Moana

Cosmopolitan Magazine (certainly NOT a serious periodical dedicated to social commentary) has an article suggesting the children shouldn't dress up as Disney character Moana because that would cause them to appropriate Hawaiian culture. At first, I though the article was satire, but nope, it's serious.

"Cultural appropriation" is a new social justice meme defined (Wikipedia) as:

Cultural appropriation is the adoption of the elements of one culture by members of another culture. Cultural appropriation, often framed as cultural misappropriation, is sometimes portrayed as harmful and is claimed to be a violation of the collective intellectual property rights of the originating culture.

Obviously, using cultural elements that ridicule another culture is not a good idea, but how, exactly, does a Moana costume do any damage to Hawaiian culture? For that matter, how does wearing a Mexican sombrero insult Mexican culture or a Sari somehow damage Indian culture? Maybe dressing up as a witch might be an insult to the Wiccan religion.

Kurt Schlichter suggests that there's a relatively simple and effective response when social justice warriors (SJWs) make crazy demands like the no Moana costume rule—Just say no! In referring to SJWs and their dictates he writes:

... these idiots have no power if we just laugh at them and say “No.” That’s all it takes to stop all this stupidity cold. What are they going to do? Force us to conform? Unlikely – most of them couldn’t even do a push-up, especially the ones that identify as male. No, they seek to impose a Dictatorship of the Scoldatariat, clinging to power not through bayonets but by constant braying and badgering.

It’s so simple to resist them – we just have to start giggling and saying, “Yeah, no, I’m not going to do that.

But there's a bit more to it. SJWs never seem to be satisfied. If you comply with one of their demands, other demands follow in short order. Again, Schlichter identifies the underlying issue:

This endless series of new rules is supposed to keep you off-balance and constantly vulnerable to their correction and guidance. You will never, ever be right – there’s always some new infraction for which you must submit to further restrictions of your right to self-governance. And the rules don’t make sense. Remember how you thought it was important for girls to be empowered by play where they model themselves after strong girl characters like Moana? Wrong! You’ve failed again, because in attempting to comply with their gender dictates (and make no mistake – SJWs have just as firm ideas of gender roles as normal people, except their ideas are terrible) you will inevitably run afoul of some other dictate. It’s intersectional all right, like an intersection with no traffic lights where you’re going to end up in a wreck one way or the other.

You can’t win, so why do some people play this game instead of telling these buffoons where to get off?

Actually, you can win, but in order to do that you can't give in to the abject idiocy of demands that little kids shouldn't wear Moana Halloween costumes.