within the larger context of Gaga's overall "stealing." I think most people would be willing to submit that Gaga has borrowed from Madonna (in my experience, that point never garners controversy), but when you bring up, for example, M.I.A. or Grace Jones comparisons, reactions tend to be much more hostile. "But she's not Grace Jones, durr." That commenter is setting up a straw man -- Gaga isn't specifically appropriating from singers of colour, but she has appropriated from them, and they are far less likely to get credit, and this appropriation is far less likely to be discussed, than her appropriation from white sources. And for my money, "If SE wants me to take them seriously, she needs to evaluate them with videos or sound clips side by side" is the height of privileged, derailing douchebaggery. "Oh, you just have an opinion until you have evidence, which I won't find by myself, even though a LMGTFY search would turn it up."

Wanna bet that even with evidence, said commenter would turn tack to "Gaga steals from everyone, it's not a racial issue!"? Yeah. I'm having a hard time getting pissed at SE here.

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	waltraute 2010-09-19 12:27 am UTC (link)
	I think a detailed discussion would make a good second blog post, perhaps to come after the one above as a general introduction. I think Sparky's Monster is about as successful a comment moderator as Teresa Nielsen Hayden, to lift a comparison that one anonymous poster made. (Reply to this)(Parent)

chibikaijuu
2010-09-19 08:09 pm UTC (link)

I do feel like people are less willing to admit that Gaga cribs from artists of color than from white artists, and I wish she were more cognizant of that. But I don't think that incorporating elements of the work of artist of color who are famous in their own right (so long as the elements aren't directly tied to race) is necessarily appropriative. It's a racial issue because her fans refuse to acknowledge her sources, not because she is using those sources (if there is any evidence of her downplaying their influence specifically, especially in comparison to her white influences, I'd love to be pointed towards it).

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