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.
Hey, you can totally pee in nature as a woman. It’s just hard not to get it on your shoes. /furtherTMI
@thecat — yeah I realize USA isn’t the only America, I’m just kind of squicky about either term really, I should probably get over my desire to squirm at the “go USA” connotations of USAian though.
@Pecunium — re: war, I was trying to come up with a way to word that that wasn’t horribly wrong, sorry for the failure result. Calling it his luck felt even more wrong, but you’re the one with experience here, not me, so I defer to your judgement
re: the hobbits, it’s not really that I think Frodo+Sam are more a couple but that I was royally pissed Frodo left Sam behind at the end (whereas Merry and Pippen both stay in the shire) Regarding Sam’s job as Baggins gardener, do you remember the books well enough to recall if that was paid work or something he’d volunteered for? I remember reading them as friends back when I read the books, but that was like 15 years ago now. It may actually just annoy me that Frodo has to leave because of everything he’s seen, but hey, Sam was right next to him and happy life in the shire! (I guess that’s not unrealistic, as annoying as it is)
The class differences among the humans are rather obvious though, now that I’m rewatching it again. At least it’s not lower class = bad though (almost the reverse actually), the Rohannim are willing to fight to the last while Gondor’s steward tries to abandon post when the orcs arrive. The only actual argument I have in defense of it though is that of course Gandalf is portrayed as being above everyone else, he’s basically god in the religious allegory. The way the elves treat everyone else is very much “you’re beneath us”, to the point Legolas is about the only one of them I can take seriously on this watching. I hadn’t seen it recently enough for my brain not to be lumping all the humans on the side of good together though, and my apologies for that.
FTR, I’m currently watching it again for the first time in like 8 years, and “The spark of the humane had left them.” is literally true, Saruman tells his Urak-Hai leader that they were elves once and are tortured twisted things now. Also, I blame hollywood for this, but there doesn’t seem to be a single not-white actor in the films, and I’m like 7.5~8 hours in, the southerners are dressed in black, but what little of them is visible is white skin.
Sorry for the lengthy LoTR post, I’m trying to summarize 9 hours of movie into 3 paragraphs >.<
@NWO — "Cudo’s to me, I’ve created a poop this morning." — when that takes 9 months, an actual toll on your body and then hours of labor we can talk…go have some fiber if you think those compare! Also, I’m online so much because I’m disabled you fucker — really, I’d love to see you all jealous of how easy I have it after spending…oh…24 hours? in my shoes. I’d swear the only men I post hatred about though are you, and my father, but he’s long been on my shit list, and you both utterly deserve it, and, oh yeah, in neither case is your gender a factor. (Fuck, I might even have more women than men on my shit list, it’s a very short list, congrats on earning a spot)
@Pecunium — think he could handle that? Or is a day too generous? 12 hours? (I’m only directing this at you because I don’t feel like explaining and am pretty sure you get the general picture, and mocking NWO is fun)
@Kyrie: Well, I intended the “identity” portion to cover both sexual and gender identity.
as it turns out, the penis has very few positive interactions with things that are freezing cold. sorry.
@NWO — re: hating men, not only are my best-friend and FWB both men, but I care way more about them than I will ever ever give a shit about you. You’re more a “people not to take remotely seriously” shit list type, because, well, you aren’t ever not full of shit. (This is intentionally a double negative as it really does take work to end up on my shit list, see the patience I’m given all the other trolls)
I’m going back to my Tolkien trolls now, they’re way more interesting than NWO.
@Shadow — You made me laugh again, but at least I’m not in class this time.
What if you were a teenage girl, who woke up one morning to find herself in the body of her MOTHER?!!!???!!?! Now, that would be horrifying.
Well, damn. I guess white straight cis men really are totally oppressed, if they can’t make awesome snowmen with their genitals. Sucks to be them.
Apparently, not only can Varpole not read correctly, he has also taken up the John the Other technique of Irrefutable Triple Onomatopoeia. Oh, that whole post makes me smile inside.
And Buttman is right, you women would be really surprised and horrified by having a penis. Especially the way it constantly screams and babbles incomprehensible phrases and predictions of the arrival of the Great Old Ones.
RE Ithiliana’s non-Eurocentric fantasy recommends: Ancient literature is also good for this. The Epic of Gilgamesh is pretty fun to read, and is quite interesting. I got a version of this put out by Penguin which contains several different versions of the Epic, and which makes it clear where the lacunae in the original clay tablets are, points out reasonable interpolations by modern translators, and has juicy bits in the introduction pointing out Sumerian parallels to Biblical stories, e.g. of Noah of the Deluge variety. More to the point, though, is the Shahnameh—literally the “book of kings,” it’s a tenth century Persian work and and is roughy equivalent to Homer’s works in cultural importance (as far as I can tell). I haven’t read all of it, but whenever I pick it up I enjoy it, at least partly because of how it reminds me of The Silmarillion.
I have to say, there are plenty of issues one could take up with Tolkien, especially from a modern perspective (Eowyn is pretty cool but the Arwen of the book is rather unimpressive, and yes, there aren’t many women in general who get to do important things, and there are some race issues, and the good people are pretty people and ugly people are evil idea is very strong in those books, as is the idea that goodness and suitability to lead is tied to genetics, which has obvious class implications), but if you think that the books are just a recitations of geneology…did you read The Silmarrilion rather than LOTR? Because that’s the only book that actually does read like the geneology bits of the Bible in parts (and that wasn’t an accident).
If you just hate that kind of book then that’s fine, but it’s a bit Debbie Downer to go on a rant about how crap books like that are in a thread that’s full of fans. Not to mention that the authors who you’re holding up as a better alternative have their own problems. McCaffrey, for example, is full of rape apologism, and I noticed that even when I first encountered her books at age 9. One can certainly choose to overlook that and enjoy the books anyway, but it’s there. Most authors have some questionable elements, especially if they started writing a long time ago. (For example, McCaffrey’s stuff got much less rapey over time, but some of the porn she wrote in the 70s is downright eyebrow-raising.)
McCaffrey wrote rape apologism? And porn??
o0
Do you have references or examples in mind?
I wanted to make a few comments, both on privilege and on the LOTR/Fantasy discussions.
First, privilege. I am cis, white, male, able, come from an upper-class background, and am read as straight (though I’m more queerishitscomplicatedillgetbacktoyoulatermaybe?). I and my partner (who is often read as straight female whenever we are seen together, and has a feminine name) both wrote letters to President Obama for Amnesty International’s letter writing campaign a while ago. I got a thank you note that was about a page and a half long, thanking me for my interest in the US signing UN human rights charters, and explaining what the president has done since he entered office. My partner received nothing. Not a thank you note, not even a we got your letter note. Now we both know that our letters never reached anyone above an intern, but the fact that my masculine name got me a letter while zie’s feminineish name didn’t was the first stark case to me of my privilege.
Now, onto the LOTR and fantasy.
I am a huuuge fan of LOTR, and I have to mention that Tolkien deliberately wrote his villains to be as un-approcheable as possible, as he fought in WWI and was horrified with the ease with which he could empathize with the young boys trying to kill him. Thus, the orcs were made to be distinctly different, and had no mentioned families or farms. His son discovered after Tolkien’s death that he had written about the family life of the orcs (they have wives and children too, in eastern Mordor), but couldn’t bring himself to put that into the story.
Also, I am a big fan of Tamora Pierce, author of the Alanna the Lioness books, as well as four other series (2 quartets, one duology and one trilogy in that order of writing) in that world, and the Circle of Magic books Lauralot mentioned. She started writing books with girls as knights and mages because she was tired of only boys getting to play with swords (or something like that). While her early books have some issues with noble savage and imperialism, they get better as she keeps writing, and fem-women become serious characters (a major problem with the Alanna series is all the ‘feminine’ acting women are either evil or airheads and useless, and only the rough and tough girls are good at anything).
Honestly, when I was reading in middle and high school I read books with girls as protagonists because they were often better written than fantasy with boys, mainly because I like characters to be characters, not super Marty Stues.
if you’re talking about nanasha statement back on page 1 i don’t think you’re really being fair. the things she listed are perfectly legit reasons to dislike tolkien, (seriously, you’ve never heard a tolkien fan make fun of his fondness for listing things?) and the fact that most people in the thread enjoy it because of or in spite of those things shouldn’t stop her. yeah, her tone was a little dismissive, but not really out of line for a casual conversation.
“…and I have to mention that Tolkien deliberately wrote his villains to be as un-approcheable as possible, as he fought in WWI and was horrified with the ease with which he could empathize with the young boys trying to kill him.”
Yeah, I was thinking that while watching Helm’s Deep, that it’s kind of good the orcs don’t look human, or watching the good guys fucking slaughter them would be less cheering and more cringing. Which may be why I’m currently avoiding watching the end battle…there are humans dying on both sides…
I get hit with this every time I’m enjoying my Wodehouse. The casual racism is just jarring! I’m pretty sure the same can be said about misogyny in Wodehouse’s works as well, but it doesn’t strike me as quickly
That sucks. My vagina emits weird new age music while projecting a video of an aquarium:
It would be great, if only I could find the volume control…
@cloudiah
Have you tried your nipples? I’m pretty sure that they are linked to our noise production because how twisted they are has a direct effect on the coherence and pitch of my voice.
@Shadow, That takes care of the sound, so thanks! Now about the video…
I was reading an old Batman comic, of all things, and encountered the phrase “mighty white of you.” Damn it, Golden Age.
McCaffrey wrote porn short stories in the 70s when she wasn’t established yet, because it paid well. They’re pretty much all rapey as hell, the worst example being about a human girl who’s kidnapped by an alien race and taken to a planet where hot young human girls are used as sex slaves, and escapes, only to find an injured member of the alien race and rescue him, and then he rapes her. Which she initially fights but then starts to enjoy halfway through, and she isn’t angry at him afterwards, the implication is that they might become a couple. It’s that specific narrative – rape that the woman “surrenders” to partway through as romantic – that shows up multiple times in her writing. It’s icky (and very common in romance novels). I still loved her books as a child, but even as a child those parts made me stop and go “WTF did I just read?”.
Re-read the first time Brekke has sex with F’nor. He initially forces her, and she tries to fight him off, and then she “surprises” him with a big dramatic “surrender”. It’s a specific type of normalization of rape that’s so common that most people don’t even notice it happening.
McCaffrey wrote alien porn. White rape apology. There is rape and rape apology in Pern.
My brain need to process that. Or I need to erase the memory.
I’ll try hitting my brain against the wall, in case it helps one of both.
Thank you anyway, Cassandra.
Like I said, go back in time far enough and there’s horrible shit in books written by almost any beloved author. I stopped reading McCaffrey at a certain point, but she does seem to have dropped that stuff at some point in her career, presumably in reponse to changing social ideas about rape, so in a way I guess we can count that as a victory for feminism?
Well, to be fair, it’s about a lot more than what he’d seen. While Samwise did carry the Ring for a little while, Frodo had to bear the the burden and the temptation of it for months, and it kept growing stronger the closer to Mordor they got.
This constant psychological torture is on top of the already traumatic experience of being stabbed with a Morgul knife, thus very nearly being destroyed and turn into a wraith.
Magpie:
Actually, yes, in the sense that there was no way for him to get it wrong.
Anna:
There are two related factors at work here:
1) The United States was founded on, among other thing and in ways both direct and indirect, explicit rejection of a formal class system.
2) As VoIP notes, we really don’t separate the economic hierarchy from the social one.
So you’re not supposed to be aware of where you fit into the system, socially, because officially there is no system, and since where you fit in economically is the same as where you fit in socially, you’re not supposed to be overtly aware of that either.
slavey:
Thoise of us who acknowledge a reality have moved past the homunculus hypothesis. Should that go in the Book of Larnin’?
Now then, about those laws?
Jessay:
One of those countermeme people at the beginning of OWS was something like “I work 70 hours a week and can barely keep body and soul together, but you don’t see me complaining” and I was thinking “um, why not? That seems like something to complain about.”
Having just finished rewatching LoTR, there’s an entirety of 0 non-white non-orc characters. In the god knows how many hours of the extended edition, I suppose I could’ve missed one, but it seems sadly more likely that they not only cast an all white cast, but CGI’ed only white people too.
Also, Eowyn and Arwen walk past each other at the coronation at the end, and say not one word, after all that there’s not even like “glad to see you survived” or anything. I guess when it was written though Arwen’s stubborn refusal to listen to her father because love! was kind of progressive, that Tolkien actually gave her a line about how her heart is her’s to give? IDK
Double fail >.< (they do, however, have a one eyed Rohirrim giving commands at Helm's Deep, which I guess makes it not a total disability fail?)
That should say Rohirrim with one eye, fail on my part.