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.
From a European perspective, I think the biggest shock about Srebrenica was that it happened in Europe at a time when such things were supposed to be decades behind us. Whereas with Rwanda and Darfur there was a general assumption (whether conscious or otherwise) that it’s the kind of thing that just happens in Africa and there’s nothing we can do about it.
@Anna
“…maybe there have to be certain social safeguards – universal health and education and a safety net – for true social mobility to be possible.”
Supposedly Canada has all these things (I say supposedly because while we don’t have to pay for health care, access is not always possible; while we do have access to education, it is prohibitively expensive for some people; and while we do have a “safety net” it is not actually possible to survive on what income assistance (welfare) pays you) and yet the lack of social mobility is the same if not worse than in the US. I guess that I’m saying is that the social mobility problem is a lot more complex…
@Argenti Aertheri
re: USA vs America
I understand the point you are making about patriotism, but the US is only one of the Americas. I lack the skill to this properly, but as a Canadian it is really annoying how the US as “America” is seen as the only America while the rest of us are made invisible. An example of this is that when traveling it is always assumed that I am an American from the US because Canada is all but invisible.
Re Fantasy
As a child I read a lot of SF and Fantasy, but as an adult I find that I’ve moved away from fantasy and I think a lot of it is because of what Nanasha is saying about how a lot of it is the same old tropes, medieval Europe, war, and women not really having a place. Not all fantasy is like that, and I did enjoy Tolkien as a child. As a women it is sometimes hard to find Speculative fiction that I can identify with because so much of it is written with the assumption that it is for men, As a child reading a lot of speculative fiction I had no idea it was supposedly a male genre until around my late teens when people were surprised that I liked it. (I’ve read more golden age SF than any guys that I know…). It is interesting how as women we are supposed to be able to identify with the protagonist when it is a SWM, but it would be considered socially unacceptable for a man to identify with a female protagonist, because SWM is the default.
>She’s got the Chalion series, which is a loosely-related trilogy;
My feeling was that the third book could just as well be set in a competely different universe. I did not like it a single bit. But The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls are amongst my favourite fantasy books. Other books I’ve enjoyed greatly were Clouds End and The Chronicles of Sirkara.
Argenti: Not to be flip, but to be in a war, in the combat zone, is to survive by pure chance. In a line unit in something like the Penninsular War (Wellington in Spain and Portugal), or WW1, or WW2, or Korea, or… the sense of fatalism: of being the walking dead, was really high. It was a defense mechanism of the first order.
Tolkien’s luck was that in the most stark of the actions of chance his unit was in, he was spared having to roll the dice.
One of the things I took away from the books (I couldn’t abide the films) wasn’t that the bad guys were dark, but they were twisted. The spark of the humane had left them. Yes, the Nazgul were creatures of the night, and so the blended into it, but it wasn’t that they were dark of skin, rather they were dark of soul.
“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.
I don’t think I see this. Not lovers in the sense we would think of it now. For the same reasons that Tolkien didn’t have a strong sense of what women were like, we don’t have quite the same sense of the homosocial bonding of the period (and there was also a lot of situational bonding too… again, The War was a powerful creator of bonds which were strong, durable, intimate and affectionate. I can see Frodo and Sam having that. It’s interesting that I see less of people saying they see that in Merry and Pippin). Late Edwardian mores were different.
The Hobbits are “Good Olde England” the land of Church Ales and Sturdy Yeoman and Peasant Farmers before Enclosure. It’s Arcadia, and while it was never real, in the flesh, it still informs a lot of the English sense of the past.
Magpie: 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 ?!?!
Yes. Women were real. He was ignorant of them. Elves, Hobbits, etc, were false. He couldn’t get them wrong.
Argenti: 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,
There is a lot of class in the relationship between Frodo and Sam. Between Gandalf and everyone, the Elves and the Hobbits, the Elves and the Rohannim, the Dwarves and….
It’s all a huge pile of class; some of which we lose because we see them as the treatement of different groups of people, as opposed to ways of showing who fits where (it was some of both, and there was probably some aspects of the ways in which different parts of the Empire were seen to have different qualities).
“the hobbits as “simple people” — but given they’re the heroes, I’m not sure what to make of that” —
“The Sturdy Englishman”, plain spoken, bluff and honest,” and so the paragon of all the world.
Much as I love the Sandman comics, Dream is actually one of my least favorite characters. This is just my interpretation, but I think we are supposed to blame him.
I mean, he’s basically portrayed as a rigid, uptight, pompous asshole. To my mind he borders on being the villain of the story.
… I forgot about them? Sorry! I’ve only read the Bujold books once each, and I’ve read the Wimsey books within the past year.
@Falconer: That makes sense!
I reread both authors fairly constantly, though it’s been a while since I read Sayer (I found her work in 8th grade and read constantly for many years)! Bujold’s work–most everything, all the time, loving it like crazy.
Sorry if I came across as hostile–but the stark difference astounded me.
No worries, Ithiliana.
I just dashed off a quick recommendation before I headed out to rehearsal, and didn’t remember all the details.
Chalion’s a heavy read and it takes me a while to get through one. The Sharing Knife reads a lot more like a Vorkosigan novel to me — light and fast, with hidden depths. I re-read Miles every year or two, but oh boy is there a problematic scene in Mirror Dance. That I remember.
I guess the Wimsey stood out to me because the creeper was the hero, and the problems with that stuck in my mind.
Someone, I think Magpie, asked about the Discworld dwarfs — if Tolkien meant his dwarves to share some background elements with Jewish folk, Pratchett kind of stumbled into a similar situation without realizing it. As in, Jewish fans of his started remarking at cons how admirably Jewish his dwarfs seemed to be: thrifty, hard working, living away from their homelands, sending money home, etc., which was something of a surprise for Pratchett.
Gotta be off in a minute — I’ve got a concert to perform this afternoon. Wish me luck!
Regarding The Sandman, I also thought the readers were meant to see Dream as a stubborn asshole. Also, to some extent, I’m not sure if he and his family can really be judged by human standards, because they seem to be operating under a different morality (that I’m still trying to work out). Though with that said, Dream still pisses me off.
Speaking of fantasy, has anyone else read The Circle of Magic series? I really enjoyed the way those books mixed magic in with every day activities, and the number of female characters.
guys, varpole weighed in and its predictably hilarious. apparently privilege exists, and yes, people act like spoiled babies when you point out their privilege, but what’s really illegitimate is not objecting to people reacting poorly to having their privilege called out.
http://antimanboobz.wordpress.com/2012/05/18/john-scalzi-challenges-ebert-for-the-douchebag-awards/
If a woman woke up one day as a “cis” straight white male she would be horrified by her experience. It’s not a pleasant experience. Straight white females are more privileged than men.
Hey guys, NWO dropped some idiocy upthread. Turns out we can add “bitter that he cannot carry life” to the list of “Reasons NWO is a pathetic misogynistic asshat.”
@nwoslave- Er, no. I work full time during the day. I spend the evenings keeping my daughter out of my husband’s hair so he can sleep and be as healthy as he can. I’ve also been taking time off of work and driving him to job faires, double checking his resumes and doing whatever I can to make sure he gets all the support he needs to help him get out of his current job and into one that is better for his mental health.
You see, I actually LOVE my husband and think that he’s awesome. And just because heterosexual white males tend to have less problems in life, it’s not that they have NO problems in life- and there are levels of status and privilege that my husband does not have access to as well- my husband is a large guy- overweight people are heavily stigmatized in our society. His job is retail-based/low class, which is hardly ever respected either. And then you have the fact that he is a very giving/caring person, which a lot of people attempt to abuse (not on my watch as much as I can manage it, but his job abuses the hell out of him by forcing him to come in when he feels like shit).
So stop talking out of your ass. It just makes everything you say sound like shit.
i feel like ‘carrying a child for nine months is the same as taking a shit’ is already in the book of larnin’, but i can’t remember
i dunno man, being swcm has been pretty fucking awesome in my experience. but then again, i can pay full price for a drink without bleating about how i’ve walked into cafe buchenwald, so ymmv.
Buttman: you’re not the first troll who apparently hate being a man. I’m sorry for you, but in my limited experience, you’re the exception, not the rule. Most straight withe men seem happy to be straight withe men.
“Buttman: you’re not the first troll who apparently hate being a man.”
Is Larry David just trolling us?
“If a woman woke up one day as a “cis” straight white male she would be horrified by her experience. It’s not a pleasant experience.”
Not everyone on earth is jumping to pay you six figures for letting them blow you? You poor dear.
I too would be surprised if my genitals changed configuration over night. Then I’d probably run outside to write my name in the snow. 😀
Well, duh. Waking up to find that your body has ceased to match your identity/orientation/race is pretty fucking traumatic. But hey, at least as a cis white straight male, I wouldn’t have to deal with racial/sexual/gender discrimination on top of that horror. Hooray!
i propose we resolve this with a freaky friday style body switch where buttman learns a valuable lesson by trading places with someone who actually has a fucking clue
It’s funny. You live in this body your whole life, but you don’t think to do these things until someone talks about visiting 😛
hey snow is white and you guys feel that all its good for is peeing on. yeah, white privilege tooootalllly exists. :rolleyes:
I don’t think I’d enjoy peeing in the snow as much as I enjoy making snowmen. Now if it turns out dudes can make totally awesome snowmen with their penises, I would possibly be more interested.
“Waking up to find that your body has ceased to match your identity/orientation/race is pretty fucking traumatic.”
Yeah, but he said “cis man”. So no dysphoria!
Anyway, I would probably start by peeing in nature, then a few more things that might qualify as TMI, then I would try to call my loved ones or the police and figure out what the fuck happen. Or just panic.