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I wholeheartedly agree with you, Melissa. I'm also a writer, and once wrote a play about two white, male East German border guards on the night the Berlin Wall fell. I'm a white, Canadian woman who never lived under Communism but with some research and imagination, I created two male characters and put myself in their shoes. Our capacity for empathy is not rooted in identity and lived experience only but in our shared humanity and capacity for imagination. As an artist, it's absolutely essential to embrace this, otherwise it would be utterly stifling as a writer to be limited to my lived experience alone. It would also strangle the life out of the arts in general (which it already has to some extent), as everything becomes a political statement or victim porn instead of insightful, engaging, nuanced, and sometimes amusing and entertaining storytelling.

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The sad thing is, had you been male and written the play about two females you'd be tarred and feathered (at best) for some kind of appropriation or another. I don't honestly think empathy is a word many of these individuals understand or care about unless it benefits them in some way.

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Sadly, I fear you're totally right. The perception of appropriation seems to be one-directional. I suspect if a racialized or marginalized group of people adopted what is considered to be white or euro-centric culture, it would be considered colonization instead of appropriation. Funny how that works...

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Thank you, Friendly Debater, for this great contribution. (Is there any way i can read your piece about the two border guards? I lived in divided Berlin. And I spent a lot of time in the German democratic republic talking to people there. I am very interested in that whole phenomenon and id love to hear your take. ) Kathy Meeks

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Kathy, I'm in Berlin too. DM me on Facebook if you'd like to chat.

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You can DM me via Messenger (look up Stephanie Turple). I'll probably need your email address to send you a copy of the script.

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