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.
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.