Lionel Shriver responds to her critics

[Valin]

Washington Examiner:

Ashe Schow

9/23/16

 

Earlier this month, fiction writer Lionel Shriver made headlines when she delivered a speech to the Brisbane Writer's Festival (which most of her online critics had probably never heard of) and said she hoped "the concept of cultural appropriation is a passing fad."

 

She explained that being told we cannot appropriate other cultures – like wearing sombreros at fiesta-themed parties – will ultimately harm fiction writers. "The moral of the sombrero scandals is clear: You're not supposed to try on other people's hats," Shriver said. "Yet that's what we're paid to do, isn't it? Step into other people's shoes, and try on their hats." (Emphasis original.)

 

She went on to talk about college campuses and how people are no longer allowed to do anything that is associated with particular identities. These words offended one woman, Yassmin Abdel-Magied, a Sudanese-born Australian engineer and memoirist, so much that she stormed out and gave an interview to the Guardian.

 

(Snip)

 

This, Shriver wrote, has made the Left now the "oppressor," the ones who enforce conformity. Shriver said she is a "lifelong Democratic voter" but is "dismayed by the radical Left's ever-growing list of dos and don'ts — by its impulse to control, to instill self-censorship as well as to promote real censorship, and to deploy sensitivity as an excuse to be brutally insensitive to any perceived enemy."

 

She said all the "frenzies" surrounding claims of cultural appropriation, trigger warnings, microaggressions and safe spaces are "overtly crazy" and will push people toward GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.