Now I’m just as against cultural appropriation as the next guy, but when Students Teaching About Racism At Ohio State University (STARAOSU) made some posters about culturally insensitive Halloween costumes, a great meme was born:

The Victoria Police had a very quiet Halloween:

Before Halloween 2009, a number of municipalities in Greater Victoria banned fireworks: 2009 was definitely quieter than 2008. Having Halloween on Friday or Saturday compresses partying into one night: look at 2008, 2003 and 2009. (I went to bed early on Sunday and I swear I wasn’t causing trouble on Saturday, officer.) Is the combination of these two factors enough to explain the huge drop for 2010 or is this a sign of a larger trend? I find it ironic that children are doing less and less trick-or-treating as Halloween becomes increasingly safer.

The next time Halloween will be on a weekend is 2014: start planning your costume now.

If a burqa-clad young Muslim woman tells you that only being seen by her husband makes her feel sexy, you don’t believe her. You say she’s been brainwashed by her cultural upbringing. She has Stockholm Syndrome.

Why would you think any differently if a young Canadian woman says that dressing as a slut is “celebrating her sexuality”?

Poststructural literary analysis is based on the “death of the author”. It doesn’t matter what the author claims or thinks they’re writing about: what matters is how people interpret it. Authors do not have a priviledged position with respect to their own work. If someone writes a novel that’s obviously about young Hitler but claims that’s not what it’s about, who cares what the author says?

So when I “read the text” that is a woman’s slutty Halloween costume, I don’t care what she claims she’s doing. In fact, I’m less likely to believe her analysis: she’s too close to the material to read it critically. She has too many incentives to convince me that she’s not being oppressed. I also don’t care what people who benefit from a slutty world say.

Sex-positive feminism may be possible, but it needs to be backed in theory. It’s not enough to just say “I’m sex-positive and I’m a feminist!”