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.
@Dracula — valid point, and basically what I was thinking somewhere around Samwise’s “I can’t carry it, but I can carry you” line. It still really annoys me that Frodo just expects Sam to go life a happy little shire life though, this might partly be just how contrived Sam’s marriage feels, she doesn’t exist for 95% of the story after all.
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.”
Because they get up, go to work, come home and go to bed, no time to complain (this is only partly snark)
@argenti
did you never hear about their fuckup on the hobbit casting call:
http://blogstage.backstage.com/2010/11/hobbit-casting-director-fired-for-seeking-only-white-hobbits.html
*faceplam* sighh
@Lauralot
I didn’t even realise how problematic that phrase was til right now
@Argenti
While I agree that Sam’s romance was contrived, I think the whole story set up the other hobbits as more carefree and resilient than Frodo, so the fact that Frodo needed to leave and everyone else just wanted to go home seemed inevitable. Besides which, they all had family in the Shire too (IIRC everyone’s family survives including Gaffer), whereas Frodo isn’t close to any of his family aside from Merry (or is it Pip)
The whole “what if you woke up as a cis white heterosexual male” thing reminds me of these books:
http://www.amazon.com/CHICK-FOR-DAY-What-Would/dp/0684855178
http://www.amazon.com/Dick-Day-What-Would-You/dp/0679773533
So basically, the dick for a day stories are all about women experiencing life as a guy. All the chick for a day stories involve highly sexualized stuff involving rape, fucking every guy in the universe, and other such things.
Basically being a man= being a person. Being a woman= sex object, even when you ARE one.
*facepalm*
I think the key difference is that Sam still wanted a life in the Shire. Not just to get married and have kids, but he also had work he needed to do.
I think Frodo didn’t want Sam to needlessly give up on his aspirations out of loyalty.
i haven’t read lotr since i was 7 so i don’t know if this is wrong, but is it also not that frodo’s soul was touched by the one ring, so he needs to clear out to make way for the age of men in a way that’s not necessary for the other hobbits?
I think that’s true of the elves and Gandalf, but in Frodo’s case it’s more a matter of the Undying Lands being the only place that could offer him a chance to heal.
Also, can I say that I’m kind of disappointed in the choice of “superhero” for the ONE OF TWO FEMALE CHARACTERS THAT EVEN SPEAK IN THE AVENGERS MOVIE?
So you have a Norse god, a giant invincible rage machine, a perfect supersoldier with an indestructible shield, a guy who has a miraculous mechanical exoskeleton, and a guy who has arrows that can program computers….
And then you have a woman wearing a plain black catsuit (with the zipper slightly down enough to see some boobs) who can do gymnastics and manipulate people. I didn’t even realize she had those shocky glove things until afterwards because the montage doesn’t show that it’s HER who is doing it, and only because my husband knows something about the actual character did I know that was what was going on.
I mean, sure, Black Widow is skilled and good at what she does. But in comparison to the rest of the team, she’s basically the least important.
And that’s one of the exact reasons why most female characters are so uninteresting. Either they have to be sexual conquests/objects, or they get to be so boring and stupid that they’re just background characters at best. And if their only talents are “manipulating people” or playing into other annoying feminine tropes, it’s also no wonder why they don’t come across as “cool.”
*sigh* Is it too much to ask for an actually COOL female superhero?
@Sharculese — no I hadn’t seen that casting call…wow… Idk on the one ring, Sam did carry it for a bit too, so I’d think not? But maybe.
@Dracula — “I think Frodo didn’t want Sam to needlessly give up on his aspirations out of loyalty.” — that could be it, given Frodo couldn’t get Sam to leave him despite trying twice (the first time Sam nearly drowned, forcing Frodo to grab him) — that would also explain why he made them think he was just seeing Bilbo off right until the last second though. Also, that wound doesn’t just nearly turn him into a wraith, Gandalf makes a point of noting it won’t ever really heal, he only survived because of Arwen and even then just barely (and this is literally the one thing Arwen does that isn’t all about Aragorn)
@Shadow — idk maybe? Pip is “a fool of a Took” though, so I don’t think he’s related to the Baggins. IIRC though whichever is related is like, a third cousin or something remote like that, so I’m not sure the names will help any. War never reaches the shire though, which might be another reason why Frodo can’t stay, his 3 hobbit companions are the only ones he could possibly talk to, and Sam was the only one with him for most of it.
FTR, even if the ending makes perfect sense, it’s still going to irk me, everyone but Frodo gets a happy ever after and he fucking earned his! (to anyone about to note he’s sailing with the elves — yes, and with Bilbo, who asked to see the ring on the way to the boat…it’s going to be one long trip)
“*sigh* Is it too much to ask for an actually COOL female superhero?” – I’d suggest Eowyn, but you already said the trilogy bores you…I really do love her “I am no man” bit though, particularly since it’s followed with her sword.
I thought the fact that Frodo couldn’t stay in the Shire was basically an acknowledgement of the idea that you can’t always go back home, because if you’ve been through experiences that change you it doesn’t necessarily feel like home in the way that it did before. I thought it was a metaphor for what happened to a lot of war vets when they got home after seeing awful things and couldn’t ever really adjust to the life they’d lived before or the fact that the people around them would never be able to understand what had happened to them. It’s sad because in a lot of ways Tolkien is talking about himself, or his fellow veterans.
Cassandra — that may well be it, and my parents’ house hasn’t been my home for a very long time…you may’ve just nailed both wtf it’s about *and* why it annoys me.
@Argenti Aertheri- I mean an actual superhero from the actual DC/ Marvel Universe.
It just seems like in a world where there are a lot of characters with assloads of awesome powers, all the female characters have powers that either play into stereotypical female gender roles (controlling people with mind powers, manipulating people, shapeshifting into different appearances to manipulate people, etc), or involves them HAVING to wear skin-tight bust-popping-out clothing.
And I don’t want the characters to be basically men with boobs, either. There’s got to be a way to have a character be both female and authentically cool without having to be bimbos or background characters. I just don’t know if that’s possible in our current society.
Yep, hence the need for Frodo to travel to Valinor.
Sadly enough, in the book Arwen wasn’t involved in that scene at all. An elf named Glorfindal carries Frodo across the ford.
Actually, Frodo is related to the Brandybucks and the Tooks.
It does in the book, sort of. But I don’t wanna give away too much if you haven’t read it. And if it makes you feel any better, Sam does join Frodo in Valinor eventually.
merry is the one who’s related to frodo, but pippin is also merry’s cousin
or what dracula said. like i said earlier, twenty year gap here.
If I remember correctly, Frodo is the orphaned son of a Baggins and a Brandybuck, and the Bagginses have some Took ancestry.
Many things can make life more difficult than it should be. Your economic status, cultural bigotry, medical disabilities, etc.
However, liberals, in their infinite wisdom, think that the biggest “diffculty settings” are your sex, your orientation, and your race. Oh, and whenever or not you are transexual.
If you are a white straight cis male, then that is apparently the “easiest” setting.
Doesn’t matter if you are bankrupt, live in a terrible country, or are quadraplegic. If you are a straight white male, then live should be easy for you! You are playing on “mother goose” difficulty, after all!
~
Like conservatives, liberals only focus on their “pet issues”, and this post and the reactions towards it proves it.
Hell, who says being a white male is easier than being a black female? There is no affermitive action for white males. Males get their ass handed to them in custody battles. Males don’t make as much money as females in the typical household, at least according to some studies. White straight males also can’t blame “the system” for their failures.
There is inequality in certain areas for all sexes and races. And anything socialy taboo is disdained, not just transvestites and homosexuals.
But because these inequalities are not part of the liberal agenda, they put on their blinders, and ignore them.
Rationality at its finest!
Sorry, I’ve read these books like fifteen times.
guys, superbloop may be officially to cool for this world
also hes really fucking dumb
For real, I’m in awe on both counts.
It’s good to know that my expectation that anybody who goes on about what “liberals” do in a conversation that hasn’t brought the word up until they bring it up is going to say something dumb, and likely contradicted by the very discourse about which they are expounding, is not going to be upset any time soon.
I do not expect that sentence to be grammatical, however.
Yeah, there is. IT’s called “Being a white male”. You automatically get more truck for it. There isn’t a special program because it’s the societal default.
You’re not good at analogies, are you? I like how you recognize that there are things that make life harder, you just refuse to acknowledge race, sex, or sexual attraction as being important, relative factors. All else being equal, whitey mcstraighterson has an easier time of it.
This isn’t actually true, men just don’t usually deign to fight for the custody of their kids. When they do, women are usually the primary caretaker before the divorce, but men do better than in the reverse situation.
Those studies say who is given the task of spending it for the household, you colossal moron.
…oh god, what a fucking horrible thing, to not have the deck stacked against you. WOE TO WHITEY MCSTRAIGHTERSON III.
Plus, you know, they do anyway, they’re just wrong in doing so.
Wow, I’m not sure how to explain to you what an asshole you are for even pretending that gender and sexual identity are just ‘taboo’, as if they’re choices. Fuck you.