Straight White Males oppressed by blog post
So straight white science fiction author dude John Scalzi has created a bit of a hubbub amongst straight white dudes on the interwebs with a blog post called Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is. The post, later reposted on Kotaku, is basically an attempt to talk to fellow dudes in their own language about the concept of privilege “without invoking the dreaded word ‘privilege,’ to which they react like vampires being fed a garlic tart at high noon.” (And they do.)
Scalzi’s thesis:
Dudes. Imagine life here in the US – or indeed, pretty much anywhere in the Western world – is a massive role playing game, like World of Warcraft except appallingly mundane, where most quests involve the acquisition of money, cell phones and donuts, although not always at the same time. Let’s call it The Real World. You have installed The Real World on your computer and are about to start playing, but first you go to the settings tab to bind your keys, fiddle with your defaults, and choose the difficulty setting for the game. Got it?
Okay: In the role playing game known as The Real World, “Straight White Male” is the lowest difficulty setting there is.
This means that the default behaviors for almost all the non-player characters in the game are easier on you than they would be otherwise. The default barriers for completions of quests are lower. Your leveling-up thresholds come more quickly. You automatically gain entry to some parts of the map that others have to work for. The game is easier to play, automatically, and when you need help, by default it’s easier to get.
Scalzi should have added “cis” to “straight white male,” but otherwise I’d say that’s fairly spot-on.
Of course, as Scalzi himself points out, life for straight white (cis) dudes is not always peaches and cream. They may have any of a number of disadvantages in life that make things difficult for them. They may have been born poor, or in a war zone; they may have been abused as children or the victim of crime or violence as an adult. Or faced any number of other problems and conditions and disadvantages.
Scalzi deals with this issue a little more obliquely than he could have, noting that some people begin the grand game of “The Real World” with more points than others, and that this can make a good deal of difference.
But do straight white cis males face disadvantages stemming from being straight white cis men? I honestly can’t think of any that have affected my life in any serious way, and these small disadvantages pale in comparison to the many advantages. Yeah, I had to register for the draft when I turned 18. Of course, when I registered there was no draft, and there still isn’t one, and the draft has virtually no chance of being resurrected in the foreseeable future, so I can’t say this requirement has affected my life in any tangible way.
As Scalzi puts it:
If you start with fewer points and fewer of them in critical stat categories, or choose poorly regarding the skills you decide to level up on, then the game will still be difficult for you. But because you’re playing on the “Straight White Male” setting, gaining points and leveling up will still by default be easier, all other things being equal, than for another player using a higher difficulty setting.
Anyway, Scalzi got a lot of responses to his post, many of them from straight white dudes outraged by his assertions. So he wrote a followup taking some of these critics to task. He was particularly amused by the criticism that by “picking on” straight white males he was being racist and sexist.
This particular comment was lobbed at me primarily from aggrieved straight white males. Leaving aside entirely that the piece was neither, let me just say that I think it’s delightful that these straight white males are now engaged on issues of racism and sexism. It would be additionally delightful if they were engaged on issues of racism and sexism even when they did not feel it was being applied to them — say, for example,when it’s regarding people who historically have most often had to deal with racism and sexism (i.e., not white males). Keep at it, straight white males! You’re on the path now!
I am sure there are many gems of obtuseosity in the comments, and in the Reddit thread on his original post. But it’s Friday night, and I have a migraine — which sucks, but it’s not because I’m a straight white cis dude — so I’m going to let you guys find them for me.
EDITED TO ADD: Thinking a bit more about Scalzi’s central metaphor here, and I don’t think it completely works: he assumes that obstacles other than racism, sexism, and homophobia can be explained as the equivalent of having started the game with fewer points. But it you have, for example, a disability, that’s something that makes you life harder every day; it’s more akin to raising the difficulty level than to starting off with fewer points. (Not to mention that you’re likely to face bigotry because of it as well.) This doesn’t erase the privileges a straight white male with disabilities gets from being straight, white, and male, of course, but it does ratchet up the difficulty.
Posted on May 18, 2012, in narcissism, oppressed white men, racism, reddit. Bookmark the permalink. 448 Comments.
They literally cannot hear where he says “all other things being equal.”
The only explanation for that is that they think all other things can’t be equal, because SW(cis)Ms are smarter and better. A woman or a minority applicant for a job just can’t be as good or better and must have a shittier attitude as well.
“Yeah, I had to register for the draft when I turned 18. Of course, when I registered there was no draft, and there still isn’t one, and the draft has virtually no chance of being resurrected in the foreseeable future, so I can’t say this requirement has affected my life in any tangible way.”
Isn’t the draft on r/mr’s list of ten men’s rights issues on their front page? If I recall, that’s the one with all those false rape allegations that totally happen every day don’t believe it and you’re misandrist. It’s interesting how far afield we straight white cis males have to go to find something that oppresses us.
I love your blog! Endlessly interesting and amusing.
even if there was still a draft, it’s not like that wouldn’t be affected by privilege. my dad had a super low draft number, but he got to defer by going to vet school. did having shit tons of privilege make that option more available to him? of course it fucking did.
I’m not sure where this trend of calling someone racist or sexist when that person is pointing out racism or sexism came from, but it needs to die. If I call the fire department to report a fire, I’m not an arsonist (yes, for the cheap stupid seats, I know that sometimes happens, but work with me here).
People who do this may as well yell, “NO U.”
@hellkell
It’s more like they still think that he who smelt it must have dealt it
The comments on the Kotaku reposting of that article are a perfect illustration of why I avoid male-dominated geekspaces like they were infested with ebola, sharks, and really bad tempered wasps. The level of outrage generated by a really rather gently worded post pointing out that privilege exists is ridiculous.
Kotaku is generally like that. One time there was an article about how a game designer had secretly labeled a character “Feminist Whore” in the program files and someone had found out. The Kotaku-ites were bending over backwards trying to justify that one rather than condemn it.
John gets it.
His post on what it means to be poor… pretty damned good.
There was one guy who stated that in his opinion that most privileged people in the world are hot Asian girls. These dumbasses really do think that ability to get laid is the single most important factor in determining who has most privilege. They think that sex appeal is the One Ring of privileges.
Idiots.
Because obviously if you were an enlightened post-racial color-blind prodigy you wouldn’t ever notice anything regarding race whatsoever. So people who call out racists are racist because
1. *gasp* they are calling attention to the fact that somebody is not white
2. they are causing “racial disharmony” by daring to mention that racial tensions already exist
Those are the most charitable interpretations of things you’ll hear people say, it’s from a fundamental misunderstanding about what racism and sexism etc. are. That being non-racist is really about politeness and not about stopping the harms an oppressive institutionalized system causes. “Racism” is these discrete acts that happen sometimes which are bad because they are disruptive and offensive, like swearing loudly in public or something; they aren’t a moral issue but an issue of etiquette. Talking about race is like talking about politics or religion or whatever. It’s ok to call out racists so long as you tell them they’re being mean or something, but if you mention race (i.e. that the person is being racist) you’ve broken the etiquette norm of Don’t Mention Race and now any problem that breaks out is not due to the original person’s racism but due to your causing discord by mentioning it. It’s sort of like how you’ll hear calls for “civility” in politics (which is not in itself the worst of goals, but) ignoring the fact that sometimes people in government have repulsive, reprehensible views that need to be strongly condemned and that the problem is their disturbing views and what they’ve done about them, not the way people are discussing the issue.
The less charitable view of what people are doing when they complain that people are being racist for pointing out racism is that they’re mad that the racism-pointer-outer is dismantling white privilege. Which is not incompatible with the first thing; despite individual intent, people who yell racism at calling out racism basically function in favor of white privilege anyway even if they think that colorblindness is legitimately the best way to avoid racism. It’s an attempt to shut down the conversation and refocus it on white people, i.e. how calling people racists affects white people and their role in society. You are now a reverse racist if you talk about racism because that implies that it’s white people’s fault or an individual white person’s fault and that they need to do something about it, which would require seeing white people as not totally A W E S O M E all of the time. Hence the ethnic studies bill in Arizona where studying Chicano history/rights movements etc. implies “inciting racial hatred” against white people.
So I guess it depends on whether the person who is yelling “NO U” means that you are being racist about PoC or being “reverse racist” when they call out “racism”, but as I said, both things functionally amount to tone-trolling in favor of the white-at-the-top status quo.
Of course that whole registering for the draft thing applies to all cis-male citizens as well so if the draft was actually going on it would disadvantage more than just SWMs. In fact since SWMs are more likely to be in college or have other circumstances that would get them an exemption from the draft they still have benefits over other cis-males in this respect.
Those straight white males are so sensitive. I think they’re just looking for something to get offended by. Jeez, talk about a victim complex. Why don’t they have a sense of humor?
These guys also seem to think if they lose their privilege that things will necessarily be worse for them. They fail to comprehend that one solution to privilege is to allow others to rise up, rather than simply bringing the straight cis white males down. Some people can’t feel as though they’ve won unless someone else has lost.
It’s weird that they think “your life is easier than a POC/woman/queer person’s would be in the same position” is some kind of mortal insult.
I think they’re hearing it as “your life is so super easy you’ve never suffered or worked at all,” which I could totally sympathize with if there weren’t hundreds of people constantly trying to explain that’s not what anyone said.
Leaving aside what kladle said, which are all good points, I think some of the folks who go “NO U!” are doing it because they think that on lefty blogs the first person to call racism, sexism, disappearing the victims of abuse, or what have you, wins.
Either that or they’re irritated because all of their good, strong, rational arguments* don’t make a dent in lefties’ you’re-a-racist-idiot,-shut-up fields. These guys come to sites like this, or over on pandagon, or to slacktivist, and they think they’re making great arguments when they go ARGLEBARGLE and then conclude, when we go dude, you’re being a dick, that we’re just being willfully obtuse.
Because it makes so much sense that men are working themselves into coronary disease while women marry them only to take half their assets or more in the divorce, and why can’t we see it?*
(Incidentally, some awful whim of mine made me click on the Archive link over to the left and scroll all the way down to the bottom and start reading forward from the first post, and by Vecna’s right hand the comments are like, three trolls versus Darksidecat and David and Christine. And the trolls’ arguments are just appropriated feminist arguments about oppression and equality and Dworkin this and Steinem that. Urg.)
*OH SO MUCH SARCASM
Yep. Given a lot of their defenses basically sum up to “yeah? Well you’re FAT” or “you’re wrong because you’re a big meanie poo poo head and it’s just cause you hate me” it’s unsurprising that they’ve still got the “you detected it, so you ejected it” grade school mentality when it comes to pointing out privilege.
LOL. I wonder if then by that comparison, feminists are the Nazgul.
SHIIIIIIRE! BAGGGINSSS!
Dworkin is clearly the Balrog. Sexist dudes keep calling her out from the depths (or, you know, death) purely so they can make a big dramatic last stand against her.
“LOL. I wonder if then by that comparison, feminists are the Nazgul.”
Impossible! They’re the idiots who needed a spell editor not to leave open the “no man can kill me” loophole (Eowyn: I am no man) — they’re more like our MRA trolls….
“Dworkin is clearly the Balrog.” — quite possibly
Anyone else notice that there’s a perfect correlation between skin tone and good/evil in those movies though? Dark = from the south = evil, 100% of the time >.<
Back on topic, do the complaining (straight white cis) men realize that life isn't a zero sum game?
Also, +1 internet to Noadi for this:
Though, it’s kind of moot, if the draft were reinstated MRAs and feminists would finally agree on exactly one thing — protesting the draft. Granted, the reasons would be different, but we could probably manage that whole “the enemy of my enemy is [a temporary ally]” (friend is way too much credit for people merely fighting for a common cause)
I agree with the analogy. White straight males would most definitely be the easiest setting.
Ah yes, of course. That makes much more sense.
Yeah. I love LOTR, but yeah, there really do seem to be racist undertones. Though IMHO not as bad as with C.S. Lewis.
If only straight white males would quit starting wars than they wouldn’t have to sign up for the draft. They can thank Dick Chaney and his kind the world over.
I think that his point is solid but does need to encompass class, transness, and ability… otoh, I can see why “straight white man” is stronger for rhetorical purposes than “straight white middle-class* cis abled man.” Still, he could have put in a paragraph mentioning ability and transness…
Look, I am Queen Gender Roles Suck For Everyone, but they suck extra-hard for women. That is not controversial.
*because no one in America believes they’re rich
Lewis is ahead of Tolkien, because he did write a non-white non-western protagonist (Aravis).
cue pompous, self-righteous and bloviating “rebuttal” from JtO in 3…2….
Yeah, but only one (that we know of) non-white person gets into Narnia (heaven) at the end? I dunno, given that the rest of the Calormens are depicted in such a negative way, I’m not convinced by the few token “good” non-white characters that Lewis wrote. But maybe that is better, I guess? Eh, I dunno. Both make me uncomfortable.
Come on, if we are LoTRs casting Dworkin, she’s got to be Saruman. Eloquent orator, seems to be on the good side but then problems are revealed, but yet is not a member of the other enemy but a third party.
Ebola shark! Ebola shark!
xD
“Dworkin is clearly the Balrog. Sexist dudes keep calling her out from the depths (or, you know, death) purely so they can make a big dramatic last stand against her.”
Also, since she is already dead, she matches their skill level in debating, as she cannot answer them.
Tolkien also fails the Bechdel test — which is kind of amazing considering there aren’t that many named characters, a fair % are women, even elf queens and kick ass warriors, and it’s over 9 hours total — yet somehow not once do two women have a conversation?! How did Tolkien even manage that? (Eowyn and Galadriel, for how awesome they both are, never meet)
And wormwood and the crazy king!! argh…I really do love the trilogy, but it’s got serious issues all over the place.
Back on topic, I want to second what ozymandias said about class and disability. With one note — most people don’t think they’re rich because they aren’t rich but upper class — which is an easy enough class to fall out of it one gets sick/injured and can’t work, or can’t go to college because of a disability, discrimination against trans* people, etc — but they’d not meet “cis straight able white men” already, so it’s moot for the discussion. Just wanted to note it’s a hell of a lot easier to get poorer than it is to get richer.
Maybe “middle class or higher” in context?
darksidecat — I’d agree re: Dworkin but then the MRAs will claim Gandalf is one of them and just no, never, not happening.
Can Elam be the troll that attacks them before the balrog appears though? IIRC that troll happily steps on the orcs on it’s way to attack the fellowship. No lines, just lots of flailing around trying to cause damage to anyone/thing in the way…hmm…maybe that’s more like NWO…
So who’s Gandalf? We definitely need to claim the god/saint character before they do!
Gandalf = John Stuart Mill?
“Gandalf = John Stuart Mill?” …yes…
Pardon my amazement, I didn’t think anyone would come up with someone in only 5 min.
The only *possible* thing a straight white male might be disadvantaged by is … I dunno, having the bad luck to be passed over due to affirmative action or something. But are there that many dudes who couldn’t get hired because they were white? Or who couldn’t attend college because there was no affirmative action for them?
As a very white, male, new graduate, I can’t say there’s any white dudes I know who had affirmative action work against them.
I think it is a zero sum game for straight white males. Any reduction of the difficulty level for any other group reduces the advantage of the SWM. They make the argument themselves and have been doing so for hundreds of years.
Actually if we’re going to have a Sauruman figure I nominate Hugo Schwyzer.
@Kladle:
This is why I hate the term “racially-charged,” as in “x politician made some racially-charged remarks today that are generating controversy.” The controversy isn’t generated because the politician invoked Spectre Race, chaos demon. It’s because zie said something racist. There are lots of non-racist things you can say about race, and in fact we need to if things are going to change. Silence only perpetuates the status quo.
“Racially-charged” always seems to me to be code for “zie was stupid enough to mention race and now all the POCs are paying attention or whatever, instead of doing whatever the hell non-White people usually do when they’re not rudely existing at me.”
Yeah, but only one (that we know of) non-white person gets into Narnia (heaven) at the end? I dunno, given that the rest of the Calormens are depicted in such a negative way, I’m not convinced by the few token “good” non-white characters that Lewis wrote. But maybe that is better, I guess? Eh, I dunno. Both make me uncomfortable.
I do think Lewis was well-intentioned with Aravis and Emeth; they actually seem to me like he put them in because he realized the series implied that all brown people are evil and so he wanted to show that some Calormenes were good and others were bad. Of course Aravis immediately has to escape Calormen…
Yeah, it’s basically picking a shit sandwich at that point.
About the omission of cis, and the ETA part of the post: I don’t think (and David doesn’t seem to either) that it means the metaphor is completely wrong, just that it’s incomplete, and some things are miscategorized. Class seems to be the biggest issue, though it’s bound up with race (since both are broadly inherited)
(Sidenote: I just realized I was showing privilege in the middle of a conversation. Like, halfway through a sentence. Quick verbal turnarounds are fucking hard!)
kladle:
Racists are acutely aware of race (which is probably true, generally) therefore anyone who is aware of race is a racist (which is flawed logic, obviously).
Remember, we’re talking about the sort of person who thinks saying “I don’t even think of Sam as black, zie’s just a person to me” is a sign of virtue.
ozy:
You’d think that …
To some extent, I’ve always found it hilarious when the SWMs clutch their pearls about how there are “no [hot] girls on the internet [who want to have sex with me]” (never *women* mind you, but *girls*), and then engage in the sort of misogyny and blind insensitivity that makes most women feel deeply unsafe and therefore most of the female users hide behind gender-neutral names or simply neglect to mention their gender. Those who *do* out themselves as female are often lambasted by “tits or gtfo” and the ilk, and plenty of users either start treating her like a slut or proposition her for some kind of relationship in a typical Nice Guy fashion, regardless of what she looks like, what she’s like, or her sexuality/interest in him.
*sigh*
I don’t mind if SWMs are made to feel deeply uncomfortable when someone brings up that, hey, it’s the EASIEST DEFAULT SETTING. Because the truth of the matter is that while you don’t choose your default setting of being-ness, it is up to you to OWN your privilege and use that knowledge to tone down on the insensitivity to others that seems to be the main bastian of the SWM mindset.
One other criticism is that it’s not very intersectional. It sort of assumes that, say, the disadvantages of a queer woman would be homophobia plus sexism, vs complex interactions between oppressions. Not all women experience sexism in the same ways, even though all women experience sexism.
Cassandra — “Actually if we’re going to have a Sauruman figure I nominate Hugo Schwyzer.” — yes! They’re both definitely only on their own side.
On topic, even with the ETA about disability, I think the metaphor can work, but then, I tend to play RPGs where not having points in something is constantly an issue, and you can’t always just put more XP into something to correct that. It’d have to be a complex game, but life is complex, so the metaphor never would’ve worked on something as simple as, idk, the metal gear series? FPSs in general?
Ozy, I think if you read the article it’s clear Scalzi treats class as a variable that players have some ability to ‘level up’ (or the reverse), despite there being obvious cases of disparity, say involve being born into a privileged class of a first world country versus being a member of an unprivileged class in the third world, where the ability to change one’s circumstances upwards or downwards seem dramatically unlikely.
Generally though in Real World, you’re stuck with the colour of your skin, your sex at birth, and your sexual orientation: if you’re trans, then being able to successfully change from living as your assigned gender is highly dependent on other variables including health, class, and money.
One of the things to keep in mind when looking at Tolkein (or Marlowe, or Chaucer) is that the ways in which men and women did, and didn’t, interact was different (and for Shalespeare, Chaucer, etc. the sense of sexuality was less binary than it is now).
Tolkien, in particular, came from a slice of British culture in which men and women didn’t travel in the same circles; and that the shaping event which formed the background of LOTR was his time in the infantry in WW1. Were he not in hospital for shell-shock he’d have almost certainly have died in 1917, because his battalion was wiped out; something like 70 percent fatalities in twenty minutes.
In terms of the Bechdel Test it seems to me that a man of Tolkien’s generation would have had absolutely no idea of how women might interact with each other, so I’m not sure I’m sad that he didn’t attempt to write it.
DSC, it doesn’t address intersectionality at all, but I suspect that’s because Scalzi didn’t want to overload the article with the extra detail that a thorough investigation of that would involve – the article focusses on the p-word which mustn’t be spoken (and without it, the article was bad enough to give the usual douchebags an allergic reaction anyway), and points out that SWM is the easiest of the playing settings; playing as a gay minority woman is “hardcore”. I don’t think it’s a fault of the article to omit that there are non-obvious ways that different oppressions interact in Real Life: this is 101-type article of remedial teaching for the privileged guys to receive insights they have missed out from having played on the easiest setting in their lives.
Incidentally, the Pharyngula thread on this same topic a few days ago was derailed by someone who was trolling by failing to understand intersectionality: he wanted to know whether (all things being equal) a gay man would have a harder level of difficulty than a gay woman, and it was patiently explained at length (in the process revealing what an obnoxious troll the guy was) that it just ain’t that simple.
Shit, I knew Tolkien was in WWI and probably only interacted with women as nurses and wives/mothers, I didn’t realize he survived basically on pure chance. I guess I can give him a pass on everything but the dark=evil part (that would be fairly easy to fix after all, and I’m more annoyed the movies didn’t even seem to notice)…actually…I don’t the books gave races that’d convert to the real world really, I don’t recall anything from the books saying that the hobbits were all white for example.
Re: intersectionality — considering just how complex that is in the real world, it’d be rather hard to try discussing it in RP terms without ending up writing a thesis. It maybe should’ve been mentioned, if it wasn’t (I’m half done with the article itself), that if not a cis straight able white man of a certain class then The Real World gets harder in various intersecting ways — but trying to describe that is neither the point of the article, nor anything like easy.
The article is about the players playing on super-easy though, not the settings that aren’t super-easy. As a 101 level metaphor, it seems to do pretty good. And/or what Xanthë said.
Yeah the article is really trying to get across a 101 point on the concept of privilege to those who have it, so while a more completely carried out metaphor would have been nice, I think it was wise of him to keep it a bit simplified for the specific audience he was targeting. Heheh, its like even the metaphor to describe their privilege has to be on a lower difficulty setting >_<.
My spouse groked it, but he has always been pretty naturally aware of his straight white cis able bodied class thin privilege. Most of those are directly necessary for being in the military which allows for the level of quality of life we have. And the two he has (white man -and now straight) still afford him advantages over others in the social system of the military.
The point of all other things being equal should be easy to grasp too. I mean you have to either admit that there are layers of advantages and disadvantages at work that affect people based on things like race, gender, class, etc, or you have to think that straight white men are inherently and objectively more deserving (due to the ratios of success in various fields and over all wealth etc). And I know many people do argue that, but they should then just own that they are arguing in favor of entrenched sexism/ racism/ ismism.
David, thinking about your addendum to the main article, I think considering disabilities could have been best handled by Scalzi providing a more detailed discussion of the Real World game’s “health” stat: for example, you could be really unlucky and have a permanent disability from the start of the game; or, through no fault of your own you could acquire a disability at some point during the course of play. The remediation of disabilities is also highly dependent on other changeable variables – if there is treatment or therapy to manage a particular disability then obviously things like whether you can afford health care has a clear influence on your game’s outcome.
And on Tolkien (fangirl here) I don’t recall if the race of the evil southerners is stated explicitly in the books but because of the Elephants and being from the south/ across the sea it is pretty easy to code it that way anyhow. I have more problems with that than the lack of women and women interacting. When he started the books he stated that he didn’t think he could write a woman character that accurately captured the female perspective due to not having much deep personal interaction with them. After being married and having a daughter he wrote Eowyn as a stronger role.
And the hobbits are by modern standards rather feminine coded. They like nice houses, clothes, pretty little things, parties, gifts, gossip, gardening, flowers, singing, dancing, they weep and laugh and chatter. These aren’t strictly female traits by any means, but most books would not have their main male heroes described this way. They easily could have been women hobbits and everything else would have been exactly the same. And I admit that could be entirely my bias talking, but it at least helps me rationalize why feminist me still loves the books and movies. And I think there is something to it because of how everyone liked to make fun of the hobbits for being gay (honestly gay hobbits just makes it better imo).
@ronalon42 — I read my brother’s copy of the books, which means they’re 500 miles from my fingers, but you might be right about the southerners not having explicit races (that translate to our universe) either. The hobbits definitely do have random women interacting, they just don’t appear to have names, which means it fails the Bechdel test — I am basically willing to give it a pass on that though, the first movie/book could easily actually pass by just naming some of the women at the party at the very beginning though.
“And I think there is something to it because of how everyone liked to make fun of the hobbits for being gay (honestly gay hobbits just makes it better imo).” — yes! Though I sometimes get a “huh whut?” when I say Frodo and Samwise are basically lovers until the ending.
And really, Eowyn’s “I am no man” is nearly enough to do it for me — she’s doing the long standing “tradition” of a woman dressing as a man to go to war with the menfolk, not the modern day Tomb Raider style hero who’s entirely fanservice. Even the “craaaazy king” and Woomword, that’s probably more of the religious symbolism and more like demonic possession than mental illness (and Frodo’s inability to deal with wha he’d seen and done isn’t mocked but makes him even more of a hero basically…)
I’m really curious how much the racism is written in versus a hollywood byproduct — I know the orcs are written as being dark, but they might be the only ones…hmm, are those books part of the Gutenberg project? *wanders off to check that*
Well I did just find one interesting note — Saruman and his white hand army — definitely evil though.
On topic, Xanthë nailed my thoughts on how to do disability in RP terms.
Thanks Argenti! Having read the Scalzi piece on Wednesday I’ve had the opportunity to read what better minds than mine have been able to contribute, as well as mulling over some of my own thoughts for several days, so if there’s anything good about my comments, they’re probably borrowed; any defects in them are due to me.
Just recently I was quite surprised to learn that in the last year or so, a wearable prosthetic exo-skeleton has become available on the market, allowing people with paraplegia-type disabilities to walk again – I’d seen an article describing how a paraplegic woman had been able to walk the entire London marathon course wearing the exoskeleton. So I was somewhat curious to see what something like that would cost: at it’s current prototype stage the price is somewhere in the vicinity of US $100k. So the implications for such remedies not being equally available to all game-players is rather self-evident.
At the end of the day, you really do have to accept that these people were a product of their times and culture; they’re not alive anymore, so you can’t influence how they write, and, well, sexist and racist undertones (or overt mentions) are going to be there. Not that you shouldn’t talk about them, of course.
He couldn’t imagine how women would interact with each other? But he could imagine how hobbits would interact with elves. Much easier than women, apparently ?!?!
“So the implications for such remedies not being equally available to all game-players is rather self-evident.” — indeed, and that’s a life improving device, what about the costs of experimental trials for fatal conditions where the lack of money can prove fatal…
And regarding Tolkien — the racist undertones may be lacking in the original texts, the light/dark good/evil thing could also be that Tolkien was Catholic and there’s definitely plenty of religious symbolism in the books. Also, I found a hilarious pair of letters of Tolkien’s responding to Germany (just before WWII I’d guess) inquiring whether Tolkien was a Jewish name:
“…I do not regard the (probable) absence of all Jewish blood as necessarily honourable; and I have many Jewish friends, and should regret giving any colour to the notion that I subscribed to the wholly pernicious and unscientific race-doctrine.” ― Letter 29 — Tolkien’s German publishers had asked whether he was of Aryan origin
“…But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people.” ― Letter 30 (Tolkien’s unsent response to his German publishers; a more neutral version was ultimately sent)
I cut them for length, but they’re available here for the curious. He certainly seems a hell of a lot better than much of the world was in the early 40s. It may be more about religion and lack of foresight than racism. But yeah, if I’m going to complain much about it, it’s the movies, not the books, by 2001 we frikken’ knew better, or should have.
Magpie — large chunks of the books are battle scenes, with the women and child hidden away and that whole bit — it is kind of crappy, but understandable from someone who’d served in WWI. And I’m watching them currently because I’d intended to do that last week, and the hobbits are “a simple people” but otherwise treated as humans — right down to the children thrilled at Gandalf’s fireworks. The Shire itself is a respectable enough (though entirely white, in the movies at least) portrayal of the English audience it was written for.
Lol, and I jsut jumped half out of my skin at those fireworks, damn you Gandalf!!
I’m British, so I didn’t even have to do that. Our two years’ compulsory military service was abolished by 1963, though several other European countries admittedly still require it.
In fact, a half-Finnish schoolfriend of mine was horrified to discover that his dual nationality meant that he’d have to serve a year in the Finnish Army, though he was more exercised by the fact that he barely spoke a word of Finnish than the prospect of doing military service per se. (In the end, he found that virtually everyone spoke enviably fluent English, and he seems to have had a great time).
This is where I boggle at how people can enjoy Tolkien for realz.
I mean, seriously. I haven’t heard that many genealogies since I attempted to read the Bible from end to end.
And while I know that 99% of fantasy is based off of Tolkien’s writing, that’s one reason why 99% of fantasy PISSES ME THE FUCK OFF. I can’t stand reading one more story where the same old tired tropes get played out again and again and there’s always some stupid fucking war that involves some Ultimate Evil that must be defeated by whacking sticks together and going on a Big Manly Quest.
I respect others’ rights to enjoy fantasy epics, but I’ve never been able to understand the interest in Tolkien’s work. ‘The Hobbit’ was one of the only stories of his that I could actually read, and even then I had to skip over some of the long-winded “son of father of” parts.
And honestly? The only part I liked about the movies were the parts involving Gimley because I <3 Jonathan Rhys Davies.
Class seemed to be another big thing in Tolkein, as far as I remember. It’s a long time since I read any.
Nanasha — An analogy — “And while I know that 99% of fantasy is based off of Tolkien’s writing, that’s one reason why 99% of fantasy PISSES ME THE FUCK OFF.” — that’s like saying you don’t like abstract expressionist paintings, so how can anyone like van Gogh?!! You’d be welcome to hate abstract expressionism, and even van Gogh, but to have a “the mind, it boggles” about it? You don’t like it, ok, don’t watch/read it then, unless it’s become HS reading or something, no one is going to force you to watch all 9+ hours of the movies or anything…
Shorter version — we like it, you don’t, but so what? I absolutely hate mayonnaise, that doesn’t mean you can’t love it, just means I have nothing to say on a “w00t mayonnaise!!” discussion…
Magpie — so far the only maybe-classism I’ve seen is the description of the hobbits as “simple people” — but given they’re the heroes, I’m not sure what to make of that. Tolkien’s personal letters seem to show an appreciation for having served alongside farmhands/etc in WWI. There’s definitely a strict royal hierarchy, but it’s the sort of thing you’d expect in the WWI era (and um, don’t you have a queen still?)
“the hobbits as “simple people” — but given they’re the heroes, I’m not sure what to make of that” — ahh ok, its because anyone else would be too tempted by the ring (and even as it is, remember the ending? Frodo’s not exactly immune to it)
Yep, still have a queen :) And a Governor General to representer her.
It’s one of the things I remember, the way Frodo and Bilbo treated Sam, their servant. It seemed very English, to me.
@Argenti Aertheri- The thing is, I *love* a lot of the fantasy elements and honestly think that a lot of really cool things can be done with fantasy stuff. The problem is that I have to wade through so much crap that it’s exhausting. As a kid in the library (I was an avid reader as a child), I had tons of time to try out different types of books (Anne McCaffrey is still one of my heroes) and there was quite a lot of fantasy that is actually really good. I enjoyed the Alanna the Lionhearted series and the Sabriel series as well- both involved many fantasy elements without having that Tolkien-esque drivel about long-ass wars and genealogies. Plus most of them had female characters that actually felt like PEOPLE and I didn’t feel like all the interesting characters were just a bunch of guys who I had nothing in common with.
As an adult, I’d really like to go out there and find some good fantasy reading, but as a parent and full-time worker I’ve found myself in a serious time crunch and don’t have nearly as much time to sit for hours looking through books for something that is my personal brand of fantasy.
And that makes me very sad. Oh well, I guess I’ll just go read “Stardust” for the tenth time again.
If I remember correctly, the so-called Easterlings and Southrons that marched under Sauron’s banner weren’t really described in a huge amount of detail in the books, but it seemed to me like they were meant to be vaguely Western Asian and Northern African.
I’ve always thought of the orcs as being very pale, for the most part. Probably due to their severe intolerance of sunlight. With the obvious exception of the Uruk-hai.
So yeah, I’ve no doubt there was more than a little internalized, though not necessarily overt or intentional, racism influencing the books.
Magpie — fair enough on Sam being a servant, but he’s also basically the actual hero of the book (particularly towards the end once the ring starts getting to Frodo), and the movies anyways he’s treated more like household hired help than any sort of slave or anything — it is rather English. I also just passed the bit where they torture Gollum, and that is consistently portrayed as something only Really Evil characters do — something America still can’t figure the fuck out. *has a small fit that gitmo is not closed yet*
This is also what makes it better than a lot of fantasy, nearly 100 years later it still has political allegories. (And Orlando Bloom, which I’d say would always bias me, but the Pirates series just keeps getting worse and worse, like worst pirate movie with the largest budget is their goal.)
Um, can’t really blame Tolkien for being full of tropes that weren’t fantasy novel tropes when he wrote the darned things.
Also, “big manly quest” is not really the atmosphere of LoTR. In fact, a number of the primary characters are small and are seen by those around them at various points as useless in battle. Sam isn’t exactly “Big Manly Quest” “whacking sticks together” as one of the main heroes. Boromir is, and he becomes corrupted. While the LoTR is rather straightforward good vs evil in a lot of ways, it’s not nearly so simplistic as you are making it out to be.
Tolkien does write the orcs and the evil humans as dark (there’s also noble savage in there). There are also allusions to the dwarves representing Jews. On the other hand, he did publicly oppose apartheid and anti-semetic laws/the holocaust. So, yeah, not unracist, but not Nazi/Klan racist either on the whole.
Totally with you on gitmo.
“Treated like household hired help” is what I’m talking about – we might be talking across each other, because treating hired help* differently to a friend or acquaintance would be seen as arrogant and rude.
Or even having hired help.
I’ve never understood this urge people have to comment on subjects that they dislike, know little about and clearly have no interest in. Yesterday’s discussion blended the films of Ed Wood (which I know well) with anime (which I know very little about), so I contributed to the former and generally sidelined the latter, aside from thanking someone for reminding me that I really should get around to watching Satoshi Kon’s Paprika sometime.
I saw similar tendencies yesterday when the great German baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau died, and some Facebook friends used this as an excuse to bash Donna Summer’s fans: I wasn’t entirely sure why, but I suspect it was due to over-ostentatious public grieving. But I’m willing to bet that the vast majority of Fischer-Dieskau mourners knew little or nothing of Summer’s work, but the fact that it was not only popular but played in discos (urgh!) must therefore mean that it was Automatically Inferior. Never mind the fact that her fanbase was far more extensive than his, and that her death clearly touched more people as a result.
(For the record, I think Fischer-Dieskau was probably the more important artist – for starters, hardly anyone can match his recorded legacy – but I’d have thought that was more an excuse for celebrating his life rather than denigrating someone else’s.)