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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	silrana 2010-09-19 02:03 pm UTC (link)
	I was thinking the same thing. So all those early rock & rollers who said they were heavily influenced by the music that was coming out of the black community are dirty, dirty racists? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	sequinedlizard 2010-09-19 06:17 pm UTC (link)
	A lot of the history of modern popular music has really problematic race issues, though. Yes, borrowing and influence happens, and it may not be intentional, but there have been lots of musicians of color that have gotten the shaft from the music industry, especially in its earlier years. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	insanityprelude 2010-09-20 01:59 am UTC (link)
	Are we still allowed to like the music at least? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	bandit 2010-09-20 03:57 am UTC (link)
	Really? Really? Did anyone say you had to stop liking music? Pointing out race issues =/= telling everyone to stop liking things. Issues need to be acknowledged so that people can recognize them and maybe reconsider actions in the future, but ignoring the past that has come before cheapens it and reeks of cover-up. So yeah, in summary, stop being childish. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	sequinedlizard 2010-09-20 04:25 am UTC (link)
	Thanks, I had stuff to do and didn't have a response to that. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	tofuknight 2010-09-21 06:56 pm UTC (link)
	I lollled. Yes there's srs bzns here, in the music industry, and in the history of music. But this was funny. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	insanityprelude 2010-09-21 07:06 pm UTC (link)
	I aim to entertain? (although in retrospect, yeah, it was a shortsighted kind of comment. I used to spend too much time around people that did tend to give off this "X is unintentionally Yist so it's bad" vibe.) (Reply to this)(Parent)

	bravest_spinja 2010-09-20 10:23 pm UTC (link)
	Yeah, although I also thinks there's a difference between "Taking the work of non-white musicians, remaking them into whitebread songs, and using financial influence to block them from reaching the airwaves to begin with" to "Human Moulin Rogue! picks out gimmicks from (often successful) musicians for her pastiche machine." (Reply to this)(Parent)

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