#(I try very hard not to use AAVE on the Internet because i AM white and I know it's often appropriated)

[theunembarrassedalto]

is this the year I finally, despite my lifelong resistance, get into pop music? stay tuned

#it's not that i don't think pop music can be good! or at least not anymore #alex aged ... oh probably 12-19 or so was definitely a little bit of a snob about it #but previously i have often been ... bored by pop? #but i'm kind of digging some of the stuff happening now! #obviously there's montero which fucking slaps #spotify just gave me kiss me more which is doja cat and sza (because i really like sza) #which is also really good to my pleasant surprise! #(also i'm not gonna delete all my tags to change this but. is the use of 'slaps' to say something is good AAVE?) #(I try very hard not to use AAVE on the Internet because i AM white and I know it's often appropriated) #(but it's genuinely extremely difficult because. i live with a Black person. i am married to a Black person who uses AAVE all the time #and when you live with someone esp in a partnership you end up picking up a lot of speech patterns from each other! #and so I think I've like. accidentally gotten a lot of AAVE that way and I. genuinely do not know what it is half the time #because it's just like oh yeah this is a phrase N uses that has worked its way into my regular vocab #and i don't want to appropriate it #i want to be respectful!) #(then i get to wondering about like. what is appropriation vs appreciation. #like. can i use AAVE if i understand and credit it as not my creation? like i do get that it's actually a whole language and not just #'internet slang' or whatever! #but i absolutely do not want to use it if it's disrespectful or appropriative to do so by nature!) #okay this was a wild tag rant my APOLOGIES but i wrote it all and it is genuinely something i think about #so i'm not gonna delete it lol. enjoy. all y'all following my blog must have a fun time #anyway uh. categorization tags incoming #personal

[burning-bubble-tea]

So I’m reading the comments of a TikTok video MISTAKE 1 talking about why gay men use a lot of aave.

A lot of people are saying appropriation. And that’s it. Like, I don’t like how black and white the thinking is. Literally. What about Latinx, Indigenous and Asian gays? Is subconscious cultural appropriation bad or worse or kinda understandable? And is there even a possibility to get all gay people who “sound gay” to stop speaking like that because it sounds like aave. I’m not denying that queerness is often represented by white cis men, but I am also confused on what the end point is. If you want people to stop talking like that that’s a bit harder. I get people stop using slang, but I don’t know. There’s something about the idea that it’s for blank only a bit iffy. I get closed cultural practices but it gets quite muddy. I dunno.

On a useless personal note, I’ve sounded typically “gay” for a very long time. I’ve sounded like that before I used the internet often. I personally think it’s because I was around women a lot. So I sound typically gay because I consider myself partially socialized with women and then the internet introduced me to slang terms, many of which I’ve learned more about and am trying to remove from my vocabulary.

I just don’t like the intense anger of it. But I also don’t want to invalidate their anger because they should be allowed to express frustrations of having culture constantly stolen.

I just think what frustrates me the most is how there’s no nuance. I know nuance is hard but weren’t indigenous, latinx and Asian gays part of developing queer culture? It always feels like it’s just black people and white people stealing from black people.

On a different weird personal note, voguing has been presented to a lot of people through the appropriative lens of drag race. Some people rightfully speak out against it saying it’s a closed cultural practice while others say it’s for every queer. As a beginner drag performer I emulate what I’ve seen others do and some people pull out dance moves from ballroom culture and then the issue comes on if I’m appropriating by dancing. I’m still in the gray area and try to at the very least minimize the voguing elements of my performances but like unlearning other things it’s hard. But also, does anyone really care? I haven’t had anyone come up to me in person but I also don’t want to make anyone feel uncomfortable. But I also don’t want this to seem like some pc performative bullshit.

One time I watched a video of a ball that had many Asian performers and I got excited seeing people that looked like me there. But a lot of the comments expressed how they felt like asians were encroaching on their space and some of them were proper critiques but most of them reeked of yellow peril. They saw the Asian performers as threats to ballroom culture.

I’m just frustrated with the black and white thinking and the opposition to the black and white thinking. Someone saying we don’t need to think in this binary should not be taken as defending those who think appropriation is ok.