There's plenty of material out there, some of it linked from the original article, on Why Cultural Appropriation Is Bad. You don't need someone to step forward to say it's bad for it to be bad.
Would you rather people who see a problem in the making step forward and say so when they notice it, or would you rather get six months down the road when people have put a lot of work into it, then have someone raise their hand and say, "uh, there's a problem with this"?
The point was always to make people aware that there are issues around cultural appropriation and the con theme has issues from that perspective. Because I want the con to succeed (yes, I've attended both years and volunteered this year), I thought it was a good idea to make people aware of the potential issue as soon as possible, rather than wait for someone else to do so possibly weeks or months down the line.
Besides which, a local furry friend of mine who's Chinese-Canadian has stated his objection to the theme in discussions on Twitter. So if you have to have a person who's publicly stated that they're hurt by it, there y'go. (and before someone decides I'm making him up, a. not the kind of thing I do and b. if I can get his permission, I'll provide a link.)
There's plenty of material out there, some of it linked from the original article, on Why Cultural Appropriation Is Bad. You don't need someone to step forward to say it's bad for it to be bad.
Would you rather people who see a problem in the making step forward and say so when they notice it, or would you rather get six months down the road when people have put a lot of work into it, then have someone raise their hand and say, "uh, there's a problem with this"?
The point was always to make people aware that there are issues around cultural appropriation and the con theme has issues from that perspective. Because I want the con to succeed (yes, I've attended both years and volunteered this year), I thought it was a good idea to make people aware of the potential issue as soon as possible, rather than wait for someone else to do so possibly weeks or months down the line.
Besides which, a local furry friend of mine who's Chinese-Canadian has stated his objection to the theme in discussions on Twitter. So if you have to have a person who's publicly stated that they're hurt by it, there y'go. (and before someone decides I'm making him up, a. not the kind of thing I do and b. if I can get his permission, I'll provide a link.)