In my last year of college, I took a course on Japanese theatre and performance

ectinix:

And there was this one white boy in that class, who I’m relatively sure was majoring in Japanese Studies. It was very apparent that he liked Japanese culture. He could even speak Japanese. He spent the entire semester trying to hit up the female international students (only the Asian ones) and talk to them about anime.

In that class, we learned about many Japanese performance types, and when it came to watching movies about about the traditional Noh, Kabuki, Bunraku, etc.; THAT ONE BOY would make it a point to loudly complain: "This is so boring. This is so weird. This is stupid. Why do Japanese people come up with this stuff?! What the hell is this?! LOL this is lame."

THIS is what I can’t stand.

You spend so much time “immersing” yourself in a culture; you think you “know” so much about it; you think you “appreciate” it so much…. so much so that you pick and choose to love anime and women while disparaging tradition and history. Yes, tell me more about how much you APPRECIATE Japanese culture.

This is why I can’t take people like Katy Perry seriously.

If you have so much love for a culture and claim to know all about its customs and people, you would damn well know not to say something as stupidly disrespectful as “Geishas are basically, like, the masters of loving unconditionally.” This alone makes it disgustingly obvious that Katy Perry knows next to nothing about Japanese culture other than “it’s beautiful.” If you think geisha = prostitute, get the fuck out right now.

THIS is why it isn’t ok to just let people “enjoy” other cultures without pointing out objectively harmful thinking or behavior. If you really LOVE a culture, DON’T contribute to marginalizing its people while commodifying and fetishizing its other aspects.

If you want so badly to take part in a culture that is not your own; you better make a commitment to immerse yourself in it with RESPECT — That is NOT picking and choosing only the things you like about it, dismissing all else that doesn’t suit your tastes, and ignoring the voices of people who are rightfully offended.

YOU can put on and take off a kimono. WE cannot take off our identity.