So here's my two cents, since cultural appropriation and political correctness are very similarly related.

At some point we as a society decided that we needed to find a way to be more respectful of each other. We decided that it wasn't okay to use racial slurs and we should address people with respect and dignity they deserved. Often this was done because particular groups of people had been treated badly in the past. (Slavery, abuse, land theft, etc.) Finding ways to heal past wrongs and be respectful of each other is not a bad thing. The way we talk about certain groups and treat certain groups is why political correctness exists. In a normal non-extreme world, this doesn't hurt anyone and it doesn't stop respectful conversations from happening about current problems that need to be addressed.

With that in mind...

Cultural Appropriation is a PC term for taking something from another culture (like a custom, naming convention, heraldry, clothes, etc.) and using them in a knowingly disrespectful way. For example, dressing up like a Native American on halloween so you have an excuse to show a lot of skin and act wild and get drunk is an example of cultural appropriation that I'm sure everyone would agree is disrespectful. Taking African culture, music and language and incorporating them into a re-telling of a European story (Hamlet) to create something new and memorable in a respectful way, is not cultural appropriation. (I'm talking about Disney's The Lion King, by the way)

So, I don't think people are being overly sensitive or being dramatic when something is taken from their culture and its being used in a bad way. This doesn't mean that you can't be inspired by something outside your culture and use it to inspire your art or your writing. Cultures share ideas and stories and clothing trends and food trends all the time. It would be a terribly boring place in the world if we didn't. Just try to be respectful. That's all most people will ask for.

1. Someone, somewhere, is always going to be offended by what you do. You can't prevent that, and the aim of art shouldn't be to be safe and inoffensive. Art is a lense through which we examine and interpret our lives, and in times of oppression, art is a form of resistance.

2. On the other hand, the aim of art shouldn't solely be to be offensive (provocation for the sake of provocation is probably the single most boring thing you could be doing). Creating something that offends someone is meaningful only if there's some other goal than "haha, made you angry!"

3. While you can't control how your art is interpreted, it is your responsibility to be aware of the potential reaction to your work, and that if you hurt people, you don't get to just shrug that off - especially if the people you hurt are already targets for more serious hate and phobia. Creating art that offends the people in power and upsets them is one thing - and is something I often encourage (see; art as a form of political/social protest) - while creating art that offends, say, people of colour or people on the LGBTQ+-spectrum, who already suffer from a lot of systemic discrimination in their daily lives is something altogether different, you know?

4. The cultural appropriation debate is very complex and intense and not something I am an expert on - and it's gotten louder and more extreme, as mostly-online-based debates often do. While the basic premise - white people claiming aspects of other cultures and through using them make them more socially acceptable to a white majority, or the whole my-culture-is-not-a-costume thing that crops up around Halloween each year - is sound and worth discussing and highlighting and paying attention to (the fact that there are people who still think blackface is somehow okay is bonkers), I've seen examples where just learning another language than your own was called out as cultural appropriation, and that is just silly.

5. This all comes back to respect, and knowing how and why you do what you do. If a member of an oppressed minority tells you that they were offended by what you did, well, you have an entire complex and hurtful history of oppression's worth of reasons why you can't just dismiss them as 'not getting it'. When stepping outside of your own culture and lived experience for inspiration for your art, know that you're walking on ground that isn't yours, and you need to be respectful and thoughtful of where you put your feet. That doesn't mean you can't ever do it; you just need to be aware and respectful and do your homework first. Are you gonna put a person with a sexual orientation other than your own in your story? Then you'd better do your research first, talk to people of that orientation, etc., etc., so you avoid offensive stereotypes. And so on.

TL; DR: Shit is complicated, art is hard, be respectful, don't kick people who are already down.

Sometimes people need to be offended in order to figure out where they stand on something or to start a discussion. I don't mind offensive content as long as it's not harmful. We can't just live in a world of our own opinions sometimes we have to step out of our "safe spaces" and grow as people. As long as you're not creating with the intent to harm people then just express yourself. True art cannot be made by a committee.

i understand where your coming from after all my comic is based around a society that threw away political correctness and allows physical punishment of children. both these things have to be written about very carefully as i tip toe my comic tales through this cotton wool world. I know there are people who don't like things in my comic but i see it like this. if i show a society that allows things the real world doesn't, people can see things that will never happen to them. that being said i would never allow things like racism or other such vile forms of hate to enter my stories.

You ignore them. It's as easy as that. Replying to them is just fueling the fires because no matter how you try to rationalize with them in the end they are always right and you are a nazi in their eyes. Most of the time they are not in the right at all and being a minority group doesn't make their opinion right neither does it mean you should listen to them because they are a minority. I'm the most underprivileged person out there, life is shit for me and I know damn well being a minority group doesn't make you a good person or rational. Some minorities are bitter assholes who didn't get the life they wanted and instead of helping others they just bully people to make themselves feel better. You should listen to someone because they are good person not because of what identity they fulfill or how much life has kicked them in the balls.

Also cultural appropriation is problematic in itself. People seem to think that cultures should not mix and somehow cultures can be "stolen" but that isn't true at all, cultures have mixed for all of eternity taking bits and pieces of it. Real discrimination is racism, hate speech and stereotyping, not wearing dreadlocks or eating chinese food. Mexicans "stole" Piñatas from the Chinese, christians "stole" their religion from the jews. Shit's been going for eons. No culture owns anything since cultures themselves are a product of another culture and that culture is a product of another culture and so on.

In the end PC culture has it's merits but is hurting people too in some ways. We want change but separatism and traditionalism isn't going to solve anything and just enforces the status quo. Extremism alienates people and so far it's come down to no one is in the right because no one can be perfect. Fuck I'm a liberal and i'm not liberal enough it seems lol

i think its healthy to think about the effect your story will have - but you should come at it from a different angle. instead of thinking through fear of backlash, think empathetically. if i do this, will this group of people feel hurt? why? what can i do to prevent that?

admittedly, there are spaces where people will get too angry in the wrong situation. that is scary. i get the impression youre pretty young, so if you do screw up - which happens to everyone - someone, knowing this, will probably talk you down calmly. in return, be calm, and willing to listen. if you show youre open to a polite discussion about how to improve your work, the situation is less likely to escalate, and youll both get more out of it.
as for the people that refuse to be calm, they often have reasons. a lot of marginalised people can get very tired and very worked up by constantly facing both small and big acts of discrimination, and dont want to debate the issue. sometimes, the mistake youll make will be big, maybe, in which case you should look over what theyre saying, maybe do some research, and likely take the high road and back down, apologising.
if its a small thing, and nothing good is coming from their aggression, back out of the discussion, telling them youre going to think about their comment. and do. maybe find someone else to talk it through with.

TL;DR: write and draw with compassion, not fear, and carefully consider why people are upset

also, i doubt anyone would be triggered by this. youre just expressing anxiety, and might annoy some people, but being triggered usually means sparking significant discomfort, like dissociation or an anxiety attack.

one thing I do is talk to people of the group I'm representing about it. Like I'm not a trans male, but the main character of my comic is, so I'll make a post on my tumblr like, "could someone who is a trans male review this line/page/action for me when I get to it to make sure it doesn't have any unfortunate implications?" or "Would it be alright if I show my character is trans in a subtle way by showing top surgery scars?" and it's usually met with appreciation and willingness to help.

I used to have the same "oh everybody gets so offended you cant do ANYTHINg!!!111!!!11!!" ideal but now I try to see what exactly the issue with it is that's causing a negative reaction, is it stereotyping? Is it a caricature instead of an accurate portrayal? poorly researched/portrayed? People don't really get upset for no reason. If you think something might be fishy or get a negative reaction, you're feeling that for a reason, that's when I'd ask someone OF THE TYPE OF PERSON YOU'RE PORTRAYING to review it for you just to make sure.

Also side note this is a place where i'd DEFINITELY avoid using "triggered". As stated above it really should only be used in the correct situation (like.... triggered doesn't mean getting angry or offended it's a full on panic attack or dissociation. also personal taste because I hate the TRIGGERED! joke/meme/unfunny punchline in it's entirety)

Seconding everything @punkarsenic said! It's really similar to how I approach it.

While working on a scene that involves a major character who wears a turban for religious reasons, I was asking a creator friend for advice on a piece that didn't feel right to me. "I mean, if someone says this is problematic, are you willing to defend the choice?" my friend asked. I responded, "I know I have at least one pakistani reader. I would hate for her to read this scene and feel unwelcome." That changed our approach completely, from "will someone think this is problematic?" to "what's the most thoughtful way to write this scene?"

I've had a someone decide my story is bad because I'm writing a deaf character who can speak, when I'm not deaf, and they therefore assume some nasty things about me, thinking that I must be promoting oralism and looking down on deaf people. That was upsetting, but it didn't make me change anything and I did my best not to take it too deeply to heart. But I've also had folks (some Deaf or Hard of Hearing) ask me genuinely, "hey, why did you make your deaf character lipread so well? do you know how hard lipreading is? It's a lot harder than you're making it look." (and I'll note, almost all of them have been really kind about it!!) I talked with them about my choices, but genuinely took their concern to heart. There are earlier pages that could come across as implying that speaking and lipreading are necessary skills -- I never meant to imply that, but I also wasn't really thinking at the time about how big a deal that is to deaf folks in real life. No, I didn't change the things in my story that have been established already, but finding out, "oh shoot, I should've been more thoughtful about this issue" helped me, going forward, not to accidentally write that kind of message into my story.

I share this because there's a lot of fear in creative circles now about misstepping JUST ONCE and being attacked by a mob. But we only hear about the planes that crash, not the millions of planes that reach their destinations just fine, or with minor delays.... and in the same way, we hear about the times when someone very popular got a bunch of people mad at them, but we don't notice how much more often a reader is upset or concerned and the creator quietly listens, says they'll keep it in mind or take it to heart, and nothing more happens.

Just so you know! "Triggering" doesn't mean the same thing as being offended or upset. A trigger is, for people who have trauma or mental disorders, something that will "trigger" their disorder or bring back their trauma. So trigger warnings are just looking out for those folks, marking things that might be traumatic for them!

If you want to ask a question or understand an issue, but you're afraid you might ask it the "wrong way" so to speak, you can say so honestly! There was a thread in here earlier where someone was asking about asexuality, and I think they were really respectful -- they admitted to not knowing what issues might be sensitive or what was the right way to ask anything, but said that they wanted to ask and learn and try to get it right. it's okay to say that you don't know, and most people will respect you a lot for being open about it!

There are a lot of good points in this thread, I'll just add that it seems like there is a bit of witch hunting going around the artistic community as of late. (Which I assume is because insecure artists are easier to argue with than outright bigots.) I think a big part of this is generally people who mean well, but A) know very little about writing or creating art or B) have their own agenda that they wish to get out there.

For me personally the further I get away from a topic I know about I try to do more research on it. Not to necessarily make everyone happy but more so to make it more human. At the same time part of that is knowing that whatever I make is going to take into account aesthetics and structure before it takes into account history and others feelings.

I think the important thing to remember is that you are creating fiction not a political manifesto. I think it's genuinely harmful for artists to tip toe around things they are interested in or care about. It keeps people who would normally want to write about interesting diverse topics from ever venturing away from their own little corners.

In the end
Own what you do, if you need to apologize and make corrections do it. If there is something you really wanna stand by do it.

My comic will have a lot of sad shit and I don't care. It what makes me happy so if I'm happy that's all XD The more heartbroken and twisted it is the more I like it xd
It seems that my readers are not being offended with the fact that one of my characters is being abused, so little by little I'll just add more twisted stuf. xd

Don't think bout offending people in your story when you write, you just limit your freedom of thought n imagination
As long as its a fictional story or is for comedic purposes I can allow any type of content in my opinion

Go all out offensive, political correctness is becoming more of a form of censorship to be quite honest with you. The fact of the matter is, no matter what you post anywhere, someone will get offended. They'll have the right to complain, but you still have the right to post. It's freedom of speech, the same freedom of speech that gives you the right to not care about the offended But do consider critisism without taking it as hate

I heard someone once say that being not PC only works if the author is not coming from a place of hate. However, I have seen assholes and bigots try to use the excuse that they are "just being not PC", when in actually they are being assholes. It's sort of the difference between a black comedian saying the n-word vs a white supremacist.

But on the other hand, it is important to find a balance between full on offensive and over fluffy stuff. I always say that PC only works if you don't over do it. At one point, you have to being willing to do something that might upset someone.

I did have a scene in my original comic of an adult man is punching an unconscious little girl. I ultimately decided to remove the scene to avoid outrage. But on the flip side, I also have a black kid who dressed up as a Native American in one scene...I guess I was a bit worried about it but no one got offended so I guess I was just overreacting.

"Politically correct", it must be pointed out, was a term invented to cultivate resistance and antipathy towards a simple concept: just being mature and courteous towards people unlike oneself. It's as plain as that. It can just as easily be called "being a mature adult" instead.

On the "appropriation" front, I will say that at least eight times out of ten now, the most vociferous complaint comes from umpteenth-generation-removed people not actually living in or around the culture supposedly being appropriated. Cultures mingle and mix naturally -- as they should -- and popularity of cultural elements outside their culture of origin is usually how those elements survive; I may point, most significantly, to international interest in Celtic culture and the Gaelic languages in the 80s and 90s, and in geisha in the 90s and 00s, which led to domestic strengthening of those aspects of the cultures and, indeed, survival of those elements in that resurgence of interest.

That said, I am always of the opinion that people should not just take things from a culture without learning about those things and that culture -- good and bad elements -- and I encourage trying to neither romanticize the culture, nor to demonize it. Gain a context and acknowledge biases. I am also firm in my position that it's gone far out of hand with people (ironically) taking it upon themselves to judge others as being "worthy" of using elements of a social group, culture, or ethnic group that is only assumed to be not that person's own. This has led to a gatekeeper mentality and has its own masses of problems that are well outside the scope of this conversation. Further, as artists and writers, it is very important that people not feel intimidated when considering stepping outside their own personal social circles and comfort zones.

Speaking from a personal perspective: if we had to wait for only gay people to write every story involving gay people, we'd never have made any progress. I don't even like most of the gay representation in popular media to this day, but sometimes there's a really great example of it that pleases me. I can recognize some queerbaiting and fetishizing, but that doesn't mean we have to throw it all out. Baby and bathwater. Representation helps with acceptance, given time. Plus, I'm not the only gay person out there, and I have no right to speak for all gay people. I can personally present my argument and objections to the material, and people should be able to draw their own conclusions.

If you're trying to be provocative, you have to be provoking something, whether it's questioning, examining something, or reassessing matters. n.b. that being an intolerant bigot does not mean you're just "exercising free speech" which, I may add, does not mean you can just say anything and avoid any repercussions. If you're going directly to be offensive, you're probably going to look questionable and puerile to at least a significant part of your potential audience. When you say something, you don't say it in a vacuum. You're likely going to have response from a statement, and you'd be directly provoking it from a question. Especially if you go for epithets, which will always generate massive controversy and discussion that you may find like a can of worms, and better avoided...especially if it undermines what you're trying to do with your story or work in general.

So be prepared for a conversation, if you make an artistic statement. If you're making a statement that you dislike, say, empire line dresses, be prepared for -- even if it never happens -- someone to speak up and try to engage you who has the opposite viewpoint. Because of this, art and writing are not a very good place, nor do they lend themselves easily or particularly well, for unilateral bigotry and intolerance or, as they have been called even in this conversation, "coming from a place of hate". Even if you're out to criticize an element of a cultural or sociocultural group, it really needs to have more context to it than simply "I hate this" presented by itself.

In short (too late!) there's a difference between setting out to offend, and incidentally offending. Appropriation, even when it is legitimate, is not necessarily related to an offensive element or attitude towards a group of people. Much depends on intent, on being informed, and on the message being conveyed by the work, which will naturally vary from person to person.

You can't account for every person's perspective and what they get out of your work. But you certainly can try to minimize offense by being aware. You can't always anticipate it though, so as long as your intention isn't a malicious one, people really should try the aforementioned "being a mature adult" and understanding that. If we can both come to the table with mutual respect -- or some modicum thereof -- and at least hear each other out, that should go a long way to making sure offense is minimized.

You most often will provoke conversation in the best case scenario, by making a topic to be discussed. Inviting respectful discourse is something that, in my opinion, should always be a sure bet.

Well, I think there has always been, and there will always be a point to which every artist has to think about to what level they are willing to be subversive. Remember that something being offensive doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong. Oscar Wilde's writing was terribly offensive, and yet even when he says things that are a bit morally shady, you can look past them because it's evident that he means no harm when he speaks.
About the cultural appropriation thing, that always makes me laugh. Maybe it's because over here, cultural "appropriation" Is something that plenty of native people encourage because it allows them to continue holding on ot their traditions in the modern world, as well as preventing othering. It helps us integrate more when we can know and admire each other's culture.
Listen, sometimes, there are things that are too controversial and no matter how much backbone you have, you will still want to stay away from, but generally, try to think of it this way "Do I not want to do this because I'd get hate, or do I not want to do it because it feels wrong?" And then ask yourself that if you mean no harm by it, how can you make sure you get this across? A warning and/or disclaimer is often the best way to go about it, at least from my experience.
In my comic1 I issued a disclaimer at the beggining just to make sure it was understood that just because my characters do certain things, it doesn't mean that I agree with their actions. One of the main reasons I did this was that later in the story there is a very complicated situation about gender identity. One character contacted the other to get in a relationship specifically because he thought he was a crossdresser, even though he is actually not, he just likes to wear women's clothing, jewelry, etc. And he sort of coerces him into crossdressing anyway because he is afraid of coming out to his parents. I felt I would get my head ripped off if I didn't make sure people understood that I think that is a fundamentally fucked up thing to do, even if it's still understandable from that character's POV.
Still, that is a very tricky and complex situation, I have dealt with a ton of harassment about my opinions in school, both by classmates and teachers, and I always believed that I should never get in line with things I don't genuinely believe in simply out of intimidation. But at a certain point I did find myself in situations where it just wasn't worth it. These are difficult waters to navigate, that is true.

You will never please everybody, so my simple and effective advice is to do it anyway, fuck anyone else, and the people you WANT as a fanbase will flock to you anyway. You wouldn't need offended assmunches at that point anyway. In a world right now where everyone gets offended at everything, I say just DO it, and I want artists in general to stop feeling stifled because of this. Imagine all the shit that would exist right now if it weren't for fear of pissing someone off. --c-- Even the Greats from the past pissed people off; just a fact of life. They can deal with it.

Political correctness is tool of authoritarians to lock your mind in a cage. Resit it at any chance you get.

As for 'cultural' appropriation, that concept has all the intellectual rigour of chimpanzees smearing faeces on a wall.

My advice is to stop willingly handing away control of your thoughts and actions and to remember the proverb, if you don't have any enemies, that just means you never stood up for anything.

I write comics with diverse characters. Just because I'm not black, or a lesbian, doesn't mean my character can't be black or a lesbian. There isn't (and shouldn't be) a ban on writing a character that is different from you. If there was, we'd all be writing about clones of ourselves!

If you're unsure if you can write a certain type of character realistically, get help from people who are part of that group and research the history of that group. Read things written by people who belong to that group. Have them read your story, to make sure you aren't doing anything racist or stereotypical without realizing. All these things will help you make sure you're being culturally sensitive with your story.