Wearing costumes is cultural appropriation

You seem to be terribly confused about what I an actually arguing for. You probably missed my edit:

'Distaste' is a subjective feeling that doesn't just involve morality. It also involves aesthetics, religious/emotional attitudes, personal quirks etc, etc. What's distasteful to one person isn't necessarily distasteful to another.

People are free to feel how they want about things, but at the end of the day, we need to acknowledge that borrowing and changing is going to happen, and that what others do with what they borrowed doesn't actually harm us. People giving credence to the idea of 'Cultural Appropriation' or 'cultural respect' will suppress so much needed creativity.

I haven't been arguing that people should never, ever, criticize others use of culture.

But they are provably sacred to a great number of people.

So what? Why does that bind me to having the same respect for it they do? I'm not Christian.

What wrong with someone claiming all men are sexist?

Nothing, if you can prove it.

But it's just an object! It's distasteful to destroy it, but surely there's nothing WRONG with destroying it! Otherwise you're admitting that it has a social value and it's wrong to treat it poorly.

You are taking what I am actually arguing about way out of bounds. I am only arguing about cultural 'respect'/appropriation in the case of copied things. All the argument about distastefulness is about those things, not whatever you've taken it as. So, let me restate:

  • In the case where a practice is imitated or a reproducible symbol is adopted from another group, the original group's distaste does not necessarily make it unethical to recontextualize those things, because both groups can continue on with their practices as is, without modification.
/r/TumblrInAction Thread Parent Link - imgur.com