The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 20 - Why 'Cultural Appropriation' Is Nonsense

00:00:00.000 So let's talk about cultural appropriation, okay? Over the weekend, a high school girl,

00:00:07.600 just a random high school girl, not a public figure, not a celebrity,

00:00:12.880 she tweeted a picture of herself in her prom dress, innocent enough, she thought, right?

00:00:20.440 And she was tweeting it out to her, whatever, a few hundred followers. And she was wearing,

00:00:25.300 I guess, a Chinese style dress. And so a Chinese man, Chinese American man, it seems,

00:00:33.560 saw this tweet and he thought, well, let me attack this high school girl. And yeah, let me just do

00:00:42.660 that. Let me try to ruin her day and her week for no reason. So he screenshotted the tweet and he

00:00:50.120 sent his own tweet saying, uh, my culture is not your damned prom dress. My culture is not your

00:00:57.760 prom dress, which I mean, he's right about that. She never claimed it was. I don't think she ever,

00:01:03.880 I didn't, I didn't scroll through all her tweets, but I don't think she ever said,

00:01:08.660 I'm wearing Chinese culture today. I'm wearing the entirety of Chinese culture today. Uh, no, 1.00

00:01:16.140 I think she's just wearing a dress, just a dress is a dress, you know? Um, but his tweet attacking

00:01:23.420 this girl, uh, cyber bullying her basically got somehow 170,000 likes, 170,000. And it sparked this

00:01:36.440 avalanche of criticism on this girl. And it started a conversation about cultural appropriation. 0.95

00:01:43.760 And this goes back to something I talked about last week where you see now how everybody who's

00:01:52.220 on the internet now gets treated like a public figure that everybody gets this intense scrutiny

00:01:59.640 over everything they say and do. And anyone at all, no matter who they are, even if just some,

00:02:04.620 some 17 year old girl going to prom, um, anyone can, can come under national backlash for something. 1.00

00:02:12.720 And so this, I guess this girl, her number was up for that. So, um, now ironically, this,

00:02:19.580 this guy, Jeremy Lamb is his name and he's pictured in his Twitter avatar wearing a baseball cap,

00:02:28.360 board shorts, and a t-shirt, none of which are traditional Chinese garb. I I'm pretty sure. 0.83

00:02:35.140 In fact, even his name, Jeremy is not Chinese. That's most certainly Western. Uh, and I, according 0.70

00:02:42.800 to an internet search that I just did a minute ago, the most, just for an example, okay, the most

00:02:47.320 popular name, the most popular male name in China right now is Zhang Wei. Now, the reason I bring it

00:02:54.660 up is, is, can you imagine if some lily white American parents who wanted to be trendy, you know,

00:03:04.560 if they had a baby boy and they named him Zhang Wei and they sent out a tweet or something with a

00:03:10.300 picture of their, of their extremely white baby saying, Oh, my little Zhang Wei was born, uh, eight

00:03:17.560 pounds, nine ounces, you know, what happened? They would come under again, intense national backlash.

00:03:24.040 How dare you appropriate Chinese culture by giving him a Chinese name? But Jeremy has appropriated a 1.00

00:03:31.180 Western name. He's appropriated an entire Western wardrobe. I mean, everything from his hat right down

00:03:38.040 to his shoes. Okay. All of it is Western. And really, if, if, if we're going to talk about appropriation,

00:03:45.180 if we're going to get into the appropriation discussion, and if we're going to get into this

00:03:48.980 game where we say, okay, you're not allowed to use anything or wear anything that doesn't originate

00:03:55.140 with your culture. If we're doing that, it's not going to work out too well for non-Westerners. 0.52

00:04:01.360 Uh, because first of all, by, by the rules of this game, if the rules were applied evenly by the rules

00:04:09.360 of the game, if you're a non-Western, if you are, if you are of non-Western heritage, first of

00:04:15.160 all, you need to stop doing what you're doing at this exact moment. Stop doing it right now. Go

00:04:19.660 away because you can't computers, phones, any kind of phone. These are all Western inventions

00:04:26.100 and you can't use them. It's appropriation, cars, airplanes, much of modern medicine, antibiotics.

00:04:32.580 Uh, most of the appliances that you have in your kitchen, dishwasher, refrigerator, all that.

00:04:37.960 You can't use that electricity, light bulbs, movies, TV, photography, democracy. Okay. Air conditioning.

00:04:44.160 I could go on and on and on. And I haven't even gotten to clothing yet. Jeans, ball caps,

00:04:49.460 t-shirts, sneakers. Can't wear those under these rules. Can't wear them. This is why cultural

00:04:55.380 appropriation is utter nonsense. One of the reasons anyway, because it puts cultures into these boxes

00:05:00.940 and it doesn't permit crossover. And it denies the very diversity that the left pretends to value

00:05:08.420 above everything else. They say, we let, you know, diversity is the best thing in the world.

00:05:11.700 And yet they're the ones saying, no, you can't have that. That belongs to the other culture. 0.99

00:05:16.620 You got to stick with your own cultures. Separate, but equal cultures. Okay. Stay separate, 1.00

00:05:22.920 stay segregated. That's what they're saying. Or, or I should say, let me, let me clarify back up for a

00:05:28.260 minute. It denies you the, the right to cross over into another box if you're white. So it's a one way 0.97

00:05:37.060 ticket here, basically. If you, it tells whites to stay in their box and never go outside of it. 0.91

00:05:44.980 But people of other races and ethnicities, they can come into our box all they want. They can take 1.00

00:05:50.260 what they want, browse around, you know, look around, take this, take a sneaker, put on a ball cap,

00:05:54.920 use some air conditioning, take a, you know, take a flight back and forth from, I mean, they can do

00:05:59.440 whatever they want. But for us, we have to stay right here in this box and we can never go and do

00:06:06.080 anything else out of it. So the double standard, the double standard is so blatant, just so extremely

00:06:12.820 blatant and in your face. And they just, just so unashamed is this shameless, I should say, is this

00:06:20.100 a double standard that it's almost shocking as a custom, as we all are to the double standard,

00:06:25.580 it almost succeeds in shocking. But the real double standard with this appropriation stuff

00:06:32.480 has nothing to do with culture or race or anything like that. The thing is that because there is one

00:06:40.580 place, there is one place, there's one area where, where, where real live, honest to God appropriation

00:06:50.720 actually does occur. Harmful, degrading, demeaning appropriation. That is happening. But the one

00:06:59.560 place where it actually happens, the one place where appropriation actually happens and is actually

00:07:06.360 harmful and is actually offensive and degrading, that's the one place where the left celebrates it.

00:07:12.060 And of course, I'm talking about men who appropriate womanhood by pretending to be women. That is the one 0.68

00:07:20.120 actual, real example of appropriation. And it's the one place where the left, not, it's not that they

00:07:28.040 look the other way. They actually applaud it and say, yeah, it's brave. It's inspiring. It's beautiful.

00:07:33.880 But here is real appropriation. Here's a man who has reduced femininity to a caricature, to a cartoon,

00:07:42.280 basically. And he says he has an urge to wear dresses and to wear high heels and to wear lipstick.

00:07:47.180 And that, this urge somehow indicates that he's really a woman inside. By intruding on womanhood, he turns

00:07:55.420 womanhood into nothing more than a fashion choice, essentially. He empties it of all of its substance.

00:08:03.000 He says that a woman's body, what goes on inside her, what goes on inside her mind, all of that, what goes on

00:08:09.560 inside her soul, her ability to create human beings and to, and to, you know, harbor them inside her body and 0.90

00:08:17.800 to nourish them with her body, all of that. Okay. Those things that are really authentically, uniquely,

00:08:25.880 fantastically, beautifully woman, those things, none of that, all those things don't matter. None of that

00:08:34.920 matters. According to the new way of looking at it, because in order for the man to take part in

00:08:43.760 womanhood, well, then we've got to strip womanhood of all the things that are unique to it because he 0.92

00:08:48.920 can't, he can't, uh, he can't have any part of that. He can be a woman, he says, without any of that. 0.57

00:08:56.240 So none of that matters. As long as he puts on a dress and maybe he changes his name and he grows

00:09:03.240 his hair out and maybe he gets implants or something and he mutilates his genitals. If he does all that, 0.56

00:09:08.780 well, now he's a woman, all the rest of the stuff that used to be the territory, the, the, of women 1.00

00:09:16.180 doesn't matter. So, so see here we have the actual consequences of appropriation

00:09:24.080 that the left worries will happen with cultural appropriation.

00:09:29.440 Here we have it actually happening because their arguments, what is their argument against a white

00:09:36.140 girl wearing a Chinese prom dress? What's their argument against it? What, why are they worried

00:09:40.180 about it? What's the big deal? Well, according to them, by wearing the dress, she reduces Chinese 1.00

00:09:47.440 culture to a fad and to a novelty. She takes part in it. She benefits from it. She borrows its beauty.

00:09:54.080 She kind of like steals it without understanding it. And thus she makes it into something superficial 0.79

00:09:59.700 and hollow and just like something to parade around like a costume. Basically she turns,

00:10:05.800 she turns Chinese culture into a, into a costume. That's the argument. Now that doesn't really happen 1.00

00:10:13.140 when a white person wears a Chinese dress or when a white person, I don't know, whatever else gets

00:10:20.920 them accused of a, listens to Beyonce or something like that. Um, that's not, that, that doesn't,

00:10:26.340 that doesn't do any harm to anybody. It doesn't cheapen Chinese culture, black culture. It doesn't

00:10:32.080 because cultures intermingle, they blend and fashions and styles change. And so that's,

00:10:37.540 there's this exchange between cultures that goes on. And that used to be what the left,

00:10:43.360 you know, celebrated and said we should be doing is, is this intermingling and exchange of cultures,

00:10:49.000 but womanhood and manhood on the other hand are absolutes. They are poles. Okay. They're like 0.95

00:10:57.940 North and South poles. And when men come in and they blur those lines, they really do blur the lines 0.90

00:11:06.700 that give women their identity. Because this is what define, in order to have an identity, 1.00

00:11:12.800 there must be lines of distinction. And it used to be, and it still is scientifically,

00:11:19.220 but our culture doesn't recognize it anymore. It used to be that we all recognized that the,

00:11:23.840 there were certain lines that defined a woman. And those lines were really obvious among them.

00:11:30.680 As I said, she can create a person. Okay. She could conceive a person within her and bring that 1.00

00:11:38.700 human being into the world. I mean, this is incredible. It's like a supernatural ability.

00:11:43.020 It's such an incredible power that she has. The fate of all human civilization rests on the woman

00:11:50.640 because we need the woman to propagate civilization. Of course, the woman needs the man to take part in 1.00

00:11:56.240 that. But the woman has this very essential role of actually harboring the child, bringing the child 1.00

00:12:03.440 forth. And then the child, even when he's born, you know, after he's born, the child has a real

00:12:10.020 physical need for the mother. Technically, the child doesn't even need the man. I mean, kids do need

00:12:15.400 their fathers. Don't get me wrong. But a newborn child has a physical need for the mother. The newborn

00:12:22.600 won't even notice his dad for like several months. Believe me, I've had three. He needs his mother.

00:12:28.500 So there's that motherly maternal connection, you know, and it's just that those were the things

00:12:34.520 that used to define womanhood. But we've torn down those lines. We've destroyed them. We've 0.90

00:12:40.000 obliterated them for the sake of these cross-dressing men. And so the LGBT, um, lobby has actually done 0.96

00:12:49.880 to womanhood what the left says this girl did to Chinese culture. But the girl in the Chinese prom 0.85

00:12:55.900 dress is villainized. A man in a prom dress is canonized. The girl in the dress is accused of

00:13:04.180 turning Chinese culture into nothing but a dress. The man in the dress actually has turned womanhood 0.95

00:13:10.640 into nothing but a dress. He's actually done it, at least in the eyes of society. Yet he gets away

00:13:17.320 with it. It's incredible. All of this talk about appropriation, here it is. It's actually happening.

00:13:25.780 Let's talk about that. And it's doing real harm to women. It's part of the reason why now you've got 1.00

00:13:33.020 to worry about your, about your, um, you know, your, your daughter ending up in a locker room or in a,

00:13:38.600 in a bathroom with a man because of this. Men have come in and appropriated woman. They've, they've, 1.00

00:13:44.940 they've even taken their bathrooms from them in their, their locker rooms, their private intimate

00:13:49.180 spaces. Men have come in and taken, or I should specify the LGBT camp has come in and taken. 1.00

00:13:57.020 So how is this happening? How, how is it, how is this being allowed to happen? Well, the answer is,

00:14:02.260 um, it's, as I've explained in the past, the left has what I call a victim pyramid or a victim

00:14:09.200 hierarchy. Now we know that victimization is currency on the left. Victimization is power on

00:14:17.100 the left and whoever is the, the most victimized victim of all. Well, they're going to have the

00:14:23.480 most power. They can do whatever they want and they can't be questioned. So there's this jockeying

00:14:27.800 for position among the various demographics on the left, who can be the most victimized. And there's

00:14:31.720 always this competition, but who's the most depressed, who's the most persecuted, who's the most

00:14:35.600 bullied and so on and so forth. Um, right now the LGBT folks are at the very top of the victim of the 0.99

00:14:42.620 victim hierarchy. They're all the way at the top. They've ascended to the peak. And this is a big

00:14:47.720 moment for them where they're here at the top and they're reaping all the benefits. And what it means

00:14:53.220 is that they can do whatever they want and nobody can criticize them. And really the transgenders 0.91

00:15:01.420 have even ascended to the top of the top, which is what, well, you know, now you find even, I, I saw

00:15:08.700 some headline on Twitter recently that, um, uh, gay men are being told that, uh, they, they can't dress

00:15:16.500 as drag queens anymore because I mean, oh my gosh, just try to wrap your head around this. The new 1.00

00:15:25.460 thing that I, that I've seen is that gay men cannot dress like drag queens because they're appropriating 0.96

00:15:32.280 from transgenders. Okay. They're that's what now men, now men in dresses are, are, are appropriating 1.00

00:15:42.980 from other men in dresses. So I, anyway, um, so the transgenders have ascended all the way to the top

00:15:50.440 of the top of the top and they can do whatever they want. And no one can criticize them because they're

00:15:55.140 the most victimized of all, um, from some, you know, from my own observations of studying the

00:16:00.100 left, uh, it seems to me, and they're, like I said, there's a jockeying for position and kind of

00:16:04.100 it's a sort of this game of thrones that goes on. But right now, transgenders at the top and then the 1.00

00:16:09.280 rest of the LGBT XYZ, um, squad, they're there right underneath them. And then racial minorities 1.00

00:16:16.040 are right below them. And then women, women are actually kind of at the bottom right now on the left 1.00

00:16:22.440 in terms of, um, the victim hierarchy, which is why even after all the, the work that feminists 1.00

00:16:29.980 have done, after all the, you know, feminists, especially modern feminists, they spend a lot 1.00

00:16:34.400 of time finding persecution where it doesn't actually exist. They find rape culture where

00:16:39.400 it doesn't exist. But meanwhile, that you've got actual dudes walking into their bathrooms and 1.00

00:16:45.380 their locker rooms, and they're not allowed to complain about that. They can complain about

00:16:49.460 manspreading on the subway. They can complain about anything else, but they can't complain about

00:16:53.900 that. They basically been told, shut your mouth and go with the program. And for the most part on

00:17:00.200 the left and the feminists, most of them do. They're put in their place by the LGBT. And, uh, so they just 0.99

00:17:07.640 go along with it. So that's why, you know, that's how we've ended up in this, um, really absurd

00:17:15.420 situation. And I'm sort of waiting and it's happened a little bit. There's been a few examples

00:17:22.000 of it. There've been a few liberal feminists who have sort of very gingerly ventured into the 1.00

00:17:30.080 territory of kind of criticizing the transgender thing. But I'm waiting for the moment when the

00:17:35.980 feminists really just get fed up with it. And they say, you know what? No, I, we're not going to 1.00

00:17:40.720 tolerate this anymore. I mean, they've spent all this time telling men that you're not even allowed

00:17:46.560 to have opinions about women's issues. If you don't have a uterus, that's been their refrain for 1.00

00:17:52.180 decades. They've said no uterus, no opinion. And now they've got to sit there and just deal with it

00:17:58.520 while men not only have opinions about women, but actually become women without uteruses. And they're

00:18:04.380 not allowed to. So eventually I think the feminists are, um, going to get fed up of it with it. And 1.00

00:18:10.000 there's going to be a full-on civil war on the left over this issue. But as it stands right now,

00:18:15.680 men can appropriate all they want. And, uh, it's the one kind of appropriation that the left 0.91

00:18:22.180 never says anything about. And that is the real reason why appropriation is nonsense.

00:18:28.980 All right. Have a great day, everyone. Godspeed.

The Matt Walsh Show - May 01, 2018

Ep. 20 - Why 'Cultural Appropriation' Is Nonsense

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