Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is
Posted on May 15, 2012 Posted by John Scalzi 801 Comments
I’ve been thinking of a way to explain to straight white men how life works for them, without invoking the dreaded word “privilege,” to which they react like vampires being fed a garlic tart at high noon. It’s not that the word “privilege” is incorrect, it’s that it’s not their word. When confronted with “privilege,” they fiddle with the word itself, and haul out the dictionaries and find every possible way to talk about the word but not any of the things the word signifies.
So, the challenge: how to get across the ideas bound up in the word “privilege,” in a way that your average straight white man will get, without freaking out about it?
Being a white guy who likes women, here’s how I would do it:
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.
Now, once you’ve selected the “Straight White Male” difficulty setting, you still have to create a character, and how many points you get to start — and how they are apportioned — will make a difference. Initially the computer will tell you how many points you get and how they are divided up. If you start with 25 points, and your dump stat is wealth, well, then you may be kind of screwed. If you start with 250 points and your dump stat is charisma, well, then you’re probably fine. Be aware the computer makes it difficult to start with more than 30 points; people on higher difficulty settings generally start with even fewer than that.
As the game progresses, your goal is to gain points, apportion them wisely, and level up. 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.
Likewise, it’s certainly possible someone playing at a higher difficulty setting is progressing more quickly than you are, because they had more points initially given to them by the computer and/or their highest stats are wealth, intelligence and constitution and/or simply because they play the game better than you do. It doesn’t change the fact you are still playing on the lowest difficulty setting.
You can lose playing on the lowest difficulty setting. The lowest difficulty setting is still the easiest setting to win on. The player who plays on the “Gay Minority Female” setting? Hardcore.
And maybe at this point you say, hey, I like a challenge, I want to change my difficulty setting! Well, here’s the thing: In The Real World, you don’t unlock any rewards or receive any benefit for playing on higher difficulty settings. The game is just harder, and potentially a lot less fun. And you say, okay, but what if I want to replay the game later on a higher difficulty setting, just to see what it’s like? Well, here’s the other thing about The Real World: You only get to play it once. So why make it more difficult than it has to be? Your goal is to win the game, not make it difficult.
Oh, and one other thing. Remember when I said that you could choose your difficulty setting in The Real World? Well, I lied. In fact, the computer chooses the difficulty setting for you. You don’t get a choice; you just get what gets given to you at the start of the game, and then you have to deal with it.
So that’s “Straight White Male” for you in The Real World (and also, in the real world): The lowest difficulty setting there is. All things being equal, and even when they are not, if the computer — or life — assigns you the “Straight White Male” difficulty setting, then brother, you’ve caught a break.
(Update, 11:07 pm: The comment thread hit 800 comments by 11pm and I’ve turned it off, because now I’m going to sleep and tomorrow I travel, and this is the sort of comment thread that needs to be watched closely. I may turn it back on at some later point, but inasmuch as 800 comments already made it slow to load up, don’t necessarily count on it. But after 800 comments, most of what could be said has been, I think.)
(Update 2: Here’s a follow-up article addressing some common questions/comments regarding this piece.)
(Update 3: Some final thoughts here.)
(Update 4, 5/18/22: A ten-year retrospective on the piece is now up.)
I should note that I’m planning to Mallet anyone who decides to start a debate on the word “privilege” in this thread. I’ve already established that straight white dudes often cannot deal with the term rationally; there’s no need for a) any of them to prove it, b) anyone else to reiterate the fact.
This is also one of those threads where I will remind people to be civil to each other because there is a lot of opportunity here to slip into incivility. The usual suspects, I assume, know who they are.
I should warn people that I’m feeling slightly cranky today so my tolerance for rhetorical nonsense and bullshit is going to be lower than usual. Bring your very polite “A” game today, kids.
Finally, I will credit the genesis for the “lowest difficulty setting” concept comes from this article at Cracked, by Luke McKinney, in which “straight male” is described as being the lowest difficulty setting for sexuality. I’m expanding on the idea a bit.
Well, you’ve made your point abundantly clear to the straight white male nerds, I’ll give you that. Not 100% sure if the metaphor will work for non-nerds, but any progress is good progress, right?
This is brilliant John.
“Straight White Male” is the name of my progressive rock band
Well, I’m a nerd, but I’m not a gamer, so the terminology is a bit less familiar to me, but overall, I found the metaphor fairly simple to grasp. I’m actually surprised I haven’t seen privilege explained in this terminology before because the framework does work pretty well.
While I agree, sometimes there’s an element of “oppression Olympics” that ties into the difficulty level you’re assigning. I’m not saying you’re wrong. I’m saying that it’s a useful analogy up until the point where it’s not, and I’m hoping that pointing out where it’s not useful helps future conversations.
Anyhow, as usual, thanks for posting about it.
Also, if you are assigned straight white male, you have a much higher likelihood of starting out with more points.
Y’know, there’s a reason you ended up being a writer. You’re damned good at it. This is a very readable and cogent explanation of something I’ve been much less effective at explaning.
This is a brilliant metaphor. Probably not universal to people who have never played a computer game, but I’m not a gamer (although I have played the occasional game) and I followed it quite easily.
Josh Jasper:
It’s certainly true that any analogy only goes so far.
Brain Mac:
I think the metaphor works for anyone who plays video games, which is generally includes most straight white males under the age of 40.
Straight white male nerds need to hear the message.
♥
This post is spot on, but there are two things I want to add.
1. There are other variables involved. Stephen Hawking comes readily to mind. He is successful, but I wouldn’t call his life easy.
2. The quickest way to fail at this or any other game is to spend all your time complaining about how unfair and difficult it is rather than playing.
Brilliant!
From another player going at this from the easy setting, very very nice. Retweeted and off to link from Facebook.
*attempts to fiddle with game settings on Life*
Dammit. There’s a reason why I always choose to play video games on Casual when it’s offered, but this is clearly one of those games that won’t let you change the difficulty settings midway through.
(Though, considering the metaphor, I suppose one can adjust the difficulty settings up by coming out in various ways. Down? Not so much.)
“In fact, the computer chooses the difficulty setting for you. You don’t get a choice; you just get what gets given to you at the start of the game, and then you have to deal with it.”
Explaining the Rawlsian theory of justice via computer game design, well played, sir.
Well, if one were to pull one’s mind out of the fantasy world of science fiction books and video games and actually look at the stats (you know, reality) they’d find that the only conclusion they could come to is that “Straight White Male Privilege” doesn’t actually exist any longer.
And that’s a GOOD thing.
Straight white female, probably nerdy, non-gameplayer over 40 and I understood the metaphor just fine. :D
As most people in this country do, you ignore the very real impact of the social class of your parents on your “difficulty level.” So you’re feeding the myth that the USA is a classless society. Certainly people who aren’t white and male are disproportionately affected by the effects of class, but I’d take the odds of an African-American daughter of doctors over a white male son of incarcerated drug addicts any day. None of which is to deny the reality of privilege, but green privilege trumps just about every other kind.
Scorpius, once again proving that he doesn’t get out much.
Brendan, you have appear to have wholly missed the commentary on the “wealth” stat.
The percentage of children playing video games is usually given at over 90%. Suggesting only nerds will understand this seems a bit dated.
(Brain Mac typo – Sounds like an unfortunate Kraft dinner.)
Robert Enders, can you see how those complaints might be easiest to dismiss from the lowest difficulty setting? And how it might seem as though the complainers are likely to lose when actually those who are losing because the game is rigged are those who are most likely to have something to complain about?
Will this game work on my Macbook?
Well done, John.
Don’t forget to mention that most of us players only have an NPC level role in this game, and as a whole, by playing our role more civil and respectful, we remove a tiny fractional amount of the difficulty divide. not much, but a little.
But every game character needs a core motivation. A catalyzing event.
What is John Scalzi’s core motivation, or catalyzing event, for needing to beat a bunch of white nerds over the head with a “You lazy punks have it so easy!” message?
Thank you from someone with a (merely slightly) higher difficulty of white female… brilliant analogy. I would say that there are time elements too, as risks and opportunities change over the duration of the Game. The player ages and acquires baggage, be it mental, physical or metaphorical, even as they add skills and points.
No analogy is ever perfect; nor will it reach all the potential populations needing the message; but this should be food for thought for many.
My problem with the use of the word ‘privilege’ is the reflexive implication that in a perfect society no one would have ‘privilege’ and everyone would be treated like a ‘gay/minority/handicapped/female’ – i.e. badly. I haven’t thought of a good word to use instead, but that word needs to imply that the default we all want is to be treated with a reality-based version of the dignity, respect, and opportunities with which many straight white males are treated. More fairness equals more good.
I can’t argue with the metaphor — it’s brilliant.
However.
It’s not that we (straight, white, male) nerds can’t understand the concept of privilege (Latin, essentially, for “private law”) and how we’re benefiting from it, I believe. It’s the fact that yes, we didn’t have any more say in the character we were issued by the computer than anyone else, and we get tired of other players grousing like we did. No matter how good or how bad we do, it’s used as a justification for why we are, somehow, inherently at fault for our stats. And therefore most of the rest of what is wrong in the world. I’ll cop to straight white male privilege and how I’ve exploited it as much as anyone else would in my position, but I didn’t cheat to get that card. And having it doesn’t make me an inherently evil, unjust, selfish or immoral person any more than any other sociographic racial stereotype would.
Psychologically, that leaves you with two options: acceptance of your status, and developing some method of dealing with the guilt that being socially privileged forces upon you, like philanthropy or serial monogamy, or check out of the cultural matrix that imposes both the privilege and the guilt upon you. A movement known as Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), advocating Straight White Males abandoning those roles of ever-increasing social and financial expectation/privilege/guilt here in the West and pursue more fulfilling interests off the grid or in exotic foreign lands where you are merely one of many minority populations.
I mean, when you’re stuck with the lowest default setting and you have no way to correct it, why not abandon the Big Quest and indulge in little side-quests off in the hinterlands? You have just as much fun . . . and no one can call you a loser if you aren’t playing the Big Game. Hey, it beats enduring the ‘privilege’ of socio-racial guilt — what else are we supposed to do?
Nice come-back, Scalzi. Which is just a tacit admission that you ain’t got much to support your assertion. “much” meaning “anything”.
I’m thankful for all the advantages I have over Herman Cain’s daughter. I really dodged a bullet there.
The trouble with the privilege argument is that at the core, it’s really just the same old divide and conquer tactic. Poor white straight men do have advantages relative to a poor gay woman of colour, but anyone with enough money has insurmountable advantage over both. The former would be far better off working together to even the scales with the latter than fighting each other for the scraps.
There was a story on ESPN last week about a baseball team forfeiting rather than compete against another team that had a girl on the roster.
Reading the comments (always a daft move, I know…), I was somehow still shocked by the appearance of men (likely white and straight from what evidence I had) outraging against the outrage toward the quitters, generally with a sentiment surrounding “They won’t let boys play on girls teams, so…”
Sadly, there is no way to let these people know that we are not, actually, engaged in some game or battle where we are defaulted onto the same teams. Nothing is more embarrassing/annoying than when some hateful twit draws that line and uses “we” to mean all white people or all straight people or, science forbid, all men as if we were collectively drawing on our strengths and accomplishments as a unit.
The flaw in this piece, in my opinion (based on my experience, of course), is that you’re using gamer terms, and I’ve always found the world of nerdy gaming to be filled with people who are all too happy to do everything they can to put themselves into the shoes of someone else, giving them an edge in the empathy category. The terms and descriptions as laid out are likely lost on the target audience.
Maybe not. I could be wrong. I’m just some straight white dude.
“The quickest way to fail at this or any other game is to spend all your time complaining about how unfair and difficult it is rather than playing.”
Speaking as someone whose difficulty setting is on the higher end of “moderate,” I think you’d be surprised at how few people—if any—spend their time complaining about privilege, or using it as an excuse for their shortcomings. The fantasy of the marginalized person who constantly “complains” about marginalization is just that, a fantasy. What they will say is that, when trying to understand broad trends or public policy, it’s important to point these things out. Moreover, they might also work to ensure that everyone begins life with the same chance at success. Say what you will about it, it’s not complaining.
The point at which this discussion always gets tangled up is when the logical next question is asked:
OK, we’ve managed to get everyone on the “Straight White Male” setting recognize that they didn’t hit a double, they were born on second base. Now what? What, exactly, are they supposed to do to address that, beyond a general awareness of their position?
Because I have yet to hear any person railing on this point (who, let’s agree, are themselves usually playing on the “Educated Middle-to-Upper Class Western World” difficulty setting, which affords the time and energy to level Social Justice criticisms) have an answer to that.
…and, without an answer to the “what do you want me to DO about it” question, it just often seems like a method of dismissing somebody entirely for something they have no control over.
Robert Enders @ 12:05 pm:
I agree that his life hasn’t been easy, but it’s easier than it would be if he were a gay minority female and still had motor neurone disease. For example, there are people in physics that still harbor sexist attitudes. A woman in physics has to work harder to prove herself to colleagues who are automatically more skeptical of the value of her work because of her sex.
There aren’t enough ♥ ♥ ♥ in all the world for this. Thank you.
Speaking as a SWM, I agree completely with the metaphor. I just never know what the proper play style should be.
The game is obviously an MMO—how do you play well with others? Obviously, PK and griefing are not good ideas, particularly towards people playing on tougher difficulty levels than yourself. But even collaborative play is full of hard decisions.
Should I pair with lower-level players just because they’ve got a harder road ahead of them, even though it means that I’m not going to progress as fast? Should I play less well to avoid outpacing the people around me? People at my level, but playing a harder difficulty level, are often my competition—should I defer to them, even though we’re technically the same level?
It might be that the metaphor falls apart because it treats life like a zero-sum game, but life often feels like a zero-sum game…
It seems like even removing the “p” word from the discussion doesn’t stop people from making the same “p” word type arguments.
Saying that a straight white male can have a disability and therefore have a hard life is not up for debate. Having a disability is challenging. The point is that being a straight white male with a disability is, in general, less challenging than being a gay, middle eastern woman with a disability. When all other factors are the same, that is, when you look at two individuals with the same level of wealth, the same disabilities or lack thereof, the same access to resources and education, the person who is a straight white male is statistically likely to have an easier go at things.
And with all that said, there are cases where straight white men are under represented. There are cases of straight white men being assaulted, abused, discriminated against and treated unfairly. This is not about individual cases, this is about overall trends. Most CEOs of fortune 500 companies are men. http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/story/2011-10-26/women-ceos-fortune-500-companies/50933224/1 Most politicians are men http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_government. The breakdown gets even worse when you break things out by race or religion. About half the population is female, while the mix of races and religions are far more complex and less easily defined and vary from state to state and city to city.
But overwhelmingly, the people with the most power in the western world are straight white men and that impacts how people view the qualities of being straight, white and male.
Excellent. I’d only add some nuance to an already pretty complete game: Your highest difficulty setting isn’t quite high enough. I think perhaps you ought to add “unpopular religious affiliation” and perhaps “handicap” to “gay minority female”, as these are also conditions that usually impede people and are often reacted to in knee-jerk, stereotyping ways. That and the fact that the game can end unexpectedly, often right in the middle of the best parts and more often than not it can not be rebooted.
your point about
“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.”
feels like a dig at “Straight Whit Males” being more intelligent or being able to gain skills and or concepts better then others is kind of ridiculous
John… as a straight white male–in his mid 40’s–I can honestly say that you have hit the nail squarely on the head. I learned at a very young age that my status in life was a bit better than others. I live in a town–that while small–has a very high percentage of ‘minorities’. In this town you can drive from affluence to poverty in less than 5 minutes and anyone–even from outside–can guess who holds which poker hand.
As I grew a bit older and entered into the working world, I gained even more exposure to the facts of the game of Real Life. I have worked with Vietnamese, Laotions, Cambodians, Albanians, Kenyans, Mexicans, Hondurans, Guatamalans, Venezualans, Costa Ricans, Jamaicans, and some other ‘ans that I’m sure–shamefully–I’m forgetting about.
The majority of friends I’ve had in my life turn out not to be Straight White Male, but anything else… including gays, lesbians, and a crap ton of people who didn’t even speak English as a native language and barely as a second language. I wouldn’t trade a single on of them either. Their stories about the shit they have lived through have made me realize that no matter what I am personally going through at anytime, I CAN and WILL survive.
From a guy walking 60 miles to attend his father’s funeral–after taking the last bus to the nearest town (and having to redo the walk after it was all done–to knowing talking to someone from a place where trading cattle to a girl’s father for her hand in marriage is not only good since, it is very polite, onto someone who was drafted into an army at age 10 and sent to war (and managed to escape it all by age 12!) to just and average everday guy trying to earn enough money to send back home to support his wife and sons…
Yes… even being without a job, Straight White Male is the easiest setting to have the program dump you into by default!
I’m pretty sure there’s a “Sword of Righteousness comes attached” joke in here somewhere…
Crap, you mean we had a choice?? Someone tell me what I was thinking when I chose: “slightly bent white girl with daddy issues, a traumatic childhood and a badly edited genetic code that makes life without health insurance complicated?”
LOL…oh well I guess I have gotten used to her by now.
Scorpius:
“Nice come-back, Scalzi. Which is just a tacit admission that you ain’t got much to support your assertion. ‘much’ meaning ‘anything’.”
Actually, it’s me noting that you’re entirely oblivious on the subject and satisfied to be so, that I have no interest in engaging in consciousness-raising 101 with you as you have no interest in having your consciousness raised, and there’s no use giving you much attention when there are other, less troll-like commenters here. A dismissive comment is what, historically, you’ve shown you deserve. Which is why you got one.
Now, shoo, Scorpius, people who actually have something useful to contribute are discussing things.
This is a great concise metaphor. I constantly seek methods of explaining things like privilege, othering, and similar concepts.
The one major aspect that thi metaphor lacks, which is the next things that often “breaks” the concept of privilege in the heads of “nerds” is that privilege is directed graph, with cycles! The nodes in the graph are properties rather than holistic combinations, so in some contexts a gay white male is privileged over a richer straight black woman and in others the reverse is the case.
Perhaps RPG concepts such as efectvreaistance can be utilized, but that reduces the elegant simplicity of this particular metaphor. Still a great initial introduction.
What about straight white males who play the game with more difficult optional conducts, like vegan, never wielding a weapon, or voluntary poverty (e.g. starving artist)? In this metaphor, are we obligated to respect them as better players, or is it more appropriate to dismiss them for failing to play the character they were assigned as munchkin as possible?
Class is definitely enormous, though (which obviously you know) so I’m not sure it’s on the stat level. Ditto nationality and stuff. (Constitution might be like axes of disability?) I guess maybe in my head I’d reframe all the things about your social situation as the difficulty setting, and the traits that are inherent to you as stats, although of course sorting those out in The Real World is by no means trivial since nature/nurture is an interconnected little beastie. So maybe, in my framework, wealth–difficulty level (like Oregon Trail!) and creativity–stat.
I’m overthinking the metaphor, which I think is apt, and obviously the point is best made by choosing a few qualities to emphasize, instead of writing a difficulty level that’s about 20 items long. ;-)
John, as a hetero white male, this article comes as no surprise. That you have to discuss it at all is rather depressing (although having seen many other of my counterparts not understanding the concept, I know why you wrote it). Honestly, I think it is as much a societal issue as anything else (not being willing to consider another person’s point of view or issues), but I could be wrong.
I would only add that the hardest difficulty setting would actually be trans minority woman with disabilities, not cis gay abled woman of color.
Nice analogy, though in my personal opinion (as one of the “easy setting” players who has encountered many a challenge) any baseline privilege likely fades significantly (note: I didn’t say “entirely”) into the background when the enormous complexity and multiplicity of individual and family factors is brought to bear. Nonetheless, I think most people will probably read this piece the same way they’ve read the thousand other explanations over the past forty years: “straight white men have it easy — the overprivileged, oppressive bastards.” Assuming for a minute that’s correct… please, help me understand what I, as one of the privileged, can do? How can I make the world better? I really want to know. I don’t want to play with loaded dice — but if what you’re saying is true, I don’t have any choice, do I? Nobody with a moral bone in his body wants to win because of an unfair advantage.
Straight white male privilege still exists. In a country where more women graduate college than men (hard work even with a full ride), men still make significantly more than women after adjusting for career path, time on job, and age.
Fortunately, cheat codes abound.
If you’re going to really stick the metaphor I think you need to add that folks with a different setting are going to find it impossible to go into the same specializations as you do. It won’t tell them that’s why, but a lot of them will just find the selection disabled. Their charisma score might be the same as yours, but in certain places it won’t seem to work as well as yours does. They won’t be able to party up with everyone they want to. Sometimes they’ll get randomly attacked in areas that are perfectly safe for you. Stuff in the same store will for some reason cost more for them, or they’ll get sold inferior stuff without warning.
I’m unsure that folks who need it spoon-fed to them this carefully can get it – if “your path is always going to be easier than theirs” isn’t clear enough then I’m not sure more words will be.
Robert, Stephen Hawking had his difficulty level turned up by missing out on the able-bodied setting, another, um, easiness factor. (avoiding the word privilege is hard)
And being born to wealth is like getting the cheat codes.
“OK, we’ve managed to get everyone on the “Straight White Male” setting recognize that they didn’t hit a double, they were born on second base. Now what? What, exactly, are they supposed to do to address that, beyond a general awareness of their position?”
Well, acknowledging that it exists and that the playing field is skewed from the get-go would be a nice start. The fact that this is not the first time John has had to make this post is due to the fact that just getting people to understand what privilege is and that it exists can be a frustratingly monumental task.
Outside of that, the most general way of addressing the problem is to recognize the inequities in the game and extend your hand to help those who do not have your privileges in whatever way you can. It doesn’t have to be a huge gesture, but every little bit helps to even out the field so that it’s more fair to more people. This should be a simple concept to grasp, but clearly it isn’t, so educating others to be more aware is also a way to help – which again, doesn’t have to be anything like a giant lecture, it could be as simple as calling someone out on making a privilege-blind statement and saying “Hey, you know it’s not as simple as “hard work will bring you success, and if you’re not successful, it’s because you’re being lazy, right?”
Basically, once you’re aware of your privilege, try to use it to help others who don’t have it, LISTEN to the experiences of those who don’t have your various privileges to try to understand how it affects them, keep learning and understand that you will probably make mistakes and be called out for being blind to your own privilege at various points no matter how good your intentions are (and when that happens, again, remember to LISTEN), because privilege is deeply embedded in the way we live and no one is going to completely understand or grasp all of it without a lot of self-examination and work – in other words, don’t be an asshole.
Robert Enders, while it’s true that Stephen Hawking’s life hasn’t been easy, and he has done incredible things considering the adversity he has faced, I find it difficult to imagine that a person born into different socio-economic conditions would have had similar opportunities to reach their potential. To use Jennifer’s analogy, he went on a trip to Mars (not an easy task) with a fully stocked spaceship, whereas many other non-SWM are doing well to have enough to to survive a trans-Atlantic flight.
i agreed with ian ironwoods point about “straight white males” getting the same random start in life and it just turning up in the better end of the scale, i dont see why we should be victimized for taking advantage of a good deal, lets face it most people regardless of their “difficulty setting” would jump at a fast track or free bonuses, the game is the way its is and we all just play the best we can, some with better odds
Ways to counter privilege include but are not limited to: voting in support of equal pay measures, rational health and family policy, and pro-choice legislation; supporting services for women, children, impoverished persons, and others from whom privileges often withheld; recognizing when you are benefiting from privilege and ACTING on the knowledge; speaking out when you hear someone being racist, misogynist, or homophobic–TELL your raconteur friend that the rape joke is not funny.
Marie Viv, et al:
I’m not actually aware of saying “gay minority female” is the hardest setting, just that it’s a hardcore setting.
Prof Pedant, et al:
“My problem with the use of the word ‘privilege’”
Why are we discussing the word ‘privilege’ at all when I’ve made it abundantly clear that it as a word is something I don’t want discussed in the thread? Lots of people will take the opportunity to talk about the word and avoid everything else. So stop talking about that specific word, please, so we can avoid the whole Pavlovian Avoidance Issue regarding it.
I just want to comment on how well you packaged your point. And it seemed so effortless. I recently worked on a blog entry using a metaphor and it took me longer than usual. But you’re right on schedule!
Don Whiteside:
I like your points. Although I note that I am now trying to figure out how to write The Real World as a game which is not helpful.
Unrelatedly, isn’t this kind of similar to the premise of one of Stross’ novels?
I’m impressed. That’s an excellent analogy. It explains it handily, and in a way most of your readers should be able to grasp.
I’m also impressed by the comments harping on the p-word following your disclaimer, but that’s a different kind of impressed.
If the dreaded P-word doesn’t scare you away there’s the “Parable of privilege” that tries to illustrate how that all works (and it, too, isn’t perfect. Turns out that “real life” isn’t so accommodating that it can be completely captured in a simple story): http://sindeloke.wordpress.com/2010/01/13/37/
Ian Ironwood, it’s not that having privilege makes you an evil person, any more than being white makes you a better one. Both are stereotypes.
Privilege says not one damn thing about YOU as an individual. It says a lot about your EXPERIENCE.
You have a third choice besides guilt or rejection. That third choice is “acknowledge your privilege, respect that it’s informed your perspective, practice listening more than you talk in discussions of equality and rights, and use your privilege to end itself.”
If you’re already doing those things, then go you and thank you for being an ally. If you’re not, then that’s a path that’s available to you. Privilege cannot be ended solely by those who do not have it; women demanded the vote, but men who already had it extended it to us, because they saw an inequality, they saw an advantage they had, and they felt everyone ought to have that advantage. So they *shared* their privilege, elevating everyone, instead of *giving up* their rights.
We’d all be equal if those born to privilege placed artificial barriers to ‘level the playing field’ so we all play at the highest difficulty level, but we’ll be equal AND happier if those with privilege work to unlock that easier difficulty for everyone instead.
Excellent metaphor, frames the issue quite nicely. I’d suggest a further parameter, one that offers a means of addressing Ian Ironwood’s query: so what do we do about it?
By playing the game, and advancing through levels, one gains skills and abilities that can be used to change the game. You cannot change any player’s initial character assignment or difficulty setting, but you can tinker with the code that controls how the differences among the settings are manifested. You can choose to make them larger, or can choose to reduce them. As with everything else in the game, the SWM characters have an easier time gaining access to the game code, and greater influence on it once they do, but understanding that fact is the first step for such characters to realize that they have a disproportionate responsibility to do what they can to debug the code, and work toward removing any meaningful distinctions among the difficulty settings.
It’s a lot of code to go through. It’s taking a long time. The difficulty settings don’t have the same effects in all regions of the game, because some regions have made more progress than others. But overall, we’re making progress. You can’t change your own difficulty setting, nor those of others, but by playing the game, you gain the ability to change the game so that the difficulty settings matter less and less.
Well the white bisexual female class skills much faster but her elemental damage sucks against most boss monsters.
This is all true. However the relative difficulty of playing different roles varies widely by geography.
E.g. I’d rather play as a gay Asian male in the San Francisco area than in many other parts of the country.
You also have to admit that, albeit slowly, attitudes are changing. Forty years ago, a successful black baseball player tried to rent a house in the next town over. There was an outrage and he had to have police protection. These days, there is no controversy. Interracial couples are common here.
I myself take offense to the term “privilege,” and it drives me exactly as insane as Scalzi’s opening paragraph indicates. As Ian indicated, I didn’t choose to be straight, white, or male–and it also hasn’t meant that my life has been necessarily easier than others. It’s been anything but easy. That term is people assuming I’ve been given a break somehow–and I absolutely haven’t. Many millions of other SWMs haven’t either.
Would life be even harder if I were a minority? Or a double or triple minority? Of course. But it hasn’t exactly been a picnic for me either, and that term assumes that it has. And that makes me crazy.
/end 2 cents
Joshua – no one is saying you should be victimized. It’s not victimization when you don’t get extra privileges.
Joshua Mcdermott @ 12:43 pm: I don’t think anyone should feel guilty about their difficulty setting. I know that there are things I have achieved that would be harder if I were a woman, if I were gay, or if I weren’t regarded by society as white. (I’m not completely white, but I am generally regarded by society as white.) I don’t go around feeling guilty about this, because that’s not constructive.
However, you should feel guilty if you use your difficulty setting to reinforce the system of difficulty settings. For example, you should feel guilty if you laugh at, or tell, sexist, racist, or homophobic jokes. You should feel guilty if don’t take these issues into account when you vote. You should feel guilty if you tell your daughter that girls can’t grow up to be scientists. And so on.
Being a liberal, I read posts like this pretty much every single day. Being a SWM, I acknowledge my advantages, even though my life is in the toilet.
But I have to agree with a couple other commenters. There’s a question here no one ever answers: OK, privilege acknowledged. Now what? What do they want us to do about it?
Because other than voting, there seems to be little a nobody like me can do. I can’t help but feel all of these posts are directed at SWM who go online and bitch about affirmative action or whatever, and that you just want them to shut up.
Understandable. But you’re addressing all of us, which feels a little weird, in order to get a message across to people who won’t listen to you any way.
So forgive the 4chan’ism and affront to grammer, but: wat do?
@ Stephen McNeil – Nice expansion on the original metaphor!
An excellent essay and a good start.
But as Gareth Skarka says, this is only the first step. However, if this is Skarka the rpg designer, I’m surprised he doesn’t understand what the next step is: making new rules in order to balance play. Kathy (above) somewhat jerkily refers to racial quotas as “cheat codes,” implying (I think) that they are wrong and ruin the game for other people; rather, we could (still sticking with the analogy) refer to them as a patch–a fix to the game that helps to balance out the experience. I mean, if you were playing Scrabble with a million-point Z, we might say, let’s tone that down, bring it more in line with the values of the other letters. That doesn’t completely change the game–you’re not playing Battleship because we changed the value of a letter–it merely makes more equitable.
As a straight white dude, I was deeply affected by a mock game of “Jeopardy!” we once played in elementary school where each team had to pay to choose a question and your team got the first chance to answer–and one side got a lot more money to start out with. Of course, the side with deeper pockets was able to take more risks, bounce back from missed questions, and dominate the choosing.
Also, I love that recognition of reality and talking about comes to be considered shrill complaining. It reminds me of William Dean Howells’s review of Charles Chesnutt’s excellent book, The Marrow of Tradition which was a fictional account of an actual race riot where a bunch of white people killed a lot of black people. Howells had championed Chesnutt’s early work, but his review of Marrow was “bitter, bitter”–as if a book about a mf’ing race riot doesn’t have a right to be bitter.
I agree with Scorpius, to a point. To use the analogy given (although I think it is one-sided and presumptive):
Just like in an RPG, we all get experience points when we are born. Race, gender, and socioeconomic status all affect how many points we start out with for certain attributes (for example, as Brendan pointed out, some people are born with more Wealth points that others). But by receiving many points in one area – like Wealth – it means there are less points for other areas – like Compassion and Empathy. Or someone born with very few Physical Attractiveness points might be born with higher Intelligence or Creativity or whatever.
That’s somewhat important, and it does affect how you play The Real World, but there’s a secret most people don’t realize: you earn *more* points as you experience life and *you get to choose where to allocate them*! So even though you don’t start out with much Wealth, you can choose to work hard and gain more! And if you meet someone weaker than you are, you get to choose to add Friendship/Protection or increase Bullying! And upgrading these stats has more of an impact on your eventual happiness than what you started out with.
That’s where the analogy falls apart, in my opinion. Because anyone can complain that they were born into unfortunate circumstances (or most people, anyway). But what we choose to do with life, and how we choose to treat other people is the ultimate endgame.
Let’s face it: by being born in America, we are all lottery winners. Look at a kid in Sudan – a kid who has to search for water and food every day and has no education or career to look forward to, a kid who is likely to contract AIDS or some other life-ending malady if they aren’t killed outright in a war or genocide. Straight White Male might be the easiest setting in America, but every other setting in America is easier than Normal and not even close to Hardcore if you look at the world’s population as a whole.
By the way: can you guess my age, gender, and race? I bet not……..
Camman – it might help to think of it as a systematic thing not a personal thing. The concept that you’re missing for applying to the personal is intersectionality. It’s the idea that advantages in one area can be either reinforced or mitigated by advantages or disadvantages in other areas.
Gotta disagree with your easiest setting in our current world of diversity requirements and affirmative action. Wealth and intelligence our of the starting gate trumps race by far. And wealthy black female will actually have an easier time with lower requirements than a wealth white male. And I don’t think a straight white male in a trailer park in Mississippi has a bunch better chance than a straight black male in chicago. At least the black male in chicago has the 1 in a few thousand chance of landing basketball scholarship. Best the white trailer park kid can hope for is a stint in the military without injury to pay for college.
At this moment, you may be my favorite white guy who likes women.
Sincerely,
An Asian dude who likes dudes
Joshua mcdermott: You’re having the same knee-jerk reaction to this that other people have to the P-word, which is why Scalzi tried to frame it in a different way. It’s about awareness, not clobbering Straight White Males about the head and shoulders. Once you are aware that the game is skewed, then you can approach the world’s and the country’s problems more rationally without the mien of someone frothing at the mouth that this is the land of OPPORTUNITY for ALL and you just need to PULL yourself UP by your BOOTSTRAPS, son, and you don’t need to commie fascist socialist “safety net,” you get what you deserve and if you want to deserve better you need to work harder! *upchuck*
Also: Victimized? Really? If you consider it ‘victimization’ in having your awareness raised that, yes, you got into the game with some extra perks, then you have an extremely skewed idea of the word. It does not mean what you seem to think it does. Not. Even. Remotely. I’d rattle off a list of ‘Being Victimized’ like Scalzi did for ‘Being Poor,’ but it quickly becomes a catalog of atrocity.
@Jdack and others who ask, what we do, I think there are a few things we do: a) watch our own thoughts for bias (because I’m a liberal SWM and sometimes, when I read, say, Alyssa Rosenberg talking about the plight of women on tv, my first impulse is to roll my eyes, before I consider what she’s saying seriously).
b) Vote and agitate for a more equitable political future; and vote with your money and time for a more equitable cultural situation.
and c) Let your voice be heard. I don’t like to rock the boat, but maybe the next time I hear someone complaining about some (mythical) “minorities always complaining instead of making their lives better”, I should speak up and try to make this argument clear.
Jdack:
“I can’t help but feel all of these posts are directed at SWM who go online and bitch about affirmative action or whatever, and that you just want them to shut up.”
Actually, from my point of view, this article is aimed at the people who want to hazard explaining these things to SWMs and need a metaphor for it that won’t make them immediately freak out. If a SWM who needs a consciousness raising happens by and feels things suddenly elucidated, so much the better.
Kilroy:
I don’t think you read the entry particularly closely before you commented.
Great analogy.
For all of you players with the easy settings who are wondering why you should be aware of this, it’s because you (and everybody else) can make choices during the game that lower the difficulty rating for everyone. And best of ll, it won’t make your easy rating more difficult. You can play and win the game, AND help others along the way, but only if you are aware of it.
@ Jdack
“I can’t help but feel all of these posts are directed at SWM who go online and bitch about affirmative action or whatever, and that you just want them to shut up.”
Well, I might be going out on a limb here, but I’m guessing that if you’re not one of those people, if you get the basic principle of what privilege is and how it works, the OP wasn’t meant to address you.
I think Rowan Badger had a great answer to the “what can those of us who recognize privilege do now that we know how to see it?” – “acknowledge your privilege, respect that it’s informed your perspective, practice listening more than you talk in discussions of equality and rights, and use your privilege to end itself.” Especially the last part.
Well, there are a *few* ways to change your difficulty setting. Change your gender and/or sexual preference. You have to get all new armor, spells, everything. Just *try* finding a female breastplate when you’re 6’+. Stupid game designer. :|
That’s it. I’m selling an RPG that comes hardcoded with player data. The box you get is the player you are – kind of like buying a package of trading cards. Buy it again if you want a chance at a different player.
There are other variables involved. Stephen Hawking comes readily to mind. He is successful, but I wouldn’t call his life easy.
That’s a key reason why, when discussing my own priv– er, low difficulty setting, I went full bore: straight, white, upper-middle-class, non-religious, able-bodied, able-minded, average-height right-handed male.
@benjb – See, I totally get the spirit behind this idea. I just don’t really think, beyond the voting thing, there’s much practical application in it. I mean sure it makes you feel better maybe.
I guess I just think he’s mostly preaching to the choir. Not that I have any insight to the readers of this blog, but my experience online is that A.) most of Scalzi’s fans already agree with him, and B.) those who don’t, will not be swayed.
As far as SWM who kneejerk to this topic, it’s understandable sometimes. When your life blows, people telling you how grateful you should be and lucky you are can feel… frustrating.
It’s kinda like telling someone who just got shot in the arm: “hey at least you’re not on fire :)”
Scalzi’s next book: Philosophy for RPGers. (As whump did, I saw what you did there :-) )
Niiiiice metaphor, and it’s also good to see it in terms that are appropriate for geeks (which are just as prone to this sort of foolishness).
I enjoyed the idea (from the comments) on having additional settings that add Real Bad-Ass Hardcore Action to one’s character, such as ticking or not ticking the “got a disease” checkbox. Makes everything much harder and a lot of things that might help any other player simply have no effect.
Very nice. Thanks for posting this!
“And wealthy black female will actually have an easier time with lower requirements than a wealth white male.”
Justify that.
“And I don’t think a straight white male in a trailer park in Mississippi has a bunch better chance than a straight black male in chicago. At least the black male in chicago has the 1 in a few thousand chance of landing basketball scholarship. Best the white trailer park kid can hope for is a stint in the military without injury to pay for college.”
So… black people have an advantage because a minority of them are athletic? No poor white people ever end up in the arts or athletics?
Keep in mind that the game is not a zero sum competition with only one winner. It’s an ongoing MMO RPG, so it would certainly be cool and newsworthy, if as a community, people got together and did what they could to even the playing field for those who were handed a tough difficulty. But first you have to recognize that different difficulty levels exist.
It’s certainly the case that some of those stats look impressive. However, what counts is not what stats you start out with – it’s your likely score. There are several different ways to keep score, and it’s worth looking at each of them.
There’s wealth of course. That’s a major indicator, all right, and if you’re a SWM, your final score is likely to be high. However, while that correlates with being a SWM, it also correlates even more with your initial allocation of funds. As a SWM, you’re more likely to have that higher initial allocation, but if you don’t, you don’t get any benefit from the other SWM’s who do. Will they share with you in the multi-player version? A SWM might buy another SWM a drink, but he will ask a SWF to share his house with him. Being a RSWM is obviously good, but the RWSMs are not a huge amount of help to the PSWMs.
Do a comparison with the SBMs and the GWMs, and the game stats are pretty clear. If your ability to play the game is equal, your scores are going to be higher. Don’t even mention GBMs – they start the game way, way behind, and you have to be a very good player to catch up.
Compare with SWFs, however, and it’s not so obvious. For a start, the SWM is going to see “GAME OVER” a lot sooner. Not as soon as the SBM, but five years or so sooner than the SWF, and sooner even than the SBF. If the game is really easier for M, then shouldn’t they be able to play longer?
Why is this? Well, lets look at what kind of game it is – The Sims, or Call Of Duty? Well, if you’re a M, then it’s going to be more like Call Of Duty for you than for the F’s. You’ll find a number of other M’s around you playing a shoot ’em up, and even if you just want to play The Sims, you can’t help getting involved. You are more likely to be a victim of violence. You’re more likely to be murdered. You’re more likely to be homeless. You’re more likely to be in prison.
Is there such a thing as male privilege? Clearly. To some extent, privilege for a SWM is like water for a fish. It seems natural. However, the rest seems normal as well. Having your opinions taken seriously is nice. Being punched in the face by a drunk isn’t. Does it all add up to the EASY setting? YMMV. However, I’m not going to tell my son that life will be good for him and that his sisters are going to have all the problems.
Fantastic.
@ Muse – I agree. A discussion of how intersectionality works and how it relates to privilege is very useful when expanding on the concept of privilege, once the basic fact of its existence is established.
“Now what? What, exactly, are they supposed to do to address that, beyond a general awareness of their position?”
Awareness is a good thing, precisely because it makes it easier to rally people behind mitigating action. I assume the question really being asked is, “what actions should we be encouraged to take?”
Let’s stick with the game setting analogy here: we have a game that you play once, on a randomly assigned difficulty setting, where you initially spawn in some random location (and may legally be prevented from leaving that location), where your long-term stats depend heavily on both the stats given to you by your parent gamers and by their treatment of you early in life. Every one of these factors is out of your control, and heavily influences how successful you’ll be in the game.
What can be done, both as an individual player and as a collective of players, to give as many people as possible a satisfying gaming experience?
There shouldn’t be much onus on those who started out poorly positioned to improve their own positions; that’s the goal of the game in the first place. Nor can we expect those who got a good start to voluntarily worsen their own positions for the benefit of the less fortunate; that runs counter to the rules of the game.
That leaves us with societal action, which usually means government intervention. Mechanisms include progressive taxes, guaranteed access to the necessities of life, quality education, customs and laws that prevent discrimination and profiling, protections and guarantees for those on other difficulty settings, etc.
Play balance will always be tricky. There will always be people who try to game the rules. It’s much more difficult than just throwing up your hands and saying, “Life’s unfair. Nothing we can do about it.” But when we do that, we doom a significant portion of our population to a world where they can’t even begin to express their own potential. And that’s bad for everyone.
I’d say that “victimization” is the wrong word to use, obviously — I prefer my choice of “dismissal”, earlier.
Because pretty much, that’s what it feels like: I *am* aware of my “difficulty setting” (not using the word, as Mr. Scalzi has requested). I do what I can to address it. And yet, I still get Social Justice Warriors throwing it at my head, as if I’m Rush Limbaugh who just told them to suck it up and find a man to take care of them. Any attempt I make to convince somebody that, no, I get it, I really do — is automatically dismissed because of my gender, ethnicity and class.
Telling me, as “The Pint” does above, that I should LISTEN and “don’t be an asshole” — pretty much assumes that I’m NOT listening and that I AM an asshole. That’s not victimization, but it sure as hell is dismissal.
Clear and simple. Love it.
It would be interesting to create a real video game around this concept. I believe there’s a game out there somewhere that shows people what it’s like to be poor. It would be possible to create a Sims-like game where minority/female/handicapped/gay characters encounter discrimination and cruelty, while the white characters pass through obliviously. It would be easy to make it more difficult to befriend certain characters if you were non-white or gay or something. You could have random instances of mean-ness mirroring real life. Characters could fail to get a job, or be fired from jobs. You would have to play the game a couple of times with white male and non-white male characters to get the full effect, though, and I’m afraid that real life white males would give up in frustration, disbelief, and disgust after only a few rounds as the gay minority female.
I wonder if the people discussing the word “privledge” didn’t read the directions because they are playing on the lowest difficulty setting and therefore get to do what they want.
@camannwordsmith
“Would life be even harder if I were a minority? Or a double or triple minority? Of course. But it hasn’t exactly been a picnic for me either, and that term assumes that it has. And that makes me crazy.”
I hope you’re aware that you just proved Scalzi’s point. If you have a hard life, but your life would be harder if you were a minority, then there must be something about your life as it is that mitigates the hardship. Could that thing be…your easier difficulty setting?
“Fortunately, cheat codes abound.”
Tempted to dismiss this comment totally, but it does get at something the ‘Easy setting’ analogy misses — that higher difficulties are the result of large-scale, often unconscious (and often not) discrimination on the part of folks who are playing on easy. And people playing on easy tend to take umbrage whenever anyone playing on hard gets a tiny break: “Hey, they’re playing on hard! Why should they get access to the University Graduate stat buff? You should only get that if you’re playing on easy. Giving that buff to even a tiny percentage of hard players is cheating.”
Well, if one were to pull one’s mind out of the fantasy world of science fiction books and video games and actually look at the stats (you know, reality) they’d find that the only conclusion they could come to is that “Straight White Male Privilege” doesn’t actually exist any longer.
And what stats are those? By all means, provide us your plentiful evidence, since unsupported claims don’t amount to a hill of beans.
Nice come-back, Scalzi. Which is just a tacit admission that you ain’t got much to support your assertion. “much” meaning “anything”.
This from a guy who, as far as I can tell, has not once backed up his own assertions in the entirety of his posting history on this website.
Jesse:
Best to leave him be.
I’m not even vaguely surprised that I didn’t get here before someone said, “It’s not my fault the game handed me the Straight White Male character! Don’t blame me! It’s not fair to punish me, by making the game harder for me, when I didn’t decide to be the Straight White Male!”
Heck, the top news story when I woke up this morning was about a California assemblyman complaining, in front of two of the world’s top female athletes who were there to be honored, that Title IX steals money from male athletes who need it. Opressed male athletes who won’t get the athletic scholarships they need because some WOMAN stole their school athletics funding. Won’t somebody think about the poor men? (Let me join the athletes themselves in eyerolling at this guy, and everybody like him.)
The closest I’ve come to explaining this is, to extend your metaphor Mr. Scalzi, If you use the fact that you’re planing on the easiest difficulty mode to help yourself, you’re playing a bad guy; if you use it to help the people who are struggling with hardcore mode, you’re a good guy. Which one are you going to play?
(Actually, the Diablo screen at the top of this post is very appropriate. If you’re playing Real World as Non-White, Queer, and/or Female, let alone all three, you really are playing by Diablo’s Hardcore setting: if you fail even once, you die.)
[Deleted because inasmuch as the author of it admits to not reading the entry at all, anything he has to say will be aside the point for the thread — JS]
[Deleted for pointlessness. Did some site with exceptionally stupid readers just link in? — JS]
I’ll admit that my viewpoint is somewhat skewed from my perspective as a lawyer, which is probably a field where diversity and affirmative action make a much larger difference than in other areas. But black female from a wealthy family with a 168 LSAT and 3.8 GPA is going to get admitted to Harvard for law school. White male from a wealthy family with exact same stats and other experience points (clubs, extracurriculara, etc.) is not going to get into Harvard, but will be pushed down probably out of the critical top 14 law schools. Upon graduation in middle of her class at Harvard, black female from wealthy family will get interviews and easily land a position with one of the top big firms that find it very difficult to full the necessary diversity positions and are lucky to find a double minority. She then starts at $160,000 per year and is pretty much guaranteed Partner in 8 years. Straight White male from wealthy family graduates top 1/3 of his lower level law school, gets hired by a Big Firm in a small city making $130,000 per year and has about a 1/20 chance of making partner or being squeezed out in 3 years.
As far as the straight black male from Chicago ghetto compared to the straight white male from the Mississippi trailer park, you just hear a lot more stories of that occasional success story, usually through athletics at least to get a foot in the door at a university, compared to the white male. Off hand, can’t think of any success stories that start in a trailer park in Mississippi.
lets face it most people regardless of their “difficulty setting” would jump at a fast track or free bonuses, the game is the way its is and we all just play the best we can, some with better odds
And yet plenty of people with those “better odds” consider their good luck to be proof of their inherent superiority over those who drew a higher difficulty setting. In fact, quite a few politicians will blame those with higher difficulty settings for those same settings, even though the settings are determined by random chance/the computer.
If the goal of the game is for only SWM to win, then I guess that’s okay. But if we want everyone to win, then castigating people for what is, in the end, random chance, seems not only unfair but counterproductive.
Changing the words around isn’t going to make a difference if the argument is the same.
If you want to engage people’s empathy, it’s wise to try to help relate a situation to something they may have experienced. For example: All straight white men either are or have been young men at some point. Did you notice how cops, border guards and the like treated you with less respect and deference than your female friends or your grey haired parents? It’s like that for people of colour, but worse.
If you frame the, er, advantage debate around the idea that straight or white or male or cisgendered people always have to give things up, people who are all of those things aren’t going to be very keen. If you point out that they do are victims of the system (even if less so), then they’ll have more reason to pitch in.
TL;DR: You attract more flies with honey than vinegar, and empathy is a two way street.
@Rowan Badger
“You have a third choice besides guilt or rejection. That third choice is “acknowledge your privilege, respect that it’s informed your perspective, practice listening more than you talk in discussions of equality and rights, and use your privilege to end itself.”
Okay, but . . . why?
You say that to end the very privilege that I’m accused of having, that I get blamed for having, that I am despised the world over for having, I have to use that privilege –regardless of whether or not it has done me, personally, any good. Yet despite over a hundred years of constant and sometimes very quick erosion of this privilege, has the over-all respect for Straight White Males climbed? No. Has the abandonment of privilege by SWMs led to a better social view of them? A better historical view of them? No. From our sexuality to our employment to our education, SWMs have been stepping back from our “privileged” status like it’s a hot coal, and the level of respect we get gets lower, not higher.
SWM no longer enjoy exclusive access to finance, the franchise, education, and a hundred other privileges that we used to have. Fair enough. But what argument do you have for asking us to work against our own self-interest? What other race/class combo are you asking to work against their best interests in order to make things “fair”?
It seems to me that you are invoking concepts of noblesse oblige, chivalry and grace from us in an attempt to get us to sacrifice yet more of our assets for the common good, without giving us any compelling reasons other than “it would be more fair”. Since the impulse towards fairness necessarily discredits the concepts of noblesse oblige, chivalry and grace — see “feminism” — then I can’t help but see your third “choice” as being intellectually dishonest. You want us to acknowledge our privilege — done — respect that it’s informed our perspective — done — practice listening more than you talk in discussions of equality and rights — done, but not with the results you were hoping for — and use our privilege (the one big thing we have going for us) against itself.
But I still don’t see, outside of some abstract concept of “fairness”, why it is in our interest to do so. Has our lives as SWM gotten better since we began ditching our “privileges”? That’s arguable — and very much informed by our perspective. As SWMs. I think we’re going to need a far more compelling and intellectually honest argument than that before we can proceed any further.
What to do? Well, for starters, don’t complain if the game designers throw in a patch that gives those other players an extra buff or two for the purposes of balance. Boosting other players is not a nerf for you. Don’t act like it is.
Also: don’t go around kill stealing or loot camping just because it’s easier for you. It’s just as rude as an overleveled character hanging out in the newbie areas and snagging their resources because you’re in no danger from the local fauna. If you don’t have any nearby competition, then sure. Have at it. But if someone else wants to play there, then let them. It’s common courtesy, just like it is to give up one’s seat on the bus to someone aged or with a disability.
Just because luck gave you an awesome set of stats doesn’t mean you actually deserve to be ahead of everyone else. A simple question to ask yourself: did I do anything to earn the position I’m currently in? If the answer is “no” or “not much” then that position doesn’t actually belong to you. Straight, white guys are not at the top of the leaderboard because they truly earned that. They’re there because enough of them lucked into positions of power (see: monarchies, nepotism) that they were able to subjugate everyone else (often violently.) There’s no such thing as the right of conquest when you’re vastly overleveled v. your opponent.
@ Gareth Skarka
I think you’re taking my words out of context. In response to several comments asking “well, what can I do once I’m aware of my privilege,” I said that people should to continue to listen to those who don’t have privilege (because you know, learning is a continuous process) and not be an asshole (which usually results from not listening or considering other people’s viewpoints), both of which seem perfectly reasonable pieces of advice and generally not difficult to follow. It’s certainly not dismissal – it’s an acknowledgement of the fact that those who have privilege usually aren’t going to recognize when it’s coloring their viewpoints until it’s pointed out to them because, as someone else said, having privilege is like being a fish in water – a fish doesn’t know water is “wet” but a non-amphibious creature certainly does – and that quite often, pointing out the existence of someone’s privilege can be met with hostility and a refusal to listen (which again, is being an asshole).
I think it bears repeating that if you don’t react like that, if you are someone who listens, who considers and is generally NOT an asshole when your privilege is pointed out to you, that statement isn’t a condemnation of you.
It’s funny and yet frustrating how discussions of privilege end up taking a similar tack to those about bigotry, in which much hand-wringing and pearl-clutching is done over how people’s feelings might be hurt by having it pointed out to them that their actions are bigoted (or that one has privilege which has resulted in unfairness toward others, no matter how unintentional), rather than having concern over the actual harm being done by bigotry or by how the playing field is skewed towards those who have privilege.
This is very nicely written.
I think the solution, if you’re feeling guilty/undeserving at all, it to offset how easy quests are for you by making guilds with sprites from other difficulty levels and help them level up faster so that they get “equal pay”, “respected when they speak” or “unlikely to be attacked” buffs or focus on dispatching discrimination-bosses alone or in a guild.
I’m pretty sure it’s not supposed to be PvP, this game.
I’m a bit disturbed by the leap from recognizing your difficulty setting to the idea that SWM are being “victimized.” People with lower difficulty settings aren’t under attack, there aren’t punitive damages assessed for rolling high in life, and I don’t think anyone is asking for them. Others have better addressed the issue of “winning” (Newberry, above)- life is not a zero-sum game. Here’s how I see it: it’s not about having to give up the things I have gained so that others can have them, it’s about making sure that I am not impeding, actively or passively, access to those things for others. It’s about defining success as the advancement- in health, wealth, love, whatever- of everyone, not the denigration of some for the advancement of a few. If I’m really playing to “win”, then it’s about ensuring that I not only leave room for players on higher difficulty settings to win with me, I actively work to help them do so.
And the idea that SWM are playing Call of Duty while SWF are playing the Sims? I see this type of argument a lot, that somehow, by virtue of being male, my life is all guns, violence and hardscrabble fighting for success, whereas if I were female, my life would be somehow softer… I think this viewpoint is interesting, as it seems to accord people only one mode of life- the one where men are policemen, firefighters and soldiers, and women are teachers, nurses, and mothers who always survive childbirth. For most of the world- both in countries where women are able to choose risky physical work and men are able to choose quieter work and in those places where no one, male or female can avoid physical risk every day, this Call of Duty/Sims distinction is rubbish.
I was deleted because opposing views are not tolerated by liberals? One day i hope i can evolve & be liberal.
So Ian – even stipulating your premise (which I won’t agree with but will stipulate for the moment) this is ridiculous.
“SWM no longer enjoy exclusive access to finance, the franchise, education, and a hundred other privileges that we used to have. Fair enough. But what argument do you have for asking us to work against our own self-interest? What other race/class combo are you asking to work against their best interests in order to make things “fair”?”
Why is not being a flaming jerk not good enough?
You’ve got yours, so go ahead and crap on everyone else. After all, it’s the American way. When I read a newspaper, I see that those like me are being continually demonized by the press. When I go to church I get told that I am an evil oppressing patriarch (and since I have never married, I wonder about the ministers user of the term patriarch). If I have any troubles in my life, I don’t deserve any help or support. Those are the realities of being a straight white male in today’s society.
I’ll never have a family because men don’t deserve a choice. If I want to simply reproduce then my best option is to become a convicted criminal, their reproductive rate is far higher than honest, law-abiding, straight white males.
Have you really been paying attention to the world or are you just living a fantasy life out there in flyover country?
So, if life is a video game, then the equivalent of beating a horde of Brutes and Banshees in Mass Effect 3 is successfully asking Natalie Portman on a date. Since I’ve done the first, the second should be attainable, no?
@Kilroy “one of the top big firms that find it very difficult to full the necessary diversity positions”
Why do you think the ‘top big firms’ find it difficult to diversify their staff? And what do you mean by ‘necessary’ here? AFAIK, there is no legal requirement for a law firm to maintain a certain level of diversity; they just can’t legally discriminate.
On “SWM” setting, you keep getting prompted to pay for some additional DLC quests that just seem to take up your time and money and put you in uncomfortable situations with low-payout. But it gives you some advantages with a few of the guilds.
Many of the quests seem to be tied to some kind of convoluted alignment sub-system that doesn’t seem to convey any direct in-game advantage,
A lot of the rumors on the internet is that the new version coming out in a a few decades will build on those DLC quests and the game will be much better then.
JT:
“I was deleted because opposing views are not tolerated by liberals?”
You were deleted because your comment was pointless and idiotic.
Sigh:
“I’m a bit disturbed by the leap from recognizing your difficulty setting to the idea that SWM are being ‘victimized.'”
This is indeed a fundamental problem relating to SWM.
Matt:
Your post is appallingly stupid. Please rend your garments stupidly somewhere else.
I’m a straight white male, 54 years old, the 4th of 5 children.
My family of origin was (lower) middle-class. My younger sister has Down’s syndrome. My parents paid for my college education.
I have an IQ that’s been measured as pretty high. I got really good grades in high school, because it was easy, and got really mediocre grades in college, because it was not easy.
Because I have a very small, narrow comfort zone, am fearful and socially awkward, and am not particularly ambitious, I didn’t get a “real” job until I graduated from college twice, with two engineering degrees.
I’m an alcoholic, though I’ve been sober for a really long time, and because of that, I lost that “real” job and it took 7 years before I had an engineering job again.
Overall, I haven’t had to work particularly hard at becoming a successful mid-level engineer. I’m also a husband and father of 3 boys.
If there were a major “drag” on my path to success, say if I were non-white, non-male, non-American, etc., there’s no telling where I might have ended up professionally or socially, but I doubt seriously that I’d be as successful as I am.
I was dealt a really good hand, and since I generally take it for granted, I actually do appreciate having it called to my attention from time to time.
Life, society, the world in general has treated me really well regardless of whether I’ve earned it, in most instances. I know that this wouldn’t be the case if I weren’t a SWM.
So thanks for reminding me of that, John.
Beyond a general acknowledgement of my good luck in being straight, white, male, and from an upper middle class background, it’s tricky to know what to do next. I do try to extend a helping hand to anyone in need of same. I do think very carefully (and listen) to people of other backgrounds when considering my position on an issue. I try to be vocal if I hear or see something out of line. But I can’t really give up my history, or even point to any one particular event and say “well, that only happened because of my lucky draw.” Loaded dice seem to be the best illustration. The probabilities were better for me than for most, and I guess I am trying to help reduce or eliminate that effect in future.
I agree that’s a great analogy.
But by analogy with your incredible “being poor” essay, would it be simpler to simply list things that you experience as a woman, or black person, or non-straight person, etc.
“Being X is getting on a metro and keeping one eye behind you to see if someone will grope you”
“Being X is being scared whenever you see a police officer, in case he/she harases you”
Etc, etc
I find that (of a very very small sample of people I know) most people (who are not already completely intransigent) have a generally sympathetic reaction to that, saying things like “Oh my god, is that really true? I guess I should have really known, but I didn’t.” It turns out that most people (from all demographics) don’t verbalise this stuff, and people in group X assume it’s obvious that they’re harassed by the police, but people not in group X literally never think of it. And people OUGHT to know it, possibly, but when they don’t, “you’re better off than me” is very abstract and they keep forgetting it, but if they have specifics, they have some chance of sticking.
And from there it’s a comparatively small step to “most people experience this sort of ingrained societal harassment, and they shouldn’t have to”.
It seems like the concept of privelege is relative, and most reasonable people could accept “you have a privelege relative to me” because it’s obviously true. (Some people will still object, but not everyone.) But it seems like “you have a privelege” produces a massive defensive reaction, even amongst people who use the terminology, because everyone instinctively seems themselves as “normal” and they’re terrified of being seen as above “normal”, even if a sensible baseline for “normal” would be “what most people experience”. It seems very common to start an explanation by emphasising how someone is priveleged, and I agree that people SHOULD be able to accept that, but since it produces SUCH a negative reaction, if you actually want someone to understand, it seems much, much easier to simply emphasise how everyone else’s experience differs, without insisting people understand that they are exceptional as a prerequisite. (Eg. In your analogy, you could choose levels “easy, normal, hard, very hard” or “normal, hard, very hard, extremely hard” and have the same difference between the easiest and the hardest but I speculate people would raise fewer spurious objections if you used “normal” as the level they’re on rather than “easy”, even if “easy” might better reflect the demographics. But you’re better at this than me, do you think there’s a point here?)
Query: Are we talking about the US/Europe (i.e., Western civilization) or worldwide? I can think of several locations where being a SWM is not the lowest difficulty setting. Maybe “cis-gendered het. male” would be more accurate for world-wide lowest difficulty setting? Or something like “being a member of the majority population”?
@Jack V “But by analogy with your incredible “being poor” essay, would it be simpler to simply list things that you experience as a woman, or black person, or non-straight person, etc.”
See this famous essay:
http://www.uakron.edu/dotAsset/1662103.pdf
I’ve never really knew what a “white” person is, except for the caricature that’s popular today. The problem is, that caricature is…a caricature. It makes for easy, flippant essays, though.
White males are Greeks living in Athens, where poverty and crime and desperation are rampant. White males are part of gangs in Liverpool because they’ve always been poor and dealing drugs and beating others out of their money is how you get by. White males are Mexican (yes, they are) living in Coahuila and desperately trying to scratch out a living and stay away from the drug gangs. White males are standing in unemployment lines all across the country, losing their homes, living in shelters with their families. The popular target of ridicule, the mythical “middle class white male”, is disappearing fast.
And so on. “Privilege” has been studied to death, and if there’s one thing I know it’s this: *poverty* and *community environment* are the strongest factors, not the color of your skin. It’s a difficult thing for Americans to understand, because they focus so intently on race and ethnicity (and increasingly, sexual orientation) as an explanation for every social problem they see.
For Scorpius, Jesse et al. who want stats, they’re pretty easy to find. Here’s one link. Scroll down to the table labeled “Over time, by race and sex.” It’s clear that there is still a disparity in personal income along the divides of sex and race. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States#cite_note-11
“Why is not being a flaming jerk not good enough?”
Because far too many people consider me a flaming jerk just by existing as a SWM . . . so why take the heat? Even the SWMs who go out of their way not to be flaming jerks get crucified, not understood and accepted. Being told how powerful you are and how despised you are for it is one thing, but having that and not actually having any power? And then, when you do try to do your part for making things more fair, what reward do you get? Respect and admiration? No, more resentment and social blame, more ample justifications for further erosion of SWM status — and it just keeps going?
That’s why the MGTOW movement is gaining such traction. These younger dudes are looking at the older dudes’ lives, and they’re shaking their heads. All that hard work, dedication, and devotion gets you . . . this? Why bother? Better to emigrate, find a hot Latin American girlfriend, and teach English in some tropic country than end up as yet-another divorced, unemployed Beta dad estranged from his kids — but still guilty of his “lowest difficulty setting”. When you take away the possibility of victory, then the only reason to play is fun, and this “blame the white dude” game just isn’t fun for us anymore. Better to retreat and withdraw than play a game you have no hope of winning.
A bell curve with x-axis for weath would probably portray the advantages of being a straight white male. Towards the very bottom and very top of the wealth scale, it is probably easier to be straight black female than straight white male. Of course, it still sucks at the bottom and rocks at the top, but its just a measure of relative ease at those levels. Towards the middle, it is probably easier to be a straight white male. But how much of this is just because of the relative cultures and not because of the game code? Even towards the middle, relatively intelligent straight black female will have a lot of advantages of relatively intelligent straight white male as far as access to colleges and jobs, as they as they don’t get caught up in the welfare multiple children by multiple fathers trap.
Scalzi: thank you for this.
Dear people who are saying “I know that, why did you post this?” or even “I know that, what should I do about it?”: See those folks up and down the thread (or in your life) think SWMs don’t have any significant advantages? They are both the reason this was posted, and something you can do.
Thanks so much for writing this — as a multiracial queer trans woman (and also a gamer) I find it makes a tremendous amount of sense. I have a particular perspective on this whole idea that might be useful, because at different times in my life I’ve been perceived as falling into different categories — by institutions, my family, friends, strangers on the street, prospective employers, etc. I know first-hand what it’s like to be seen as a straight man, a gay man, a lesbian, a straight woman — at least temporarily; a lot of queer women know what it’s like to be read as straight by say, a guy hitting on you.
I’ve gone through periods of being seen as more and less of a “normal person” and an “unintelligible outsider” due to how I’m presenting my gender, and like many multiracial people, I find that people interpret my race differently depending on context, their own preconceptions, how deep or light my tan is at the moment, etc. (Some people ask the standard “what ARE you I mean where are your ANCESTORS from?” question, others don’t but you can see it in their eyes!) I am, however, very fortunate in that I’ve almost always been able-bodied in life so far, and had some pretty lucky rolls at the beginning.
Still, I think I’ve developed a weird extra ability due to having switched my own difficulty setting, and having had it switched FOR me at times in complex, nigh-random ways. I have a “difficulty setting sense” that picks up contextual cues (some overt, some subtle) and gauges how I’m being perceived — what privileges are being afforded me or denied me at the moment, to use the old-school terminology. It’s like knowing the system of a game well enough, because you’ve played on multiple difficulty settings and can tell that the AIs are behaving differently, that your health doesn’t regenerate as fast, or whatever!
As far as Gareth-Michael Skarka’s question about “what to do” — we SHOULD live in a world where everyone can choose to play on the easiest setting, especially because many of the difficult settings are so deadly. When you play on an easier setting — and if you have lucky rolls, because that counts for a ton too — there are many ways you can use your good fortune to make change, or simply give a hand up to someone who has to play on a harder setting. Isn’t that what you’d do for a teammate who’s stuck on a more difficult setting while you’re on an easier one? Watch their back, give them a boost because they weren’t able to buy the “jump over the wall” level of Jump Power — stick around to help instead of racing ahead. Plus, these difficulty settings are created by ALL the players collectively, not by some godlike game designer or programmer outside the system! We’re the only ones who can change how a lot of this game works. We COULD make a world where everyone can pick their difficulty setting.
Finally, I want to say that although playing on a harder difficulty setting doesn’t come with any extrinsic rewards, the same is true in a lot of games — and it still can be worthwhile. I play with my difficulty setting and deal with the shifts and challenges because it’s who I am, and I wouldn’t erase that even if I could have a RESET button that lowered my difficulty level to the bottom. I’m proud of what I’ve gotten done in this life with the obstacles in my way, and I’m proud of other people who are in solidarity with me. I’m not saying we’re “better” or “more worthy” in any way — practically EVERYONE has bad rolls in one way or another, at one time or another, regardless of your difficulty level, and I want to be proud of all who struggle for better lives and a better world. But there are bands of us who have found ways to play with what we’ve been dealt — strategies and solidarities, jokes to lighten the mood, all of it — and that experience is it’s own reward. Being yourself is its own reward. Playing on the difficulty setting that shaped you, informed who you are, is its own reward.
If ever there was something that could be defined as “wrong”, this article fits it perfectly. Good job at being wrong random self-important internet blogger!
Sigh. Kilroy:
“I’ll admit that my viewpoint is somewhat skewed from my perspective as a lawyer, which is probably a field where diversity and affirmative action make a much larger difference than in other areas. But black female from a wealthy family with a 168 LSAT and 3.8 GPA is going to get admitted to Harvard for law school. White male from a wealthy family with exact same stats and other experience points (clubs, extracurriculara, etc.) is not going to get into Harvard, but will be pushed down probably out of the critical top 14 law schools.”
Do you not see that you are missing the core of the argument? That black female (and her parents) are playing on a much higher difficulty setting than the white male. The inherent structural racism and sexism in the country made it SO MUCH MORE difficult for her to achieve that 3.8 It made it so much more difficult for her family to acquire wealth. I don’t see how you have missed that aspect of the argument so completely. The black female was on a higher difficulty setting FROM BIRTH. Her difficulty setting didn’t start at age 22 when she decided to apply for law school. She had to work so much harder than the white male to get to the same place.
Also, as to your comment about “Off hand, can’t think of any success stories that start in a trailer park in Mississippi.” I think you are being willfully ignorant. How many white, male politicians do you hear proclaiming they were the “son of a mill worker” or the “son of a poor coal miner”? It happens ALL THE TIME. Don’t act like it is harder for poor whites than poor blacks. That is just total BS.
I understand why people get so angry and defensive about this. It feels like an attack. It took me until some time in my early- to mid-30s before I even started to grasp the concept. I remember always being angry, because I was an ally, so why was I getting shit or something inocuous I’d said.
This pointing out of privilege isn’t done to make people feel guilty (well, maybe some people do that, but Scalzi is most certainly not doing so here), it’s done to encourage you to consider the point of view of people with less privilege than you, to try to show why you shouldn’t dismiss their experiences out of hand.
My advice is, get angry about articles like this if you must, but try to keep the arguments in mind when you’re dealing with other people later. Try empathizing, not just assuming everyone’s involved in a zero sum game and any concession will weaken your position and contribute to your losing.
There, a white man mansplaining to other white men.
>> Telling me, as “The Pint” does above, that I should LISTEN and “don’t be an asshole” — pretty much assumes that I’m NOT listening and that I AM an asshole.>>
No, it doesn’t. No more than, say, those scanner things at bookstores and libraries assume that you’re a thief. What it assumes is that some people are thieves.
If the message is that SWMs should listen more and not be assholes, and you’re already doing that, then good. But being affronted because a generalized message is not tailored specifically to you is silly. If the shoe doesn’t fit, you don’t have to put it on. It’s there for people it does fit.
As a 6 foot tall, 200 pound, greying white straight male I can assure you that the main feature of the “easy” setting is that the rest of the world gives you a certain amount of respect when you walk into the room that they tend to not give other players on “harder” settings. There is an assumption, that I know what I am doing and/or if I fail I made a “honest” mistake. The “ref’s” are less likely to call fouls and assign penalties. So, the issue is what can we do about it??? First, what I try to do is make sure that I give others the same respect they give me and I second I actively confront others who treat those on the harder settings with less respect. I view it as an obligation for having been smart enough to figure out the game is rigged.
Amazing the contortions some of us will go through to avoid acknowledging the simple fact that if you’re in a position to make life a little fairer for someone else, that’s the thing to do. “But it isn’t in my interest…”…sheesh.
Louis CK says it shorter and better, alas: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG4f9zR5yzY
Ian Ironwood:
“Even the SWMs who go out of their way not to be flaming jerks get crucified, not understood and accepted.”
1. How awful it is to be prejudged by conditions you have no control over. If only others could possibly understand this pain.
2. Also: No. I find generally speaking when I get crucified, it’s not for going out of my not to to be a flaming jerk, it’s when I show my ass and then refuse to acknowledge the ass-showing.
Pat wrote: “That’s somewhat important, and it does affect how you play The Real World, but there’s a secret most people don’t realize: you earn *more* points as you experience life and *you get to choose where to allocate them*! So even though you don’t start out with much Wealth, you can choose to work hard and gain more! And if you meet someone weaker than you are, you get to choose to add Friendship/Protection or increase Bullying! And upgrading these stats has more of an impact on your eventual happiness than what you started out with.”
But you’re missing the more important contrary rule: starting with extra points puts you in a better position to acquire yet more points, and makes it easier to allocate the points you do receive in a way that benefits you in the long term.
For example, say Jay start Kindergarten with a mere +3 Reading (never learned the alphabet, dyslexia), while Kay starts off with +14 (already reading at a fourth grade level). Clearly Jay needs to be grinding on his Reading stat, while Kay should probably be focusing on something where she’s weaker. But without drastic intervention, Kay is going to be the one doing lots of reading, because it’s generally more fun to do something you’re very good at. Jay will avoid reading at every opportunity, perhaps even coming up with clever tricks for hiding his deficiency. So by the beginning of first grade, Jay might have earned one more point, while Kay might have earned another five.
Wealth is even more obvious. If Kay starts out with parents who are earning $300K/year, you can expect that they’ll have ample opportunities to save, invest, and make that money grow. So it’s very likely that Kay’s college education will be paid for. But Jay’s parents make $30K/year, and are stuck with a high mortgage because they needed to live in a certain area to give Jay access to a good reading intervention program. They’re constantly late with their bills (and getting hit with late fees as a result), they can’t afford Internet access (which makes it harder to do all sorts of things, including earn money).
So when Jay finally graduates from the Derek Zoolander School for Kids Who Can’t Read So Good, his parents really can’t assist him with college. While Kay is graduated debt free thanks to a grant from the First National Bank of Mom and Dad, earning money for a down payment on a house, Jay is loaded down with debt, working a part-time job, and still three years from graduating.
I speak from personal experience here: I spent perhaps five extra years in school and out of the professional job market because I wanted to graduate debt free, so I only took as many classes as my finances and work schedule would allow.
And social capital works fundamentally the same way. If you start out with poor people skills, you’re less likely to have opportunities to practice those skills. At best, you can hope to make friends with similarly deficient peers, but by definition they aren’t great role models. At some point, you’re very likely to give up on trying to interact with your peers in any way.
Points earn points. Only the best athletes in school are going to be invited to go to basketball camp. Only the kids who are good at chess will be attracted to the chess club. You have to have wealth before those with amazing investment opportunities will seek you out.
It’s very easy for people who started with lots and leveraged it into even more (Mitt Romney seems to think he got to where he is in life on his own). And it’s just as easy for those same people to think that the people who don’t do so well just suck at life.
Actually, one cannot change one’s sexual orientation. One can change how and whether one chooses to express it. Also, “trans” has effects whether one transitions or not: pre-transition (male presenting) trans women make about what cisgender women do, and their incomes go down even further after transition. The part that demonstrates this is clearly about sexism? Pre-transition (female presenting) trans men’s incomes _increase_ after transition. (This article summarizes the research article: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/25/before-that-sex-change-think-about-your-next-paycheck/ )
As another white male named Chuck standing at 6’6″, 300+ I can safely say the nail has been hit on the head. It’s easy being white. Anyone who says otherwise is an asshole.
RANDOM SELF-IMPORTANT INTERNET BLOGGER. I love this. I think you should own this, John.
Some of the players in the SWM difficulty are fond of using game hacks to skip levels and exploit code bugs. Scripting is very popular if your wealth stat is high enough… you can download a few that will send you through all the college levels while you go off to get more coffee, whatever, and when you come back you’ve collected all the badges and immediately get a token that takes you to the employment dungeon. And whenever the devs try to introduce re-balancing code to kill the hacks, a lot of SWM players complain that the devs are ruining the game.
@ Ian
“SWM no longer enjoy exclusive access to finance, the franchise, education, and a hundred other privileges that we used to have. Fair enough. But what argument do you have for asking us to work against our own self-interest? What other race/class combo are you asking to work against their best interests in order to make things “fair”?”
Why is sharing privileges with others working against your own self-interest? Isn’t is in your best interest to have a more level playing field, which would go a long way to ease tensions between various privileged and non-privileged groups? A more equitable society benefits EVERYONE involved, not just the privileged few who don’t want to share if it means “giving up an advantage.”
I’m paraphrasing from another explanation about privilege I read awhile ago, but I think the point is relevant here: “Those who have traditionally held societally-enshrined privileges realize that those privileges are in decline. They interpret this as persecution because privilege is all they have ever known. The defense of privilege is a defense of dominance and discrimination, but for those who benefit it’s a defense of their traditional way of life. But in a free society, such privileges are inappropriate.”
Great analogy. I think the problem with being in a specific demographic is that it is very hard to “experience” what is actually happening to other folks of other demographics. This dynamic creates a problem of perspective unless said demographic tries to immerse themselves into the challenges of other demographics or until an issue hits the mainstream that provides some needed context. Some will choose to ignore the implications or historical context of these mainstream issues.
We have such a mainstream issue hitting the airwaves right now with Gay Marriage. We keep hearing rich, married, white males tell the country how we cannot evaluate over a thousand years of tradition just because people ask them to. They then tie that “tradition” to religion in an effort to make it harder for folks that disagree to do so by relying on words like “sin”, “abomination”, and other rhetoric. Very reminicient of the issues of slavery and separate but equal. I bring this up because we have some folks right now playing the game at a harder difficulty setting getting slapped in the face just because they want the same consideration as everyone else in the U.S.
I think your article is very well timed Sclazi. Thanks for posting!
Chris writes:
How can I make the world better? I really want to know. I don’t want to play with loaded dice — but if what you’re saying is true, I don’t have any choice, do I? Nobody with a moral bone in his body wants to win because of an unfair advantage.
“Honey, you’re cute, that’s not fair. Your family is pretty well off, that’s not fair. You were born in America, that’s not fair. Darling, you had better get down on your knees and pray that things don’t start getting fair for you.” — P.J. O’Rourke to his daughter.
Actually, I think to a significant degree, people are generally willing to do well in life because of a better starting position, even moral ones. Parents give enormously of themselves for the very purpose of loading the dice for their offspring as much as humanly possible.
Catherine Shaffer:
I disagree! I am a PARTICULAR SELF-IMPORTANT INTERNET BLOGGER. So THERE.
Also: Is there another type of blogger besides an Internet blogger?
A more equitable society benefits EVERYONE involved, not just the privileged few who don’t want to share if it means “giving up an advantage.”
Indeed. But I have to say, I appreciate Ian being so straightforward. He’s fully aware that the situation is unfair and imbalanced to his benefit. And he’s willing to say, in public, “That’s okay. I got mine.”
Not everyone is okay with admitting their selfishnes so openly.
Also: Is there another type of blogger besides an Internet blogger?
Yes.. there is the Interweebs!* blogger.. namely yours truly
*Interweebs is a wholly owned trademark/copyright/subsidiary of DigitalAtheist Ink. Violaters WILL be prosecuted, or at least recieve a harsh stare from across the Interweebs!
A quick note directed at those upset about affirmative action policies that give black and Hispanic folks a leg-up over white folks (like Kilroy @ 1:24). Right now, in the college admissions game, white folks, as a result of those exact same policies, have a leg-up over Asians. See (http://chronicle.com/article/Asian-Americans-the-New-Jews/131729/): “According to the Princeton sociologist Thomas J. Espenshade, Asian-Americans need SAT scores about 140 points higher than white students—all other things being equal—to get into elite colleges.”
I think that article has a whole set of other issues, and I disagree with a lot of it, but I thought that one stat was interesting and worth calling out.
@raesh: I think when you start with wealth, it is automatically easier from birth. And a straight black female starting at birth from a wealthy female has an easier path than a straight white male starting from the same wealth. This is usually because affirmative action and diversity don’t actually help those that need the help, but tend to be of most benefit to the minorities that are already from upper middle class families.
Is there another type of blogger besides a self-important one? :)
It should also be noted, somehow, somewhere, that the Straight White Male setting also carries with it a 73% chance at inheriting the handicap of being designated a serial killer
I’m afraid you’ve been playing Life 1.0. The new version Life 2.0 has been adjusted to make straight white male just as hard or more difficult than the other classes. This is especially true if you start the game with the default Christian setting (SWCM). Consider:
– A SWCM that tries to stand up for his religious beliefs is ridiculed. Even though this country was founded by SWCM that wanted a place where they could be free to stand up for their religious beliefs.
– Non-SWCM that stand up for their beliefs are all protected by free speech laws, anti-hate laws, and more, nobody seems to care when a SWCM is mocked for their religion, but mock a non-SWCM for anything and you better hope you never need to run for public office or start a company.
– Non-SWCM that want to advertise, solicit, or promote their life style or ethnic pride are encouraged and allowed.
– SWCM that try to do the same are sued, ridiculed, and in some cases have their property vandalized.
– A non-SWM has an endless list of resources available to them that SWCM are forbidden to take advantage of:
— Minority-only scholarships (one example: http://tinyurl.com/3zxubyk),
— Laws that require colleges to admit a certain percentage of non-SWCM even if there are SWCM that are more qualified.
— Laws that create incentives for organizations to hire non-SWCM even if there are SWCM that are more qualified.
— Laws that give non-SWM incentives and grants when they start a business.
— Not only are none of these incentives available for SWM, if someone tried to start a SWM-only scholarship, legislative action, or grant program, they would be sued into oblivion by the ACLU.
I agree that Life 1.0 was lousy for non-SWM, and non-SWCM. But given all the resources and incentives available to them, I just can’t believe that Life 2.0 is any harder for non-SWM than it is for SWM.
You’re brilliant, you.
Also: really wish your blog’s comments came with a youtube-style like/dislike counter, so I could insert a “x straight white males have poor reading comprehension” comment here.
I’m… stuck thinking that it’s kind of a poorly-stated analogy, since it leaves social class to the side with a throwaway comment on wealth.
As it is, “Wealth is the god stat in that game; it’s so broken it’s not funny” wandered right through my head.
If he’d explained it as “lower class”, “middle class”, and “upper class” are three whole different games, and “straight white male” is the lowest difficulty setting on each one (and it’s a setting that makes character exports upwards between game easier), I’d be with him much more wholeheartedly.
@Kilroy Why this then? http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/us/01race.html
@MaryAnne Unfortunately the end result statistics don’t agree with your position.
Only 4% of the american population is asian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States#Race_and_ethnicity)
Yet nearly 33% of all PhD in STEM disciplines awarded in 2008 were to asians (http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf11320/)
Tom G:
“The new version Life 2.0 has been adjusted to make straight white male just as hard or more difficult than the other classes.”
You’re apparently playing a very early alpha build, Tom G. One that’s not likely to get past the development stage.
Also, your “victim” module seems not to be working nearly as well as you apparently seem to believe it is. Please file a bug report.
Everyone else:
As I’ve noted over at Twitter, there’s a whole lot of 101 going on around here. For those of you engaging in it, bless you. There’s a lot to do, apparently.
As one whose initial reaction to the word “privilege” was pretty much exactly what John describes in his post, I really appreciate this–and I’m not even a gamer.
I just can’t believe that Life 2.0 is any harder for non-SWM than it is for SWM
That would be a failure of imagination on your part I’m afraid.
Like the ‘war on Christmas’ and other made up things, this is most probably a selection effect based on the quests you’re undertaking and the Guild you’re hanging around with. If you try changing Guilds and spend a little more time talking to other NPCs you might discover that what you think is Life 2.0 is actually marketing hype from a rival game company and hasn’t been released yet and probably never will be.
Scalzi: I know, I know, expecting a Leftie to spell out facts, pay attention to statistics, make a good argument and all around deal with reality is too much. Much better lay out the convenient-to-the-leftist-powers-that-be mythology and dismiss or bully through mockery and intimidation those that actually ask pointed questions or bring up “inconvenient truths”.
Scorpius, I think you’re conflating “what I believe to be true” with facts. There’s a significant difference.
You nailed it, except you forgot to include disability in your levels..
This is magnificent. Thank you for writing this.
And “consciousness raising 101”? Could you be more of an un-self-aware parody of yourself?
Scorpius:
As you neither bring up pointed questions nor inconvenient truths, how would you know?
You do often attempt snark and make unsubstantiated assertions that you don’t bother to source, but that’s not the same thing, now, is it.
When you can bring something to the party other than tiresome reflexive spew, do let me know. But not on this thread, because three (four!) contentless comments is your limit, and you’re off it now.
For those who are asking now what. We know we are playing on easy, but what do you want us to do about it? James King brought something up earlier. Each of us is an NPC in the lives of everyone around us, and as such we actually SET the difficulty level of the game for everyone else. You want to make a difference then start examining your own life and behavior for ways that you treat Straight White Men differently from everyone else, and try resetting your defaults. The problem is that it is harder then you might think because the bias is so deeply ingrained in our culture that many people apply it completely unintentionally. Overt sexism/racism, etc. is relatively easy to fight, both in other people and in yourself. It is much more subtle stuff that really does the damage. Like this blog post about how women are not crazy, society just sets out to make us think we are. http://thecurrentconscience.com/blog/2011/09/12/a-message-to-women-from-a-man-you-are-not-%E2%80%9Ccrazy%E2%80%9D/. That is just one example (that came quickly to both mind and google), but it is the kind of thing that gets under the skin and really adds up over time. So you are playing on easy and you really want to make a difference, just remember that you are on of the characters handing out experience to other players, you can ignore their difficulty setting if you want to.
And, Kilroy, I have to add one more thing. You keep looking at this on the career / wealth axis, and saying rich black women have it easier. That’s just one axis. Sure, your hypothetical rich black woman might have a better chance at getting into law school and getting a good job and making partner after. (Right now, in this particular historical moment, when there are some companies and societies trying hard to level the career playing field.)
But she still has a way higher chance than your hypothetical rich white man of getting assaulted on the street, date-raped in college, beaten up by a boyfriend or husband, and/or killed by the same. Never mind the host of diseases she might get that research neglects because the smart money focuses on men’s health problems, the specific risks of pregnancy and childbirth, the specific mental issues that come with being a teenage girl in our society (anorexia and bulimia are endemic) etc. and so on. Career success is not the only measurement of ease in life, or of success.
I have a daughter and a son, both very small right now. They will both grow up smart, well-educated, relatively wealthy, and if they are lucky, healthy. But unless the world changes overnight (or possibly if we reinstitute the draft), I am likely to worry a lot more about my daughter’s safety in the next few decades.
Okay – Tom, let’s take this point by point.
” A SWCM that tries to stand up for his religious beliefs is ridiculed. Even though this country was founded by SWCM that wanted a place where they could be free to stand up for their religious beliefs.”
How many non-Christians are there in government? In what way are Christian’s ridiculed (No, not being able to oppress other people doesn’t count). This nation was founded by a lot of Deists, on a principle of secularism – which is to say religion doesn’t belong in government. Period.
“- Non-SWCM that stand up for their beliefs are all protected by free speech laws, anti-hate laws, and more, nobody seems to care when a SWCM is mocked for their religion, but mock a non-SWCM for anything and you better hope you never need to run for public office or start a company.”
See above. The fact that you are losing the ability to be more special doesn’t mean you’re oppressed. I get that you’re used to being above the fray, but coming down to the level with the rest of us isn’t oppression.
“- Non-SWCM that want to advertise, solicit, or promote their life style or ethnic pride are encouraged and allowed.”
Because Virginia just didn’t prevent a gay man from being a judge because he was gay – oh wait, they did. Also, see the NYC Mosque.
” SWCM that try to do the same are sued, ridiculed, and in some cases have their property vandalized.”
Well yes, if you want to advocate that other people are sub-human on the basis of color, creed, or orientation (or a laundry list of other things) you can’t really do that.
” A non-SWM has an endless list of resources available to them that SWCM are forbidden to take advantage of:
— Minority-only scholarships (one example: http://tinyurl.com/3zxubyk),
— Laws that require colleges to admit a certain percentage of non-SWCM even if there are SWCM that are more qualified.
— Laws that create incentives for organizations to hire non-SWCM even if there are SWCM that are more qualified.
— Laws that give non-SWM incentives and grants when they start a business.
– Not only are none of these incentives available for SWM, if someone tried to start a SWM-only scholarship, legislative action, or grant program, they would be sued into oblivion by the ACLU.”
All of these are to affect the fact that you already have those things. SCWM already *have* that leg up. What d you think legacy students are? Also your second point is a red herring – that’s illegal.
I’ve never read your blog prior to this post. This is a great metaphor. I plan on integrating it in my teaching, and I’ll credit you for it. Thank you.
Scorpius, a troll
Spits out non-sequitors
The ban-hammer falls
[Deleted because being a troll isn’t merit badge-worthy — JS]
This is the geekiest sociological discussion I’ve ever read. Well played, Scalzi.
My $.02: I think a lot of discomfort with the word ‘privilege’ has to do with the individualistic nature of American society. Guys don’t like the idea that we’ve been ‘given’ anything because it challenges the belief that we all pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. Our society is geared to make us uncomfortable with the idea that such privilege exists, even though it completely does.
Whether I’m (as a SWM) comfortable with having that described as privilege is irrelevant, because it doesn’t make it less true.
Ian wrote: “Has our lives as SWM gotten better since we began ditching our “privileges”? That’s arguable — and very much informed by our perspective. As SWMs. I think we’re going to need a far more compelling and intellectually honest argument than that before we can proceed any further.”
So, I’m supposed to make the “stop doing the things that make your life better at the expense of others” argument based entirely off of why it’s in your own best interests? Was it in the best interests of white American slaveowners to get rid of slavery? Is it in the best interests of straight couples to allow their special legal standing to also be conferred on gay couples? Is it in the best interests of the extremely wealthy to give more of their money to the poor? Was it in the interests of South African whites to ditch apartheid?
Or, in every case, is action spurred by empathy, shame, and fear of being a douchebag?
In case you haven’t been following the discussion, the point of nerfing the easy setting is NOT to make life better for the people on easy setting.
Note: several solutions to the above problem are being tested on the “Academia” PvP server (whose use is essentially mandatory for all new players). These solutions include radically different server configurations and a reversed difficulty curve. However, long-term SWM player use of this server is not advisable due to repeated documented bugs, including documented instances of moderator-approved anti-SWM instakills, an unmoderated and easily exploited kick system, kernel instruction corruption, privilege escalation exploits, and most worrisome, statistics showing gaps in achievement between players on different difficulty settings in spite of adjustments.
Which wouldn’t be a problem, except some QA testers think these are features, not bugs, and wish to see them applied to all servers in order to solve the difficulty curve issue described in the above report…
Tom, I was just quoting research on college admission, which I don’t think in dispute. You’re talking about Ph.D.’s granted in the sciences — that’s going to include foreign students, yes? Foreign students are just one factor that’s likely to lead to more Asians in the sciences. Massive parental pressure on young Asians in college to major in sciences is another. I could go on.
I actually totally understand why colleges might want to set the admissions bar higher for Asians than for whites. I’m just pointing out that they do, for those who might not be aware.
“You’re apparently playing a very early alpha build, Tom G. One that’s not likely to get past the development stage.”
Considering the current trends, I don’t see how you can believe that:
– Compare the rights of minorities 100 years ago, to 50 years ago, to today. Which way is that trend going, up or down?
– Compare the number of non-SWM PhD holders over that same time period, which way is that trend going?
– Likewise for political positions, business leadership, number of states that allowed gay marriage, etc…
It’s true that most current legislation favors the majority. Welcome to democracy, that’s how it works. If you want to minority viewpoints to dictate legislation than you’re either going to have to:
1. Work hard to become a leader (like Obama did)
2. Start your own country where you’re no longer the minority (like the pilgrims did)
3. Convince the majority that your ideas are better than traditional ones (like MLK did)
Sitting around and complaining about how unfair life has historically been a recipe for failure.
Um – our democracy explicitly protects the rights of the minority from the tyranny of that majority.
Compare the rights of minorities 100 years ago, to 50 years ago, to today. Which way is that trend going, up or down?
Hopefully up. Doesn’t change the central thesis one jot though,
Some things here. First, I think that Scalzi has come up with an excellent metaphor for the starting state of things. I could think of a few, slightly geekier ones that would be more applicable (such as rolling for stats in D&D without a reroll option), but it’s a good starting metaphor.
What it does not account for is a clear statement of tribal loyalties (which is just lazy, given how much of this is implemented on existing games. Scalzi, I’m doubting your console gaming cred here.)
Whichever tribe you belong to, you have a bonus in dealing with members of that tribe, and a penalty in dealing with members of other tribes. So SWM have a bonus in dealing with other SWM, but perhaps a negative chance of getting special treatment from GBF- they may feel he’s gotten enough of a break as it is. GBF may have a bonus in dealing with other GBF, who will work hard to give her a leg up, but a severe penalty in dealing with SWM. The tribal actions are remarkably similar. However, the size and influence of the tribe are not comparable. There are more SWMs, and more powerful SWMs, then there are GBFs. So there are more opportunities for SWMs to have an easy time than there are GBFs. At the same time, there are more SWMs, so they gain a lesser individual advantage all time. Yet the effects are cumulative, so they come out ahead.
Where this often goes wrong, is that we, as liberal, enlightened individuals, ask the SWMs to either remove themselves from the protection of the tribe (refuse to take benefits not accorded to others) or to work to collectively lower the influence of their tribe. (Benefit programs come out of taxes, etc) So we are asking them to work against their tribe, /at the same time/ as we are asking the other tribes to really unite and work for the interests of their tribe in the interests of solidarity.
And many of these things /are/ zero sum games. Affirmative action brings neither more seats to universities nor jobs to employers: it merely forces both to be more diverse, thus lowering the amount of slots available for SWM and making each individual’s chance of getting their desired goal less likely. They are being asked to work against their interests in the name of “fairness.”
I’m not a SWM, but I think if we’re going to have conversations about race with them, we need to acknowledge that.
Just because you’re on the easiest mode doesn’t mean that you won’t hit a ceiling once you get to a certain level. Just ’cause you’re on the easiest mode doesn’t mean that the grinding won’t get to you.
It just means you’ve got fewer mobs and they don’t inflict as much damage.
@Matt W: obviously, there are a lot of people that “absolutely do not rule out the possibility that African Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent. I could also obviously be convinced that by controlling for the right variables, we would see that they are, in fact, as intelligent as white people under the same circumstances. The fact is, some things are genetic. African Americans tend to have darker skin. Irish people are more likely to have red hair” – Crimson DNA.
As I said earlier, my view may be skewed by my profession and I’m open to the possibility. But I think starting wealth is a more important variable than starting race and race and minority status can be an advantage at certain levels.
@ Tom G. You’ve confused not being able to have your own way all the time with actual oppression.
“I just can’t believe that Life 2.0 is any harder for non-SWM than it is for SWM”
Then you’re not listening hard enough because countless people here have asserted that this is not the case. For example, just because the Civil Right Act was passed in 1964, racism still exists, and institutionalized racism still borks the playing field in many occupation fields/geographic regions for people who are not white. It’s 2012 and we’re STILL debating whether women have the right to control their own fertility instead of being treated as babymakers. The Violence Against Women Act hasn’t been renewed because the GOP objects to language in the renewal that extends to transgendered people, Native Americans and undocumented immigrants.
And THIS??
“- A SWCM that tries to stand up for his religious beliefs is ridiculed. Even though this country was founded by SWCM that wanted a place where they could be free to stand up for their religious beliefs.
– Non-SWCM that stand up for their beliefs are all protected by free speech laws, anti-hate laws, and more, nobody seems to care when a SWCM is mocked for their religion, but mock a non-SWCM for anything and you better hope you never need to run for public office or start a company.
– Non-SWCM that want to advertise, solicit, or promote their life style or ethnic pride are encouraged and allowed.
– SWCM that try to do the same are sued, ridiculed, and in some cases have their property vandalized.”
That’s not persecution, that’s a reflection of a reality in which SWCM aren’t being treated as a special protected class – privileged, one might say – as much as they used to be. It’s not being oppressed, it’s being treated in the exact same way non-SWCMs have traditionally been treated. It’s being made to share all the cookies in the jar with everyone, instead of doling them out when you feel like being magnanimous (and being angry at others for wanting their fair share when they should be satisfied with the pieces you’re willing to give them).
I’m just going to repeat from my earlier comment because apparently it can’t be repeated enough: Those who equate the decline of their privilege with persecution do so because it’s ALL THEY HAVE EVER KNOWN. They need to become conscious of their privileges and realize that in a free society, SUCH PRIVILEGES ARE INAPPROPRIATE.
Muse:
Don’t confuse him with facts!
Tom G:
“Considering the current trends, I don’t see how you can believe that”
It’s because your alpha build seems to be coded by paranoids who seem to believe that making life less institutionally biased for others means HORRIBLE HORRIBLE things for the people currently getting unearned advantages. Don’t think it’ll get out of play testing.
As a straight white female, I definitely understand the lower difficult setting analogy, and agree that it would be even less difficult had I been born male. This was very well explained and very intelligently discussed. For the most part. Though I admit that I mostly read the comments to see the smack downs… they’re really quite enjoyable.
@John Scalzi:
“I find generally speaking when I get crucified, it’s not for going out of my not to to be a flaming jerk, it’s when I show my ass and then refuse to acknowledge the ass-showing. ”
Funny story: know a dude, SWM, liberal, graduated from college and professional school, married a fellow professional, felt properly guilty about his SWM privilege (lowest difficulty settings) and set out to make up for that guilt and make the playing field more fair for everyone. In the process he gave up, voluntarily, a more lucrative career and time he would have preferred investing in a family to work for political and economic equality for women. Became a towering beacon of straight white male sensitivity for the entire community. Marched, voted, organized, agitated, used his Whiteness and Maleness for good, all the while being a devoted husband and respected (as well as a SWM can be) member of his fairly liberal community. He wanted to start a family, but his wife persuaded him to wait until they had better established themselves and struck a blow for justice before they settled down. He reluctantly agreed, but he agreed. And he put everything he had into it.
The moment his wife had an affair and started divorce proceedings, this towering pillar of virtue was abandoned by nearly every non-SWM friend he had. Women who he’d worked for on issues for years shunned him for no other reason than his wife had left him and he was therefore just another SWM asshole — despite any assholish behavior on his part. His wife just wasn’t attracted to him anymore, met someone, and when they split . . . well, she got the community (and their sympathy) in the divorce. The years of his working for the benefit of the community were forgotten, his service was discounted and ignored, even his presence at events of common interest with his wife were met with aggressive resistance. Once he had lost the non-SWM validation his wife provided, the rest of the community turned on him for no particular reason except his race, gender, and sexual preference. He was “them” after that. So “them” that he felt compelled to move thousands of miles away because the well was so poisoned against him.
Aw, poor white dude, I know.
I tell this to you for two reasons: first, the dude isn’t me, it’s a friend, and seeing a profoundly committed idealist run head-on into the realities of social interaction and get unjustly personally destroyed within the community he had such a long history defending and advancing was one of the saddest things I’ve ever witnessed. He didn’t show his ass. He didn’t make himself a flaming jerk. He quietly liquidated his assets and moved away, all the “good” he’d done with his Whiteness dismissed for no particularly good reason. They still talk crap about him, and the dude never did anything to warrant that kind of vitriol. Anecdotal? Certainly. But instructive.
And secondly because this man should have earned the respect of his community through doing as you and so many of your commenters has advocated — yet his reward wasn’t commiserate with what he sacrificed. He used his Whiteness for Good, and it got him exiled. Now he’s a lawyer who sues people for a living, not a social activist. He quit trying to make life fair, because all of his efforts to do so, every fiber of idealism he had, evaporated because of his gender, color, and sexual preference when the social situation changed. He considers himself “wiser” for the experience, and feels that he wasted a good chunk of his life attempting to make a system fair when it was ultimately he who was in the crosshairs.
I’m a SWM. I acknowledge the benefits. I also acknowledge the negatives, which can be substantial if you’re not very smart. I happen to be smart enough not to let the negatives get in the way . . . but I would be hard pressed to counsel my sons to casually adopt an attitude of masculine noblesse oblige in a society which will forever condemn them for the evils of their male ancestors despite anything they themselves do or do not do. Once you’re a SWM, you’re guilty. Of everything. Fair or not, you are going to be judged for that, and you need to learn to live with it . . . or quit playing a game where the other players call you a cheater for just being there, everyone wants you to forfeit your best advantages for the “benefit of the party”, and where even if you weren’t born a king, you’re going to be condemned as one for just looking like him.
Sure, “angry male whining” . . . so we’re dropping out. We’re marrying less, and when we do it’s later in life. We’re not taking jobs, nor promotions and we’re not going to grad school as much as we used to — why bother? More younger SWM are getting vasectomies, abandoning any serious attempt at starting a family, and seeing the world instead of becoming the responsible, guilt-ridden citizens they were intended to be. We’re “commitment-phobic” and “flaky” Guys who really just don’t care any more, because all of the impetus for us to care is tainted with unassailable guilt and no hope of respect for the future. And if everything we do and care about is tainted in the eyes of others, withdrawal and rejection are, really, the only sane options for a self-respecting SWM these days.
@Tad – likewise some people can’t play on any level :)
I’m afraid you’ve been playing Life 1.0. The new version Life 2.0 has been adjusted to make straight white male just as hard or more difficult than the other classes. This is especially true if you start the game with the default Christian setting (SWCM). Consider:
That should read as “Straight White “Alledged” “Christian” Male. Having been one of those in the past I’m able to say that just claiming you are “Christian” boosts the stats in your favor a lot more than you would believe.
– A SWCM that tries to stand up for his religious beliefs is ridiculed. Even though this country was founded by SWCM that wanted a place where they could be free to stand up for their religious beliefs.
First off… this country was not founded on such principles. If you will read the relevant documents–The Constitution and The Bible*–you will realize that one has nothing to do with the other. TTo quote Thomas Jefferson: “Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.”
Also: “What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not.” James Madison.
– Non-SWCM that stand up for their beliefs are all protected by free speech laws, anti-hate laws, and more, nobody seems to care when a SWCM is mocked for their religion, but mock a non-SWCM for anything and you better hope you never need to run for public office or start a company.
Amphigory at best, bullshit at most common. Try being a non-“christian” in this U.S. of A. and see what response you get. Atheists such as I are the most despised people around, never mind that we fight for our country or equal rights for everyone in it.
– Non-SWCM that want to advertise, solicit, or promote their life style or ethnic pride are encouraged and allowed.
“Christians” are allowed to promote their faith ad nauseum on billboards, in state constitutiona amendments (see recent NC stupidity on same sex unions), and by the very fact that I can’t travel more than five miles without stumbling over a “church”.
– SWCM that try to do the same are sued, ridiculed, and in some cases have their property vandalized.
Except that they get to do it every wher in public: see also: MLB, NFL, NASCAR, NBA, various and sundry governmental assemblies… Etc… ad naseum/ad infinitium
– A non-SWM has an endless list of resources available to them that SWCM are forbidden to take advantage of:
— Minority-only scholarships (one example: http://tinyurl.com/3zxubyk),
— Laws that require colleges to admit a certain percentage of non-SWCM even if there are SWCM that are more qualified.
— Laws that create incentives for organizations to hire non-SWCM even if there are SWCM that are more qualified.
— Laws that give non-SWM incentives and grants when they start a business.
awwwwwwwwwwww… someone “nerfed” the playing field and made things level. Tough shit. You are a SWM… you are suppsed to have hair one your Scrotum of Privilege… deal with it!
– Not only are none of these incentives available for SWM, if someone tried to start a SWM-only scholarship, legislative action, or grant program, they would be sued into oblivion by the ACLU.
See above as regards “Scrotum of Privilege”
I agree that Life 1.0 was lousy for non-SWM, and non-SWCM. But given all the resources and incentives available to them, I just can’t believe that Life 2.0 is any harder for non-SWM than it is for
Try actually talking to/interactin with people who are actually stuck with “Real Life 1.0”. It exists every where.. just because we currently have a non-SWM President does NOT mean that we have equality in any way/shape/form.
There’s a pretty (simple) way to deal with being a self-aware SWM and where to go from there: Don’t be bigoted, sexist, etc. Help those in need who were born into a more difficult position than you. Defend them from others if they need it, and don’t allow others to use their features they were born with against them. Play nicely with others and be openminded. Always be aware and don’t be a dick.
No, it won’t solve All The World’s Problems but it will go a long way from all the SWM’s who care little about those on a harder difficulty than themselves and refuse to believe others don’t have it harder than they do (nor care.) If you already fit these quota? Great. Keep doing it. Go further and try and encourage others to be openminded and helpful to others.
If me, a female nonheterosexual poor unemployed college student, can be openminded and still give to others who have it harder than me and open my heart to other’s need, it should be cake for ya’ll (unless you have literally no money and live in a box under the freeway – in which case you probably aren’t on the internet right now.)
I wonder if one part of the communication-difficulty here is that (either consciously or subconsciously) some people are playing what they see to be a zero-sum game and playing to win, and don’t see any personal advantage to leveling the playing field (and, in fact, can only believe that advantages for others are going to make it harder for them to “win”). As opposed to people who see an alternate way to “win” (like, say, a world where a bigger win is to raise everyone’s score above a certain threshold, instead of just a high score for one individual.) If you’re playing for the first place, high score in a game that ranks players, it’s going to be harder to see why you should share your advantages, or even why you should admit that you have any.
Just, you know, as a general point:
No one is mad at you personally for being a straight, white guy. Or virtually no one.
People might be mad at the sociological power of straight, white guys.
But very, very few people hate straight, white guys.
There are feminists who breathe more fire than I do, but as stats go, I’m definitely on the extreme leftist, feminist side, and neither I nor those I associate with are mad at straight, white guys for being straight, white guys.
Some of my best allies (note that I didn’t say friends, although that also applies) are straight, white men, including, on a practical level (since we blog together) Barry Deutsch, Jeff Fecke, and Richard Jeffrey Newman.
Excellent post. I’ve been giving a lot of thought to these issues and writing about them (specifically, on how to purge our own attitudes that contribute to racism/sexism/whateverism). You nailed it.
I cannot get along with this article. I’m a straight white male, and The Real Life has been anything but easy. I come from a single-parent home. My mom had very little money; my dad didn’t contribute a huge amount of money. I had very few toys. The only way I was able to afford college was because my mom was in a very bad car accident and sued the guy and won a sizeable sum of money. That didn’t do anything for her physical well-being, and she’s had back problems because of it for almost as long as I can remember.
Everything I’ve ever had in my life I’ve had to work for: house, car, etc. No special doors were every opened for me, unless I made the extra effort to force them open.
This isn’t to discount the difficulties that minorities face in social & economic advancement. But to put all SWMs into the same bucket denies the complexity that is modern life.
I’m pretty sure Senor Scalzi does not pretend to be covering every aspect of the issue he’s brought to light here regarding what is essentially a default setting in society. I would hope this kind of excellent, cogent post encourages further discussion of other aspects of the issue, such as using guilt as a motivator, class warfare, and populist rhetoric.
But all things considered, as a straight, white, male Christian Mormon, who is also pretty libertarian, I really agree with the fundamental points made here.
Sure, there’s plenty more to discuss, such as political will and who really benefits from legislation today, as well as the proper and appropriate role of government, but honestly, straight white males who argue against the historical precedents that support Scalzi’s point need to freaking well gain some humility.
geekyknitter says this too.
First step (for SWM types, or other easier difficulty levels): Recognize the game’s easier for you than it might be otherwise and that there’s nothing intrinsic in your deserving this. John’s post helps in doing this.
Second step: Take action, help others with a higher difficultly level get a leg up in the game. It’s more fun to play the game like that.
Third step: Recognize it’s only a game to those who are find it easy.
“Also: Is there another type of blogger besides an Internet blogger?”
Yes. They are the ones that blog on post-it notes on their bathroom walls. Comments are much more interesting, there.
Ian, I’m really bewildered by part of your position. You seem to think the world will care if SWM decide to not marry, or not have children. “Sure, “angry male whining” . . . so we’re dropping out. We’re marrying less, and when we do it’s later in life. We’re not taking jobs, nor promotions and we’re not going to grad school as much as we used to — why bother? More younger SWM are getting vasectomies, abandoning any serious attempt at starting a family, and seeing the world instead of becoming the responsible, guilt-ridden citizens they were intended to be.”
Dude, if that makes you happier, go for it. With my blessing. What’s the harm?
Dang, when I found myself a single parent, I knew it was to darned easy, even when everybody kept heaping praise on me.
Sarcasm aside, that was my standard answer.”I’m awhite male, the world is a white male world. This is not nearly as hard as it gets.”
My main problem is having someone say “Your life was an easier setting because you are a SWM.” You have not lived my life. You do not know what I have faced. You don’t know anything about me. My life has been as impacted by the choices of others as much as anyone else.
This is the problem when you try to look at any population and take that down to the level of the individual. I know there are ways to look at populations that are good when it comes to making policy and laws. I just feel that some of these conversations get out of hand when they get personal.
Maybe my life has been harder than yours, maybe it was easier. Why don’t we not judge each other. I am not going to claim I had not help, why don’t you not claim I had it easy.
I suspect that those using wealth as a distraction from the analogy either haven’t experienced the reality of not being SWM and/or have not experienced true poverty.
I grew up (in the southwest US) living below the UN’s definition of absolute poverty—in fact below the level of deprivation of basic human need for youths. I am now in the upper middle class of the US income bracket, which makes me richer than most people in the world. I am a SWM.
Many of my friends and family who did not have the SWM difficulty switch set for them are still stuck in the same (or nearly the same) situation into which they were born. In fact, most of the people I went to elementary school with (my family were the white minority in school) are either dead, strung out, or still living in the same conditions they were born to.
Research shows that, all things being equal, it is easier to stay in the class to which you were born. But all things being equal, it is significantly easier to advance to a higher class if you have the SWM switch set for you at the beginning of the game.
@Rachel Swirsky
“No one is mad at you personally for being a straight, white guy. Or virtually no one.”
I’ve been dragged over the coals repeatedly by “virtually no one” then, most of my life. There are indeed plenty of people who are pissed off with you just for being a straight white guy. But it doesn’t matter, because straight white guys have to sit there and take it, or they’re assholes — and then they really get the beat-down. But just being straight, male and white is enough for plenty of people to have a problem with you. And yes, they can get very, very personal.
Perhaps you don’t see it as personal because it isn’t directed at you.
Ian Ironwood:
“And if everything we do and care about is tainted in the eyes of others, withdrawal and rejection are, really, the only sane options for a self-respecting SWM these days.”
Yeeeeeeah, no. One, anecdote is not data, and you’re sharing anecdote. Two, what does any of this have to do with the fundamental thesis that “Straight White Male” is the easiest setting in life? As noted in the entry, “easiest setting” doesn’t mean “automatic win.”
It really does seem you’re upset that everyone does not treat you with the respect you feel is your due. And, well: Life is like that. Doesn’t mean that as a Straight White Male, your defaults aren’t still on the “easy” setting.
The analogy is excellent but imperfect on one point: the origin of the rules and the difficulty settings. These originate from the collective actions of all the players. How we each behave individually adds up to the entire rule set. Further, the game that we’re playing is like Nomic, where changing the rules is part of the gameplay.
The real question is: are you happy with the rules as they are? If you’re not then you can use some of your moves to help change the rules. That doesn’t mean changing laws as much as it means keeping your actions in line with the rules you want to have. How you act and how you treat people every day matters.
For my part, I have a fairly low difficulty setting, but I do my best to lower other people’s difficultly settings where I can.
And Daniel, “I cannot get along with this article. I’m a straight white male, and The Real Life has been anything but easy. I come from a single-parent home. My mom had very little money; my dad didn’t contribute a huge amount of money. I had very few toys. ”
Again, the point of the article was simply — if you were a gay black woman, born into the same circumstances as you were otherwise (single mom, not much money, etc.), your life would have been even harder than it was. Yes? That’s all the article is trying to say.
All right, a little more about me so you gain some context and so we can all bloody well accept that ‘straight, white male’ is a description of a person’s general status, not a description of their history or a whitewashing of their individual struggles in life.
I was raised as essentially an orphan in a hippy-founded fringe cult for the first 17 years of my life, whereupon I left. I then fought to join society and feel like I belonged. I found a place during my one year of public high school, then found another place a little while later. I paid for college, paid for travel, paid for cultural experiences here and abroad, and did so by working my @$$ off and making sacrifices. Married at 24, with 6 kids now (38 years old now), I’ve made mistakes that have screwed up my family, just like anyone else.
I’m unique, just like the rest of the straight white males, but I’m not unique in the area of my general status. Scalzi’s metaphor is very accurate. I have no doubt that my already challenging life would have been perceptibly harder had my general status not been what it is.
[Deleted for garden variety racism, misogyny and assholishness — JS]
“As noted in the entry, “easiest setting” doesn’t mean “automatic win.” ”
Is it possible to put that in big, bold letters? Because that seems to be a point that’s being missed repeatedly.
@tibbets
While the game is more difficult for anyone who chooses to play for the Vegan goals… It’s easier to stop being Vegan than stop being a Straight White Male.
—
Also I was going to quibble about if the difficulty-setting really applies globally… But I remembered that for the recent archived versions of Real-Life there have been large economically prosperous regions where Straight White Males have reaction-stats bonuses, and where if you were a Straight White Male, you would be able to cross the border without a great deal of scrutiny. Of course, some Straight White Male subclasses are easier than other Straight White Male subclasses, but they’re all easier than any other class.
Kilroy says: “Off hand, can’t think of any success stories that start in a trailer park in Mississippi.”
You’ve never heard the story of a successful white man who pulled himself up out of poverty and became a successful in Business, or sports or some other avenue in Life?
I can think of dozens off the top of my head, some of whom I know personally. (my Business partner: Rural Oregon born, trailer park living child of working class poverty and former marine for one. My rural Indiana born/povertystriken/foster-cared step dad who become a successful lawyer for another). Since you seemingly don’t have a wealth personal experience to draw upon, I’ll just point to two people off the top of my head:
Poor white kid becomes successful millionaire athlete:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_Huff
How about the founder of wallmart? Poor white kid from Rural America.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Walton#Early_life
This story happens all the time. If you don’t see it, its because you don’t want to, or are extremely sheltered or both. The Horatio Alger mythology is one that permeates American Culture, and there are literally too many “successful white males who were born into poverty but managed to escape it” to count. And before you say “that doesn’t happen to white people anymore” I’ll point you back at my business partner, who somehow managed to succeed and escape the trailer park, despite all that affirmative action out there.
It is a great post, am surprised I was able to follow it so well without sweating the fact that am not a video game player. I do take issue with the comment on Dr.Stephen Hawkins-despite his incredible physical challenges, he received the privileges of being a straight White Male-his disability only served to enhance his privileges. Source? His book on his life.
Reminds me of the story of the monk and the samurai. You know, the samurai asks the monk where is hell, and the monk insults him with a very base comment. The samurai is stunned, yet continues in hopes something was amiss in the communication. The samurai asks again and is met with another, even worse, comment. The samurai is mad now, and tells the monk to be careful what he says next, his hand upon his katana now. The monk offers yet another insult. Just as the samurai unsheathes his katana, the monk says, “Here is hell.” Oh, and the monk lives in the end.
“If you frame the, er, advantage debate around the idea that straight or white or male or cisgendered people always have to give things up, people who are all of those things aren’t going to be very keen.”
Well it’s true, ain’t it? It’s why people get their knickers in a knot over Title IX in sports – when you insist on parity it means that the previously advantaged group isn’t going to have as many open seats at the lunch counter as they used to. But I think you can simultaneously point out that they didn’t have some inherent right to those things in the first place: they were enjoying them at an advantaged rate.
As far as dealing with that negative reaction I think it makes sense to just say that living a moral life isn’t always easy. It would be simpler to just walk out of stores without paying for things, cut ahead of people in line, make deals we don’t have any intention of honoring, etc.
But living an ethical life has advantages as well, and not just being able to sleep at night. I feel the lack of diversity in my life working in the computer field, and when I have been at more diverse places it’s been a better environment in a lot of different ways. Applying to work at places that would only hire folks of my ilk might have meant less competition but some games aren’t worth winning.
Kilroy:
I’ll also note I lived in a trailer park when I was a teenager. True, in California, not Mississippi. Maybe getting that extra sun made a difference?
Daniel, in your rush to feel personally attacked by John’s metaphor, you seem to have missed the part where not all SWMs are, in fact, being lumped in the same bucket. In addition to the S, W and M categories, a number of other categories also randomly applied at birth (er, I mean, at character creation) that will affect the difficulty level- amount of wealth, socioeconomic status and education of parents, stability of childhood, absence or presence of disabilities, etc. No one denies that, and no one is trying to deny your skill at succeeding despite your difficulty setting, or tell you that you were just lucky, rather than worthy of your successes. Instead, you’re being asked to recognize that difficulty settings themselves are randomly applied, and that they significantly effect the game in ways that have nothing to do with the skill and determination of the player. You already recognize this from your own experiences, and can apply it to your interactions with others, making choices based on this recognition, rather than ignoring it.
@Jared: The details of my life are quite inconsequential… very well, where do I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink. He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical. Summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we’d make meat helmets. When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds- pretty standard really. At the age of twelve I received my first scribe. At the age of fourteen a Zoroastrian named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum… it’s breathtaking- I highly suggest you try it.
@John Scalzi
“As noted in the entry, “easiest setting” doesn’t mean “automatic win.””
If you will please educate the rest of the players on the server about this, that would go a long way towards fixing this bug. Apparently there are an overabundance of them who make just this assumption, and then attempt to incorporate that into their strategies. It’s making the system unstable enough where the game is getting more and more frustrating for said players, which could have a dramatic impact on the game’s long-term viability. While many in the Design department want to see this as a feature, not a bug, the fact is that without these particular players future versions are going to become increasingly unstable and, ultimately, unplayable. Unless the ultimate goal of the game is the elimination of this player class altogether, which certain design teams see as an eventual benefit, then a dramatic re-framing of the game in regards to the lowest possible difficulty setting must happen before further constructive development can be undertaken.
And yeah, it was anecdotal, not statistical. It was meant to be. Statistically, SWM are putting off marriage up to 10 years later — if at all — in response to their fallen estate. There are, apparently, elements of this game that are indeed zero-sum.
John,
I’ve been a longtime fan of your writing, both in books and blogging but this is great. I’ll be passing it around in the hopes of educating some of my geeky straight white male friends.
as metaphors go, this seems pretty clear and kids these days have all pretty much played some video game so”difficulty level” should be something they’re all familiar with. The metaphor also works in making it clear that the goal is to get everyone’s difficulty setting down to “easy”.
The problem I have with the term “privilege” is that privilege is commonly understood to refer to something that can be taken away, versus a right which should not be taken away. Driving is a privilege. Get caught driving drunk and the state can take your drivers license away. Things commonly described as “privilege” that a straight white male has are more often than not actually things that should not be taken away from straight white males to create equality, but rather should be granted to everyone. Straight white males usually dont have to worry about being stopped by the police for being straight, white, or male. But if that is a “privilege” then that implies it can be taken away, like a drivers license, to create equality. The goal, I would hope, is not to make straight white males subject to police profiling, but to end the practice of police profiling for everyone.
Most things called “privileges” arent things that ought be taken away to create equality. More often they refer to things that everyone should enjoy but some do not.
The “difficulty level” metaphor is way better in describing the problem and the etymology doesnt suggest the wrong solution. Everyone should start out on the “easy” level.
@Kilroy
Nice.
Damn, all this time I’ve been playing on the EASY setting? Shit, I must SUCK at this game.
Makes me wonder why more people don’t choose QUIT more often. Look, no one short of a sociopath thinks the playing field is even, but I think characterizations such as those in this article are not really helpful in the end, unless your goal is to have every straight white male feel guilty and self-loathsome. It’s patently absurd, like the Eddie Murphy “White Like Me” skit from SNL.
I love how this article comes out and is completely sexist… just because someone is of a particular sex, doesn’t make their life any easier or harder… Today’s society is a lot tougher for white males period, compared to 50 years ago.
Did Reddit’s /r/mensrights board link to this essay? I’m not going to step into that particular cesspool of cray-cray to find out.
In any event, they’re doing as good a job in displaying the issues the piece presented as the piece itself.
Easiest level for human player in “the game”: Wealthy, Intelligent, First World Country Citizen.
All other considerations are far behind.
Sean is trolling, right? or the metaphor… he has failed to grasp?
This would be interesting if someone factored in all the relevant variables and turned it into a real game. It might add some insight to the whole discussion and prove some arguments and disprove others. Years ago Yale did a study on the effects of having an economic advantage. They used Monopoly with players starting off with different amounts of money to illustrate the advantage it created. WIth our advanced game development capabilities, this essay could go to the next level.
Not only is this the best and easiest to understand metaphor on the subject of privilege, it might be the best metaphor ever
When having this conversation in the future, this will now be my default setting for trying to explain the concept of advantage to those who have no perception of having one
@JT Yeah, when I was 20 or so, I used to think simply offending someone was the same thing as making an actual point. It isn’t. You certainly CAN offend someone while making a point, but that’s incidental.
Pissing someone off can, (and often does), fill one with a sense of accomplishment, but the accomplishment is that you managed to push someones buttons. That you manipulated someone into getting emotional. Congrats, it’s usually not too difficult to do. The problem is when you confuse that with “being right”. Is denial of “being wrong” the ONLY POSSIBLE explanation of someone taking offense? Think about it.
Great discussion… one thought for those who claim that some person of color got a job or got into a university instead of a WSM who was “more qualified.”… What is it that makes you believe they were “more qualified?” When someone needs to pass a test to be qualified for a job or admission into a school, scoring higher on the test, doesn’t make the person “more qualified.” When I got my drivers license, I didn’t get a special license because I got a perfect score…. I qualified for a driver’s license. Its the same thing for admissions. Once you cross the qualified line you are qualified. They could draw lots if they wanted to for making selection or use any other criteria. Classic SWM thinking that one should not only pass the test that may or may not have anything to do with the job or ability to perform in school but that one should also be the BEST test taker…
Good think you tried to distance yourself from the word “privilege,” so as to not let the discussion be overrun with overly defensive “SWM” commentary.
This is a clever article about a lie (but I’m just so lucky and don’t know it!). It could have just as easily, and more accurately, been written with “wealth” or “class” as the difficulty level, and “race” and “sex” as stat points. But if your point is that “we white boys have it so easy”, then I suppose it’s easier to do it that way. Clever way of describing a stupid and untrue assertion.
oh, and the game metaphor really helps on on another important front: just because the game setting is “easy” doeant mean you will automatically win and doesnt mean that the random position on the map the computer puts you at, or the random supplies and skills the computer gives you at the beginning, cant make the game harder for you than for others.
Apparently this ‘Game’ has a lot of flaws, one major one is that in any RPG you have beliefs represented by sects, cults, religions, philosophies, gods… what have you. Followers of certain beliefs actually get bonuses and new abilities applied to a characters overall abilities… much like the profession they choose, provides them abilities and specialties that other characters only long for… Strictly speaking, if you are going to make it more “realistic”… you need to account for these in your game. Spouting platitudes in a made up game that is limited by the message you are trying to convey… really makes this a one sided issue, and hardly objective… and completely unrealistic. It really makes you sound like the guy that makes up new rules in Monopoly, when playing with their kid brother, just to get an advantage. Why dn’t you imagine these “Religious” additions, and maybe a few other items such as how the country compares to others in opportunity… and give bonuses for living in the USA. From what I read… at this point, this argument is not based on any real game theory or unbiased perspective. Seriously… if you simply added Budhism for example, the game would change quite dramatically… since their message is quite different: (i.e. ”A man once told the Buddha, ‘I want happiness’. The Buddha said remove the ‘I’ that’s ego, now remove the ‘want’ that’s desire, now all you are left with is, Happiness.”)…It sounds like maybe some budhist philosophy might make your character sheet… grow in some areas of thought that might help him succeed in his life. Heck, you might just be one of those that realizes happiness… right after they read that tidbit. If so, would your character be considered a winner in your RPG game?
<3
It seems a bit offensive to boil advantage and disadvantage down to simply Race, Sex and Orientation. I’m sorry, but there are plenty of other ways your can start out with an ‘advantage’ or a disadvantage in one area or the other, and your simplistic argument is offensive to those of us who have overcome significant challenges that don’t fit in your narrow definition of ‘easy’
@jlassenjlassen Nope, not trolling, just stating the obvious that is blatantly spattered all over this article.
@Scalzi: have to live in a trailer park to afford going to a high school with its own museum? I don’t think that fits the nature of the claim.
“Today’s society is a lot tougher for white males period, compared to 50 years ago”
Oh, thank goodness your comparison was time-based, because if you’d ended that with a comparison to any other group of people, I’d have been on the floor laughing at the absurdity.
However, I still think you’re wrong. 50 years ago, everyone had it harder. Sure, some people (actually, some straight white able bodied males with money and education, and a vanishingly small percentage of people with most of these traits) had it way easier than anyone else. This was because often, they were the only people allowed to play the game at all. But they were fewer and further between, even among people with the same characteristics, in particular with respect to the issues of money, education and able-bodiedness. 1962 was no picnic for the majority of people. The blessings heaped upon the few are now accessible to, if not the many, at least more, how is this a bad thing?
If you want to take the idea further I suggest reading:
Monday Original Content: Non-Western SF Roundtable (Part 1)
Original Content: Non-Western SF Roundtable (Part 2)
Where a round table of non-SWMs discuss the issues of writers who could well be SWMs writing about non-white non-western cultures and what implications it may have and how to in part 2 that shouldn’t stop you trying though passing it through someone of the culture you are writing about might not hurt.
They also address the ideas of the ‘universal’ using a great example of how white woman are used to sell cosmetics and what being white in that context may represent.
The problem with SWM default is that it’s viral automatically assumes that infecting everyone around it makes the world better like having a Starbucks and McDonalds everywhere you visit including the Arctic
Ian Ironwood:
Speak for yourself. I put off having a kid until I was 30 because
1) I wasn’t emotionally ready to support a kid in my 20s
2) I also had enough foresight to want a stable financial situation, and
3) my parents, school, and church weren’t stupid enough to teach me abstinence-only.[1]
4) I had my parents as a negative example of what happens if you have a kid too soon.
Might it be that people with more education are putting off having a kid until later in life?
[1] as a nerdy introvert, I had a preexisting advantage here.
>> And if everything we do and care about is tainted in the eyes of others, withdrawal and rejection are, really, the only sane options for a self-respecting SWM these days.>>
I could have sworn I heard someone say, “How awful it is to be prejudged by conditions you have no control over. If only others could possibly understand this pain.” Maybe just an echo.
Withdrawal and rejection are, presumably, your recommended strategies for everyone else, too, since they’re the only sane options you see for not being fulsomely appreciated for all one’s sterling qualities. But I can’t agree with your arrogation of the term “self-respecting.” I think there are plenty of self-respecting SWMs who disagree with your assessment of the sane options, just as there are plenty of self-respecting non-SWMs who’ve helped improve things for all by not assuming withdrawal and rejection are the only sane responses to tribulation.
@CJSF the proper term for QUIT is EXIT. And yes there are plenty of players who try to EXIT the game of LIFE. Som are stuck in “Program nor responding” and some hit CTRL/ALT/DEL. (no this isn’t some slam: as noted above… way above… I’ve had friends of all levels and one whit C/A/D a few times ’til he got it right/wrong).
As a SWM player, I long ago understood I’ve got it “good” even though I’m on the low end of SWM’dom.Better than being Cambodian drafted at 10 to fight in war-dom!. ;-)
“Today’s society is a lot tougher for white males period, compared to 50 years ago.”
All evidence to the contrary, I’m sure. Although if by “tougher” you mean “having to compete with non-SWMs on an increasingly more level playing field,” sure. Movement to a more equitable society isn’t a bad thing at all – unless you’re the type of person who doesn’t like to share.
Awesome, I have been trying top find a way to explain this to those who claim that they did it all on their own. This is a great place to start well done
Kilroy:
Some good schools have these things called “scholarships”.
Not much I could add to this post, and I’m afraid I don’t have time to read the whole comment thread (though I will later if I have time). I just wanted to make a quick observation, and I apologize if I’m repeating what’s already been said.
While there are plenty of straight white dudes who are oblivious to their privilege, I suspect many who have an allergic reaction to the term do so out of a misconception that it’s a form of indictment for catching a break, and most people naturally don’t care to be blamed for the circumstances, whether fortunate or unfortunate, of their birth. Which is why your metaphor is such an awesome way to describe privilege. Again, there are definitely straight white dudes who don’t realize they’ve caught a break in three categories, and still others who realize it but don’t care that others haven’t. And there are some non-straight non-white and/or non-dudes who do resent and/or blame those who caught those breaks.
But I firmly believe that most non-straight non-white and/or non-dudes simply resent that society gives people breaks for how they are born, and do not resent the existence of the straight white dudes or blame us for the circumstances of our birth. In most cases the bitterness that may infuse the word privilege is directed at the lottery itself, not its winners, and that can be confusing since the privilege itself is indeed ascribe to the winners.
@ John
Sorry I used the word privilege four times (technically five now) and, strictly speaking, did not follow your admonishment. If you decide that my comment does not add anything constructive to the debate, or is otherwise off-topic, I accept the business end of the Mallet without protest.
Spot on post, etc. I find it humerous that some SWM here question what we should do with our privaleged setting. There are many quotes such as “To whom much is given, much is expected” and “With great power comes great responsibility” to answer that question, but one reason I think this post is so spot on Right Now is because we are all living in a world entirely at the whims of Straight White Males. There are things that can be accomplished by one straight white male that entire societies of minorities can’t change. Civil Rights, Women’s Rights, The Bill of Rights, all of it was protested by throngs of people, but it wasn’t until a few Straight White Men did something about it that things changed. That should make me proud as a SWM, but it doesn’t because rights granted by Straight White Males can easily be voided, forgotten, or ignored with frightening ease by other SWMs.
And anyone who doesn’t believe SWM privilege exists needs to work as a male administrative assistant as I have for a decade. Many SWM admins either complain that they are mistaken as gay or that other men don’t respect them or they go to the opposite end and try to portray themselves as boundry-pushing pioneers in a female driven field. In actuality though I’ve seen women and minority men work very hard to get opportunities that I can get just by showing up to work one day in a tie. When female admins dress up for work they are criticized for using their looks to get ahead. When minority males dress up for work people think they have job interviews or something going on after work. When I dress up for work I’m congratulated on my initiative and people outside of the organization think I’m in management.
I’ve been thinking about all the guys asking, ‘okay, I acknowledge the unfairness, what do you expect me to do about it?’ And about my partner, Kevin, a SWM who was born into wealth and health too — he really got the easiest setting possible in a lot of ways. And he’s not particularly into social justice activism — he’s a mathematician, and an introvert, and he wants to spend the bulk of his days doing his work, getting paid well for it, and playing video games. That’s fine — he doesn’t have to dedicate his life to activism. But here are some of the things he does that do help the overall situation:
– in twenty years, I’ve never heard him make a racist or sexist joke or comment. And sure, he probably wouldn’t make them around me, his brown female partner (although some men wouldn’t hesitate), but his character is such that I’d be pretty shocked if I learned he had said anything like that. And I HAVE heard him (quietly, tactfully — sometimes even silently, but nonetheless effectively) making it clear he disapproves when others make that kind of comment.
– even though he was hesitant about taking on the labor and responsibility of child-rearing, once he became a father, he committed to doing his 50%. And sometimes he desperately wants a break. Often. Me too. We acknowledge to each other that small children are huge energy sucks, we hope it’ll get better soon, we try to spot each other through the roughest patches, and we keep aiming for a 50/50 partnership on childcare, despite the huge cultural weight that pushes him to do less, and me to do more.
– ditto housework, although Kev has a harder time with that. But he tries to do 50% there too, even to the extent of going along with me making up a chart that marked out exactly how long all the chores took, and dividing them up evenly.
– even though he makes twice what I do, he doesn’t act as if that gives him twice the household buying power; he understands and acknowledges that he’s gotten some big cultural bonuses on the salary front (both in getting access to his cushy job, and in what he gets paid for it). That doesn’t account for all the discrepancy — for one, he’s in the sciences, and I’m in humanities, and of course for a second, he may just be better than I am. But the cultural bonuses are there, and they’re real.
– he supports me when I’m doing social justice work, because he believes in the overall goal of a more fair and equitable society, with a level playing field for all. On a concrete level, that means extra childcare and housework sometimes, so that I can do this work, with less videogame playing for him.
– he supports my career, ditto. And my writing about sex, and being openly poly and bi, all of which could cost him, career-wise and society-wise.
– and on the rare occasions when it’s difficult for him to do the fair thing, Kev grits his teeth and does it anyway. For example, when our daughter was an infant, he had to go to a talk at the same time I was taking a class. He could have stayed home and skipped the talk, which would have been less socially awkward, but instead, he put her in the Bjorn and went to the lecture, figuring she would either sleep through it, disturbing no one, or if she woke up and got fussy, he could step out. He did that specifically because he knew there were women in the department who had this situation come up often, and he knew that if he, a man (and one more senior in the field), modeled this as professionally acceptable behavior, it would make life (and work) easier for the women.
A lot of these instances are very specific to our lives. But maybe they serve as a model for the kinds of ways a SWM can commit to social justice, on a daily and personal level, without taking up a life of activism.
(And of course, if you want to do more, you can be like John, and start this kind of conversation in your own communities, dedicating a goodly portion of your day (days) to managing it and keeping it civil.)
I love this analogy, thanks John!
From someone who is playing on the Hardcore setting, but has managed to accumulate all sorts of prizes and bonuses through kick-ass gaming, I think that what “EASY” players can do to even the field and make the game more fun for everyone are the same things that us Hardcore players do to help each other.
Vote, in every election, and do volunteer work on behalf of candidates that you support. Hold signs in the rain and go door to door with voter registration forms. Go to City Council meetings, read the minutes, and write letters. Instead of surfing the web, write to your Reps and Senators, county council-members. Pick a cause and send your political representatives a letter or email a day for a year, on a rotating roster.
Put your money where your mouth is, and not just to charity – spend your food dollars at businesses that are owned and operated by women and/or minorities, or businesses that have strict Social Responsibility standards. They are not hard to find; such business promote those standards proudly. Buy fair trade goods, as much as possible, and when it’s not possible, buy used or make your own. Invest your retirement savings into a Social Justice fund, not the Lawyers, Guns, and Money funds. If a company isn’t transparent about where they source or invest, they are probably not socially conscious.
Recycle and reuse. Volunteer at a food bank, shelter, or Adult Training program. Donate your old clothes to a charity that helps people re/enter the work force. Give your old sofa to a women’s shelter or community center. If you work in procurement or HR or sourcing, actively seek minority candidates/vendors/sources, and advocate within your company for justice and equity.
Make justice a habit, like putting on your seat-belt or wiping your ass.
Or don’t. But quite a few of the nifty prizes I’ve won in The Game have been the result of playing hard and helping other players. In my experience, it has been true that “a rising tide lifts all boats.”
/my $.02
Oh, this is perfect. And I note that there is -still- a lot of 101 going on in the comments, even on points that you made abundantly clear in the original post. Le sigh. There are none so blind as those who will not see…
The thing about Real Life (the worst MMO ever): there are a lot of multiplayer interaction options. If you’re playing easy mode, you may be upset when somebody else you like who is playing on a harder mode has problems. You may be upset when somebody disparages the challenges you experience in the game because your base setting is easier to begin with. You may ask, as I almost immediately saw one commenter asking, “What can I do about it?”
You can 1. LISTEN to people who are using more hardcore settings. Sometimes they know the rules better than you do, because they have to, and sometimes they’re just playing a more difficult game. 2. UNDERSTAND their point of view. You -can’t- play the game on their setting, but when you brag about how easy a boss fight was and they say that they couldn’t get it after months of attempts, don’t just dismiss them as being bad players; realize that they are facing challenges and difficulties that you have never seen or had to work against. 3. HELP them, when possible. There’s a lot of ways to do this; the obvious one is to throw money around–being on the default easy setting, you -will- be able to farm gold faster and more easily than those on other settings. But that isn’t always possible, or even helpful. Fortunately, there are a lot of other ways to help. If you see another player in a potentially difficult PVP situation (against town guards, say, who may be corrupt), just bring your easy mode on over and hang around. Watch. Listen. Pay attention. Write down names. Your mere presence as a Straight White Dude MAKES A DIFFERENCE, because the town guards will be on better behavior around you, and if something happens they will listen to you more readily than they will any other type of player.
Imagine that your Easy Mode setting is actually an aura that radiates for several feet (or yards, or -miles-, depending on how many points you’ve been able to shove into the Wealth stat) around your actual body. This has positive and negative consequences, which you can’t help, can’t stop, and can’t change. Learn to be aware of your White Straight Guy aura. Learn to see how it changes the behaviors of other people. And learn how to speak up when you see somebody who doesn’t have that aura being treated unjustly. Because your Straight White Guy Easy Mode Aura -makes your observations and participation more important-.
You may be thinking, “But I don’t see people who aren’t Straight White Guys being treated unjustly!” Actually, you’re constantly surrounded by it; you just don’t see it because -it’s not happening to you-. If you see anyone who isn’t a Straight White Guy, pay a little more attention, especially to their interactions with other Straight White Guys. Truly, honestly, just paying attention, listening, and understanding is a huge step forward in using your Easy Mode Aura to -help- others, instead of using it to brute force your way through the game at the expense of all the other players.
Easiest level for human player in “the game”: Wealthy, Intelligent, First World Country Citizen.
From the article: Imagine life here in the US — or indeed, pretty much anywhere in the Western world.
Excuse me, Tom G. I think you meant your second point (below)
2. Start your own country where you’re no longer the minority (like the pilgrims did)
To read:
2. Take over an existing country filled with non-white natives by eliminating, relocating, and shaming them, in order to repopulate it with SWMs.
@ThePint notes that “in a free society, such privileges are inappropriate.”
I think this idea, more than any other, is the problem with why there can be so little effective communication around this. Because essentially, it /is/ asking people to come down from one standard of living to another, lesser, (and often shitty) standard of living.
Anecdotal case in point. I would be playing on Hard difficulty level, personally, in Scalzi’s reckoning, but I happen to have another card, let’s call it a Merit, that I purchased with my points. It came hard earned, but it often acts as a cheat code in interactions. I’m not a cop, but it’s a good enough analogy, so I’ll go with that.
As a cop, my Hard difficulty level is often negated. When pulled over while driving by other cops, they often let me go, even though I’m starting on Hard. If I’m involved in a protest, and everyone gets arrested, I may be let go with a warning while other people spend the night in jail. If I get into a fight, my word will be believed. If I need a lawyer, the union of my fellow cops will likely find one for me. I do not run as high a risk as others of going to jail for a mistake. If I want to stop being a cop and look for a different job, when I am interviewing, people are more likely to hire me. Other cops go out of their way to help me when I’m having trouble. This means I am likely, on average, to lead a comfortable life. This means that I’m not going to suffer from my original Hard difficulty, because I have a magic cheat that gets me through.
I don’t want other people to suffer. In the things that are not zero-sum, I would like everyone to have them. I’d like everyone to be let go with a warning. Ideally, I’d like cops to stop writing traffic tickets at all. I’d like for there to be less petty annoyances that make life harder.
But I don’t want to lose my cheat code. In some ways, it’s because I’m starting off on Hard as it is, so if I lose my cheat code, I am immediately plunged into a very, very difficult life. I don’t want to start having to pay all of these tickets, or suffer consequences for laws I don’t believe in. I don’t want to have my own life get even worse.
Though the arguments here are all about SWM, following that chain of logic, it would seem that many here would argue that it is my moral duty to put aside my cheat code, because not everyone can have one. But I simply don’t understand why. I don’t understand why I would ever want to make it harder for myself and my children, simply so that other people might get ahead. It’s argued above that it is better for everyone if the playing field is completely leveled, but I’m not sure that is true. Where does the playing field sit when it’s completely leveled? What does that world look like? How expensive is that world?
Also, disagreeing with the assumption that being a single white male makes your life easier isn’t “trolling”, it’s “disagreeing” with how the metaphor is laid out. People ignore other factors when they claim white males have it easy, then whine when you point this out because you don’t get the metaphor’s accounting for other factors. But if you really believe that SWM’s have it easy due to factors over which they have no control, yet are so insidious as to propagate it, then there’s nothing I can say to convince any of you. You’ll see what you want to see.
John, in a thread as long as this, a convenient way to navigate is often to scroll down to the next green post and then see what it was replying to, since, hopefully, the author of the post is motivated to seek out the most insightful comments and respond to them.
Unfortunately, this methodology did not work well for me here, since you seem, despite your admonitions against troll feeding, only interested in responding to the trolls. This confuses me a bit – I know it can be fun to engage with trolls sometimes, but it doesn’t seem nearly worth the degradation in the quality of this thread.
There needs to be a Kickstarter campaign for this! Maybe as a mod for GTA?
not my fault I lucked into the easy setting, I’m tired of people giving me crap about my family heritage and albedo. you want to give crap, pick on people for having a dumb culture, you can change cultures, and some of them definitely raise your difficulty setting. This is why race is dumb and should be ignored. Anything beyond your control should be beyond notice. if you want to fight racism, first, jettison Race.
not my fault I lucked into the easy setting, I’m tired of people giving me crap about my family heritage and albedo. you want to give crap, pick on people for having a dumb culture, you can change cultures, and some of them definitely raise your difficulty setting. This is why race is dumb and should be ignored.
Let me see if I can paraphrase some of what I’m reading in the comments…
Original post: Indoor cats have an easier time of it than cats who live their whole lives outside.
Commenter A: As an indoor cat, I get my tail pulled by the three-year-old. How dare you say my life is easy!
Commenter B: Why do you hate indoor cats?
Commenter C: That might have been true in the past, but now all of the indoor cats are choosing to give up and get themselves fixed. Why do you keep marking your own kind with a pungent spray of guilt and loathing?
Commenter D: I know this one dude who taped bacon to his cat. You see? Indoor cats have it just as rough as the outdoor cats…
#
Catsplaining aside, it’s been pointed out many times that the fact that you belong to a group that, statistically speaking, has certain advantages over other groups does not mean that your life is therefore easy or wonderful or completely without struggle. Likewise, the fact that your life has been challenging doesn’t mean you do not have certain unearned advantages over people in other groups.
I like how being told you aren’t inherently better than anyone else is somehow being “given crap”.
Easiest level for human player in “the game”: Wealthy, Intelligent, First World Country Citizen.
False dichotomy in my opinion. It’s an attempt to say we’re all better off than other people so that people with a good reason to whinge shouldn’t. Doesn’t alter the central premise one bit.
This is so very well said. I am glad you appreciate that for some reason white male nerds seem to think they don’t have to own their privilege, and just because they might have got teased in high school doesn’t mean they don’t have to acknowledge that racism/sexism/able-ism are a thing.
@Kevin
I was speaking for myself — Mrs. Ironwood and I waited until our late 20s-early 30s. The problem with my friend’s case is that his wife (another activist) wanted to put off kids until the couple were in their late 30s, early 40s, well-settled in their careers. So my friend took a low-paying job doing public advocacy to fulfill his wife’s noble requirements — and then she got a case of baby-rabies and jumped ship for the first well-off Alpha who showed her interest. I’m not arguing that they needed to jump into having a kid right out of college, but the fact is waiting (for a woman) until your late 30s/early 40s dramatically decreases her ability to conceive and carry, and her insistence on his career direction (she had even more guilt about race and class than he did) put him in a completely untenable position. Like all too many Beta dudes out there, he believed that if he made proper atonement for his Lowest Difficult Setting while doing what his wife told him and being properly contrite for his gender and race, then people (and his wife) would Like Him more . . . but when the feces hit the fan, it was so much easier to write him off as another pathetic, entitled SWM than it was to face her infidelity and ask her to take responsibility for messing up the relationship. I overheard her complaining, during the depths of the divorce, that he had never been really committed to their ideals, and that he was incapable of ever doing so based on his background — despite the fact she came from a more privileged background than he. He was a dude. He was expendable.
Sure, it was a massive rationalization on her role in the relationship, but no one got hurt, so it was okay. Oh, no one but him. He doesn’t count.
And that’s why you might feel a little defensiveness from some SWMs out there. We kept getting told how much better things will be if we just quit being so . . . SWMy, but the fact is, things never do get better. And when we do make the effort, its largely unappreciated because in the minds of the non-SWMs, we just don’t count.
At just what point is it permissible for a SWM to stand up for himself and his interests anymore without being accused of being an asshole?
>> But it doesn’t matter, because straight white guys have to sit there and take it, or they’re assholes — and then they really get the beat-down. But just being straight, male and white is enough for plenty of people to have a problem with you. And yes, they can get very, very personal.>>
I’ve rarely seen so unaware a statement. You’re complaining that unless you “sit there and take it” you’ll be treated like someone “uppity.” Except your idea of a beatdown isn’t lynching or rape or murder, it’s that people might not be friends with you.
As if no one else in the world knows what it’s like for their sex or ethnicity or sexual orientation to be seen as a problem, and have it be very personal.
Wake up. Even with the agony you’re going through what with your friend not being loved for his nobility, that’s STILL better off than the kind of prejudice the non-straight, the non-white and the non-male face.
ugh… mucked up the tag. Sorry.
For the SWMs who are arguing against the concept of privilege: Ask yourself would you rather be black? Would you rather be a woman? Do you think your life would be easier if you weren’t a SWM in America?
Kilroy:
When I went to that school with the museum, my mother was making rather less than it cost to attend. I was fortunate to attend, which is in fact rather to my initial point.
Sean:
“Today’s society is a lot tougher for white males period, compared to 50 years ago.”
Which is a point, even if it were generally true, that contradicts absolutely nothing in the original entry, but rather points out how stacked the deck was in 1962 to the advantage of straight white males.
The rest of your post is just ridiculous spew.
Generally:
It does seem rather a lot of the complaints about the post here in the comments are from people who did not read the post or did not read it particularly well, since many of the issues are either addressed directly in the post or are completely aside from it. It’s not too much to ask for a close read before commenting.
The essay is fantastic, but what blows my mind more thoroughly is your (Scalzi’s) dedication to the conversation in moderating and replying to all the comments, and in so doing giving up a lot of your time. Bravo, John.
So instead of invoking “privilege” you create a simplistic analogy to World of Warcraft, based on the conceit that young and straight white men are so shallow, narrow-minded and generally stupid that they cannot comprehend – let alone engage – your point of view unless it is explained in video game terminology. All you’ve done is showcase your own conceit.
@Kilroy, what you’re missing with your worry about the black woman and white man with the same LSAT and GPA is how many extra hurdles were likely put in the way of the black woman to achieve those scores. And that doesn’t mean that the white man didn’t have hurdles to overcome. We all do. Just that chances are high that the black woman had more. Yes, even though she was born rich.
Money doesn’t buy your way out of racism and sexism, I’m afraid- or if it does, I have yet to figure out how. I have heaps more money now than I did in college, and I am still on the receiving end of sexist crap.
And +1000 or so to @Rowan Badger’s post. It is awesome. Particularly the last line: “we’ll be equal AND happier if those with privilege work to unlock that easier difficulty for everyone instead.”
I’m a straight white female born middle class is a place with decent public schools and to a family that didn’t screw me up. My character in this game started at a fairly easy level. That doesn’t detract from what I’ve achieved- my kids are getting to start at an even easier level, and like most parents, I’m doing everything I can to set their characters up to do well in this game.
But I’m also doing what I can to make accidents of birth less relevant in character set up, and I plan to teach my children to recognize the advantages we pre-loaded their characters with, so that maybe they, too, will grow up to try to fix this problem.
And I try to really listen when people explain how my experiences aren’t relevant to them because they are playing at a harder level. Not because I want to feel guilty or bad, but because I want to figure out how we can extend the benefits I’ve had to more people, and the only way I can see to figure that out is to listen to the people who haven’t had those benefits.
Unfortunately, this methodology did not work well for me here, since you seem, despite your admonitions against troll feeding, only interested in responding to the trolls. This confuses me a bit – I know it can be fun to engage with trolls sometimes, but it doesn’t seem nearly worth the degradation in the quality of this thread.
Wait, you mean that he’s letting the conversation run without interfering with it? And is stepping in so it doesn’t get derailed by morons? How annoying of him!
or (alternatively)
You’re confessing that don’t actually want to read the entire thread and complaining that the Cliff Notes aren’t immediately being provided for you?
Scalzi, have you read Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse?
That as an upper-class 6’4″ athletic straight white male I started play with the “easy” settings I understand. I can understand that other players want to blame me for my luck. (This is a good metaphor, Scalzi.) Some of the other settings I had were more difficult. Life’s tough, I got on with it, won some, lost some, some got rained out.
What I do not understand is how frequently when I tried to reach out and help someone playing other settings, I got active hostility for asking if I could help. There’s a training effect there that some of the more extreme players should take note of.
Meanwhile, I’m of an age and had enough of my corners knocked off that I’ve wandered over to the corner of the field. I’m going to sit in the sun, sipping my adult beverage of choice, and I’m going to watch you folk try to do better than we did. So far, things not looking too good, you seem to have missed some of the basic math and econ classes.
As far as the word itself, I think this use is intentionally intended to provoke controversy. “Boon”, to my ear, is closer to the meaning desired. As the laws change (as opposed to custom or practice), we are indeed becoming a society of (word), and I think that’s sad.
>> I’ll also note I lived in a trailer park when I was a teenager. True, in California, not Mississippi. Maybe getting that extra sun made a difference?>>
My parents lived in a trailer home early on in their marriage, but my father managed to work his way up from refrigerator repairman to corporate VP of a tech firm, and his kids all did pretty well. That was Massachusetts, so the sunshine ratio was doubtlessly different.
“But what can I do?”
– Buy and read at least as many works of fiction by people who are not straight white men as you do works by SWMs.
– Listen rather than waiting to talk, and don’t interrupt people.
– If you live with other people, figure out how many hours per week are spent on housework in your household, and readjust your schedule so that you’re doing at least your share of it. Make sure to count executive tasks, like keeping track of what’s in the pantry and whether the kids have enough clean socks, towards the total.
– Practice the phrase, “Dude, not cool.” Trot it out whenever a fellow SWM says something homophobic, racist, sexist, or expresses other bigotry.
– Consider the possibility that the non-SWM who is “crucifying you” because you’re a straight white guy is, in fact, speaking to you very calmly about something you *did* or something you *said,* not what you are. Consider the possibility that, in fact, they’ve understated their case because you react to criticism from non-SWMs by throwing tantrums about how you’re being HORRIBLY HORRIBLY ATTACKED.
Already doing some or all of this? Here, have a cookie.
Love this!
@ Mary Anne – Why that just sounds so…. so… reasonable! Seriously though, I think that you illustrated a very important point about creating a more equitable society: it’s not just activism that helps to create that better world, it’s the little choices we make as individuals within our relationships with others – family, friends, co-workers, etc. – that advance the changes we want to make. And it takes away the excuse of “Well, I don’t have time to be an activist or the ability to make a big statement, so why bother trying?” EVERY level of effort contributes to the overall move for change, even if it doesn’t come as fast or as noticeable as we’d like.
@jackiegamber A fair point.
@scalzi I still don’t understand why think 2.0 “isn’t going to come out of play testing” as you put it. Historically, large scale socio-political trends in the US have continued to grow rather than the contrary.
Back when we played D&D, choosing Human as your race gave you the best all-round chance of success with the most amount of character types. It didn’t mean you would be the biggest badass around, but gave you the most freedom to choose. I think being any one of straight, white or male gives us a boost but a combination all three provides the best opportunity for success.
So the word isn’t really privilege, it’s opportunity. And in our capitalist-based western society, it’s all about opportunity isn’t it?
Great piece. I especially love this part:
“It’s certainly possible someone playing at a higher difficulty setting is progressing more quickly than you are, because they had more points initially given to them by the computer and/or their highest stats are wealth, intelligence and constitution and/or simply because they play the game better than you do. It doesn’t change the fact you are still playing on the lowest difficulty setting.”
I like to say that privilege isn’t when you get sent to the front of the line; it’s when other people are sent to the back of the line. But your video game analogy is more thorough and lively. Again, great job.
You should have said that you got the idea for this article from a Cracked article from the beginning, now that would really get the attention of straight white guys.
This is not going to be a helpful way of explaining this to anyone who does not agree with you. This is still attacking straight white men for being straight white men. Choosing to play video games on the easy setting is generally looked down upon by people who you would try to use this metaphor to explain your idea to. So to them you are basically saying “you CHOSE the easy way to play, what a n00b”, they will take this as an attack and will respond as such. As a straight white man I know that I have it easier than basically everyone else, but these sorts of blog posts make it very hard for me, and anyone else who tries, to have actual productive conversations with other straight white men who do not think that they have it easy. These sorts of posts are a big problem, and if your goal is actually to have a conversation in which you can actually explain or even convince a straight white man that he has a lot of advantages these sorts of posts are your worst enemy. I have been shot down in my attempt to have conversations on this issue with straight white men because of posts like this which make them feel as though anyone who is a feminist or “liberal” is directly assaulting their manhood. So please try to think of a way to express these ideas in a way that is not an attack. It is possible to do this, and if we can focus on ways to talk to people in a way that does not make them feel like they are being attacked then we will have a lot more success in these dialogues.
John: best birthday present ever. :-)
Ian, earthdog7900, et alia: so check it, the thing is, first of all, nobody’s saying “your life is easier than mine because you are a straight, white, able-bodied, Protestant, male American citizen with a credit card” (go ahead and add or subtract other variables as you think of them); they’re (we’re) saying, “your life now is easier than YOUR LIFE would have been if you had subtracted any of those variables”. See?
Secondly: you can’t ditch your Words We’re Not Saying. Sorry. That’s where liberal guilt comes from. If you can choose not to have it, then someone else can choose to have it, and choice is not involved in un-earned advantages. That’s actually why my downlist variables there are weaker than the original ones – you can choose to shoot yourself in the foot and thus render yourself a person with a disability; but short of trying to avoid the draft, what person in the world would do such a thing just for the purpose of faux-leveling the playing field? What you can do is become and remain aware, educate others, and not bitch when you have to stand for eight blocks on a kneeling bus it took someone in a wheelchair five minutes even to board right after you bounded up the steps two at a time.
signed,
+S,W, Am. cit., native English speaker, able-bodied, educated, good credit; -F, religious minority, more than 30 pounds overweight
Todd DuBois:
As someone who plays video games, has critiqued video games and is currently writing a video game: Using a video game metaphor implies the audience for it is shallow, narrow-minded and generally stupid? Fuck you.
While I like the metaphor, I think the the Easy / Medium / Hard difficulty makes things a bit too simplistic. It’s more like, there are three difficulty settings, and a bunch of gameplay options, none of which we are able to change once the game begins. Some of those gameplay options may make the “Hard” setting actually easier than the “Medium,” depending on which you get.
Yes, Hawking is at a “harder” setting given his disease. But he’s also a mathematical genius. (I’m not saying he didn’t have to work very hard to get where he is––he most certainly did.) No matter how hard I might work, I will never understand Black Holes in the way he does. I simply do not possess the brain for it.
My father has a photographic memory, which, sadly, did not get passed along to me. This makes the Latin class I am currently taking much harder than it would otherwise be. This is something I just have to live with. Instead of wallowing over it, I just have to accept it and take advantage of what was passed to me.
If you will allow me to quote Don Draper: we are not always able to choose where our talents lie.
We *all* have “loaded dice” in some form or another. The questions then become:
1. How do I use *my* loaded dice to both my and society’s benefit, without harming others?
2. Not all loaded dice are created equal, obviously. How do we “fix” this without creating a Harrison Bergeron-like future?
damienk, I’ve never been told that I ‘was’ better than anyone else. The Crap I was referring to was people belittling me for the world as i found it. I did nothing to cause history, I like everyone else did the best I could with the world I was born into. I wasn’t poor nor did I have a silver spoon. the main racists I run into say they are fighting for equality. I’m annoyed by the presumption of racism and evil I live under. It’s not as bad as others but still annoying.
Tom G: your assertion is based on a “large scale socio-political trend” that does not exist. Or, to not dismiss you out of hand, does not exist as you define it. The large scale socio-political trend in the US that we are working toward, and want to see more of, is that the difficulty settings go down for all people, that the cheat codes are accessible to more people, and that those with advantages work to ensure that they aren’t denying others access to the places those advantages take them. If you see expansion of rights and benefits to all as reduction of your own, then I suppose you could argue that things are getting worse. But that’s a pretty untenable way to look at the world, which consists of so, so many more individuals than yourself, all of whom are playing the game, and all of whom deserve the chance to win. Right along with you, not instead of you.
“At just what point is it permissible for a SWM to stand up for himself and his interests anymore without being accused of being an asshole?”
It’s pretty easy, actually – standing up for one’s self and one’s interests doesn’t always have to entail being an asshole. Approaching a discussion with compassion and empathy for those who haven’t had the same advantages (both earned and unearned) as you and being willing to listen with an open mind also helps. But generally speaking, if doing so translates into any variation of “Why should I have share with anyone, I have mine so screw the rest of you, you’re just all whining,” it’s a pretty decent bet you’re actually being an asshole.
[Deleted for trollage — JS]
@iiii
I agree with most of your post (especially the “Dude, not cool!”) on what can be done, but just have to say that I think the first bullet, “Buy and read at least as many works of fiction by people who are not straight white men as you do works by SWMs.” is one of the ones that frustrates a lot of people, even ones who /aren’t/ SWMs.
I’m 3 for 3 on “not a SWM,” but I /hate/ being told that it’s my duty somehow, if I want to make things better or fairer, to change my consumption habits to actively make my sad, just to “fight the good fight.” I generally have no idea the race or sexual identity of the authors that I read. I know the sex only by the gendering of the first name. Neither is what I look for. I read the back covers. I read books recommended to me by friends. I read other books by writers that I like.
Some time ago, I was hit by the consciousness stick and actively tried to seek out writers that were not SW, or whose protagonists were not SW. (Reading a lot of fantasy meant my shelves at least were roughly equally gendered) I even asked people who were in the front lines of all this stuff who I should be reading. I went and bought it, and read it, and realized that I hated it, almost to a man. I don’t think it had anything to do with sexuality or race-based quality of literature, but just that books I was recommended specifically for race and sexuality were less likely to be good than books I was recommended solely on the basis of quality.
Do I know that there’s a lot of stuff that goes into those recommendations, and who’s promoted, and who’s published, and what’s published? Absolutely. But at the same time, I want to read high quality literature much more than I want to spend money solely to support a racial and sexual diversity in authors. And I think it’s hard when myself and people like me get blamed for this choice.
As someone who passes for “straight white male,” I prefer the term, “lucky bastard,” over privileged. But this might be my STM part niggling over details. Regardless, I think the metaphor used in this article is spot on.
Yes, having people assume things about you because of your race IS annoying isn’t it?
I’m into practical solutions. How do we fix this? How do we eliminate racism without engaging in racism?
The Pint @ 2:44 pm:
THIS. It seems like half of the people disagreeing haven’t carefully read the damn essay (as opposed to skimming it for a point or two that you can quote in your vociferous knee-jerk disagreement). Perhaps someone should invent a WordPress plug-in that requires readers to take a short reading comprehension quiz before being allowed to post comments.
Also, several people here have called Scalzi a liberal. Now, there’s nothing wrong with being a liberal—I consider myself a liberal—but I don’t think Scalzi has ever identified himself as one. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
[Deleted because That Guy is a homophobic moron — JS]
I have this reflexive reflex when someone tells me “You’re a white man, you had it easy.” ’cause I grew up in an area where, actually, being white was a disadvantage, in a lot of ways. How dare you repress me, I grew up on the mean streets, yadda yadda yadda.
But as I’ve matured, I’ve come to realize it’s wrong. That doesn’t make it go away. But it does mean I try to think about it before I react to it.
The video game metaphor is a rather good one.
Ian – you’re sounding a lot like a you’re taking arguments out of the MRA/PUA camp. This does not speak well.
Thank you so much for this. I hope it is ok if I sometimes borrow this for my intro applied ethics courses. I think my students would engage with this in a way that they often don’t when I use more familiar starting line/race analogy, in large part not just because this analogy may be more familiar to them, but because it is more nuanced and allows for more fiddling with the details to get at different aspects of a big problem.
Damienk, Sure is. Why are the most racist people I meet proclaiming that they are working for equality and justice? I sometimes wonder if they are trying to continue racial inequality just so that they can keep their jobs. Activist groups often become what they hate.
Lots of comments here, and I didn’t read through them all, but I wanted to make the following points in response to Scalzi’s excellent article. (I apologize if I repeat anything above.)
1. Based on your point of view, the difficulty setting of life is most impacted not by gender, race and sexual orientation, but simply by the country and circumstances into which an individual is born. For example, it is quite conceivable that a gay black female born in the USA would have an easier setting than a straight white male born in a rural area of Russia. Now, if birth country is always the same, then absolutely the straight white male has the easiest time of it.
Of course, my statement comes with a natural caveat: most straight “white” males are born in western cultures with the very best of the ample opportunities. The “cultural bonus” granted by life is almost always included as a free upgrade when you are born as a straight white male. If you are not, then receiving the “cultural bonus” as an upgrade is granted to only 5% or so, because straight white males take up so many of those particular “bonuses”.
Still, one cannot discount the role that country plays in the relative difficulty of life. However, I am sure there are some simple farmers in Thailand who would argue that their lives are much more balanced than anything this “priviledged” straight white male could ever conceive. Lesson: be a simple kind of man (or woman).
2. Another bonus category would be “Christian”. I did read a few people going on above about how bad this country is for Christians and other religious groups. Uniformed is the only word I can use to describe people with that conception. If you have the bonus of “Christian” (be it Protestant, Catholic, heck, even Mormon), you automatically have it easier than most other straight white males. It is estimably permissable to be “Christian” in Western cultures. The title comes with its own set of basic upgrades, that others would have to work toward.
The best example I can give for this is the fact that most USA politicians classify themselves as “Christian”. If you are not “Christian”, you have a real uphill battle to be elected in just about any Southern state and in my hometown Ohio. My friend recently ran for city council. He has a PhD in political science, is a professor at the University of Akron, was appointed to a criminal justice committee by the governor, and is a family man with two kids. He was running against a kid with a high school diploma who lives with his parents. Do you know what question most of the good citizens of Stow asked him? “Are you a Christian?” Not: “What are your religious beliefs?” It was: “Are you a Christian?”
How telling is that? His opponent was a Christian, and yes, his opponent won the election.
Is it really an advantage to be male? Because my impression is that being female gives you plenty of privileges.
People, especially men, are more likely to be nice around you if you are female. Being female often gets you extra attention. If a boy and a girl fight, adults are more likely to believe the girl. For women, it’s acceptable to choose to quit their job in order to raise their kids, while men are expected to earn money and often get to spend little time with their family. Then, there are many programs to specifically promote girls/women in technical fields, politics and so on. For women, it’s acceptable to act irrationally and show emotions, for men it’s not. Last but not least, it’s definitely easier for a woman to find a sex partner.
The belief that women are underprivileged is rooted deep in our society, but honestly I don’t think that’s true anymore. It certainly was 50 years ago, but nowadays, if anything it’s the other way round IMO.
Disclaimer: This is my perspective from Germany, the situation may be different elsewhere.
Speaking as a SWF, I figure maybe throwing out a quick story might help illustrate.
I have a teenage Son, SWM. I also have Son’s Friend, who happens to be SBM and stays with us temporarily for the current school year while his mother couch-surfs elsewhere, working on finding more work and a new place to live (part-time employment + slum-lord-esque combo resulted in them losing housing and most of their stuff). We live just outside Baltimore (as in, I could throw a rock and hit the city line – well, maybe not me, ’cause I can’t throw to save my life), one of those cities where a minority is, in fact, a majority.
A few weeks ago, a stomach bug was making the rounds of the household, and Son decided to stay home from school sick. Son’s Friend left for school, thinking he didn’t feel great, but not terrible. Some time after I left for work, and after being on the bus for a little while, he decided the bug was a little too much to handle through class, and returned home. Not having a key, he sat down in a chair on the porch, called Son and awaited Son’s opening of the door. He noticed the blonde woman across the street, but didn’t think much of it, since we’re all very friendly with our neighbors. Son opened the door and let him in, and they proceeded to Son’s room to watch Minecraft stuff on YouTube.
A little oblivious while later, Son hears, “Anybody home?” from the living room. Thinking it’s the SWM from next door, he bounds down the stairs to be greeted by several officers already standing in the living room, the nearest of which has his weapon out and trained on Son. After a tense and confusing next few minutes, they sort out what happened, and call me. Apparently, they received a call from a woman that a young black man was entering the home of a family she knew to be white, and she believed that I, the white female, was at home. (Why she thought that, I’ve no idea, because there were no vehicles at the house.) It was called out as a home invasion, which resulted in cops crawling all over my house and yard, and even the skies. Eight police cars, at my neighbor’s count, two canine units out back, and the county police helicopter overhead.
All just because a young black male happens to be living with a white family, and came home from school early. While I appreciate that one of my neighbors was looking out for us, I shudder to think of all the ways it could have gone wrong, starting with what would’ve happened had the wrong kid come down the stairs first.
CLP:
“Now, there’s nothing wrong with being a liberal—I consider myself a liberal—but I don’t think Scalzi has ever identified himself as one.”
I would assume that compared to their own positions, I would be a liberal.
My own personal politics are largely “liberal” in the US and probably slightly conservative everywhere else on the planet.
Dani – you might find this useful then, it’s a list of 101-style pieces about varying issues, including privilege, racial/cultural issues, ableism, etc.
http://thatfeministdyke.tumblr.com/post/22774123400/links-resources
And someone else linked to it farther up, but this was also a pretty decent metaphor explaining the basic concept of privilege: https://sindeloke.wordpress.com/2010/01/13/37/
John,
You are one of the few writers that I read very word you deem worthy of sharing. I don’t always agree but I always appreciate that you make me think. Thank you for that.
In this case I do agree. I personally have benefitted from it. I had a terrible childhood. Part of the terrible was being poor. I had several encounters with law enforcement which should have led to juvinile hall. It never did. In one case my friend who was a minority was sent and I wasn’t. The only discernible difference was our skin color. I kept getting breaks others didn’t. Eventually I got lucky and a few wonderful teachers turned me around.
I worked hard. I took advantage of public education and I grew up to be a semi-productive member of society (it might be more than semi but I go to comic conventions so my wife docks points). I often wonder how different it would have been if I had ended up in juvinile hall. If my bad decisions had been held against me. If I hadn’t had a chance to make it right without any strikes against me. I worked hard but I caught a lot of breaks and I try to never forget that.
What does being moderately muscular and 6’+ tall do then? Is that like the easiest difficulty plus cheat codes? It’s not a bad metaphor but you can always find some subset of any arbitrary group to consider more privileged than some other group. I would think the ultimate privilege in the US would be a tall good looking white guy around 30, lapsed mainline protestant, with a distinguished last name, family money, father believes in nepotism, low hereditary risk of heart disease and cancer, intelligent but not too intelligent, extroverted but not quite sociopathic, no fear of public speaking, with perfect vision and no cavities.
Just over 300 comments in 4 hours. More than a comment a minute.
Having fun keeping up John? :)
btw – spot on……as always!
There are plenty of “straight white dudes” born into poverty, with crappy parents, and no opportunities, who often end up in jail. You can ask them if their life was “easy mode.”
Generalizations based on race, gender, and sexual preference are still useless and offensive even when applied to white people. Privilege, in any society, can show statistical, racial bias, but no real discussion can be held based on those statistics; discussion about the predominance of white male privilege in the USA is as meaningful as discussion about the predominance of criminals who are black or Hispanic.
No Scalzi, using a video game metaphor isn’t inherently shallow. The implication that your fellow SWM’s can’t or won’t appreciate your point of view unless you explain it to them in those terms, however, is off-putting and more than a little arrogant.
But thank you for your response, which affirms my first impression of your capacity to contribute to meaningful dialogue about this topic. Very interesting to see what your idea of “civility” is on your blog is as well.
I’m an honest to goodness Moderate. far right on some issues, far left on others. this means that I’m comfortable in almost no group. I all so tend to agree with people for all the wrong reasons.
Is it really an advantage to be male?
Yes. Next question.
>> Is it really an advantage to be male? Because my impression is that being female gives you plenty of privileges. … Disclaimer: This is my perspective from Germany, the situation may be different elsewhere.>>
What are the rape statistics like in Germany? How about sexual assault? What are the pay disparities? Are those advantages you postulate there for women who aren’t, say, slim and good-looking? Is it really an advantage that women are the ones expected to forgo a salary so they can do the amazingly-hard job of childrearing? Is being dismissed as emotional and irrational really an advantage?
Think it through. It’s a little more complicated than “Pretty girls get attention, so being male is a hardship.”
cofax:
That depends on how many times you’ve read Atlas Shrugged.
This problem that I have with this analogy is that the easiest setting is “straight white male born to a middle class or better nuclear family with expectations of personal growth, above average intelligence, normal physical and psychological development, in a suburban setting with plenty of enrichment activities, and no undue family commitments.” I may have forgotten a few factors in that list. I think that boiling down a person’s life to three factors, even if they are important factors, is too simplistic.
Also, if a person refuses to see that they are starting life with a winning hand (I’ll use a 20th century metaphor), then adding a video game analogy won’t help. The only way for them to see how lucky they are is to have life pull out the rug from under them and have them climb back up on their own. People learn from experience, not explanation. (That is why the educational system in America is failing, but that’s another discussion.) Focusing on labels will never result in a civil conversation.
The real lesson should be very simple, if you’ve got more than you need, get over your self and help out. If you are struggling through life, try to work so the next generation can start on an easier level. My parents worked hard to get out of a trailer park and put me through college. The only thing they asked in return was that I do the same for my children. Leaving a better world for the next generation is a win in my book no matter where you start.
Everything you say about SWM priv– er, “difficulty setting” is completely true and accurate, but let’s not pretend it doesn’t belittle or diminish SWMs. Playing on the easy setting doesn’t mean “instant win,” but it does mean that winning is meaningless. How can you take pride in any kind of accomplishment if you’re playing on the easiest setting? You can’t.
If the easy difficulty setting exists — which I stress again that I believe it does — then I don’t see how we can logically avoid the perspective that SWMs are “the bad guys” at worst, inferior at best (like the player that beats Skyrim on Novice compared to the player that beats it on Master — the Novice is, by definition, the inferior player). I mean I understand why we say otherwise, but it’s nothing but a polite lie.
“All that hard work, dedication, and devotion gets you . . . this? Why bother? Better to emigrate, find a hot Latin American girlfriend, and teach English in some tropic country than end up as yet-another divorced, unemployed Beta dad estranged from his kids ”
I’m not sure if it’s been noted explicitly that, while our host used the metaphor of games, he didn’t say anything about the criteria for winning. That’s up to you to decide.
The passage above, on the other hand, reads like something straight out of philosophies of “Game”, a theory of male-female relations that in turn is a variant of the old “Nice Guys and Jerks” whine, but with a somewhat older audience, and with the narcissism and misogyny somewhat closer to the surface.
Given one shot at the game of life, I don’t think Game is anything like what I’d want to play, let alone try to win. Those who do play that particular game (most of whom I’ve encountered have been straight white males) and think they’re being scorned because of their sex or their race may be missing another more likely cause.
As a straight minority female, thank you… for getting it.
Todd DuBois:
“The implication that your fellow SWM’s can’t or won’t appreciate your point of view unless you explain it to them in those terms, however, is off-putting and more than a little arrogant.”
Meaning that in fact you do have some problem with a video game metaphor, in the sense that you find it negative in some way, or think that using the metaphor reflects negatively on the intended audience. In which case, the “fuck you” response still most definitely applies.
As for civility: You get what you give, Todd DuBois. You definitely earned that “fuck you.”
The Dismissed Minority Truth:
“There are plenty of ‘straight white dudes’ born into poverty, with crappy parents, and no opportunities, who often end up in jail. You can ask them if their life was ‘easy mode.'”
There’s some irony attempting to make that point to me.
Also, please read the actual article.
Things aren’t harder for SWM than they were 50 years ago. They just aren’t completely slanted to entirely benefit ONLY SWM. Even men are harmed by some of the things in today’s society such as gender roles. Men are the providers, no way can they change diapers or clean a house and still be a “man.” (Note: that was sarcasm)
Yet despite how much less benefit SWM have than they use to have, they still get benefit of the doubt. Who gets pulled over more often by the cops, white people or black people? Who more often gets put in jail for drug use despite the usage being the same for white and black people? Black people are the answers to both questions. Then you put in sex, disability, sexual orientation, gender presentation, etc. and it’s even clearer that despite how hard EVERYONE’s life is; when you are a minority, you’re treated with less respect and given a benefit of the doubt hardly at all.
>> There are plenty of “straight white dudes” born into poverty, with crappy parents, and no opportunities, who often end up in jail. You can ask them if their life was “easy mode.”>>
Then check into what it’s like to be gay, black or female in those same circumstances, and see if those straight white dudes weren’t better off than they would be if they weren’t SWDs.
“Lowest Difficulty Setting” does not mean “Everything else will be cake, too.” As was mentioned up top.
Once again line by line for Isopod
“People, especially men, are more likely to be nice around you if you are female. ”
Women are expected to be nice all the time. They are expected to be nice if someone hits on them, nice if someone is rude. Women cannot get away with out being nice.
“Being female often gets you extra attention.”
Because being hit on, catcalled and body policed is wonderful attention.
” If a boy and a girl fight, adults are more likely to believe the girl. For women, it’s acceptable to choose to quit their job in order to raise their kids, while men are expected to earn money and often get to spend little time with their family. ”
Women are expected to raise the children. They are expected to provide all the childcare. They are expected to leave their jobs if they can, and even if they can’t they have to do the majority of the work.
“Then, there are many programs to specifically promote girls/women in technical fields, politics and so on.”
Yes – because there are so few women IN those fields.
” For women, it’s acceptable to act irrationally and show emotions, for men it’s not.”
And not be taken seriously if they ever show any emotion.
“Last but not least, it’s definitely easier for a woman to find a sex partner.”
Citation please? Also – men have a significantly lower risk of sexual violence.
Damn it, Scalzi, life isn’t like a game, and it’s frivolous of you to suggest it is! Unless the game is football, which we all know is a perfect metaphor for everything.
>> Playing on the easy setting doesn’t mean “instant win,” but it does mean that winning is meaningless. How can you take pride in any kind of accomplishment if you’re playing on the easiest setting? You can’t.>>
I take great pride in my accomplishments. The fact that Dwayne McDuffie had it harder doesn’t mean my successes are meaningless. It means that his may well be more impressive. But I’d say both of us had reason for pride. That I started out on the easiest setting doesn’t mean things were easy. It means they were easier. There’s a difference.
John, I’ve used your “Things I don’t have to think about today” post for my Freshman Seminar. This year I’m teaching one on Race, Gender and Big Multinational that makes lots of movies and has theme parks. My next one is going to be on the same topics in WoW; I expect it’s for the same reasons you wrote it. It’s not that I have anything against WoW — I play it myself. I just think it tends to attract a lot of people who aren’t aware of the difficulty settings in Life 1.0, and so don’t get the cultural appropriation, the underlying messages about race and gender, and, IME, are often clueless that some of the other players, even the ones playing female toons, might not be male! (no seriously — I did a random instance one night with some very nice young men who seemed shocked, and were confusedly apologetic, when I pointed out that their jocular conversation about what they’d like to do with some actress amounted to kidnapping and rape. Then I had to point out that I wasn’t offended because I’m a woman, but because it was offensive.)
May I have your permission to reproduce and post on Blackboard, rather than link? Otherwise I’ll have to ask you to erase my comment so that I can keep my pseudonym separate from my work-nym :-)
Actually, I would rather link, so that students can also see what civil argument on the interwebs looks like. So maybe you could delete if I have your permission, but leave a comment? :-)
Where’s the damn LIKE button on some of these rebukes from Scalzi!
“There are plenty of ‘straight white dudes’ born into poverty, with crappy parents, and no opportunities, who often end up in jail. You can ask them if their life was ‘easy mode.’”
There’s some irony attempting to make that point to me.
Gotta admit. There’s some comedy gold here.
Also: predict that more than a few commenters will STILL not bother to read the article. AND read up on Scalzi’s background.
I’m not worried about the future of women. Women graduate from college at a higher rate than Men. I foresee a coming future Gynarchy and welcome our Female overlords.
F. Martin: I don’t understand your argument, and I guess this probably applies to a number of comments here and ones I’ve heard in other contexts. Why do you think that pointing out that some people simply fared better in the natural lottery is the same thing, or necessarily entails, attaching a negative moral judgment to those people?
I think it is a dishonest misrepresentation of the debate to try and skew it this way. Nothing in Scalzi’s essay or other reasonable discussion about this issue says “SWMs have it easy, therefore they are bad guys” or anything of that nature. What the debate says is that maybe we ought to be more aware of, and seriously entertain different ways to address, the different kinds of difficulties which individuals face based on the (completely out of their control) circumstances they were born into.
Also, I would point out that acknowledging that those circumstances are completely out of their control goes a long way towards understanding why there is not a negative moral judgment entailed by stating that, ceteris paribus, SWM have it easier than other subgroups of the population.
anotherdamnedmedievalist:
Go ahead.
Isopod, I wonder if it might help to show your list of “advantages” from another perspective? I can’t speak for the entirety of human experience, but as you are generalizing and throwing out unsubstantiated assertions, here are a few things I’ve seen/heard women discuss:
People, especially men, are more likely to be nice around you if you are female.
– Nice, maybe. Respectful of business acumen? Attentive to opinions? Engaged in debate? Not so much. Which one has more worth to the woman probably depends on the individual, but the women I know would rather a colleague was paying attention to what they said, rather than being “nice.”
Being female often gets you extra attention.
– Whether you want that attention or not. Whether the attention is positive or not. And whether the attention is appropriate to the situation or not.
If a boy and a girl fight, adults are more likely to believe the girl.
– Hmmm. I think this very specifically depends on the nature of the fight in question. I have definitely seen parents react negatively to a boy who reacts physically, but also to a girl who reacts emotionally.
For women, it’s acceptable to choose to quit their job in order to raise their kids, while men are expected to earn money and often get to spend little time with their family.
– There are so many issues wrapped up in this that I think I’ll leave it to women and men who have dealt with parenting/work balance to respond.
There are many programs to specifically promote girls/women in technical fields, politics and so on.
– In direct response to eons of being told “you can’t do that, you’re a girl.” Also, there are plenty of programs to promote men in these fields through networking and mentoring. For example, in England, they’re called clubs, and women can come for drinks on Tuesdays.
For women, it’s acceptable to act irrationally and show emotions, for men it’s not.
– Acceptable, possibly, but also a reason to dismiss the woman. And, worse, often expected, so used as a reason to dismiss even prior to actual irrationality and emotion. Also, who defines irrationality? I shall give you a hint: it’s not women. Although if you’re making the point that all people should be able to be emotional and not be dismissed for it, I’m not going to disagree.
Last but not least, it’s definitely easier for a woman to find a sex partner.
– I’m gonna leave this one alone. I, personally, have no problem, and I can’t imagine how one person’s ease or difficulty in finding partners has anything to do with mine or anyone else’s.
You comment and complain that people who don’t agree with you didn’t read or understand what you wrote. It just isn’t true, you’ve created an analogy you’re so in love with you refuse to see the gaping holes it contains. Trash like this serves only to continue racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry and you hide behind the veil of righteousness… you pompous hack with a keyboard.
@Todd: It’s his blog, he doesn’t need to be civil. From what I see, he calls them as he sees them and is pretty spot on.
As for all of the whiny people who are upset at how their life has been labeled as “easy”… that word was NOT used in the post. The word used was “EASIER”, as in “LESS DIFFICULT”. You’re the ones who started bitching about how you didn’t have it easy just because you’re a SWM. Mr. Scalzi is only asking you to consider how much MORE difficult your situation would have been had you been a minority, or homosexual, or female… or mix and match. That’s what you people can’t seem to understand… how much MORE DIFFICULT your life would have been. Take a moment to consider that and stop behaving like Mr. Hines’ inside cats. (That comment was made of win, btw!)
Scalzi: you insist there is absolutely nothing negative about it and that you are not talking down to anyone, even though you also say that SWM’s are incapable of engaging the issue because they can’t get past the buzz word of “privilege”. I honestly don’t want to believe you’re being dishonest, so I’ll settle for the assertion that you’re being blind.
As for civility, I make no apologies for taking a harsh view of what I consider to a condescending post and very weak, narrow arguments. To a point I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but context is everything and you are doing this very badly. It’s unfortunate you confuse a strongly negative reaction with incivility – check 90% of other comment threads on the internet if you want to know what that is REALLY like.
The question everyone seems to have is, I’m aware, now what can I do? (Okay, everyone who isn’t defensive as hell). So: support minority representation and depictions in movies and books. Create works that use them, if you’re a creator. Don’t assume an unknown person is a he (“I got a new boss at work.” “What’s he like?”), or white, or straight, or Christian, or fully able, all of which I know seems small, but it’s pervasive and happens all the time. Actively engage with minorities to find out how you can possibly positively impact situations. Be careful and thoughtful. Little steps, taken by a good number of people, can make a goodly impact.
Argh, I refreshed and then edited, and thereby missed Muse’s excellent post. My apologies for the heaping on.
“I’m not worried about the future of women. Women graduate from college at a higher rate than Men. I foresee a coming future Gynarchy and welcome our Female overlords.”
Funny considering women weren’t allowed to even attend college until the last few decades. I doubt this number would be so upsetting to men if it’d always been that way.
What should be the default setting? If we do not experience different advantages does that mean that we are all supposed to operate at a disadvantage? If I recognize that my life has probably been better because of an unearned advantage – what am I supposed to do about it? Is there any amount of self-sacrifice that can remove the disfiguring stain of unintended cheating from me? I did not ask to be born who or what I am, and I see no justice in a sentiment that in a just universe my life would have been worse. Why is it that the idea of _everyone having it better_ is such a hard concept for people to grasp? If being a ‘straight white male’ is a form of cheating then why don’t we simply arrange it so that everyone has the same ability to cheat? Why must talk of unfairness always assume that everyone must be treated badly in order for ‘justice’ to exist?
In an attempt to be constructive, as a SWM, here’s one thing that we can do that isn’t dependent on governmental or other collective action:
Don’t have conversations and make jokes with other SWMs that make the work environment hostile to non SWMs.
This is an active problem I battle in software development, where we desperately need more programmers, but the environment is one that frequently discourages more than half the population from considering programming as a field that is open to them. It also makes the non-SWMs that are in the profession more likely to leave to pursue other things.
If the environment was better then the next project manager in my position might actually be able to hire the programmers they need, because half the population might have considered it as a possible career when they were in high school. Really, EVERYBODY WINS! this is not a zero sum game.
“Don’t have conversations and make jokes with other SWMs that make the work environment hostile to non SWMs.
This is an active problem I battle in software development, where we desperately need more programmers, but the environment is one that frequently discourages more than half the population from considering programming as a field that is open to them. It also makes the non-SWMs that are in the profession more likely to leave to pursue other things.”
As a female programmer, I can absolutely attest to this being the right way to go about it. I really wish there were more SWM programmers like you out there.
Dani: “Bad guy” may have been a poor word choice, but “inferior” definitely follows inevitably.
“Scalzi: you insist there is absolutely nothing negative about it and that you are not talking down to anyone, even though you also say that SWM’s are incapable of engaging the issue because they can’t get past the buzz word of “privilege”. I honestly don’t want to believe you’re being dishonest, so I’ll settle for the assertion that you’re being blind.”
Because no one here at all has had reacted to the word “privilege” with thoughtless, knee-jerk responses. Someone’s being blind in this discussion, all right, but it isn’t John.
I worked as the sole male in a few workplaces, I understand where you are coming from Timid Atheist.
@Muse
Condemning me for my political perspective? I’m proudly a Red Pill taking member of the Manosphere. The PUA/MRA dichotomy is outdated, however — all areas of masculine interest are part of the Manosphere now. Why does that not bode well? Is that a little pre-judgement I detect?
“But generally speaking, if doing so translates into any variation of “Why should I have share with anyone, I have mine so screw the rest of you, you’re just all whining,” it’s a pretty decent bet you’re actually being an asshole.”
I guess a lot of that depends on perspective. What seems like “screw you, I’ve got mine” to some people might be seen by others as “you mean I planned and worked and warned you that winter was coming, and you still didn’t do anything — but now you want half of mine?”. Subtle distinction, I’m sure. The problem is that it’s easy to see “Straight White Male” and assume the former when they mean the latter. It’s a common mistake for those who are wedded only to their own perspective.
Great analogy, John!
It’s very clear and accessible, but I wonder if it can get past the defensive response that accompanies other discussions of privilege. I just did a bunch of gamer interviews for my master’s thesis and discovered that “EZ mode” is a powerful insult.
Gamers don’t like to hear that they’ve taken the easy path. They want to hear that their success was hard-fought and truly earned. Telling someone that they’ve been facerolling their entire life (for people who don’t play games, this means that the game is so easy you can win it by mashing your face into the keyboard and rolling it back and forth) may get a hostile or evasive reception.
That’s not to say that it isn’t true. It’s just that “life on EZ mode” requires just as much introspection and just as many difficult realizations as any other discussion of privilege. No matter how well you explain it, the person hearing it has to do a lot of the difficult work on their own. Until they see it and acknowledge it for themselves, no explanation, no matter how perfect, will change a person’s mind on this issue.
“Why must talk of unfairness always assume that everyone must be treated badly in order for ‘justice’ to exist?”
Why is it always assumed that SWM should be treated badly because of their default setting by the SWMs? Just making you aware of your default settings isn’t treating you badly. Asking you to remember that you have better default settings when dealing with others who do not have good default settings is also not treating you badly. The idea isn’t to make you feel bad, it’s to make you think about how you treat others and not be dismissive of them in your dealings with them. Not everyone is like you, so being aware of that makes it less likely you’ll be offensive when interacting with everyone else.
I can’t believe everything in this article isn’t 100% obvious to everyone :(
Isopod asks: “Is it really an advantage to be male? Because my impression is that being female gives you plenty of privileges. People, especially men, are more likely to be nice around you if you are female.”
Oh, this only holds true if you are cis, white, attractive, usually thin woman who isn’t too challenging to men. Start asserting your opinion, gain some weight, or you know, be Not White, and you’ll find that a lot of men start to ignore you, dismiss you, or harrass you.
” Being female often gets you extra attention.”
Of the kind you don’t want. People making judgements about your weight, your job, your lack of job, your attitude, your sexiness, your smile or lack thereof. All this attention is predicated on how well I’m doing what they see as my first job: being there for their gratification. I’ll never forget the dude who when I took my seat on an airplane said, “They promised me a blonde.” I wanted to say, “They promised me a non-asshole.”
“If a boy and a girl fight, adults are more likely to believe the girl.”
Yeah, that’s why we have a social trope about false rape accusations although rape is a statistically under-reported crime because many women know they won’t be believed.
” For women, it’s acceptable to choose to quit their job in order to raise their kids, while men are expected to earn money and often get to spend little time with their family. Then, there are many programs to specifically promote girls/women in technical fields, politics and so on.”
Oh, god. I bet nobody ever justified paying you less because “you’re just gonna have a kid in a few years anyway.” Have you been lectured about pursuing a career and how it will impact your kids? Have you ever had people doubt that you could juggle a career and family? Have you ever had a relative tell you to study something in university because it will be a useful skill as a mother? Try politics–childless women are seen as suspect and incapable of understanding what average folks have to deal with, while women with children are constantly asked if they could balance the demands of the job with family life. Nobody ever asks male politicians that.
“For women, it’s acceptable to act irrationally and show emotions, for men it’s not.”
And again, this is why we have jokes about PMS and hysteria and crying like a little girl, all of which are intended to be demeaning. (BTW, the feminist websites I frequent often decry the position men are put into re: expression of emotions. It does suck that you dudes are socialised to suppress certain behaviours, but at least there aren’t demeaning terms used for when you do act according to traditional values. And it isn’t assumed of your gender that the default is irrational/emotional.)
” Last but not least, it’s definitely easier for a woman to find a sex partner. The belief that women are underprivileged is rooted deep in our society, but honestly I don’t think that’s true anymore. It certainly was 50 years ago, but nowadays, if anything it’s the other way round IMO.”
Citation needed.
My lived experience (and I was definitely born before your 50 year mark) contradicts this. The lived experience of many of my friends also contradicts this. (And I still have it pretty good, since I’m on the second easiest setting being a white, cis, mostly-able-bodied, attractive-to-some, middle class woman.)
Does anyone remember those bumper stickers from the ’90s that read, “He who dies with the most toys wins.”? I think the people who find Scalzi’s metaphor profound, poignant, and/or accurate are starting with this kind of materialistic mentality. Life offers much more than money and opportunity to get more money.
Ian “Condemning me for my political perspective? I’m proudly a Red Pill taking member of the Manosphere. The PUA/MRA dichotomy is outdated, however — all areas of masculine interest are part of the Manosphere now. Why does that not bode well? Is that a little pre-judgement I detect?”
No – condemning you for being part of a movement that is founded on misogyny.
[Deleted because Scorpius was already told he was off the thread — JS]
Todd DuBois:
“you insist there is absolutely nothing negative about it and that you are not talking down to anyone, even though you also say that SWM’s are incapable of engaging the issue because they can’t get past the buzz word of ‘privilege’.”
The inability of a group to deal with one metaphor does not imply that a differing metaphor is inferior, merely that it doesn’t have the same set of issues that the other, problematic one has. Which is why one uses it, duh.
So, yes, in fact, I insist that there’s nothing negative about it. It’s also clear that you have a problem with it. However, it is your problem, so stop projecting it on me.
“I make no apologies for taking a harsh view of what I consider to a condescending post and very weak, narrow arguments.”
Considering how you’ve bungled your initial argument with bad assumptions and a poor argument, I’m not exactly going to lose sleep over what you think.
I’ve already said “fuck you” to you Todd, but here’s a new one: Fuck off. Come back when you actually know how to argue better and aren’t cluttering up my site with projections of your own insecurities. On a different thread, however; this one is off limits to you now.
F Martin: Go back and read the original essay. “Inferior” does not necessarily follow. Someone who beats the game on the easiest setting may still be the very best player out there. Part of the point is that those who get the “least difficult” setting no more chose their starting point than those who get the “most difficult and with zero starting points” setting. You can even have the “least difficult” setting and lament that fact – or simply wish that everyone had the same starting setting. But not being able to change it is a fact of the game Real Live.
One can be in either group and win, and more importantly one can be in either group and *deserve* to win. It is just that, all things considered, if you are in the group with the “least difficult” setting, you are more likely to win than if you were in another group. (Note, again, the all-important ceteris paribus clause there.)
Last but not least, it’s definitely easier for a woman to find a sex partner.
Huh. I definitely think women in general find it easier to find a sex partner than ME.
But that’s personal, and not at all germane to the larger discussion. I think some people are over-generalizing from their own personal experience to the wider world. Not sure it’s warranted in all cases.
@JMO
“The passage above, on the other hand, reads like something straight out of philosophies of “Game”, a theory of male-female relations that in turn is a variant of the old “Nice Guys and Jerks” whine, but with a somewhat older audience, and with the narcissism and misogyny somewhat closer to the surface.
Given one shot at the game of life, I don’t think Game is anything like what I’d want to play, let alone try to win. Those who do play that particular game (most of whom I’ve encountered have been straight white males) and think they’re being scorned because of their sex or their race may be missing another more likely cause.”
Your understanding of Game is limited, and a little out-dated. Anyone who dismisses it as “nice guys and jerks whine” doesn’t understand it, hasn’t studied it, and doesn’t realize the implications. Game isn’t about just picking up women, it’s about how to manage male-female personal relationships from a perspective of masculine strength. I know that threatens a lot of insecure people, but Game isn’t about singles bars and dating profiles, it’s about marriage, MGTOW, and a whole lot of other stuff. There are usually two reasons why people dismiss or otherwise diss Game: first, because they want to believe an ideal more than they want to accept reality. Secondly, because Game actually works, and that really, really irritates those who insist that there’s no possible way it can.
[Aaaand now Scorpius has earned a place in the moderation queue. Enjoy it, Scorpius! You’ll come out again when I decide you’re not trolling — JS]
Isopod, the fact that you treat “woman” and “sexually attractive young straight woman” as synonymous through much of your comment is revealing.
I don’t understand people who act like Scalzi’s is making some wild, unfounded claim when he said that, generally, SWM tend to have issues with the word privilege. It seems like every third post here is some dude who apparently majored in Not Getting It followed by a masters and PhD in Deliberate Misunderstanding being all like “WHAT DO YOU MEAN MY LIFE IS LESS DIFFICULT, NO ONE GAVE ME A TRUST FUND!”
I still think the easy setting is more of a cultural issue that a racial issue. I know plenty of SWM that belong to idiotic Subcultures and they have their difficulty set to 11. I also know of people with minority family heritages that belong to easier subcultures that are succeeding. how many juggalettes are going to Grad school? Does the Gang subculture provide decent odds at a 6 figure salary? Granted, it is difficult or dosen’t occur to people to change their sub-culture, but it can be done.
@Muse
Feminism was founded on misandry, but I don’t think you have a problem with that. I don’t hate women. Never have. Just don’t agree with some of them. Apparently you’re one. Why does that threaten you?
Also, it’s not clear to me why accepting Scalzi’s point in this essay entails a kind of materialism. However you construe “winning” (i.e. “value”) it is likely that you could slide having more of “winning” into the game metaphor, and it would still be the case that starting out as a SWM, all things considered, makes you more likely to be able to achieve/accomplish/gain/reach “winning.”
If we’re lucky, we’ll hit 1000 by midnight.
Lots of good and worthwhile stuff going on in this thread, which I am too deep in today’s work to contribute to. But I did want to say:
To all the awesome dudes upthread, of which there are too many to name: thank you. It is deeply heartening that you outnumber the assholes. This, I really believe, reflects Life As It Is. But we can only see that when we all speak up.
And to the people doing the heavy 101 lifting: you are saints and deserve all the cookies.
Feminism was founded on misandry
Feminism was *not* founded on misandry. Good lord, that’s an appalling statement.
David I was just about to say the same thing.
Ian I think I’m starting to see why you might have been “raked over the coals” as you complained about earlier.
John great post. I always enjoy the creative ways you say things. This might turn into another one of those “turn comments off when you go to bed” ones.
folks looking for something to *do* about racism could push for data collection on police stops in their area and if they have such information and it reflects racial profiling, demand it be fixed.
Those looking to *do* something about sexism could support equal-pay-for-equal-work laws.
Those looking to *do* something about homophobia could support gay marriage initiatives in states that dont allow them.
.
Just because you are straight, white, and male doesnt mean there is something you are doing that ia rCist, sexist, or homophobic that you need to stop doing. It could be that you are doing everything you can do on an individual level, and the next place to go is fix te problem on the systemic level.
This is me popping in to say, let’s NOT have a discussion of feminism in this thread, as it is off topic and derail-y.
Kilroy, you might be well advised to do some Googling before posting about how hard guys have it:
Non-Latino people represent 66.2% of all college students and 65.2% of all athletic scholarship recipients. Men are 45.2% of all college students and 53.7% of all athletic scholarship recipients. White guys are getting at least their share, maybe more, of athletic scholarships.
Similarly, black people are 13% of the US population, and 11% of the student body at Harvard Law. So to the extent that black folks are getting a leg up in Harvard Law admissions, it’s outweighed by all the factors that are keeping them from proportionate representation in the pool of applicants.
As a poor, unemployed, uncredentialled, lesbian, divorcée parent, middle-aged, not particularly passable, transsexual woman of mixed-race color, I thank you for pointing out all of this in relatively easy to understand terms. I’m even on the verge of not being entirely able-bodied. Lucky me!
This is not about “oppression olympics”, it’s about intersectionality, and it’s about reality. About the only advantages I have on my side are that I apparently got a bonus to my intelligence stat at the time of character creation, and I’m a native Usamerican.
What I’m not sure a lot of people are getting is the implication of the article. Recognizing that, as a SWM, I had a bunch of built in advantages doesn’t make my accomplishments something that I regret or feel bad about. It just means that maybe I’m not too quick to use the old, “Well, *I* was able to survive my stupid drug addiction, get straight, and make something of my life” too readily. I was able to move on in part because, being a SWM with a certain shared cultural index and vocabulary, I was GIVEN a second chance.
Yes, once given that second chance, I had to prove myself, and it was harder than it would have been if I hadn’t screwed up the first time. But how easy is it for a random non-SWM, especially a person of color, to explain that, yeah, there’s sorta 6 months missing in the work history, and it’s because I had to get clean and learn to live? If they do that, do they still get the job?
That’s what you’re talking about when you say that I’m playing the game on an easier setting. I still had to win. I don’t regret winning. I don’t regret my success, nor do I think it “unearned.” But I recognize that I got certain chances others didn’t, and I both try to now give those chances to others and don’t resent when they get the next chance ahead of me, despite my paper qualifications.
Because of my setting, I’ll get another chance. A non-SWM might not. I know that, and can let certain things go. So hire that qualified person of color ahead of me. There will be another opportunity down the road for me, perhaps even at your company. At some point, you might need my unique skills, and you’ll reach out for me instead. But I got those skills because I got a second chance, and that second chance had a lot to do with the color of my skin and the cultural undertone that I didn’t earn.
If you’re a SWM, it all works out in the end. Recognizing that just shouldn’t be that hard.
Oh, and John, if you only wrote SF I liked, I’d be a fan. Writing this makes me rather upset that you’re not coming to DC on your Redshirts tour so I can hug you. Thank you.
@Ian
Feminism was founded on misandry? Oh course. Because not being allowed to vote or own property or have control over their own bodies was never a problem for women.Thanks for clearing that up.
[Further deleted because That Guy is nowhere as clever as he seems to believe he is — JS]
[Deleted, see above — JS]
Patti, I’m going to assume you cross-posted with me.
However, future replies to Ian’s assertion via feminism are going to be deleted; let’s not derail, please.
Sorry, John. Didn’t see your comment until I’d posted mine.
[Deleted — please see previous notation on not following up on the feminism thing. Don’t take it personally, Xana; it’s not you — JS]
The headline explained it all immediately. The article just went into why. Great shit dude.
Agh, dagnabbit. I will learn! My apologies to the Mallet-wielder of Magnificence.
Sorry John, didn’t catch your comment on refresh.
I want to make it really clear that I’m only agreeing with Ian Ironwood in one paragraph, because boy, howdy, is there a lot of stuff there that makes my brain bleed otherwise! But in this area, he is quite correct.
“I guess a lot of that depends on perspective. What seems like “screw you, I’ve got mine” to some people might be seen by others as “you mean I planned and worked and warned you that winter was coming, and you still didn’t do anything — but now you want half of mine?”. Subtle distinction, I’m sure. The problem is that it’s easy to see “Straight White Male” and assume the former when they mean the latter.”
I think there are a lot of assumptions in this thread that people who want material gains so that they can pass them on to their children (the next generation, but specifically THEIR next generation) are assholes, ‘screw you I’ve got mine’, misogynistic idiots who we don’t have to pay any attention to. And I don’t think that’s fair at all. I think a lot of people who want to achieve material gains so they can pass them on are compassionate, kind people-who just happen to want the ones they love to prosper.
It is nontrivial if you’re being asked to give up, say, a third of the inheritance you want to pass on to your children, to eliminate the inequities you see. It is nontrivial if you’re being asked to leave lower chances of success to your family, in order to remove inequity.
I think it’s quite probable that people can see that inequity exists, but I think it is unfair to demand that whenever anyone notices inequity, they be asked to resolve it at personal cost to themselves, or be labeled foul names.
When people started talking about actual implementation, it struck my geek nature that this idea is even better suited to some of the pencil-and-paper RPGs a la GURPS where characters are built with skill points, advantages, and disadvantages.
In this view, SWM would be a “character kit” that doesn’t affect your starting point total, but gives you an all-or-nothing bundle of advantages and disadvantages (note: wealth and wide-world status are /not/ part of the starting bundle). Other character kits give different bundles – but SWM would be worth more if the advantages were bought separately than any of the others.
You can use your starting points to buy stats, more advantages, or (house rule) potentially buy down selected starting disadvantages. However, unlike GURPS, disadvantages don’t refund character points, they’re just disadvantages.
The point of the exercise is not even necessarily how many points it takes to offset the differences in your starting kit, it’s how different the kits play, even (possibly especially) the low-level stuff – like Enemy:Police (roll of 6 or less on 3d6) or a permenent -2 Status (Business World).
The object of the metagame is to change both the way advantages/disadvantages function on a global scale, as well as the composition of individual kits.
I should perhaps point out that “Game” being discussed is a very different critter than that described by Carse in Finite and Infinite Games, which is usually shelved in theology or philosophy.
Sorry, in my comment on athletic scholarships, “guys” should have read “white guys” and “Non-Latino people” should have read “Non-Latino white people.”
[Deleted because That Guy is tiresome — JS]
“Does anyone remember those bumper stickers from the ’90s that read, “He who dies with the most toys wins.”? I think the people who find Scalzi’s metaphor profound, poignant, and/or accurate are starting with this kind of materialistic mentality. Life offers much more than money and opportunity to get more money.”
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a prime example of a privileged statement.
I find it profoundly frustrating that being upset about inequities in the system, especially one such as ours in the US that is *supposed* to reflect the ideal of everyone being created equally and deserving of equal rights and protections, is being equated with being overly focused on “money and materialism.” It’s easy to dismiss concerns about income and material possessions when one comes from a position of having fairly easy access to both, but for those who are living paycheck to paycheck, wondering whether to pay the electric bill or pay rent or go hungry, as a result of said inequitable system, this sort of sentiment is condescending, callous and just plain clueless.
AS, I agree, I probably wouldn’t appreciate being called foul names because I have a big six bedroom house and will probably leave it to my two kids.
On the other hand, when we were moving into this house, more than one apartment dweller on the block asked me how many kids we had, and when I said we had two, said something like, “That’s a big house for four people!” or “You should have more kids!”
If you clearly are better off than everyone else, then it’s not surprising if they’re going to be a little snarkhy about it sometimes. Even if you’re not interested in giving away your wealth / etc., you can at least be gracious about their understandable frustration with the overall situation. Surely that’s not too much to ask.
And frankly, I’ll be happier if my kids do well enough on their own that they don’t need to inherit this house, and we can sell it and donate the profits to those less fortunate.
For those who say that it’s really just about wealth: All the money and status in the world wouldn’t allow my partner and I to get married in any of the four states we can call home. A small point, but to me, at least, an important one.
(This has, obviously, come up kind of a lot in the past few days, and the sheer outrage of people who think that it’s not important because it doesn’t affect them – and the president should focus on something important, i.e. something that affects them – is exhausting. Over and over again, the message is “you’re not important enough.” Or my new favorite, “If we call everything a right the word becomes meaningless; this isn’t about rights.” Where do you even go from there?)
My own difficulty setting isn’t awfully high: I’m a cis white gay woman who is mostly-able and from a working-class background, if you want something like a complete list. So yeah, low wealth stat to start, plus gay and female and some health challenges, but still: it’s not a bad setting, and I’ve managed to do some things well and screw up some others. I really think this concept is FAR easier for those of us who aren’t at the lowest setting. I know some of the ways that being gay makes my life harder, and a lot of them translate pretty easily to ways that being black WOULD make my life harder. I’ve had this conversation with black friends, and finding the parallels and divergences is really enlightening. But I can’t do that with people who have never experienced actual discrimination.
It’s like, you know, that part where a person is treating you a little bit strangely, and you think it’s about your sexual orientation or race or whatever, but you don’t want to make that assumption because people will think you’re being too sensitive, so you just assume it’s something you did wrong, and wonder why people don’t like you? And then someone calls you a fucking dyke and won’t let their children look at you, and after the shock of it is gone, you’re almost grateful because they were so very blatant that you KNOW what just happened was awful. Yeah. Every minority member I know understands this – it’s part of the burden of being a member of a minority, the “double consciousness” as W.E.B. DuBois said. Microaggressions – those little tiny interactions – can be so tiring. I wonder how to fit that concept into the game analogy somewhere. Each difficulty session requires you to make more decisions? Or your decision trees are less likely to have truly positive outcomes?
Quick notation that some comments were in the moderation/spam queue and I’ve freed them now.
“I think it’s quite probable that people can see that inequity exists, but I think it is unfair to demand that whenever anyone notices inequity, they be asked to resolve it at personal cost to themselves, or be labeled foul names.”
That poor strawman is getting tired from being waved around. No one has suggested anything of the sort, unless of course asking people to be aware of their privilege, listening to those who don’t have it, and doing what they can to address it in their daily lives (see Mary Anne’s comment for a beautiful illustration of how even small gestures make a difference) is something that comes “at personal cost.”
So.. if my life has been on “easy mode” all this time, what of my accomplishments? Do they mean less? Have they simply been handed to me no matter how I remember working for them? Or would a comparable accomplishment by someone of the ‘correct’ race or gender or sexuality be considered more valuable than my own? How valuable am I as a human being if my life has simply been made easier? Does it make me less valuable? Does this mean that works of art or creativity or .. any other accomplishment by white men .. should those be considered less valid? Do jews count as white? If I take on the attributes of another race or class.. do I then get partial credit for changing my life’s setting? How does one escape an identity once that identity has been condemned? Is a thing lessened by the identity of who created it? I just want to know if my work lives on after I’m dead. If even that is denied to me, I think I really do want to die. I wish I knew the answer.
I have to tell you, I really start to feel like I should dig in and resist this notion that my life has been easier because I’m not sure you (any of you) know anything about me- I’m a real person, I have a real identity, a real history. I’m not just a collection of attributes that can be weighed on the Scalzi-scale. All of us are real people, and have those same storied histories.
Yet, I see that anyone who disagrees with you (above) is called an “asshole” and there is much celebration of those who agree with you. There is so much shame and resentment out there, it’s heartbreaking.
Do you really believe this, or is this a convenient way to say that you just don’t like certain people for who they are (with exceptions made, of course, for your friends).
what of my accomplishments? Do they mean less?
No. Next question.
Estuary: What would you say to someone who, having been born into immense wealth, asked you those questions about his or her accomplishments?
Also:
“You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: ‘now, you are free to go where you want, do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please.’ You do not take a man who for years has been hobbled by chains, liberate him, bring him to the starting line of a race, saying, ‘you are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe you have been completely fair… This is the next and more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity—not just legal equity but human ability—not just equality as a right and a theory, but equality as a fact and as a result.” —Lyndon Johnson, 1965.
Estuary @ 4:40
You are making great, horrible leaps of reasoning that are not borne out by what’s under discussion. Note that “easier” is a gradient, not a binary.
See some of the comments above, from others who have worked hard and value their accomplishments, while still seeing how their difficulty level gave them a boost at one time or another.
@Estuary
So.. if my life has been on “easy mode” all this time, what of my accomplishments? Do they mean less?
They are worth exactly what they are worth to you. No more, no less. If you think it makes them worth less, then that is on you 100%, because the only person who can set value on what the achieve is the person who achieved them.
And even if they were somehow worth less, so what? Just because you don’t like a fact does not make it any less a fact. You do not have a right to have the world bet set up to cater to your likes (no one does), expecting it to is another example of that SWM-mindset we are discussing.
That game friggin’ sucks. Graphics are kind of ace, though. I’d see being born in various nations more as different servers you could log into; the Sudan server is at hardcore level, with PvP enabled, frex.
“Why is it always assumed that SWM should be treated badly because of their default setting by the SWMs?”
The assumption about ‘treated badly’ is there because of the way that ‘SWM advantages’ are contrasted with the disadvantages faced by many women, many minorities, etc., disadvantages which suck. Thus it is extremely easy to assume that anyone without ‘unearned advantages’ will be ‘treated badly’. There is never an assumption that everyone should be treated as well as a ‘SWM’ (a generality which specifically includes having ones ‘non-SWM’ characteristics as ‘valued’ as ‘SWM’ characteristics are).
“Just making you aware of your default settings isn’t treating you badly. Asking you to remember that you have better default settings when dealing with others who do not have good default settings is also not treating you badly. The idea isn’t to make you feel bad, it’s to make you think about how you treat others and not be dismissive of them in your dealings with them. Not everyone is like you, so being aware of that makes it less likely you’ll be offensive when interacting with everyone else.”
But those are all things that I would do regardless of my status as a ‘SWM’, those are all things that anyone should be doing regardless of whether or not they are ‘SWM’. Even at my advanced age I continue to be astounded that these things are apparently not obvious to everyone. Consistent with that astonishment, there seems to never be a recognition in these discussions that some people are aware of their own advantages, know that not everyone has those advantages, and who recognize that identifying an advantage in another person, or a disadvantage in oneself, does not mean that other disadvantages or advantages are irrelevant.
If the alternative to ‘SWM advantages’ is ‘everyone is treated respectfully and considerately’ then that needs to be made clear. Instead there is always an assumption that anyone without ‘advantages’ is – because of human nature, physics, or something – automatically treated poorly, and anyone who is a ‘SWM’ is not aware of his own advantages (including that his lack of disadvantages are bizarrely labeled ‘advantages’) and that because of his assumed non-awareness it is reasonable to assume that he treats others poorly.
what of my accomplishments? Do they mean less?
The Big Mac tastes just as good if you have a coupon for it.
—
I think a lot of the problem here is not with John’s original analogy, which is not only insightful but has the added bonus of being amusing, but with the crabs-in-the-bucket syndrome. Let’s don’t be crabs in the bucket.
Because this invariably happens — someone mentions straight/white/male privilege, and a certain percentage of straight white men fall over themselves to see who can cry the loudest about how unfair this talk of privilege is to them*, how it’s absurd to say society favours them for in fact we live in a new world where straight white men are the most oppressed of all — and because, when this happens, the frustration I feel often swamps my ability to summon relevant facts, I’ve recently started trying to compile a compendium of links to facts about inequality, so I’ll have them handy when I need them. It’s very new and far from complete –it’s not only Western-centric but British centric — in fact, so far, it’s a bit of a disorganised mess and thus I’m only going to excerpt some links on gender for now — I hope this is in order.
RESEARCH
The Equal Opportunities Commission says that at the current rate of progress, women will be equally represented in politics in about two hundred years. (Britain)
About 34% of female murder victims are killed by a husband, compared to 3% of male homicide victims. Just to rephrase that slightly, straight men: when you marry or enter a relationship, your partner is accepting an elevenfold greater risk that you will eventually kill her than the reverse. (USA)
Britain has had equal pay legislation for forty years, but women are paid on average, 15.5 percent less than men.
Gender bias in journalism still acute, research shows.
Quite possibly acting without conscious malice, orchestras are less likely to hire female musicians when they know they are female. When women audition from behind a curtain, their chances of being hired rise significantly — provided the floor is carpeted so that no one hears the tell-tale sound of high-heeled shoes.
Men outnumber women on television by two to one.
“Men and women are still unequal, even when they are dead.”
“Eight is the peak age for women’s leadership ambitions” (video with a lot of hard statistics, not anywhere near as focused on body image as the surrounding text implies, not that body image isn’t important.)
EXAMPLES
* “Warner Brothers president of production Jeff Robinov just made a bold statement over the weekend: “We are no longer doing movies with women in the lead.” (2007)
* “Why I didn’t report my rape”
* When I was about to be published I was told not to mention so many female writers as influences and instead to cite some male writers I hadn’t read. The person who did this was a woman — women can absolutely perpetuate this sort of thing– but see how it’s men that benefit and women who are erased.
* My colleague-in-sci-fi, Jaine Fenn, was strongly advised to publish as J. N Fenn, explicitly so readers would not know she was a woman. This was, I believe, in 2008/2009.
That’s all I’ve got for now. Like I say, incomplete. But isn’t it enough to illustrate that in a world where this happens, something remains wrong?
(*not all straight white men, as Scalzi’s authorship of this wonderful post proves nicely. I actually think that’s worth noting here. Having privilege does not make it impossible for you to behave well, and if people are complaining about your behaviour, they’re complaining about your behaviour,)
It’s not Easy Mode. It’s Easier If All Other Factors Are The Same Mode. Big difference.
I doubt most people feel that their life has been on Easy Mode. But when compared to a lot of folks, it is definitely easier. Surely you can understand that? It’s not saying that your accomplishments are less, just that to achieve them, you didn’t have to deal with things other folks did. Your spawn point was on a map next to the BFG, the health pack and the quad boost. It’s a better spawn point than the one next to the nail gun or the gauntlet.
>> So.. if my life has been on “easy mode” all this time, what of my accomplishments? Do they mean less? Have they simply been handed to me no matter how I remember working for them? >>
It depends. Is the only level of “easier” (not “easy”) you can imagine one that means “effortless”?
Because if not, the question makes no sense. If you have a bicycle, it’s easier for you to travel 20 miles than it is for someone with no bicycle and only one leg. But does that mean you didn’t even have to ride the bicycle? You just teleported the 20 miles?
No. That’s not what it means.
No one wants to bash straight white males.
People who think that, as straight white males, social justice advocates are “raking them through the coals” or “crucifying” them all the time, or whatever, are you know–I’m just going to say it–wrong. Seriously. You’re wrong.
Also, those metaphors are dismissive in predictable ways — http://www.hugoschwyzer.net/2010/07/09/words-are-not-fists-on-male-strategies-to-defuse-feminist-anger/
And often offensive. If you find yourself thinking that you’ve been “crucified” because someone said something you don’t like on the internet–or even shouted at you in person–or refused to go out with you–or hired someone that in your (totally objective) opinion isn’t as qualified as your awesome self–then there’s a problem.
If you are, in fact, experiencing something closer to crucifixion–if you have endured systematic violence, for instance, based on your sex–then okay and I withdraw the complaint. And I hope you’re okay and having your needs met now.
Love it. The metaphor helps to avoid a common situation, where the statement “some people have significant advantages over others” is read as “and therefore those with advantages are bad people.”
“If you find yourself thinking that you’ve been “crucified” because someone said something you don’t like on the internet–or even shouted at you in person–or refused to go out with you–or hired someone that in your (totally objective) opinion isn’t as qualified as your awesome self–then there’s a problem.”
Specifically, a problem with your sense of perspective.
If you’re going to compare being a white guy in real life to being a WoW character, being a white guy is like being a Death Knight circa Wrath of the Lich King release. You get to skip many of the terrible things in life like leveling from 1 to 60, overcoming racism, and glass ceilings. Statistically, you start out with better gear and better skills. You have an easier time finding a raid slot (job) once you get to the level cap (adulthood).
Much like in real life, some people are better at the class than others. Much like in real life, the powers that be come down hard on you occasionally with the nerf bat. The thing is, at the end of the day, you still have more versatility than any other class. You won’t succeed just because you’re a Death Knight, but the odds are in your favor.
But what can you do?
With apologies because of the “p-word.” The conference is named what it’s named.
The White Privilege Conference (no, not for Supremacists!) Lots of 101, 201, and even some upper class work.
http://www.whiteprivilegeconference.com/
Catherine
This is awesome. Thank you for posting it.
“Baby-rabies”? What the fucking fuck?? Seriously, I’m beginning to question whether your friend is quite the saint you (and perhaps, he) seem to think he is. Just on your description, he’s staring to sound an awful lot like a Nice Guy™.
While I can see, through these comments, that people can and do interpret recognizing the relative ease of one’s own difficulty setting and acting on that recognition as a hardship, or coming at personal cost, I am baffled by that view. I see it as coming at great personal gain. When I recognize my advantages, and work to offer them/ensure that I am not denying them to others, I am sharing in the success of a much wider universe. I can’t think of a single excellent thing that I have in my life that would be better for my being the only one to have it, and many excellent things that are made more excellent when I get to experience them with people from all sorts of different difficulty settings, whether I think those settings are easier or harder than mine. My world is better shared than hoarded.
Estuary, I think there are some people who would tell you that your accomplishments dont mean as much because you are straight, white, male. But there are all kinds of vindictive and judgemental people in the world and you would go crazy trying to make them all happy. Had sex with your fiance before you got married? Some would say your marriage isnt as good as other marriages. Dont tithe ten percent? Some will tell you you’re going to hell
You’ve made accomplishments in your life. It might have helped that you didnt get shot by a cop for being black, didnt get paid less because you were a woman, and didnt get blocked from marrying because you were gay. Mostly, people are asking that everyone get these same bits of help that you got. Some might ne trying to put you in the dungeon for being straight, white, and male. But most are kust trying to get everyone on the “easy” difficulty setting that you are on. Not to take anything away from your accomplishments, but kust so everyone else can play at that level too.
“My world is better shared than hoarded.”
THIS.
From a non-gamer who loves this metaphor, and wants to be able to explain it to others like me: What is a “dump stat?”
This is, hands down, no bs, the absolute best explanation of privilege one can come up with. Consider this shared on multiple venues.
I still think that “easy mode” does indeed mean inferiority. To take the example of traveling 20 miles — the person who rode the bike accomplished a lot less than the person walking on one leg. That person’s struggle is less than that of the walker. Their achievement is objectively less than that of the walker. The biker is, by definition, inferior to the walker.
Great post John, thanks.
@ Cheri
Webcomic “Darths and Droids” has a good explanation of Dump Stats in the commentary under this strip: http://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0063.html
F. Martin:
But none of that means the cyclist didn’t get there, too. Why the insistence on a hierarchy?
Kurt, I’ve been a fan of yours for a long time. I guess I should start by saying that.
But I also don’t believe that I have the equivalent of a bicycle while all around me are one legged. I get that this has become a matter of liberal faith, which in just about any other case I’m right there with you. But this seems so full of generalization. I can’t imagine telling any person “well, of course, your life is easy compared to..(whatever)” based on a race or a gender.. . It’s certainly true that some peoples lives are easier than others, but this is a very dark and scary path. I look at my work and I feel like “so now, it doesn’t matter what I do, because in the end.. it will still be me who created it”.
Is it ok to make a sweeping generalization about a race if it’s, you know, the race that everyone feels comfortable putting beneath the others? Or if it’s the one that it’s politically acceptable to? Because right now it’s (apparently) politically acceptable to say “oh yeah, straight white male, their lives are easy”. But that race that it’s ok to say stuff about.. that changes over time, doesn’t it? And depending where you live, it’s not even the majority.
But isn’t the real problem not the variable race or gender or whatever.. but the act of making the sweeping generalization itself?
As a SWM myself, I am annoyed that I’ve missed this terrible conspiracy to get me and my kind! It’s weird because it was only the other day that my SWF wife and I were discussing how she’s paid slightly less than some of her co-workers even though she has an MBA and they don’t… Likewise, our GWM friends seem to have to be a lot more careful about picking where they go on vacation than we do because some people get upset at the fact that two grown men in the their 30s share a bed… or that a SBM friend got pulled over test driving his new Jaguar purely for a ‘documents’ check and no other reason…
Likewise, I had a bunch of advantages on the way up. Strong middle class background, good schools, university and the like – and yet I don’t feel that makes anything I’ve achieved since then of less value because I could, just as easily, even with all the advantages, screwed up totally. I didn’t. Good for me.
All of this still doesn’t mean that I should be annoyed that people don’t have a problem with the fact that women get paid less than men, black people in America are more likely to be arrested and go to jail, or that of the Fortune 500 companies there have only been 18 non-white CEOS, and only 12 woman ones.
dump stat: a stat that gets sacrificed so points can be put into a different stat. Charisma in a gaming perspective offers few advantages. Strength offers a lot of advantages. Charisma often becomes a dump stat and the points get pushed over to strength.
I still think that “easy mode” does indeed mean inferiority.
Haile Berry doesn’t get the same calibre roles as Meryl Streep and Kate Winslet. And she had to fight through arguably more difficult crap than Meryl and Kate.
But all three won Oscars. Ain’t nobody taking them away from any of them.
Angelle:
The cyclist may have gotten there, but so what? He took the easy way, and is therefore not entitled to feel pride in the “accomplishment,” which isn’t really an accomplishment at all compared to everyone else. He is objectively inferior.
@Ian Ironwood: They still talk crap about him, and the dude never did anything to warrant that kind of vitriol. Anecdotal? Certainly. But instructive.
The saddest fact is that Scalzi will never recognize your story as one which could ever happen to him, despite constantly being one blog post/bad interview/unfortunate life circumstance away from it. Hell, the bad event wouldn’t even need to have actually happened. One plausible but fictional account of how some convention-going gamer girl “just got leched on by John Scalzi”, and every single one of these sackcloth-and-ashes posts would be discounted as he becomes that month’s “potential rapist”.
But then, willful ignorance is an obvious tell of privilege, isn’t it?
I sympathize with all you straight white men who find this post offensive and hurtful. Fortunately, yoisthisracist.com hosts much gentler, more civil discussion on the same topic.
@ThePint:
Yes, people have mentioned this. You have implied it yourself, even. This is not a strawman. At 12:41, you mention “extend your hand to help those who do not have your privileges in whatever way you can…in other words, don’t be an asshole.” While this isn’t explicit, it implies the idea of giving what you have to the less fortunate OR you’re an asshole.
benjb at 1:02 notes, “I mean, if you were playing Scrabble with a million-point Z, we might say, let’s tone that down, bring it more in line with the values of the other letters.”
Bryce at 1:14 notes, “Mechanisms include progressive taxes, guaranteed access to the necessities of life, quality education, customs and laws that prevent discrimination and profiling, protections and guarantees for those on other difficulty settings, etc.”
BradHicks at 1:22 notes, “If you use the fact that you’re planing on the easiest difficulty mode to help yourself, you’re playing a bad guy”
Muse, at 1:32, notes, “Why is not being a flaming jerk not good enough?” in response to asking why someone should put aside their advantages
You, at 1:56, reference “But in a free society, such privileges are inappropriate,” which I already responded to in an earlier post, but repeat for reference.
Cofax, at 2:00, notes of Ian Ironwood: “He’s fully aware that the situation is unfair and imbalanced to his benefit. And he’s willing to say, in public, “That’s okay. I got mine.” Not everyone is okay with admitting their selfishnes so openly.” -thus implying that to accept the benefits of an unbalanced situation is selfish.
Bryce, at 2:21 notes, “Or, in every case, is action spurred by empathy, shame, and fear of being a douchebag? In case you haven’t been following the discussion, the point of nerfing the easy setting is NOT to make life better for the people on easy setting”
Constance, at 3:06, notes, “Put your money where your mouth is, and not just to charity – spend your food dollars at businesses that are owned and operated by women and/or minorities, or businesses that have strict Social Responsibility standards. They are not hard to find; such business promote those standards proudly. Buy fair trade goods, as much as possible, and when it’s not possible, buy used or make your own. Invest your retirement savings into a Social Justice fund, not the Lawyers, Guns, and Money funds.”
iiii at 3:20 notes, “Buy and read at least as many works of fiction by people who are not straight white men as you do works by SWMs”
At 3:28, you point out, “if doing so translates into any variation of “Why should I have share with anyone, I have mine so screw the rest of you, you’re just all whining,” it’s a pretty decent bet you’re actually being an asshole.”
Ron Zucker, at 4:23, notes, “So hire that qualified person of color ahead of me.”
To be fair, most of the profanity is coming from Scalzi.
I want to salute and hug everyone who has done work in the trenches here today patiently trying to explain to people what Scalzi explained in the original post.
I also want to salute people who disagree with Scalzi’s post who are open-minded and actually interested in this issue. Even though you are wrong.
@Estuary: “It’s politically acceptable to say “oh yeah, straight white male, their lives are easier than those of females, minorities and gays” “
There, fixed
F. Martin:
But still, I ask you: Who is making this “objective” judgement and why does it matter?
Thanks for explaining Dump Stats @crypticmirror , I was confused by that bit in the first read.
Very interesting article, I liked the metaphor. Though I personally think that sexual behavior is a choice rather than something assigned to you by “the computer”, it is really lousy that when things that you don’t have control over make life harder.
I also agree with @F. Martin that people born into a disadvantaged situation get more praise when the achieve something (first black this, first woman to do that, etc…), but I personally think it is deserved. I don’t think that praising one person for an accomplishment lessens the achievements of anyone else. There isn’t a finite amount of awesomeness available in the universe.
As a father of multiple daughters I like to hope that by the time they are old enough to notice that the world will judge them based on their merits rather than gender.
F. Martin:
Perhaps you have chosen an awkward analogy? I mean, the cyclist who cycled 20 miles did objectively difficult physical work. That work is not diminished by the fact that a walker’s objective work was more difficult, or that a one-legged athlete’s work was objectively even more difficult than that. No one is telling the cyclist that he should have just sat on the couch, because that 20 miles means nothing, or that they can’t take personal pride in those 20 miles.
All that said? I don’t know a single cyclist (okay, weird personal note here, I know quite a few) who would feel like they were entitled to more external recognition or acclaim for those 20 miles than the walker or the one-legged person. A personal sense of accomplishment should not be affected by the recognition of work done by the others. You can be simultaneously impressed by the feats of others and proud of your own.
And really, we’re not talking about those who reach the 20 mile mark. We’re talking about the one-legged athlete whose crutch is stolen at mile five and the walker who is beat up at mile six. And, more importantly, all the would-be athletes turned away at the starting line or told that the course is only going to be five miles for them.
Angelle:
Well, technically, right now I am. But it’s really just a necessary logical extension of realizing that one path is easier than the other. If one way of playing the game is easier than the other, the person playing it the easy way is, by definition, less of a player. If one path through life is easier than the other, the person living that life is, by definition, less of a person.
And it matters because as one of those guys stuck on easy mode, I would like to feel some pride in myself and my “accomplishments” in life. I don’t want to feel inferior, but logically, I can’t escape it.
“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 player who plays on the “Gay Minority Female” setting? Hardcore.”
Steve Moxon’s book, The Woman Racket explained that being a low status male is/was a hard setting, easily harder than an average female. That explains the success of feminism. Considering that Marie Curie is more well-known than Maxwell, I won’t stress on the low status part.
“The default barriers for completions of quests are lower. ”
Like joining the army or the odds of a boy competing for a sports scholarship? Or being one year behind in reading comprehension than the other sex?
“You automatically gain entry to some parts of the map that others have to work for.”
Feminists gained entry into the socio-political-economic complex built up by white guys, and now are trying their damnedest to prevent them from joining in their victim industrial complex, unless it’s on their own terms. (stuff like acknowledging that you are a victim of patriarchy, and feminists are here just to show you the reality how it harms even men like you!!)
http://www.shakesville.com/2012/05/this-is-so-worst-thing-youre-going-to.html?m=1
Equality today is giving women reparations for not rolling out the red carpet for them in men’s institutions, instead of men asking for royalties on every men’s invention that women use.
The patriarchy fiction has to be built up to gargantuan proportions, otherwise the female achievement of breaking its shackles pales in comparison to what the white guys accomplished. It still does.
“In fact, the computer chooses the difficulty setting for you.”
Women need not worry, in the bright future economy, as mentioned in that shakesville link, the lowest difficulty setting will be female. Hanna Rosin’s TED grrl power talk should cheer up even the most depressed feminist. Once women and minorities have changed the conditions to their suiting, with a little help from the NPC that is the the USG, we will have achieved peak equality.
[Contentless troll deleted — JS]
A better metaphor would be the EA sports games, where instead of a few discrete difficulty levels you have a large number of sliders controlling multiple aspects of the game difficulty (passing, tackling, etc.) “Straight white males” or “SVM” has always struck me as being too arbitrary and broad to be all that useful of a category in thinking about this sort of thing (for example, it implicitly ignores issues like anti-Semitism or discrimination based on health conditions).
Angelle, F. Martin, etc.
The bicyclist got there! Yay!
The point is to try to help other people get there, too, not to take anything away from the cyclist.
OK, new metaphor. I did theater in high school. I was a terrible dancer. Good singer, actress. I knew this guy who worked super, super hard to get leading roles. And he did! Yay! There were only like… 5% of the people auditioning who were blokes, though, and even so most musical leads are male. So if you were awesome, like he was awesome, and you worked hard, then there were, say, 15 excellent, hard-working dudes competing for 5 spots, and he totally had to work hard to beat them out.
But there would be like 50 girls who were equally hard-working and only 2 spots for them.
It’s not that dude didn’t work hard. It’s not that dude was objectively inferior. It’s not that dude shouldn’t have been happy he was successful, or that I shouldn’t be happy that he was successful. Again: yay for his success!
But a lady-type person who worked just as hard as he did would find herself facing harsher odds. She could be equally talented, work equally hard, but be competing with a much larger pool of people who were also excellently talented and hard-working, all while trying out for fewer available roles. For the purposes of simplicity here, let’s say all these people are about at the same level of achievement–he has to be the lucky hard-working and talented guy who beats out two others; she has to be the lucky, hard-working and talented girl who has to beat out… twenty-four others.
No patch on successful dude. Yay for successful dude! But if he’d been a lady, even if he was equally talented and hard-working, that might not have translated to the success that he had as a dude.
That’s, of course, not getting into other stuff. He was, for example, well-off enough to have been trained at the important dance studio in the area since he was small. He could have a private voice coach. His (very cool) mother had the time and resources to get really involved in the theaters where he had roles.
That stuff all existed. It doesn’t mean his success is worth less. But it’s also not worthwhile to pretend that it didn’t exist.
Daveon, I guess you win. You successfully sabotaged my sentence to make it say what you wanted it to say. I simply don’t beleive that. Our lives are easier than all women? all minorities? all gays? Like.. is my life easier than Kanye Wests? He’s got like a million dollars.
My second thought: Isn’t the lack of respect around this issue- the intolerance of dissent, the suggestion that well, those who disagree have no voice in this.. part of the real issue as well?
I’m not trying to pick a fight, but this is making me think “this is about people who are full of hatred, and it’s not really about what its pretending to be about at all. I came to talk, because I disagree.. but they’re here to beat us verbally, in the service of a political point”
I admit that I’m hurt by this, that I have a different perspective. I guess that’s it.
OK, actually throwing my hat in the ring here. Sorry if I’m repeating anyone else’s arguments here. I have read several comments along the lines “but it’s not my fault I was born straight, white and male, don’t beat me up for that. I really hate sexism/racism/heterosexism.” The point is not to beat anyone up for being this or that, but to get them to understand that others have it much harder as a result of systems that make their life easier and that if they really do hate sexism/racism/heterosexism, they will help to fight each of those and be aware of and hopefully even call out those that treat them better as a result of their status. They will hopefully also take the time to recognize when the revel in, however unconsciously, the benefits of their status. How often have the liberal men on this thread thrown casual sexual innuendos in the direction of conservative, female pundits/politicians they don’t like? How many have enjoyed the outing of self loathers like Larry Craig on more than just the hypocrisy angle. No one is saying you are terrible for your status, they are just asking you to exercise a little introspection.
Just skimming the comments is making my eye twitch in a flamenco rhythm, so I’m guessing this excellent post hit some nerves.
F Martin: I think you’re looking at that wrong. What about all the other people with bikes who failed to make the 20 miles? Or didn’t bother? Yes, aspects of my life are easier than other peoples. But I’m still playing and playing the best game I can. I don’t think we can view Elon Musk, Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerburg as being somehow less successful because they were SWMs…. They still blew through the game much better than hundreds of millions of others with pretty much the same start.
You can’t look at life with regrets provided you’ve played the best game you could(*). Otherwise what on earth would the point be?
(*) – note, I’m not making any comments on what winning means, because it’s not just about collecting tokens.
As far as the extended metaphor goes: Meh. It’s facile, silly, and myopic. Here’s a better one for the same audience:
Life is a Kobayashi Maru test. Playing it straight involves buying into the rules, which claim that “how the game is played” matters more than the outcome. That said, on the individual and cultural levels, there are ways to not play it straight — to change the test. The modern culture of straight white males is the recipient of the best currently-known strategy for changing the test in a way that benefits for the test-takers.
Corollary: Anyone who complains about straight white male privilege has chosen Picard over Kirk in the “who was the better captain of the Enterprise” debate.
Extended corollary: Those people are wrong, and should be mercilessly mocked.
Rachel Swirsky:
“Yay for the successful dude,” but he’s still inferior to the woman who overcame the greater odds.
Greater odds = greater accomplishment = better at life = superior.
Lesser odds = lesser accomplishment = worse at life = inferior.
I came to talk, because I disagree..
Then, talk, lay out the points. Do facts and figures. Otherwise, it just looks like you’re doing what you’re accusing others of.
“Yay for the successful dude,” but he’s still inferior to the woman who overcame the greater odds.
You keep saying that.
She’s not saying that.
2 questions:
First – By what standard do you define “easy”? It’s already subjective, and you offer no empirical data to substantiate or quantify it; merely your own declarative statements.
Second – Does this only apply to westernized nations? As a straight white male living in Asia, I assure you I have almost no real “privilege” to speak of.
>> But I also don’t believe that I have the equivalent of a bicycle while all around me are one legged.>>
Nobody said any such thing.
It was a response to a question about whether achievement is meaningless unless we pretend it’s all just as hard for everyone to do anything, which it patently isn’t. It’s an example chosen to illustrate a principle, not a claim that there’s only one person in the world with a bicycle, and it’s you.
>> But this seems so full of generalization.>>
It’s a generalization.
>> I can’t imagine telling any person “well, of course, your life is easy compared to..(whatever)” based on a race or a gender.. >>
Perhaps that’s because you’re trying to individualize it. It’s actually a general case. No one has argued that every straight white man has an easier life than every non-SWM. The argument is that straightness, whiteness and maleness are easier settings than the alternatives. That’s a general description, not a specific one, so if you’re thinking it means that some poor straight guy in a dead-end job at Burger King has it easier in life than the Obama children, that’s nonsense.
But if you think that the Obama children prove that sexism and racism aren’t factors, because they won’t suffer them as much as the vast majority of black women, that doesn’t make sense. General cases are not true of all individuals, individual examples do not apply generally.
>> I look at my work and I feel like “so now, it doesn’t matter what I do, because in the end.. it will still be me who created it”.>>
That’s a bizarre way to feel, I’d say. Do you really think that achievement only counts if you achieved against the highest odds available? I don’t, and I doubt most people do, but it seems like you’re taking it as axiomatic. If so, I’d suggest rethinking that, rather than building a value system that says that J.K. Rowling accomplished nothing because she isn’t black and gay, too.
>> Is it ok to make a sweeping generalization about a race if it’s, you know, the race that everyone feels comfortable putting beneath the others?>>
If you can’t generalize, you can’t talk about general things. What you seem to be doing here is mixing up “generalization” and “stereotype.”
>> Because right now it’s (apparently) politically acceptable to say “oh yeah, straight white male, their lives are easy”.>>
This is another misreading, perhaps because you think “easier” and “easy” mean the same thing, and perhaps that they also mean “effortless.” They’re not and they don’t.
>> But isn’t the real problem not the variable race or gender or whatever.. but the act of making the sweeping generalization itself? >>
No. It’s a generalization to say women are at a disadvantage compared to men. It’s also true. It’s a generalization to say that blacks face prejudice in the United States. It’s also true. So when you say that it’s politically allowed to say that men are advantaged or white men face less prejudice, and therefore these are unacceptable statements, what you’re trying to do is deny that patterns of behavior and experience exist, or at least that we shouldn’t talk about them for fear of…some sort of labeling.
There is a difference between saying, “straight white men have advantages” and saying “You are a straight white man, therefore you have nothing but advantages and no one who is not straight, white or male has any advantages themselves.” I hope you can see the difference.
And glad you like my work; I appreciate it.
@ AS – your objections still seem to boil down to “Why should I have to share? I don’t wanna.” Not sharing *once you’ve realized that you’ve been given an unfair advantage* is by definition, being selfish, and an asshole.
And you’re assuming that all we’re asking to be shared is material advantages, which isn’t so – as others have pointed out, the benefits one gets from privilege aren’t limited to material things. Those benefits also include societal acceptance, approbation, not being treated as “strange,” “exotic” or “abnormal,” not to mention having one’s civil rights defended or assumed as a matter of course (see: the fight for legalized same-sex marriage). Sharing those intangible benefits is just as important as the material ones because they are just more ways in which a society signals that you are included, you belong, you are valued.
Ultimately, it comes down to whether or not you believe that a society ultimately benefits from a more equitable system of distribution and equal treatment of its members. If “sharing” the benefits – both intangible and material – in whatever form is possible for you is something you see as “asking too much” I don’t think there’s really anything else that can be said to change your mind.
Also, if you’re not a SWM acting like a privilege denying asshole to others, those criticisms *don’t apply to you or anyone else not acting like a privilege denying asshole* so why are you taking offense to them? If you’re more concerned about the hurt feelings of SWMs because it’s been pointed out to them that they’ve likely benefited from having privilege in a system that values heterosexuality, being white and being male, rather than the inequalities and harm that have resulted from that system, then you clearly have a set of priorities that I don’t agree with.
Namae Nanka:
“Considering that Marie Curie is more well-known than Maxwell, I won’t stress on the low status part.”
Two Nobel prizes in physics have gone to women in over a hundred years. You want to argue that one of the two being better well-known than a physicist who did not is evidence of the “triumph of feminism”?
If you really want to make the argument, name to me the other woman who won the award. Try it without Google! And while you’re at it, tell me if Madame Curie (or this other woman, whose name you are almost certainly unaware of) is more well-known than, say, Einstein. As long as we’re cherry-picking examples to give credence to specious arguments.
Your logic-fu is less than compelling, Namae Nanka.
I know she’s not saying that. I am, because it’s simply a fact. If you have it easier than someone else, your achievements mean less than those of that other person. No way around it.
Your life has been easier as a white man than your life would have been if you were not a white man. This is almost certainly true.
Making empirically-based statements about race categories is, well, empirical. White is a race that comes with some advantages. These can be observed and even, in some cases, measured. How they play out in your life (or mine) may be difficult to determine.
It’s also hard to justify your apparent perception of “you have advantages” as somehow being a racial slur. Dude, you have advantages! Your life is easier than it would be if you weren’t white! That’s definitely some harsh discrimination, there. Every damn day I manage to encounter the idea that I probably rape children and should be put to death. One of these things is not like the other.
What you call “sweeping generalizations” are aggregated data analyses. This is sometimes not the best approach, it’s true; if we only look at aggregates, we don’t see individuals. However, aggregates provide evidence of inequality that we would have trouble seeing otherwise. Pick a pair of individuals, similar in many ways, one straight, one gay: maybe the straight person has a chronic illness and the gay person is a healthy professional athlete. In aggregate, though, we find that gay people are less physically healthy on average, due partly to the stresses of living gay in a homophobic society and partly to diminished access to health care or lower quality of care. This doesn’t mean it’s bad to be gay or all gay people are unhealthy, but there’s nothing about being gay that *should* mean I have a higher risk of heart disease than a straight person, and yet, statistically, I do. And that lets us see the results of discrimination.
F. Martin:
If you’re the one judging yourself as wanting, then I don’t really know what I’m supposed to do about that.
I’m trying to point out that life is not a zero-sum game, divided into hard and fast winners and losers. One person’s accomplishment only diminishes your own if you let it. As in most solo sports, we are competing against ourselves, our own limitations and our previous bests.
And as Lee Fallin said above: There isn’t a finite amount of awesomeness available in the universe.
@Esturary: Do you feel the same because you’re less successful than a bunch of SWMs too? Because Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerburg, Elon Musk, Mitt Romney and a LOT of other SWMs have more than a million dollars and are more ‘successful’ than you or I can ever dream of being.
The issue is that when you look at the stats, there are a lot more SWM Gates, Romneys, Zuckerburgs, Musks and so forth than there are Wests, Obamas, Whitmans and the like.
If you are born SWM, you’re more likely to earn more than any SWF, you are less likely to go to jail than any SBM and you’ll find a LOT easier to go to any hotel/place in the US and book a room for you and your partner without having disapproving looks or problems than any homosexual.
That’s the way it is. Sorry you’re hurt by that, or you feel it devalues the challenges you’ve had in life, but whatever you’ve faced would, on the whole, be a LOT worse if you were a woman, gay or black. Sorry.
Thanks, John, this is excellent.
One of the things I don’t understand is why people of all sorts seem to be so low on gratitude. Yeah, I started with a few strikes against me and I worked hard to get out and overcome, and I’ve done well, but I sure as hell didn’t do it on my own. I had a good family growing up (and missed out on the addiction gene), I had family support through good times and bad, I had good teachers in a good educational system, and I had a lot of just plain luck — such as getting into the computer industry just as it was taking off. For all that, I’m eternally grateful. I’m grateful that I live in a country that has both the wealth and the social structure to permit that kind of mobility. I try to pay that gratitude forward, helping others when I can. I try to be generous, not just to people less well off but generous in attitude. What does it harm me to assume the best instead of the worst of that panhandler on the corner, or the woman with a drug problem.
The truth is, if people play together instead of against each other, life gets a lot better for everybody.
F. Martin:
Yes, it’s terrible that you have advantages that other people have to work for.
I know! Help make it so everyone else has those same advantages, and then you’ll have that even playing field you’re craving so much!
It’s a crazy idea, but it just might work!
even my significant other can understand this, and he’s not a gamer, or even computer literate! Thank you!
I find this statement to be odd.
Can you, without looking it up, name the first man in space? on the moon? What about the first woman to go to space? to walk on the moon? The non-white black man to go into space? to walk on the moon?
Oh, right. Only white men have been on the moon.
Now, go look up the first woman (hint, it isn’t Sally Ride) and the first black man in space, because unless you happen to be a space historian or huge space nerd, I’m certain that you don’t know their names.
They’re not being held up as examples of how meaningless Yuri Gagarin’s or Neil Armstrong’s accomplishments were, but as examples of how others may overcome adversity to do something amazing.
Caucasian heterosexual male poster here! (Don’t worry, I’m not really putting it to good use.)
Just wanted to say, we didn’t really need this metaphor — and this is coming from a game designer. Most people know there are privileges to being white, or male, and so on. Just as there are privileges to not being, say, severely physically disabled or extremely unintelligent or from a broken home. What people should realize is, it’s not an insult to be called “privileged,” nor should it be. Nor is it a conversation-ender.
I don’t see how this simplified argument improves anyone’s understanding of the concept. That, or the constant implications that this is something that needs to be patiently explained to white male dullards, or that we’re unable to discuss the concept without freaking out. It’s just going to put people on the defensive (as we’ve seen) and turn people off the “cause.” Especially when the reaction to critiques is either to delete their post or tell them off.
We need to address privilege and level the playing field, undoubtedly. Your heart is in the right place, but I think your approach (or reproach) has been backwards.
Ian Ironwood @ 3:14pm:
Sounds to me like your friend’s problem was that he was, bluntly, a doormat. It had nothing to do with his societal position vis-a-vis his ancestry, gender, or sexual orientation and everything to do with a lack of assertiveness on his part.
Scalzi: Totally. I dispute none of that.
I’m just saying, until the playing field is leveled, SWMs are, by definition, inferior to non-SWMs. It’s an unpleasant truth, and one that may drive some SWMs to get defensive and turn away from the good fight, but a truth nonetheless, and we do no good by sweeping it under the rug or pretending it isn’t true.
>> If one way of playing the game is easier than the other, the person playing it the easy way is, by definition, less of a player. If one path through life is easier than the other, the person living that life is, by definition, less of a person.>>
Then as long as there’s someone worse off than you, none of your accomplishments matter. Unless we pretend no one is worse off than you.
That strikes me as a stupid value system, one that says that difficulty is the only yardstick that matters. I don’t think most people buy into it, so if you’re insisting on it, that seems to be your choice, not some unassailable logical conclusion.
I’ve won awards for my work. I know there are people who did not have the opportunities I’ve had. This doesn’t make me think the work is crap; it makes me aware that I didn’t overcome poverty to get where I am, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t achieve anything.
Brilliant stuff. As a straight white male I agree. It’s easy being me. This was always my problem with white supremacists – what’s your next campaign, chaps, grass green, sky blue? I’m moderately successful but the fact I’m not more successful ain’t nobody else’s fault but mine.
[People who comment to tell me that they didn’t read get deleted! Because they’re jackassed trolls who have nothing to add to the conversation! — JS]
[Deleted for pointlessness — JS]
It may be obvious, but Straight White Males can “up” their difficulty level any time they choose:
1. Start having sex with men.
2. Move to a place where most people aren’t white.
3. Transgender themselves. (At which point they will have to revert to having sex with women again if they already did #1…)
If they want to…
—
I think this description is mostly apt, and any tweaks I might make have already been offered by others. John addresses the biggest issue I have with these types of conversations, which is that people equate “the lowest difficulty level” to “easy,” and to assume that the level of difficulty is homogenous throughout the game. (“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.”)
Sometimes the game is easy. Certainly, SWMs living in non-third-world countries probably do have it easier than non-SWMs, all else being equal (which, of course, it never is). However, “easier” and “easy” are not the same thing. We’re all human, and the game of life sucks for everyone at different times and for different reasons, regardless of what difficulty level you’re playing at.
The reason I generally dismiss discussions like this is that the tone almost inevitably turns Bergeronian. In game terms, people might want to, say, make an SWM do more to earn the same amount of gold (because earning gold is harder for those on harder difficulty settings), or take away what another player who played before him gave him so that he wouldn’t have to start on the lowest levels (because those playing on harder difficulty settings didn’t get the same things to start with). In practical conversation, it’s my experience that people typically express the desire to handicap SWMs and create their own priv…uh, I mean, reset their own game to the lowest difficulty level…rather than change the system to be more fair to everybody. That’s a perfectly natural desire — just as it’s perfectly natural for SWMs to dislike it.
I’m happy someone recognizes me as hardcore
Perhaps the solution to the problem that people with bicycles have it easier if to work toward a day when everyone has bicycles. It seems more productive than saying that it makes you feel bad about yourself to recognize that having a bicycle is an advantage, so let’s not be truthful about bicycles getting you places faster than walking.
Ace Minority Female here rolling my eyes so hard at this article. I have problems in my life, because life isn’t fair and I rolled up crap for wealth and family connections. It IS a hard life, and it isn’t remotely fun, but it has NOTHING to do with the fact that I am not a Straight White Male. If I make something out of my life it’s not because I overcame my ‘handicaps’, and it wouldn’t be any easier if I had ‘training wheels’ on. In fact, because I AM female if I really wanted to, I could move up in life far more easily than a male could. Saying that straight white men have it ‘easy’ is just a crutch to hang back and feel good about yourself for not succeeding, because it’s not YOUR fault, if you were just born a little bit differently, all the effort you put into things would have more than equaled enough to succeed at whatever.
It’s an archaic, ignorant and frankly problematic belief that does no one absolutely any favors. Yes, you can be born on the easy road if you’re in just the right place or family or time, or you can jump to an easier difficulty if you suddenly get lucky, but none of that has to do with being straight, white, or male. The ONLY factor of the three that could ‘influence’ whether you are born in a good position for the easy route is ‘white’, and even then it’s a pretty offensive implication to say only white families have enough wealth or family connections to pass on to their children. How about we stop trying to point at people and decide who has it more difficult so we can feel better about ourselves over it, and instead just concentrate on doing what it takes to get whatever it is we’re looking for? That’s a whole lot more effective than trying to make white boys feel bad for being born the way they were. Or is it okay to make straight white males feel horrible about not succeeding because ‘they can’t even do it on very easy mode’?
I guess other people’s feelings don’t matter if it comes to us feeling like war-torn badasses for chiseling out a meager living on life’s ‘very hard’ mode.
I think the reason you might have difficulty communicating your ideas to straight, white males is that you make it sound like every straight, white male is either a) part of a conspiracy to make life better for each other at the expense of everyone else, or b) don’t care that somebody else might have it harder.
Generalizations generally don’t communicate well, even if they are largely true.
I love that you added the bit about not being able to change the difficulty setting. So many people try to do that their whole lives. My message: quit trying to change your initial settings and just play the game — you can still win.
John Scalzi @ 3:38 pm: Fair enough. I was just wondering if people were leaping to conclusions on this.
Mothgar @ 5:40 pm:
It would be nice if most people knew this. However, based the comments posted here, this knowledge is clearly not universal.
kurtbusiek:
It’s not that difficulty is the only yardstick that matters. But it does matter. If a man on a bike and a man with one leg and no bike race, the man on the bike may very well win the race, but he would not and should not get any credit for doing so.
To boil it down to its simplest terms:
Two people are working toward a goal.
One person has a significant starting advantage.
Both achieve the goal.
Which one are you more impressed with?
@ Mothgar
“Most people know there are privileges to being white, or male, and so on.”
Ideally, this would be the case. But judging from some of the comments here, and the fact that this is not the first post John has written attempting to explain the concept (not to mention the vast, vast plethora of blog posts attempting to do similar and having similarly frustrating comment threads), this is not the reality we currently inhabit.
There are a number of points of disagreement I have here, which I will try to phrase in a reasonably non-loaded way:
1. The assumption that the primary determinants of difficulty level are race, gender, and sexual orientation–not other factors such as class, culture, or attractiveness. There are lots of anecdotes in the thread so far, so let me add one: One of my best friends from high school was an attractive, intelligent, black girl from a family of upper middle class professionals (both doctors). Culturally, suburban, went to the same high class private school I went to. She was expected to go to an Ivy League school–she did, and ended up at Harvard Law. My fiance, who is white, came from a lower-middle class broken family, with an awful father and a mother who suffered from serious medical issues through her early childhood. In her family, just going to college was a huge achievement. Who had the tougher difficulty level? I had the same background as my friend, but as a white male; my father abandoned us when I was 13, I’m fat and not very attractive, and I didn’t have parental financial support as an adult. I know the answer from previous commenters was “yeah, but it would have been even tougher if you were black!” Putting aside the question of whether that’s true, so what? None of us are responsible for the circumstances of our birth, and we’re all born with certain advantages and disadvantages. It should be obvious from observation that race, gender, and sexual orientation aren’t such huge advantages as to outweigh less controversial advantages, so why should I care particularly about race, gender, or sexual orientation privilege?
2. The assumption that race, gender, or sexual orientation is only an advantage or disadvantage. Most obviously with gender, but also with the other categories. I’m not expected to be a nurturer…but I am expected to be a breadwinner of the family. If I wanted to be a stay at home dad, I’d be treated badly by others. If I want to volunteer with kids because I like kids, I’m automatically suspected of being a pedophile. And if I’m unlucky enough to get divorced, I’m more likely to get the worse deal on custody. On race, I get the benefit of being “normal,” but also the negative side of being “normal.” At the professional end of the scale, overt discrimination is likely to be in favor of minorities, not against them. Quantifying and adding up all the advantages and disadvantages looks like a fool’s errand, and to what end?
3. The assumption that massive social action is needed to remedy this “difficulty level.” My grandparents wouldn’t have been considered “white” in their day; they were Jewish. My great-great-grandparents were even worse off, because they were Jewish in Russia. Most American Jews were impoverished from 1910-30, and then World Jewry suffered the horror of the Holocaust, Somehow, we became successful, and we didn’t do it by carping about privilege and demanding special treatment from the majority. Chinese-Americans and Japanese-Americans did much the same thing, and now get the double-whammy of being a minority and being discriminated against in college admissions because they’ve gotten too successful.
4. Finally, the assumption that the solution to this “difficulty level” issues (brought up by the comments, not by John) is essentially “be a leftist.” (see AS’s post above for a comprehensive list) Progressive taxation? Fight for “social justice?” How does that solve the problem? Should I get a boost or a weight for being Jewish? For being fat? For having doctor parents? For having divorced parents? To go back to the game metaphor, so many pixels are spilled trying to figure out how to remedy this difficulty level issue, and it sounds a lot like the trolls on MMO forums whining about game balance while everyone else is having fun just playing the game, and if the difficulty level is too hard, they deal with it or change their goals. Because if it’s so hard to balance SWTOR or WoW, how do you expect it to be remotely possible to balance Life?
This is too hard to understand. Can’t someone give me the Internet Standard Car Analogy?
gd&r
Brad:
As nothing in the entry suggests either a) or b), I’m not. But it’s interesting that you appeared to read it that way.
That Person says:
“Saying that straight white men have it ‘easy’ is just a crutch to hang back and feel good about yourself for not succeeding”
And oddly enough, no one else seems to be saying this, either. Certainly I have not made such a suggestion.
Strange how people are reading so much that isn’t there! How does this happen?
@Curtis:
Wow.
1. Gay is an identity, not a behavior. You don’t choose to be gay.
2. Being of an advantaged race but a local minority is not actually a disadvantage, although it’s less of an advantage than being in a majority racially homogeneous enclave.
3. Transgender isn’t a verb, and this is also not a choice, although whether or not to act on one’s gender identity (by transitioning) is.
Because what you’re saying is that if I’m tired of getting shit for being gay, I should just start having sex with men. You’re not so far from “go back in the closet if you don’t like it.”
So, assuming you weren’t intending to say that sexual orientation and gender identity are easily changed, perhaps you should restate…
F Martin: If you are asking am I more impressed that a 1 legged person ran a marathon than a two legged person then yes.
Does that devalue the achievement of the 2 legged person who ran it?
No, it does not. I couldn’t run a marathon myself.
Anymore than I think that being a SWM devalues what Mark Zukerburg or Bill Gates or Elon Musk etc… have done. I’m about the same age as Musk, but he’s done better than me. Does that make me feel like I’m a loser? Not really. It would be nice to be him, but kudos and all that.
I’ve been thinking about Black friends who are similarly ‘successful’ as I am and thinking does that make me feel bad? No. No, it doesn’t.
F. Martin – If all other things are equal and if two people have exactly the same accomplishment, then the one who had the more difficult time achieving that goal is better. However, all other things are never equal. No two people ever achieve exactly the same thing. If I ride the twenty miles in forty minutes and a healthy walker takes a week to go the same distance then I did better even though having the bike is an advantage if you want to get to a town that is 20 miles away.
I think that The Pint is trying to play a game where it’s the sum total of everyone’s score that counts, and F. Martin is trying to play a game where it’s your personal score that counts.
I think there are people reacting to the suggestion that one should put a multiplier on score that accounts for the difficulty level that you play on—100 points on hard being worth 2X 100 points on easy. Which is great if you’re playing the first sort of game and obnoxious if you’re playing the second sort.
I think anyone who plays for personal score exclusively is probably a bit of an asshole. I think anyone who claims to be playing for group score exclusively should probably make sure that they’re playing at Mother Theresa levels before calling people who care about their personal score “selfish”.
Well, at least this metaphor isn’t as offensive as “privilege”, with its implication that we straight white men are coercively taking things in a zero-sum way from others. As a stereotypical truth, that is. (I am glad that y’all liberal-minded folks are now happy in dealing with broad racial and sexual stereotypes — perhaps I will remind you of it in future.)
Me, I prefer “advantage”. See, my parents and forebears gave me great advantages. Not just my awesome straightness (easy enough to get), and white maleness. As well as other genetically determined advantages — which I have several of. But also environmental advantages: a roof over my head, food, a stable home life growing up. An education, if not money, although of course I do share some credit for that. Just living here the West under the rule of law. Living in the most future time yet. All of these advantages — none of them privileges — I am happy to have had. My ancestors rock: thanks, Mom and Dad. Yeah, life is pretty easy. And that’s good.
So what’s so wrong with “game in easy mode” as a metaphor?
For one thing: this “game” actually counts; that is, it’s not a game. Games are, among other things, optional, and they have an outside context in which they are meaningless. If it were a game, I’d learn it in easy mode, maybe for a little while. Perhaps even for game “years”, until I am just as old as I am now. Then — assuming it was a game that held my interest — I’d play on hard. I could accomplish that by, for example, killing a man in cold blood, so that I could be sent to prison and get a felon’s record. Just to spice it up, you know? Perhaps Anders Breivik thinks it’s a game in this sense. To call it a game is nihilism, in other words, and I do not think most people here are really nihilists.
>> It’s not that difficulty is the only yardstick that matters. But it does matter. If a man on a bike and a man with one leg and no bike race, the man on the bike may very well win the race, but he would not and should not get any credit for doing so.>>
Ah, I see. You’re assuming that since someone (me) used the idea of a bicycle and a one-legged man as an example, that this scenario can be turned into a race (because it’s not about getting to the destination, it’s about “winning” something), and this can then be used as a perfect parallel to real life.
I think you’re mistaken.
If I write a graphic novel that delights a lot of people and brings in money that pays my mortgage, and Scalzi writes a novel that delights a lot of people and brings in money that pays his mortgage, who won?
Do we look to see who started worse off? Do we count the money? Do we test the two of us for happiness and see who’s ahead?
I’d say the question makes no sense. We weren’t racing each other. We both won, in that we both achieved a goal. Beyond that, our readers won, our mortgage holders won, lots of people won.
Rather than moan that our achievements don’t count because we’re not gay — or perhaps argue that we “won” over Larry Niven because he grew up rich — I think we can both feel pride in our accomplishments. And we can both work toward giving others a chance, too.
Because it’s not about beating the other guy. It’s about reaching the goal. The more people who reach such goals, the happier we all might be. I’m certainly happy that Scalzi writes novels, because it make my life better to read them. I’m not trying to “win.” I’m trying to achieve.
You keep ignoring the idea of achievement and looking only at an imaginary competition. If that makes you feel your achievements are worthless, so be it. I think that’s a silly way to look at things, but you’re doing it to yourself; it’s not being imposed on you.
If Niven gets there on a hang glider, I get there on a bicycle, Scalzi arrives on a unicycle, Rowling shows up on inline skates and someone else crawls across the finish line on stumps, we all won. Because we weren’t racing each other.
“I should perhaps point out that “Game” being discussed is a very different critter than that described by Carse in Finite and Infinite Games, which is usually shelved in theology or philosophy.”
Thanks for the book recommendation. I haven’t read that one yet, but based on its Wikipedia page it sounds like an interesting work, and yes, quite different from the “Game” Ian and I refer to above. (If you really want to know more about that, you can do a Google search with keywords
game male female alpha beta
and go through the list of readings as far as you care or can stand to read through. (If you think what matters in life is mastering dominance contests to win prizes, and see desirable women primarily as particularly valuable prizes, you may find some kindred spirits in the literature.)
I’m surprised at the number of detractors. I thought this was pretty well known and documented. I would add that a TALL straight white male would be a cheat code in the Game of Life. Malcolm Gladwell had some interesting insights in Blink:
http://www.gladwell.com/blink/blink_excerpt2.html
I am a tall straight white male and I had to work very hard to get where I am today as my family did not have many points in the Wealth category. But a person of color or the opposite sex would have had a tougher time with it than I. Which frankly stinks but ignoring the discrepancy is even worse.
I think so many white men admonish the word “privileged” because they feel it undermines the hard work that they have done over the years. Does someone working harder than you to accomplish the same goals diminish the work that you have done? I don’t know. If I go to the gym and have a good workout I don’t feel I did worse if a friend has a better workout.
It is hard to overlook the fact that race and sex are still an advantage in this day and age. If we consciously accept his, we can on day move on to where there is only one Difficulty selection.
More racism guised as “teaching” white males how awesome their life is by default. Sorry, but painting such a wide and diverse group in such a broad brush is always bullshit. Whatever your aim, you do more harm than good.
Excellent post, John Scalzi, thank you very much. I’d like to offer this follow up: The next step is what you do with your difficulty setting: Do you exploit it to get as far in the game as you can or do you use it to help your fellow gamers who are playing with a less advantageous setting to do better –to level out the fairness? Do you speak out against your fellow gamers who make derogatory remarks concerning another players’ disadvantages or do you allow those remarks tacit approval by your silence? The next step is to use your advantages to help stamp out the disadvantages by words and deeds and level the game for everyone. When you work together with those of all difficulty settings, you can work to make all the levels easy settings. This is what you can do.
F. Martin: I am very, very glad that I do not live in your sad world.
I’m also glad that many of the other commenters here don’t live there either. I’d try and explain what it looks like here, and why I find the view so much better than the one in your world, but I doubt that you would even make an effort to understand. You’re more likely to insist that I actually live in the same world as you do, but I just don’t see correctly.
We’re never going to have only one Difficulty selection: the world doesn’t work that way.
But I wish we could get to a point where the level of difficulty wasn’t taken as a symbol of inherent worth by anyone. Having advantages doesn’t make you morally superior those who didn’t (unless you’re an asshole); and vice, most definitely, versa.
Your ground rules seem to consist of “only a chorus of agreement will be tolerated.”
SWMs are an outrageously privileged group…impossible to deny, and for those that are SWMs their position at the very apex of privilege should be easy to see and appreciate…less easy to appreciate perhaps is when you are relatively less privileged than those at the apex, but really, in the big picture you are still pretty much starting the game at easy…and there are many, many of us who don’t fit the SWM category but still fit into that much larger category of the privileged.
@bbeck310:
“It should be obvious from observation that race, gender, and sexual orientation aren’t such huge advantages as to outweigh less controversial advantages, so why should I care particularly about race, gender, or sexual orientation privilege?”
1. Because they are systematic, which means that your society as a whole suffers because those people in those circumstances are not hitting the mark.
“On race, I get the benefit of being “normal,” but also the negative side of being “normal.” At the professional end of the scale, overt discrimination is likely to be in favor of minorities, not against them. Quantifying and adding up all the advantages and disadvantages looks like a fool’s errand, and to what end?”
2. Because you want to know whether the systematic bias is at an end, and more importantly whether it has been for long enough that the system will not reset itself.
“Progressive taxation? Fight for “social justice?” How does that solve the problem? ”
4. By establishing a minimum starting level and progress mechanisms that are minimally sufficient to allow people to overcome bad starts
It’s funny, I actually have problems with the original post myself, but these are pretty laughable objections.
If life was a MMO, North Korea would be the worlds 2nd largest super power, just after South Korea.
Your explanation of The Real World is awesome. You really get it. I’d add another factor in, however: if you’re disabled and need disability access it doesn’t matter what your race is, you’re automatically below minority races. I’m white by heritage and, *worse still* I’m white by disability. I’m an albino. You may be aware that the entertainment industry fairly consistently depicts albinos as evil, insane or, at best, mentally unstable when albinos are depicted at all. There is a group lobbying for better representation of albinos in the entertainment industry, which would help albinos intrinsically (see Edward James Olmos and his analogy of a glass of water in the desert) but would also help in the way others perceive and treat albinos.
After years of studying and hard work, the pinnacle of my career was a Community Health Worker for CNAHS, part of the Department of Health in South Australia. The senior social worker there told me my disability was my choice because I was too vain to wear ‘coke bottle glasses’. I was repeatedly refused disability access, both verbally and via email. One of the managers bullied me repeatedly for my inability to sit ergonomically at a computer screen then, after refusing disability access a couple of times via email, the subject was raised in a team meeting. I was publicly humiliated for being disabled. Then I was singled out alone as having to reapply for my job even though I was working well above my pay scale and working extra-long days, taking the early clients, lunch-time clients and late clients all in one day. The only other applicant for the position was a student social worker with no post-graduate qualifications and no professional work experience. Three months before being given my job the senior social worker had refused to allow her to counsel anyone because the senior social worker was trying to teach her the basics of counselling first. The student social worker played tennis with the manager who bullied me. Of course she got the job. I’ve been unemployed ever since, 6 years.
Recently I was approached to be interviewed as part of a snapshot of the Australian SFF scene. I had concerns about this, especially when the website that gave information said, ‘…see[ing] who has lost prominence or relevance in the intervening years…’ and the interviewer said her goal for the interview was ‘As editor of a relatively new fanzine, I think it would be interesting to have your point of view on the importance of fanzines, particularly in light of new media such as podcasts, etc.’ I said I’d participate but without seeing the questions in advance I would not guarantee that I would answer all of her questions. She said ‘Actually, I don’t think any snapshot participant refusing to answer the questions, and last time we had 112 participants. Still, you obviously have some reservations about participating, so perhaps we’ll just leave it there.’ (this is a copy/paste, the errors are hers.) The same day she sent this statement to me, a male participant said he was either ‘unwilling or unable’ to answer two of the three questions she had given him. She sent him new questions. It’s interesting that even in the SFF scene, people are giving preferential treatment to white males over disabled women.
In my interview with Christopher Kirby (Iron Sky, Matrix, Star Wars) he says one thing he likes about the science fiction genre is it tends to be colourblind. I wish the SFF community was likewise ‘blind’ to gender and disability.
bbeck310:
“The assumption that the primary determinants of difficulty level are race, gender, and sexual orientation–not other factors such as class, culture, or attractiveness.”
Yes, strange that one would have those baseline assumptions in the United States. Because as we all know, the United States since its founding never found reason to discriminate against anyone based on race, gender or sexuality, or to encode those discrimination into its laws. But we did have laws against ugly people voting. I can’t seem to remember which Amendment to the Constitution gave ugly people the right to vote, but I know it will come to me eventually.
That said, I’m perfectly happy to grant that there are several other factors that can make the game difficult for individual players, and that class, culture and attractiveness can be part of those; that’s why I note them (briefly and generally) as stat attributes, and make the notation that even on “easy,” the individual player can have a rough time of it. But particularly in the US, the assertion that race, sex and gender are not baseline difficulty settings is to seriously ignore the history of the nation, and also its current state.
Trimegistus:
“Your ground rules seem to consist of ‘only a chorus of agreement will be tolerated.'”
That’s apparently because your reading comprehension is of an exceptionally low level, Trimegistus. However, it is true that I snip out egregiously stupid comments. Yours just barely survived! Aren’t you proud.
As elderly white female who had two children to raise on a woman’s salary (a long time ago) I had to stop reading because of the recurring theme of – so I got it good, whadda you want me to do about it – I have a suggestion – If you are aware you are ahead of the game through chance only – how about giving others a hand up?.
@ThePint:
My problems are mostly around problems of how we as human beings are communicating with each other. It’s not “Why should I have to share? I don’t wanna” It’s, “Why are you failing to understand that often, there are some forms of privilege that people don’t want to lose, which is a perfectly valid and reasonable response?” Firstly, this mostly doesn’t apply to me: you may have missed it in the length of comments, but I am in no way whatsoever a SWM. I just have a lot of empathy for what it’s like to be asked to give up things so that other people can have them. I actually completely agree with you in terms of social acceptance and civil rights, and engage in a lot of activism (and donate finances and time) around those areas. I try to see this from other sides.
Not sharing, even if you realize you’ve been given an unfair advantage, is not “Being an asshole.” That is a value statement which does not apply to everyone. Not everyone has similar values around sharing being the highest priority. There’s this great thing rumbling around the net that talks about how people’s value priorities informs their choices-that all people start from strong moral choices. People not wishing to give up material things in order to get fairness may be prioritizing “family” over “equality.” That doesn’t make them immoral. It means they make different choices than you.
Your statement of “Also, if you’re not a SWM acting like a privilege denying asshole to others, those criticisms *don’t apply to you or anyone else not acting like a privilege denying asshole* so why are you taking offense to them?” That kind of defeats the purpose of this whole thread, doesn’t it? The point is that it’s okay to stand up for people even if you AREN’T like them, to stand up and be offended on behalf of people that you may not be like, when you feel they are being unduly wronged. That’s a moral principle I do believe in, strongly.
Look, in personal life? I don’t like privilege denying jerks either. I rant about it. I work against it. But I also try to figure out how I can connect with them, in their language, and figure out the most mutually beneficial solution. And that is: don’t ask people to give up things that benefit them. Ask people to work together in ways that don’t hurt them, and celebrate them for doing it, not yell at them for not going far enough.
@Newbury – because clearly it’s only possible to play for one of the two extremes. You forgot the third choice – playing for an overall score that benefits everyone *including me*. I would benefit quite nicely in an world where there’s less institutionalized discrimination because, you know, a greater variety of people learn from and interact with, less tensions caused by inequalities, etc., would make my life infinitely happier and less stressful. Like others have said, we all benefit from when more people are able to play the game with less handicaps.
And yeah, refusing to share what you have after having been made aware of how you’ve benefited from advantages not given to others, despite having an ability to do so without it causing you undue harm, even if it’s something as simple as refraining from using sexist/ableist/gendered insults in your everyday language, is being selfish. Being less concerned about the harm done by the inequalities resulting from systematic privileges and being more concerned about those whose feathers get ruffled with said systematic privileges are pointed out, is short-sighted and indicative of some seriously messed up priorities. If that makes me sanctimonious, I can live with that.
But do continue to straddle your fence, I’m sure the view is quite lovely from up there where you’re looking down at the rest of us. Also please don’t compare me to Mother Theresa – I don’t think it’s a blessing and a benefit for people to suffer.
Beth:
It’s not MY world, it’s THE world. Success is measured in terms of competition. What other measure could there possibly be?
Brilliant metaphor. The only thing I can say is that it tends, as it often happens with theories coming from America, to extend the structure of America to the whole world. America is not the whole world. The whole world is not a mirror of America.
If you are in China, being a white male is not the lowest setting: being a Chinese man is. If you are in Japan, it’s being a Japanese man. If you are in Middle East, it’s being Middle Eastern… and so on. In general, being ‘the average’ is the easiest: but we tend to forget that outside America and Europe POC are not always a minority.
So I guess that the definition of what the easiest level is depends on the dominant ethnicity of the location. But extending American standards to the whole world because it’s clearly bound to be a mirror of America is, ehr… a very American thing to do.
[Speaking as a white male, I have deleted the comment because of its abject stupidity — JS]
But see, John, you cheated. You were supposed to use a term like ‘privilege’ that is easy to nitpick and pedantify so as to derail the conversation and avoid anything uncomfortable coming up. Instead, you used an excellent metaphor that still takes into account that being a SWM is about relative, rather than absolute advantage. My goodness, what other option to avoid unpleasant conversations besides pretending you failed to address certain arguments already?
Less sarcastically, it truly baffles me to hear fellow pale people whine about how being ‘crucified’ because there is a widespread acknowledgement that racism exists and kinda sucks. I don’t get it.
Success is measured in terms of competition. What other measure could there possibly be?
Wow. You must have been a barrel of laughs at birthday parties. Were you the kind of kid who refused his scoop of ice cream of the kid next to him got a bigger one?
And I guess your life is now worthless because you’re not Tony Stark?
interesting if not flawed metaphor. Obama sort of blows the mold. After all he is the first black, female, gay president we have.
>> The only thing I can say is that it tends, as it often happens with theories coming from America, to extend the structure of America to the whole world.>>
Take another look: “Imagine life here in the US — or indeed, pretty much anywhere in the Western world — is a massive role playing game.”
“It’s not MY world, it’s THE world. Success is measured in terms of competition.”
Measured by whom?
“What other measure could there possibly be?”
You really can’t think of any others? How does “I accomplished the goals I most valued in my life, and I’m happy about that”, to take one example, not work as a measure of success? It seems like a clear success criterion to me, and it doesn’t depend at all on what or how anyone else did.
@ F. Martin
Personal subjective happiness, for starters. Some of us are only competing with ourselves.
whatever indeed:
Actually, the first gay president was probably James Buchanan. It’s rumored that Warren Harding was at least partially African American, although certainly there’s no doubt about Obama. And I’ve heard no one but you suggest Obama is the first female president we’ve had, so I’ll toss that out.
So: one in three. Would you like to try again?
@ Kevin Williams 5:40
No doubt, he was doormat city. But here’s the thing . . .
he didn’t start out that way. He started out fine, with a good life plan and a solid career doing what he wanted to do ahead of him. But he was so in love with his wife that he essentially let her take-over the relationship, unwilling to assert any authority (or spine, for that matter) because it might be perceived as him being another “angry straight white male trying to oppress” his wife in their marriage. So he doubled down on the Beta, became an envelope-stuffing, non-profit fundraising machine, because that’s what his wife told him she wanted . . . and then she dumped him, hard, for a far more stereotypical — but far wealthier — Straight White Male. And yes, one of the things that she complained about was his lack of backbone, after systematically berating him and finding fault with him for years whenever he tried to show one.
He’s doing better now, but the whole incident burned several of us on political activism in progressive causes. When witnessing the feminist feeding frenzy rationalizing her behavior, all of that pretty ideology about fairness and rights and dignity and respect went right out of the window. He was just another clumsy, dopey, Beta who got rooked into a relationship he had no hope of happiness in . . and as a result spent ten years cultivating friends who had no interest of him if he was merely a Single Straight White Male.
@F. Martin
Life is not a zero-sum game. If you think it is, you’re playing it wrong.
I think another thing to remember is: what’s the end goal? Is it to make us less racist, sexist, and heteronormative as a society? Or is it to aggressively take from others in order to avenge or assuage the difficulties that have arisen from our current societal settings?
If you want to preach progressive social justice economic Guilty White Liberal talk as the only way to accomplish those goals, that’s cool. That’s great. It feels really, really good. There’s a segment of the population that’s going to stand up and cheer. But you know what? Those people /already agree with you/. Nothing you say is going to make them any more committed to changing the world. They’re already there. You’re preaching to the choir. (And look, I’ve been there too, which is why I know how good it feels.)
But if you want to actually change the world and make it a better place to live in, you need to work from a framework of not demonizing the opposition. J. Smucker, one of the main media minds behind Occupy Wall Street NYC, makes some good points about this in his writing on narrative insurgency rather than narrative attack. “Rather than directly attack a creationist’s whole belief system, for instance, a “narrative insurgent” looks to foment home-grown insurgency against the most problematic beliefs by identifying ally beliefs and seeking to reinforce them. When speaking to creationists about environmental issues, for example, emphasizing humanity’s mandate to care for God’s creation can be an effective point of entry”
You are probably not going to win the collectivism-vs-individualism debate. Definitely not online. There are entire swaths of the country that fight it out every year for a bare few percentage points. This is an old debate about the future of the country. I understand that anti-racism work often goes hand in hand with it. But the one fight is not the other.
So again: try not being a jerk. Talk from common ground.
I think it’s highly likely that everyone, everyone on this thread, even the SWMs with the most hostile ideas, can be brought to the idea that everyone deserves equal social and civil rights.
That’s a winnable goal. Why don’t we work for that, instead of fighting out brutally over things that are unlikely to be achieved and deeply offensive to a large segment of the population?
My problem with this article is that it tries to take a statistic and apply it to every individual. That’s what easy means in a game – you will face all the same challenges, but they’ll be dialed down because of this trait. We don’t face the same challenges in life, though. Luck and circumstance have a great deal to do with it, and it isn’t simply a matter of A and B being otherwise equal, because they aren’t otherwise equal, and it’s not because of differences in gender or race. So while I respect the intent, it’s just not a very good analogy.
There’s also an argument around psychology and win conditions to be had, but I doubt I could make the points cogently enough to be worth posting.
In general, this article is an oversimplification in ways that matter to the point under discussion. Privilege is a systematic bias. It doesn’t hit every life the same way.
Maybe we can bring back the game metaphor for a second for you console gamers.
For the many achievements, the XBox360* doesn’t care what difficult setting you have your game set to. It just hands out the achievement when you do the appropriate task. You, on the other hand, may realize you got it while playing the insanity level and feel pleased with yourself.
The world just looks at your gamer score. It’s unfair, but that’s the way it works.
*This also works with the Playstation 3 and trophies, doesn’t it?
@F. Martin: No, actually, it is your world. “Success is measured” – darn interesting use of the passive, as others have pointed out. What you appear to mean is “I measure success in terms of competition, and I cannot imagine any other measure of success.” That’s sad, really.
@AS: You seem to be asserting that one can never be an “asshole” if one is acting out of deeply-held moral beliefs, or a desire to protect one’s family, because that’s simply a different value system and one mustn’t be judgy. Am I misunderstanding your reply to The Pint? Because I assume you realize that assertion can be used to justify lots of unfortunate behavior. My family is worth more than your family in my value system, therefore it is not immoral or assholery, in MY value system, for me to empty your bank account or burglarize your home.
It’s amazing how many people can’t deal with the idea of exceptions or top percentiles.
If you view the world through the statistical lens of distributions the exceptional cases are there but they are obvious not as prominent as everyone else.
I am getting sick of people listing off exceptional cases and then sweeping the rest of reality under the rug.
mgb:
“We don’t face the same challenges in life, though.”
I’m not aware that the article says one does. It also doesn’t suggest that initial difficulty setting is the only factor in how one plays the game — indeed, it points out specifically that initial points and stats apportionment are a very significant factor.
This article provides an intriguing metaphor for navigating the subjects of privilege and identity, which is a truly worthwhile endeavor. However, I think the framework of identity (which, let’s not forget, is itself socially constructed) has some important limitations. Namely, I think it can lead some people to become hyper-focused on our perceived differences, rather than the commonalities upon which we can build solidarity and community. Identity politics taken to an extreme can lead to a kind of solipsistic view of the world, which I find rather troubling and counter-productive. The way you’ve programmed The Real World seems to assume a kind of zero-sum game between individuals who fit into discrete categories. Here, then, are my some of my questions: How can we program The Real World in such a way that it reflects individuals’ perceived identities without necessarily pitting those individuals against one another or reducing them to something resembling tokens of types? Can our reality even be accurately reduced to a metaphorical reality that’s founded upon a binary system? Is the overall metaphor about life being a game problematic?
Reasonable analogy, but I have a question: Why is it in the rational interest of a straight white guy to take actions that would knock him out of his privileged position, particularly when there’s no reward for “leveling the playing field,” and no do-overs? Even if you care about your kids’ future, wouldn’t you want your kids to also be playing on easy mode (and it is exceedingly likely that if you are a straight white guy in America, your kids will also be doing pretty fine.)
Did you read the same thing I read?
Thanks, John! Does that mean you’ll delete my comment above?
Also, can anybody explain to me the following things, because they don’t seem to make much sense to me:
How is pointing out that some people (as a group) have more advantages starting out, and going through life, than do people belonging to other groups, bashing the people in the first group? I mean, don’t we talk about natural talents and advantages all the time? Tall guys tend to have an advantage in basketball. Petite and athletic women tend to have an advantage in ballet and gymnastics. It’s not like pointing out that those things are advantages means that we are saying that tall basketball players are less deserving of our praise than shorter guys who work really hard. The only difference here is that the easy setting is one that is socially constructed — which means it can be re-constructed, once people realize that.
In the same way, why is pointing out that someone has done really well when the deck was somehow stacked against them being taken by F. Martin, et al., equated with saying that that person is superior? Again, we do this with sports all the time: think of the profiles of Olympic athletes, for example. Only one person wins, but it’s not like we look at the person who had a private trainer since childhood and say, “she didn’t deserve to win.” And if the person who comes second had parents who worked two jobs each just to pay for lessons, we don’t say, “she deserved to win, because life was harder.” We might say it’s too bad she didn’t win, because she had overcome so much and many of us identify more with an underdog, but if the other person was .4 faster on the day, then that’s how it was.
And finally, why are people asking what they are supposed to do about it? Again, we learn this sort of thing as children, and even in sports. If we are taught that winning is fun and important, but not worth leaving any of us crying and feeling abandoned, we already know how this works. Actually, we know that if we learnt that winning is everything, too. If we buy into the latter, than we pick our teammates for their talents and advantages, and ignore the clumsy kid with glasses. The clumsy kid with glasses never learns to play, and gets excluded more and more as time goes on. If we buy into the former, as those of us who aren’t afraid to admit that we were by good fortune started on Easy often do, then we pick the good players AND the clumsy kid with glasses. Some of us might even do some extra practicing with the clumsy kid, which is helpful to everybody. And we might not win every game, but we know we played well and we played as a team, and no one sat crying on the bench. And at the end, when we go out for pizza, we might be bummed out if we lost, but we are a lot less likely to dissolve into a blame-fest.
How is this not just obvious?
I’ve been thinking about this metaphor since you posted it, and I wanted to add a nuance. I will ask the forbearance of the crowd on my lack of gamer vocab. I really only play Portal2.
There are some ways that non-WSM players can gain points, such as having strong community ties, that can be unavailable for anyone at the “easy” setting. I’m thinking here of strong family ties in immigrant communities. I work with a group of Assyrians who really look out for extended family members to the point of working together to get recent immigrants set up here with jobs, etc. And also, when I read about Black Culture, I get the sense that there are advantages to being a part of that that relieves some of the pain of racism.
I would certainly NOT argue that these alternative sources for points in some way balances out the initial bias. It does not. I would point out that arguments that run along the lines of “why don’t they just [insert some version of “act like white people” here]” fail to take into account that doing so would eliminate the alternative points source without replacing it with the advantaged play that race privilege allows. (And okay, I just broke down and used the p-word b/c I don’t know anything about games without portals. So, yeah.)
Apologies if this has been discussed before in these comments; I am reposting my comments from a Google+ discussion about this article.
_____
I disagree, very strenuously. While it is convenient to think that this is the case, often it’s simply not true. Because the concept of white male privilege is often so entrenched in the culture, it’s easy to see it only in the light that it’s detractors have chosen to shine on it: that white men have life in the easy lane, all the time. The implication is that minorities and women have life harder than white men, and unfortunately the evidence simply does not support that conclusion as unequivocally some would like.
The experience of a white male in an interview process competing against a “minority” or a woman poses a very serious challenge to the accepted order of the system. Because of various affirmative action programs, it is often harder for white males to get jobs with certain companies or in certain sectors; to get into colleges and universities or even to be accepted into certain scholarship or grant programs. In the case of academia, for instance, the admittance guidelines often restrict the number of applicants who will be accepted according to their stated race and their declared major.
For instance, let’s say that the Engineering program at Cal Poly is only going to accept 450 students in a given year; of those 450 openings 200 are set aside for whites, 100 for blacks, 100 for hispanics, and 50 for asians. There are also gender standards – let’s be generous and assume that the goal is pairity between admitted student genders. Now, let’s look at our pool of applicants: although Cal Poly gets applicants from all over the country, there are some demographic truths involved here. First, white males will be the overwhelming majority of applicants to the Engineering program, based simply on the racial demographics of the US (wikipedia). Out of any given 1000 applicants to the Engineering program 637 of them will be white, 163 will be hispanic, 122 will be black and 48 will be asian (with a total of 30 “other or mixed”).
Based on the above data, we can see that (assuming the national average of 1.03F:1M gender breakdown; let’s call it “50%” for the sake of easiness and just round up in fractions) there will be 318 white males and 319 white females competing for 100 available slots each, 61 black males and females competing for 50 slots each, 81 hispanic males and 82 hispanic females competing for 50 slots each, and absolutely no competition among the asians (48 in the applicant pool, 50 available slots). What that means is that as a white male, your chances of getting into the engineering program at cal poly are at best 31.8% (which is slightly under the 2011 admittance rate of 37.31% for all applicants). For a white female, 31.9%; for a black male or female, 81.9%; for a hispanic male 61.7%, female 60.9%; and 100% for both asian males and females.
From this example, we can see that in any program where any kind of affirmative action or demographic-sorting admittance / hiring / acceptance programs are in place, the very worst thing you can be is a white male. While it’s tempting to think that the socio-political landscape of 18th century urban-center europe still reigns, that is both a literal falsehood and a logical fallacy. To say that being a white male is life on easy mode is to ignore the political realities of the society in which we live.
NOTE: This analysis is deliberately void of gender-sorting of any kind; specifically, there are several kind of affirmative action programs aimed at getting more women into to help redress the seeming overabundance of males. In such a situation where both race- and gender-sorting is being employed, the white male is doubly deferred.
Why are people so uptight about acknowledging advantage anyway? I know that I have a couple of massive bits of privilege; two massive strokes of luck on the easy mode settings. I’m white and I’m British. Either of those two things makes my life much easier. I’ve seen what other people in my position have to struggle with without those massive advantages, and I am so grateful to whatever powers that run the universe that I have had that leg up. Does it make me enjoy my own achievements in my life less? No, not a bit. If anything it makes me appreciate them all the more, because I can see how precious they are and how important it is to enjoy them if you’ve got them. I got it easy and I’m glad I did, I just wish more people could have that same level of advantage I did.
1. So, now that the SWMs have had their consciousnesses raised, what should they DO with the information?
2. What would be the next highest setting after SWM? Gay White Male? Straight “Minority” Male, or Straight White Female? My guess is Straight “Minority” Male. We have a SMM as POTUS, which happened before a GWM or SWF.
Dwayne:
“Why is it in the rational interest of a straight white guy to take actions that would knock him out of his privileged position, particularly when there’s no reward for ‘leveling the playing field,’ and no do-overs?”
You’re assuming that the character quests solely by himself?
bpmitchie:
“it’s easy to see it only in the light that its detractors have chosen to shine on it: that white men have life in the easy lane, all the time.”
And yet, this is actually not what this entry says at all. If this is the thesis you’re going on relative to this entry, not only is it incorrect, but you’ve also just spammed my site with a position paper that’s not directly relevant to the discussion at hand.
gah, Bad grammar/syntax. That should read “…stacked against them being equated by F. Martin et al., with …”
>>Why is it in the rational interest of a straight white guy to take actions that would knock him out of his privileged position, particularly when there’s no reward for “leveling the playing field,” and no do-overs?>>
Because life isn’t a zero-sum game.
I’m better off if I have access to novels by women, by minorities, by those who are not straight. I’m better off if I have access to medical discoveries by the best the world has to offer, not merely the best that straight white men have to offer. The more qualified voices we have in art, science, politics and more, the better we can all do out of it.
>> Even if you care about your kids’ future, wouldn’t you want your kids to also be playing on easy mode (and it is exceedingly likely that if you are a straight white guy in America, your kids will also be doing pretty fine.)>>
I hope my kids will do terrifically well, and I’d love them to be plaiting on “easy” mode. They’re not male, though. And whether they’re straight or not isn’t an issue that’s come up yet. So the best way to make sure my daughters get to play on easy mode is to try to make sure everyone gets to play on easy mode. Not to try to make sure it’s reserved to straight white males like me.
Why is it in the rational interest of a straight white guy to take actions that would knock him out of his privileged position, particularly when there’s no reward for “leveling the playing field,” and no do-overs? Even if you care about your kids’ future, wouldn’t you want your kids to also be playing on easy mode (and it is exceedingly likely that if you are a straight white guy in America, your kids will also be doing pretty fine.)
Why is it assumed that the benefits of a more fair and diverse world will not accrue to you and your children? Why is it assumed that your children will inherit all of your advantages, and no disadvantages? Perhaps one of your children will be gay, or disabled, or suffer from chronic illness. Isn’t it in your best interest to help ensure that they will have some of the opportunities you have had?
John: this is 21st-century Western Civilization: the evidence for local multiplayer is shabby at best.
Thankfully, humans aren’t actually rational actors and life isn’t a numbers game.
Personally, I like equality. Social justice makes me feel good. And some of us would like to raise kids who would like to make the world better for everyone. It’s this whole pro-social thing I really really like, a sort of guiding ethic for life. Very pleasant. Disappears if you try to pretend humans are deciding things based on rational self-interest, but we’re mostly not, so that’s fine.
@ AS
“And that is: don’t ask people to give up things that benefit them. Ask people to work together in ways that don’t hurt them, and celebrate them for doing it, not yell at them for not going far enough.”
If you’ve found that line of argument works for you, I certainly am not going to tell you to quit doing it. But I think ultimately we’re not going to agree because of where our sympathies lie – yours seem to weigh in on the end of those who have privilege, and mine in the end do not.
“Why are you failing to understand that often, there are some forms of privilege that people don’t want to lose, which is a perfectly valid and reasonable response?”
Actually, I understand that quite well – farther up the thread, I’d said something to the effect that one of the problems with privilege is that to those who have it, it’s a normal way of life, so naturally they’re going to react defensively to the perception that they’re losing it. Change is scary, I get that, and in case it wasn’t understood, I don’t think privilege is something people should be blamed for having because it’s not their fault they have attributes that are more highly valued within our culture, nor do I expect that it’s something people automatically going to grasp because again, “fish don’t know the water is wet.” The problem is, even though it’s “normal” to them, it’s still a discriminatory system that doesn’t belong in an equitable society, so it ultimately needs to go. Ideally, privileges will be eroded in part because those who have them will recognize that personal benefit resulting from the perpetuation of a system that harms others isn’t worth it. The Civil Rights Act and women having the ability to vote wouldn’t have happened, for instance, if the those who already *had* those privileges realized that what they would lose by sharing those privileges was fair price to pay for fixing an inequity – not to mention that society would benefit overall from widening the playing field.
Ultimately, I can’t agree that one can’t ask people to give up things that benefit them in order to help fix an inequitable system. We all have give up things that benefit us personally in order to benefit our community/society as a whole on a daily basis. We pay taxes, even though having more disposable income would be great, because (ideally) we’re paying to maintain things – roads, sewers, fire depts., police., etc. – that everyone benefits from. I give up my seat on the bus to an elderly, injured or pregnant person even though I got there first because I can deal with the 20 min ride home standing up. When I can, I donate money to charitable causes I support even though that $10 or $20 could go toward me getting something for myself. And the things that privileged people would be giving up things that most of us would probably admit are morally questionable advantages anyway: better economic opportunities/less chances of being profiled/assumptions about one’s abilities or intelligence or character – all based solely on race, sexual orientation, gender, religion, educational level, physical abilities, etc. I don’t think those are difficult things, really, for one to give up. Also, I fail to see why sharing the benefits of privilege with others has to be interpreted as “a loss” – “sharing” isn’t the same thing as “losing”, it just means that more people are going to have access to the same advantages you previously had.
You clearly prefer a less combative approach overall when addressing these kind of issues, and if that’s what works for you in your life and that’s what you are comfortable with, I can respect that. I would ask, however, that you consider that just because that method works for you, it doesn’t mean that a more combative or aggressive approach doesn’t ever work for anyone else. Some of my best learning moments have come from being metaphorically slapped in the face with my own assumptions or ignorance, which I might not have heard if someone were taking a more… diplomatic approach. I don’t like treating other people with kid gloves because I think that insults their intelligence and capability, either.
How does that work when ‘the opposition’ is going to claim to feel ‘demonized’ any time they are made to recognize that the world is not a perfectly fair place? How does one explain that the world is an unfair place without upsetting people who benefit from that unfairness? Do you believe that narrative insurgency requires pretending that unfairness doesn’t exist? You’ve made a lot of sweeping generalizations that are, charitably, rather slanted towards the conclusion you which to reach. Can you give a concrete example of a “narrative insurgency” that would work in the context of, for example, race?
You don’t appear to acknowledge that communication is a two-way street. It’s important to present a message so that it stands the greatest chance of being heard. But if you water down that message so that it has no meaning or impact once heard – what good is it? And if the other person rejects the substance of the message, is the problem really a failure in the delivery?
It’s like the hypothetical couple where A confronts B with solid evidence of B’s cheating, and B’s response is “You know I won’t talk to you when you’re this upset” or “How dare you spend time snooping into my private business!” The real problem is that B wanted to shut down the discussion – not that A failed to exert the superhuman effort to confront B in a totally neutral, acceptable way such that it was utterly impossible for B to nitpick.
TL;DR – there’s value in crafting a message in a way that it will be heard, and that’s in fact what Scalzi’s post was intended to do. But the fact that the listener rejected the message is not, as you suggest, irrefutable proof that the messenger was a shouty guiltmonger who would absolutely have achieved their goal if they hadn’t fucked it up with improper tone.
John Mark Ockerbloom — If you really want to know more about that, you can do a Google search with keywords == game male female alpha beta == and go through the list of readings as far as you care or can stand to read through. (If you think what matters in life is mastering dominance contests to win prizes, and see desirable women primarily as particularly valuable prizes, you may find some kindred spirits in the literature.)
Rather than comment on their attributes, I’ll offer what matters to me:
The important thing — winning, if you want — in life is being helpful to your fellow humans. The more you do this, the better you are at living. An unimportant thing in life is keeping track of your starting place in life, and other’s starting places in life, and where they are in their lives. If you focus on those positions and adjusting them, it seems to me, you are not going to be able to actually help anyone. People who are keeping score … are losing.
let’s say that the Engineering program at Cal Poly is only going to accept 450 students in a given year; of those 450 openings 200 are set aside for whites, 100 for blacks, 100 for hispanics, and 50 for asians
Let’s not. How about we use actual evidence, instead of imaginary?
Dwayne – a person can become quite loopy when playing “World of Ayncraft”. Real life is team play.
Dwayne @6:44 pm:
“Why is it in the rational interest of a straight white guy to take actions that would knock him out of his privileged position, particularly when there’s no reward for “leveling the playing field,” and no do-overs?”
Well, for one reason, maybe because the hypothetical straight white guy has people in his life he cares about who aren’t straight white guys. Like, say, his mother or wife or daughter. Or his best friend from India, or his son’s black spouse, or his gay son’s black male spouse …
Even if he is only thinking in terms of “how does this benefit me?” rather than considering it a worthwhile goal to make the world better for everybody, perhaps he might want his daughter to live in a world in which she can have a life that is as rich and fulfilling as his sons’ lives.
That’s the thing. The game of life is not a competition against your fellow players. It’s a raiding party that can work together to achieve great things (landing a person on the moon) or really screw things up (Rwandan genocide).
A better example: Erik Weihenmayer is the first (and as far as I know the only) blind person to have summited Mt. Everest. Among the team that helped him—because he could not have accomplished this alone—were others who had previously summited. Not a single summit has been diminished by the fact that a blind man was able to do this, and not a single person on the team has been diminished by helping this man. The fact is that every summit is still a dangerous, awe-inspiring accomplishment.
Similarly with life: just because you help others (by not abusing your status) does not weaken your accomplishments or weaken your progeny’s future. Most amazing things that the human race has done have been done in teams of people with diverse backgrounds and abilities.
@Namae Nanka:
“Feminists gained entry into the socio-political-economic complex built up by white guys, and now are trying their damnedest to prevent them from joining in their victim industrial complex, unless it’s on their own terms… Equality today is giving women reparations for not rolling out the red carpet for them in men’s institutions, instead of men asking for royalties on every men’s invention that women use.”
Wait, so because white men built the socio-political-economic complex, I as a white man should get credit for that? And I as a white man should get royalties for the inventions of other white men that are used by non-whites/non-men?
White men built the socio-political-economic complex because they prevented others from contributing. Today, we’re not giving them reparations. We’re just trying to not repeat the mistakes of the past.
Great post, much excellent discussion. But I’m also frustrated that I keep seeing the same arguments from SWM:
1) My advantage doesn’t make my life easy, and I haven’t won.
2) If I got the easy setting then what I did/do isn’t worth as much as it is if a non-SWM accomplished it.
Not only are both of these irrelevant to @scalzi’s original point which is that for two people who start in the same place with the same parents with the same wealth the SWM will have a better starting position than anyone who’s not a SWM, but they’re logical fallicies.
Let me take myself as an example. I present mostly as a cis, hetero (not – I’m bi and polyamorous, but the partner I live with is male), white (again, not – I’m mixed race but reasonably pale), able-bodied (not – I’m disabled), female. I was born with further advantages like smart parents who loved to read and sent me to good private schools even after they divorced. I was also disadvantaged by not having much $, having been sexually abused as a teen and…, etc.
Still, I worked hard in school, went to college (when my broken started to rear it’s head but it didn’t become disabling as in I can’t work until my mid-40’s) and earned my bachelors after 8 years. Then I went to graduate school and worked my ass off some more, only this time I didn’t graduate – as an opinionated female in a mainly male field who didn’t play department politics I couldn’t get
agreement on my thesis (while the men had no problems with similar subjects/work leading to Masters degrees).
But I learned a lot about myself and how to think, basic logic, and how to manage people. So I eventually worked my way into a job as a NOC manager for an internet company – but as a female in a mainly male world I once again had some major points hits too. And I had to quit jobs at two different companies several times to get equal pay for equal work/responsibility/experience as the males (none of us had degrees or certs in our field so that wasn’t it, and I had the most college so…).
Does the fact that I had to be willing to quit my job to get treated equally to the SWMs make it clear that in my case by not being an SWM I had it harder? None of us were significantly better or worse at our jobs than the other, but the SWMs were automatically paid better and given better titles, even when they had less time in the field.
I’d put my difficulty level (until I lost my job/became disabled anyway) in the middle, while the SWMs had a difficulty level of easy in both education (women weren’t supposed to excel at technical stuff) and the workplace. But I still had it easier than people who were visibly minorities or didn’t get the educational opportunities that I did. And my accomplishments aren’t worth less because someone else had to work harder nor are the SWM who didn’t have to quit their jobs to get the same wage.
You can be the best you can be at what you do and do everything you can to help other people have equal opportunities without hurting anyone. My partner plays Eve online for fun, and whenever he’s in-game he’ll happily talk less experienced players through problems if he knows the solutions – he doesn’t lose anything and they level up a bit easier but they still have to work at it. The real world would be a lot better if people who are in a better place played the same way.
Oh, and btw, for a while there I was doing pretty well, but by pretty much any measure that our society accepts I’ve lost the game. And you know what? I really don’t care – when I have a good day my brain still works well enough to post a rambling disjointed comment in an intelligent conversation, and that’s enough for me.
Blech, it’s been a long day and I missed this typo. The section in my above comment SHOULD read:
“The Civil Rights Act and women having the ability to vote wouldn’t have happened, for instance, if the those who already *had* those privileges hadn’t realized that what they would lose by sharing those privileges was fair price to pay for fixing an inequity – not to mention that society would benefit overall from widening the playing field.”
This is a truly great blog post; thank you for writing it. I especially enjoyed the point about the goal of life being to “win,” and thus there is no need to play on a higher difficultly, and that there is no achievement or high gamer score for “black and gay.” One of the hardest things I’ve learned in life is what that “winning” means to me (and I do think it’ll be different for each person.) For me “winning” is about being happy, and that, for me, requires multiple tools like money and success to achieve. The difficultly level I have been assigned to play on certainly effects the challenges I face to achieve those tools. As someone situated in the Ivory Tower of Academia, I still note the predominance of Old White Dudes running everything. It isn’t that I want to take the Old White Dude’s toys (or prevent Young White Dudes from becoming Old White Dudes), I just want some toys of my own. This post, and these comments (!!!) are super aware of the difference between holding others back vs getting toys of ones own and do a great job of explaining that difference. I always love finding smart on the internet!
I’m not sure if this has been addressed yet, but you said that straight white males are more likely to start with more points, intelligence being one of them.
That’s pretty racist for someone who believes we’re all equal, isn’t it?
offensive and regressive…
There's a saying from the Talmud which, roughly, says that it's not your job to fix the entire world, but that doesn't excuse you from trying to make it a better place.
The nice thing about recognizing and acknowledging one's advantages is that they become easier to notice: CANNOT UNSEE. Often, the solution presents itself pretty obviously; calling out bigoted comments, or catching oneself in making dumb assumptions, to recognize two very simple examples. Directing one's spare cash or votes towards things that one believes will make the world a fairer place. Learning about the experiences of others, even if it's a bit discombobulating. Listen
One of the nifty benefits of this is that one learns not to flinch every time that someone raises the specter of disadvantage.
bpmitche:
“let’s say that the Engineering program at Cal Poly is only going to accept 450 students in a given year; of those 450 openings 200 are set aside for whites, 100 for blacks, 100 for hispanics, and 50 for asians.”
Why on earth would we want to say that? It’s not anywhere near the truth. The kinds of quotas you describe are illegal, and the numbers you made up aren’t anything like the actual demographics of Cal Poly, which is around 70% white and 0.8% black. Zero point eight percent.
@Jonathan Smithson: Pretty sure you’re referring to this quote, the only one to mention intelligence in the original post:
“Likewise, it’s certainly possible someone playing at a higher difficulty setting is progressing more quickly than you are, because they had more points initially given to them by the computer and/or their highest stats are wealth, intelligence and constitution and/or simply because they play the game better than you do. It doesn’t change the fact you are still playing on the lowest difficulty setting.”
Which says nothing of the sort.
Jonathan Smithson:
“I’m not sure if this has been addressed yet, but you said that straight white males are more likely to start with more points, intelligence being one of them.”
Wow, that’s incredibly racist of me! If only I had actually said it!
What I did say:
Which is not exactly the same thing as suggesting that people on other difficulty settings have fewer points apportioned to intelligence. It’s entirely possible their dump stat will be something else (statistically speaking, if we were going by the actual real world as a guide, I would guess it would be wealth).
I do, however, explicitly say that people on other difficulty settings might outperform those on the easiest setting, if, for example, they have a greater number of intelligence points. So, the one time I explicitly mention intelligence as a stat, it’s in reference to people playing on higher difficulty levels, and in a positive way.
Which, you know, is pretty much the opposite of what you suggest I’ve done, there.
Let’s all try to read what’s actually in the article the next time, hey?
Ian Ironwood:
So you weren’t reasoned into being anti-progressive, etc., you just met someone with radical politics who mistreated one of your (spineless) friends and thus you dislike any politics which seem anywhere near hers and this somehow is an argument against Scalzi’s post?
Your line of argument here is fucking stupid.
@ mythago
“TL;DR – there’s value in crafting a message in a way that it will be heard, and that’s in fact what Scalzi’s post was intended to do. But the fact that the listener rejected the message is not, as you suggest, irrefutable proof that the messenger was a shouty guiltmonger who would absolutely have achieved their goal if they hadn’t fucked it up with improper tone.”
Bingo.
Intelligence, if operationalized as IQ, shows race effects. Racist is saying that these are based in biological differences between the races and that those with lower average IQs are therefore inferior. A non-racist (and more reasonable) interpretation is that the test itself tends to favor certain race biases, and that intelligence as measured by IQ is a factor not only of inherent ability but also of certain kinds of *cough* advantages in early childhood.
We could expand this discussion but I think the ban-hammer would come down on us, quite rightly.
That said, I’d be careful saying that a white person starts with more intelligence stat than a black person. However, the actual presentation above is that a white person is likely to start with more points for stats, period. Those can be allocated in a variety of ways.
[John, sorry for the broken blockquote. I can’t even blame the missing preview button.]
After the Swirsky/Jemisin/(??Sorry) panel on Social Justice in SF at Renovation, I was privileged to spend 10 minutes in conversation with Ms. Jemisin discussing what I was “supposed” to do from my position near the top of the pyramid. I recall that she kindly said that awareness of my position and my “difficulty level” was a good first step.
I very much think that this post is a great way to help other folks of a similar “difficulty level” become aware of their initial starting position when playing the game of Real Life.
Thanks.
There is a way of increasing the difficulty setting and that is forming a party with people on higher difficulty settings. You’ll also find that sometimes this decreases their difficulty setting a little. Or even helps to revise the rules on difficulty settings.
Not to mention the effect of different game zones on difficulty settings.
“In fact, the computer chooses the difficulty setting for you. You don’t get a choice;”
That kind of says it all right there. I think a better post would be how society treats “new players”, since according to your metaphor, the “new players” didn’t have a choice. Unfortunately, although I see society changing for the better in this regard, it seems to be taking far too long. Think about the difference between being a SWM now versus a century ago…
It’s a privilege to read such insightful things.
@ Sophia
Interesting statistics on spousal murders but you are misinterpreting the data.
About 34% of female murder victims are killed by a husband, compared to 3% of male homicide victims. Just to rephrase that slightly, straight men: when you marry or enter a relationship, your partner is accepting an elevenfold greater risk that you will eventually kill her than the reverse. (USA)
According to the link, women are about 3 times more likely to be killed by an intimate partner (not necessarily a spouse) than men. The reason that your comparison is invalid is because men are murdered at a much higher rate than women – probably due to their higher involvement in violent crime.
What is truly fascinating about the data though is that the number of men murdered by their partner is a third of what it was 35 years ago. While there has been a decline in number of women murdered, the difference is much smaller. Not sure what is driving this distinction… perhaps liberalized divorce laws?
In any case, I do have to agree with your overall premise that men are much less likely to be murdered by their partner than women. I’m am not however certain that this makes up for their greater murder rate overall.
Since someone has to do it, I’m going to go ahead with the obligatory xkcd reference here: http://xkcd.com/386/
Here’s the thing—I want to win, which is to say that I want to do better than you.
I also want you to do well. I don’t want to beat you because I cheated, or because the deck was stacked in my favor, or anything like that. I want you to be excellent, and I want to be slightly more excellent than you.
So I work to level the playing field, not because I want to eliminate winning, but because I want to win fair and square, and because I don’t want people to question the validity of my winning because of the benefits I came into the game with. If this means opposing people who are cheating, then I’m going to do so, because their cheating effects my sense of accomplishment.
It’s not the same thing as what, say, The Pint is advocating; it’s not working together to increase the net score of the universe. But it appeals to my sense of justice, and it has a similar effect.
playing a straight white male is too easy on the US and EU servers, why don’t you just play on another server? I’m sure the African or South American servers are just as good
@ThePint:
My sympathies don’t weigh on the side who has privilege. My sympathies weigh on all sides. But I’ve fought these sorts of fights a lot of ways, and I’ve seen well-meaning groups of people destroyed by this sort of “not progressive enough” arguing. I don’t want to do it anymore. I don’t see it as productive in any way, shape, or form. And I find it frustrating and tiring. Admittedly, I understand this may be your experience in having these sorts of conversations over and over again, which may contribute to fatigue here.
You do state that you know that advantages will be lost if your ideal system reaches fruition, my apologies. But in that statement, you don’t seem to express any sympathy or understanding for that position. Do you genuinely just find it impossible to relate to someone who is? I mean, I can honestly understand that-our discourse on the whole has been increasingly polarized, and there gets a point where that fight-or-flight kicks in, and it is genuinely hard not to see every discussion like this as a battle. I have this problem too. I work on it, but it’s there.
You point out that, “We all have (to) give up things that benefit us personally in order to benefit our community/society as a whole on a daily basis.” I just want to point out that this is not necessarily a shared belief. There are many, many people who are offended by the system of taxation as it currently exists. There are many people that do not give up their seats to the elderly, pregnant, or visibly disabled. There are people who do not donate to charitable causes. And I guess what I would really hope that you could understand is that these are not /bad people/. These people who do not want to give up tangible things to share them with others are not /bad humans/. They ascribe to a morality that is different than yours, but that doesn’t necessarily make them the faceless alien other. In my own personal opinion, it is not okay to Otherize in an attempt to stop other people from Otherizing.
“And the things that privileged people would be giving up things that most of us would probably admit are morally questionable advantages anyway: better economic opportunities/less chances of being profiled/assumptions about one’s abilities or intelligence or character – all based solely on race, sexual orientation, gender, religion, educational level, physical abilities, etc.”
I don’t actually think that most people would agree that these advantages are all morally questionable. I do think that most people would believe that the counter-disadvantages of NOT being those things are morally questionable. I think there’s also a strong difference there. Because someone has profited from an unjust system does not necessarily make them unjust.
” I don’t think those are difficult things, really, for one to give up. Also, I fail to see why sharing the benefits of privilege with others has to be interpreted as “a loss” – “sharing” isn’t the same thing as “losing”, it just means that more people are going to have access to the same advantages you previously had.”
Those things may not be: but what about other things? What about someone’s likelihood of employment shrinking, due to affirmative action, or quotas? What about someone having difficulty paying their bills due to higher taxes in order to address perceived inequities? What about someone being, as stated above, unable to pass property on to their children, because that property was gained by inequity?
I’m sorry for being white
If you’re a poor white male, you are completely shit out of luck. You don’t have access to any of the resources available to women and/or minorities in place that act as “reverse racism” to even the table.
Furthermore, this whole “white males have it easy” stems from looking at a bunch of rich fat-cat CEOs, and thinking that because some assholes are rich, and happen to be white males, that their lavish lifestyle benefits poor white males in any way… like they send other white people checks in the mail for being white and men.
It’s not about gender and race, it’s about money. Money gives you an edge, not being male or white. And as a white male without money, you are at an extreme disadvantage.
Rachel:
Stross Novel — “Glasshouse”
Would those of you who keep spouting off nonsense aboard quotas in education please read up on the Bakke decision and Gratz v. Bollinger. You’ll sound less like uneducated morons.
Straight white male here, I’d like to know situations in which I would have an advantage over non straight white males and I want specifics. You haven’t backed up any of your claims with evidence. Seems like we are bottom of the pile now in employment and education due to affirmative action quotas, also it’s nigh on impossible to be racist or sexist towards us!
This is a great post. I’m going to use this metaphor a lot.
And I learned this word a long time ago, and have never found it in a dictionary: logomachy. It means manipulating the terms in which an argument is conducted in order to make it impossible for your opponents to make their case. It’s what the nitpickers do when you use the word ‘privilege’. With this metaphor instead, they’re disarmed of that tactic, and have instead resorted to straw men and malicious misreading (to a ridiculous extent).
And to the SWMs who are saying, in effect, “why should I even want to decrease my unfair advantage?” I have another analogy for you: do you ride in the front of buses where black people are relegated to the back? Because if you would, I don’t want to know you (and actually will do everything I can to disadvantage you—you, personally, not your orientation/race/sex category), and if you wouldn’t, well, this is all part of that same process, see?
Tess, men don’t have to change their sexual orientation or identity in order to start having sex with other men. Trust me on this, and please don’t make me explain.
Also, gay or lesbian people have had sex with opposite-sex partners since the dawn of time (well, since such categories existed; it’s not clear they always did). Never having to have sex with your non-preferred gender is a recent benefit of decades of activism, as is the fact that there are identities labeled ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’ instead of ‘sodomite’ and ‘pervert’ and ‘frigid’ and other nasty stuff.
[Deleted for spittle-flinging assholishness — JS]
@ Dwayne:
Exactly. What interest do I have in using my despised privilege to destroy my privilege, leaving me merely despised? “Fairness”? That is, to make things more fair to other people, at my expense . . . and then get thanked for it with more disrespect and insults because of who I am? With less opportunity for my children (because they didn’t exactly create more college admission slots or more jobs “to be fair” . . . funny, that). That’s hardly a game-winning strategy regardless of the rules.
See, everyone is quick to point out how if only Straight White Males would just hand over everything their forebears worked, bled, and died for to everyone else, everything would be “fair”. But that’s an overly simplistic and unsophisticated look at the equation. Even Scalzi’s fairly well-written, if somewhat condescending approach to the subject comes across as a bit insulting because it presupposes that its intended audience of Straight White Males is either a) too willfully ignorant to realize that yes, there are a few privileges still implicit with being white, straight and male in our society or b) too giddy with delight and filled with jealousy over their vaunted “privileges” (low game difficulty, whatever) to want to share their toys with others. They’re either stupid or greedy.
To his credit, Scalzi comes back with a simple “Oh, if this isn’t you, then ignore this message”, but that seems a lot like making a racial slur about some group’s perceived stereotypical behavior and then trying to cover it with, “I don’t mean all of them . . . just, y’know, those kind. The others aren’t so bad . . .”. In essence, in an attempt to correct the thoughts and behavior of his chosen audience, he has addressed them in such a manner as to alienate the ones who it would do the most good for and force everyone else to self-include into the “not so bad” category in a guilty rush.
The simple implication of the piece — that Straight White Males are just not getting it about their place in the universe, and that they therefore need to be shamed into being appropriately contrite about the disgraceful advantages their race, gender and sexual orientation have given them at every opportunity — is insulting to the vast, vast majority who do get it . . . but who are increasingly just not caring any more because they don’t see a future where they care also being a future where they prosper — and with good reason. “There’s no future in it” for us any more. Any accomplishment, any achievement we make is undermined by “well sure, he’s a white dude — of course he won!” in an appropriately scornful tone. And when presented with such a situation, there is no compelling, practical reason for a Straight White Male to knock himself out with any kind of acknowledgement of privilege, game difficulty, or whatever. Because it’s probably not going to do anything for him but bite him on the ass.
The world that is “fair” is always going to be the one where we Straight White Males are continuously undervalued, under-appreciated, and open to blame for every perceived ill of society. And we’re tired of it. Dreadfully tired of being responsible for everything wrong in the world. So we’re dropping out. Going our own way. We’re done. Y’all can keep playing, but i wouldn’t count on the resilient and enthusiastic cooperation of the next generation of Straight White Males in trying to clean up this mess any time soon.
I will give Scalzi props on one big thing: the fact that he was brave enough to make the post when he did, as controversial as it is, is very impressive. Not every writer would take such a stand that implicates (and potentially insults and possibly alienates) such a large portion of his reading audience (Straight White Males) just a few weeks before his next big book launch. No doubt his publicist and publisher are banking on that kind of controversy to drive sales — after this, it’s going to be difficult to seriously review the book without taking a very, very hard look at it in terms of race, gender, and sexual orientation — but it is a risk. He should be commended for that, whatever the consequences.
I think I love you.
All the money in the world would not make it possible for my partner and I to get married in any of the four states we can call home. Money doesn’t fix everything.
People who think it’s all about money are generally straight white men who want to believe it’s all about money… but seriously, don’t be an idiot. If you have two people with the same wealth, and one is black and one is white, do you really think that doesn’t matter? *sigh*
(Sorry for repeating myself, but some people don’t listen.)
Wait, what? Since when do video games work like this? Last I checked WoW doesn’t have a difficulty setting, and games like quake that require the most skill of the player are the most fun and stimulating but sometimes frustrating, whilst easy games are pretty boring and bland. Isn’t that kind of a more apt comparison to what life is like?
@ Jack; @ Phil, @ White Male Masterrace
A-fucking-men
Your blog is successful because you are white, check your privilege John Scalzi!
Life is hard for everyone. Everyone suffers. To try and empirically say one man suffers less than another is childish. To even quantify or qualify suffering – to reduce the human condition as a difficulty setting to a video game, is inane.
But if it makes you feel better, go right on truckin’. Everyone copes with stress differently and people have had dumber ways to confront the illusion of power.
@cofax [i]Wow. You must have been a barrel of laughs at birthday parties. Were you the kind of kid who refused his scoop of ice cream of the kid next to him got a bigger one?[/i]
Actually, I don’t remember getting invited to too many birthday parties in the first place.
[i]And I guess your life is now worthless because you’re not Tony Stark?[/i]
Comparison to fictional characters aside, yes, my life is worth less than the lives of those who have accomplished more. Obviously.
jchines’ comment re catsplaining for the win.
@Scalzi, Great post. Pharyngula linked to you and I’m glad I discovered this blog. Good to see that some SWMs get it.
And I have to laugh at all the SWMs who feel victimized just because their privilege is pointed out. We are not in a war where some win and some lose. We are all in this world together. Just because SWMs are not as privileged as they used to be doesn’t mean that they’ve lost anything.
Sorry to use the dreaded ‘p’ word, but I cannot explain it as well as Scalzi did in his analogy.
There are many people that do not give up their seats to the elderly, pregnant, or visibly disabled. There are people who do not donate to charitable causes. And I guess what I would really hope that you could understand is that these are not /bad people/.
I’m going out on a limb here: If there are no empty seats on a bus and someone who is elderly, pregnant, or visibly disabled gets on the bus, anyone physically capable of standing, who is close enough to make the offer, and who doesn’t make that offer Is a bad person. Or at least is a lazy, selfish jerk.
… or however you do italic text on this thing.
[Jackassed homophobia deleted — JS]
To R Enders
“1. There are other variables involved. Stephen Hawking comes readily to mind. He is successful, but I wouldn’t call his life easy.”
The exception proves the rule – also Hawkings brain kind of breaks the meter so I do not think he is a good example…he is what we usually call “an outlier” – interesting but statistically irrelevant.
“2. The quickest way to fail at this or any other game is to spend all your time complaining about how unfair and difficult it is rather than playing.”
I don’t think it’s advisable to give unrequested advise which you have never been in the position to evaluate.
Comparison to fictional characters aside, yes, my life is worth less than the lives of those who have accomplished more. Obviously.
Dude, seriously. You need to get out more.
I pity you: not because of your claimed lack of “success” (however defined), but because you yourself have built the box you’re trapped in. I hope that someday you can find a way to disassemble it.
Finn…you’ve just never noticed, apparently. Open your eyes. If I and a black female walk up to a deli counter at the same moment, there’s a 90% chance the person behind it will address me first. Start paying attention and you’ll see it all the time.
And depending on your definition of racism and sexism, yeah, it’s impossible. If racism is defined as ‘the systematic oppression of nonwhite people’ (which is the usual definition) then racism toward white people is nonsensical. And similarly with sexism.
You need to do a little reading.
@AS There are many, many people who are offended by the system of taxation as it currently exists. There are many people that do not give up their seats to the elderly, pregnant, or visibly disabled. There are people who do not donate to charitable causes. And I guess what I would really hope that you could understand is that these are not /bad people/. These people who do not want to give up tangible things to share them with others are not /bad humans/.
They aren’t? Because I rather think they are. Not on the level of, say, a rapist. But I think that’s pretty much the definition of “selfish jerk”.
@ Xopher Halftongue
“If I and a black female walk up to a deli counter at the same moment, there’s a 90% chance the person behind it will address me first.”
[citation needed]
@Tess
With enough money, you could move to state or country that allowed you and your partner to get married. (I seriously wish all states would legalize same- sex marriage, so my wishes of luck go out to you!)
Then being an attractive white female must be playing with an invincibility cheat activated.
It’s pretty ridiculous for you to try to school me on this, but I understand you don’t know that. Trust me on this, because explaining would be a massive derail.
The post I was referring to was saying that a straight man could give up the advantage of being straight by having sex with other men. Having sex with other men is a behavior; gay is an identity. My response was to his list of things men could do to give up easy mode, and implied that one who is straight could become gay to give up easy mode, and could do this by choosing to have sex with men. But straight men have sex with men, duh, they’re still straight, and society still treats them as straight unless they go public with the details of their sex lives.
I guess I’d argue a straight man could *pretend* to be gay if he wanted to give up the advantages of heterosexuality. Many gay people can and do pass, after all, at least for part of our lives. It’s not beyond possible that a straight man might decide he’d be better off if people thought he was gay. Not really viable in the long run though, I think, any more than most of us stay in the closet…
You’re really arguing with someone other than me, I think: I’m a lesbian who was married to a man, has been with plenty of men, and took nearly two decades to figure out that I wasn’t bisexual. No gold stars here. I wasn’t straight or even bi when I had sex with men, I was a lesbian having sex with men. *sigh*
I was just taking the idea that any straight guy could just change those things and flipping it around into exactly what I’ve been told by jerkfaces all my life, that I could just choose to be straight and then I wouldn’t have to deal with all this anti-gay crap.
@Kevin
As insightful and cogent as your “your argument is fucking stupid” argument is, let me rebut: I never said I was anti-Progressive — in fact, I’ll wager I’ve spent more time, energy, and money on Progressive causes than you in my time. I’m not anti-Progressive at all– with the caveat that I am, indeed, anti-feminist. I follow the Humanist principals of equal rights for all people, men and women, of all races and sexual orientations. I do not follow the gynocentric idea that women should be granted what is perceived as male privilege without also accepting male responsibilities, a point I will be happy to argue with any woman the moment she fills out and submits her Selective Service application.
There is a difference between being anti-Progressive and no longer working on Progressive causes — or at least Progressive causes I perceive as being against my interests as a male. My time among Progressive activists, including my unfortunate friend’s problems, revealed to me the thunderous disconnect between those who preach fairness and what they actually practice — I left Christianity because I despise hypocrisy, and I’m happy to extend the same courtesy to the Progressive movement. There is much that is good there, but . . . well, until Progressives can address the concerns and issues of Straight White Men as well as everyone else, they can work for social justice and fairness without my help and money. The pig who pays the butcher’s bill is a fool.
Hmm, looks like this got linked on another male-supremacist (and from that one jerk’s posting name, white-supremacist) site. An influx of jerks and morons.
Go away, jerks and morons. (Yeah, I know that won’t work. Jerks and morons never think you mean them.)
This brand of political nonsense is a direct attack on the working class and on freedom.
Before the rise of ‘progressivism’ the left wing was a powerful force for change the unions created safe environments for people, governments became more democratic and standards of living rose.
This was possible because of class solidarity. Working class white men were a large part of the left wing.
However, ‘privilege’ brands ordinary working class men as ‘oppressors’. It has fractured the once unified working class in to a pyramid of different factions who are each oppressing each other in different ways and each have grudges against every other group.
This lack of solidarity has meant that all of our hard earned gains are being eroded. Governments are more oppressive, standards of living are dropping and we are pulled into endless wars. Working class men are distanced from the left wing because they (accurately) see it as an enemy.
Sod every self entitled idiot who thinks being born white or male is a privilege while ignoring the ordinary people (many of them both white and male) living in grinding poverty across the world and the people with ACTUAL PRIVILEGE who keep them there.
@tess
And why do you want to get married?
Benefits? Property? Visitation rights in hospitals?
All of that can be done with money.
If it’s just love, then why can’t you be with your partner and love them just the same? “Because society doesn’t recognize our love, which is just between the two of us, not society?”
Very Easy with Maxed out Handicap
Attractive White Female
Very Easy
Attractive White Male with Jewish Ancestry
Average Looking White Female
Attractive Minority Women
Normal
Below Average Looking White Female
Average Looking Minority Women
White Men of Any Attractiveness
Kinda Difficult
Minority Men of Any Actractiveness
Below Average Looking Minority Women
Hard Mode
Ugly White Women
Impossible Nightmare Hell Mode
Ugly Minority Women
I’d like to know situations in which I would have an advantage over non straight white males and I want specifics
– You can marry anywhere and get the privileges derived from that… especially to do with insurance payments, pensions, healthcare and the like.
– Until recently you could serve openly in the military where as a white gay male couldn’t
– You’re more likely to get promoted to senior business roles. There are, as far as I can tell, no openly gay Fortune 500 CEOs (Tim Cook certainly isn’t out, if he is, in fact, gay)
– You aren’t going to be turned away from hotels and the such like (just Google for it, it isn’t hard to find the links)
– You aren’t going to get beaten up for kissing/showing affection to your partner on the street (just Google for it)
And if you REALLY think that even now, in parts of the US, a gay man isn’t going to get looked at funny just for existing, you really are not paying attention.
What was the actual point of this article? Seriously?
@ Xopher Halftongue
Are white people being proud of their ancestory racist? What about minorities in the USA being proud of their ancestory?
I feel like a lot of the negative comments are coming from people misunderstanding the scope of the positive and negative effects Game Difficulty has on the lives of the players.
I can tell you about several occasions where I have been glad to be a White Dude when dealing with authority. Police, TSA, Homeland Security, etc. They include getting pulled over after bars closed in a predominantly Hispanic city, crossing Hoover Dam in an SUV full of firearms post 9-11 (legally, mind you), getting through airport security after my reservation screwed up my name, and so on.
I lived the early part of my life in a trailer, I was poor as shit. I’m not rich now, but I am comfortable, and as much as I would like to think that I did it all for myself (I mean, seriously, isn’t that the dream we all have, making it on our own?) I realize that if I were born darker skinned I would likely be in jail, or at least would have been in jail at some point from my near misses.
The point of pointing out that privilege exists isn’t to bring us (White Guys) down. The point is to show that not everyone has the same opportunities, and to show that the rhetoric behind “Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” is based on an incomplete data set. Some people start with their boots half pulled up already. The goal isn’t to push them down, but to remove some of the limitations placed on others.
@Mopomi Since I’m not sure if you’re deliberately trying to misunderstand my comment or if I just wasn’t clear in my intent.
Generally the first person to do something is given recognition as “The first person to do X thing”. Then a hundred more people do that same thing and nobody cares. You typically don’t see headlines of things like “The 47th person to do X thing.” But as soon as someone that is disadvantaged does X, you do see that headline: “First black man to do X” “First woman to do X” etc…
I didn’t make any claims to how memorable that praise would be, just the fact that it is generally given that way. You also might have missed the part of my comment where I said that extra praise was deserved.
This article contains no gender theory content except for an explanation of someone else’s metaphor. I hope you don’t expect to receive an A for this work.
Jeez, I go away from the internet for a day and all THIS happens.
I love what you have to say, Mr. Scalzi. I’m ignoring the commentary thread but throwing this one in there (in case you are on high moderation mode).
But seriously: If I had read this a few years ago, I would not balk half as hard on the word “privilige” as I have.
@ Xopher: Ya think?!!
Oy.
@cofax:
Are you saying that, for example, a white male who is a complete slacker, didn’t go to school, has never struggled a day in his life, and has no appreciable impact on the world is really equal to, say, a Martin Luther King? Or a Bill Gates? Or an Alexander the Great? Come on now.
Value judgments are relative. A smart woman is only smart in comparison to a stupid woman. A strong man is only strong in comparison to a weak man. If there are great people, and we call them great because they have accomplished a great deal and overcome tall odds, what would you call someone who hasn’t accomplished anything and hasn’t overcome tall odds? What’s the opposite of “great?”
How does that address my point? All the money in the world doesn’t counter institutionalized discrimination – a fact everyone saying “it’s all about the money” doesn’t seem to understand.
I appreciate your good wishes, thank you. I’d rather not have to uproot my whole life and live far from my family in order to be married, though.
In case it hasn’t been mentioned, not everyone starts with the same faction standing. Some are unable to grind much or any reputation at all with certain extremely beneficial groups.
you should try living as a SWM in a 99% black country and then talk.
@Tess
The tax-breaks married couples get are in place because it is expected married couples will raise a family, and need extra money for their kids.
If you don’t want marriage for the tax breaks, what do you want it for? You can still live together.
Ian, for fuck’s sake. The draft, really? Women have been fighting to be allowed in combat roles for a long time. If I could wipe out the rest of gender inequality by registering for the draft off do it in a heart beat.
[Deleted for teh stupid — JS]
@F.Martin
There are no stupid women.
Truly, John, thank you. I’m sure you reached people today. Those who lack empathy will show themselves and have. The more people who fight the good fight, the easier for those of us born at a more difficult game play setting to level up.
Finn:
“Straight white male here, I’d like to know situations in which I would have an advantage over non straight white males and I want specifics.”
What? A straight white male demanding someone else do all the work? That’s unpossible!
Hey, Finn: Straight white male here, too! If you’re too lazy to use Google, then life sucks for you!
Johan Hammer:
“If you’re a poor white male, you are completely shit out of luck.”
I have personal reasons for finding this argument less than compelling.
Phil:
“I’m sorry for being white”
You should actually be sorry for adding such a pointless post here.
Joe:
“Your blog is successful because you are white, check your privilege John Scalzi!”
In fact, being a white male has been very good for me, and I know it and would be entirely stupid not to acknowledge it. So, indeed, privilege checked! Thanks!
Karl:
“Life is hard for everyone. Everyone suffers. To try and empirically say one man suffers less than another is childish.”
And oddly enough, no one has done that here. Nice try at the disaffected “whatever,” though!
POV:
“you should try living as a SWM in a 99% black country and then talk.”
Why? I’m not talking about that country, I’m talking about the US specifically (and the Western world generally). Your attempt to try to reframe the discussion is poorly done, aside the point, and generally stupid.
a point I will be happy to argue with any woman the moment she fills out and submits her Selective Service application
Hi Ian! I did, in fact, fill out and submit my Selective Service application. (I believe I was 23 at the time, so I was in fact within the age range where it would have been mandatory, had I been male.) Not only did I fill out and submit my Selective Service application, but when I got back the form letter saying “you didn’t need to do that, stupid”, I followed up with a polite letter explaining that yes, I understand that I am female and thus not required to register for Selective Service; nevertheless, in the interests of fairness, I wanted to be registered. They refused to register me, sadly. (And I couldn’t find a men’s-rights organization willing to use me as a test case.)
So what was the point you would be happy to argue again?
@John Scalzi
I’m reposting this for urgency
[and I deleted it for a reason — JS]
B.S.
I grew up deep below the poverty line. My siblings and I were the minority in a native-american public school.
I took advantage of every opportunity afforded to me, and now I’m among the richest people in the world (5% income bracket in the US). I do not know of any of those who came from the same school I did who were not white who are in the same bracket—most are either dead, dying, or still in the same home they were in when 20+ years ago, doing nothing for most of the day because there aren’t any jobs available to them. It isn’t because they were lazy or anything else that they had significant control over, it’s because I was not presented with the same challenges as they were.
One of my first jobs out of high school was working nights at a major discount big-box store. There were two non-male employees who also worked nights, and they were working the same shift as their SOs, who were male (and white or very big badasses). I could work nights because, although I couldn’t afford a car, I could afford a bicycle and I had the security of knowing that I could ride through any part of town at night and not worry about being accosted by horny men, racist cops, or any face any other real danger—I’m a white male, therefore statistically almost never in danger from another person.
I was, in fact, accosted once—because I was wearing an earring in each ear and walking alone late at night—and asked for a B-J. I told him that I wasn’t interested and he left in his BMW, but came back a minute later for a second attempt. I became a little more aggressive in declining his request and he backed off and I never saw him again. I’m 6′-1″, and relatively well-built; he was similarly built. If I was a woman, would I have fared nearly as well? I doubt it. This is the crap that women, homosexuals, and others have to deal with every damned day, only they can’t put such assaults (some not nearly as obvious) off nearly as easily as I could. I have been accosted by a cop once and when they saw my face under my hat, the chatted in a friendly manner with me.
It’s not just about money, it’s about opportunities or challenges that you don’t even ever have to think about if you’re a straight white male. Sure, finding a scholarship might be difficult, but I found enough to make my way through college and a PhD program (also took out loans and received some money from some of my white, well-to-do, extended family).
@Rowan: As to men granting women the right to vote: Well yes. But I’d like to say that anyone on an easier life setting can always do what they can to make others’ experiences in life better, they CANNOT help those other groups define themselves. Or take leadership in said groups. Look at the *huge* backlash a few years ago (2006) at Galludet (a university geared for deaf people) — the students were right outraged. I had a lesson in this too when I volunteered for a political cause for a First Nations group (I’m a white male), that they welcomed help, but the leaders should be one of their own. I totally agree. As a gay man, I wouldn’t want a straight person running any GLBTQQ organizations. And even if I otherwise qualified, I should not, as a white man, have any leadership in an organization for people of color or women’s organization. That’s not discrimination, it is self-determination. HIjacking other peoples’ cultures is not cool, and that includes current living culture, such as social, economic and political organizations.
Something else I have not seen in this discussion, is that the difficulty settings are different even _within_ a category (and I’m not even counting money/wealth). For example, I can (reasonably easily) pass as straight, so I have a lower difficulty setting than a guy who’s more gregariously gay, more ‘flaming’. So I am only a very small bit removed in difficulty setting from the SWMs. There’s just always the risk that a homophobe might find out, with at least unpleasant if not worse results.
It is just not right to lead other peoples’ movements. But you can always lend support when and where you can. And even within groups, game difficulty setting can vary. Even for say, gay white middle-class males. Or for any other group, I’m reasonably sure.
(BTW it seems WordPress uses a variety of markup formats, so I couldn’t format this better, HTML didn’t appear to work. I could certainly use Markdown, Markup, HTML etc. to make this have a better visual look but didn’t find a link to what format to use for that. I can’t get blank lines between my paragraphs.)
This is the kind of thing that makes me feel lucky that I have a Hispanic name and brown skin. Not nearly as cushy as being a woman minority, but at least I can deflect any accusations of privilege with it. Imagine how infuriating it must be for a sane white male. All your accomplishments are met with sneers and mutterings of privilege. Half your fellow white men have sold you and themselves out for insincere praise (Oh John, you’re one of the good white men!). When you’re not expected to apologize on behalf of your gender for the rape of women, you’re expected to vote to be taxed more so your money can go towards women’s contraception and welfare. Not to worry about your family’s welfare though, their privileged asses will be fine. They can just go to the All-White Privilege Club to get their free gourmet meals and the latest cheat codes for life.
This lack of solidarity has meant that all of our hard earned gains are being eroded. Governments are more oppressive, standards of living are dropping and we are pulled into endless wars. Working class men are distanced from the left wing because they (accurately) see it as an enemy.
The Democrats used to own the House of Representatives because of their lock on the south (somewhat simplified, but accurate). They had that lock because of the racism of the ordinary whites of the (former) Confederacy. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 broke the lock, and by your logic, LBJ shouldn’t have signed it.
How many people would you like to grind into the dust to get your goals achieved? You talk about progressivism as if you have any idea what that word means.
Why is it any of your business why I want equal access to an institution of the government? And why would anyone have been upset that they had to use separate bathrooms and drinking fountains and schools?
Visitation in hospitals cannot be bought with money, although medical power of attorney can.
Enough money and time with lawyers can get two people most of the same privileges that come with a $50 marriage license (amount may vary by state) and a couple of signatures if the two people are of opposite sexes. True. There are things that can’t be bought, though. Two-partner adoption, for example. Both being the legal parents of any child of the union comes automatically with marriage and is literally illegal in some states for two people of the same sex.
And ultimately, my point is: no amount of money gets me access to the same damn rights people who are straight have to legally recognized partnerships and all the benefits thereof.
If you want a different example of a problem money can’t fix: no amount of money can make it illegal for me to be fired for being gay. You can argue that if I have tons of money I don’t need to worry about getting fired, I guess, but what if I really like my job? No amount of money can make people at a restaurant or hotel let my partner and I eat there or stay there if they prefer not to, unless you’re suggesting that I should be so fabulously wealthy I can just buy any restaurant that won’t let us in.
@mythago
” How does one explain that the world is an unfair place without upsetting people who benefit from that unfairness? Do you believe that narrative insurgency requires pretending that unfairness doesn’t exist? You’ve made a lot of sweeping generalizations that are, charitably, rather slanted towards the conclusion you which to reach. Can you give a concrete example of a “narrative insurgency” that would work in the context of, for example, race?”
I absolutely can. Actually, I’ll note that Scalzi actually did a pretty good job at this as well in his initial post: it’s the comments where I think it went a lot awry. I don’t think narrative insurgency requires pretending unfairness doesn’t exist: I do think it requires removing a lot of the blame from acknowledging that unfairness. (For another good example of how this can be done, How To Tell People They Sound Racist)
How could this be said? It’s hard to do without a specific thing to respond to, but for example, a potential response to an above commentator talking about affirmative action could be, “Hmmm. You are right that affirmative action as it’s currently implemented has some problems.” (this is true, and generally undeniable unless you’re arguing. Almost nothing as currently implemented doesn’t have problems) “It definitely is not the ideal situation.” (Which is true. I don’t know anyone that views it as anything but a transitional state to where these educational deficits don’t exist.) “However, I do notice that the population of POC at this school is only X%, while the population of POC in the area is X+10%. Why do you think that is?”
I see a lot of people above saying, “I’m a SWM, and my life hasn’t been easy. I grew up poor.” A good way to respond to that could be, “Yeah, it does sound like your life has been tough.” Validate the experience, which does deserve to be validated. The Oppression Olympics is shitty. It should be okay to say, “Even though you are a straight white male, you did have a lot of factors working against you, including your class structure.” (Except I would use words specific to the class structure and individual circumstances.) “It really sounds like a shame-you had to work way harder than X kids, that grow up with a lot of those things already bought for them, just to get to the same place.” You are talking about their experience, but you are already getting them thinking about relative inequity. That can be a stepping stone to talking about other inequities. The key is to get people talking in a non-hostile way.
” It’s important to present a message so that it stands the greatest chance of being heard. But if you water down that message so that it has no meaning or impact once heard – what good is it?”
This is a constant, constant, very difficult argument that is constantly raised by pretty much every activist organization ever. I want to answer you, but I also don’t want to re-fight that battle in excessive depth. I will simply say that it is a constant balancing act and no easy thing to figure out.
“It’s like the hypothetical couple where A confronts B with solid evidence of B’s cheating, and B’s response is “You know I won’t talk to you when you’re this upset” or “How dare you spend time snooping into my private business!” The real problem is that B wanted to shut down the discussion – not that A failed to exert the superhuman effort to confront B in a totally neutral, acceptable way such that it was utterly impossible for B to nitpick.”
This may be absolutely true. But getting to the end goal is much, much easier when you do start from a neutral position and/or not snoop. It gives them, as in the link above, less easy outs, where they get to be offended at the way that you said things, rather than the important parts of what you said.
what’s the point of censoring all the comments that go against your article? if you dont want anyone calling on your racism then just close the comment section, and dont be a fascist
@F.Martin:
Are you saying that, for example, a white male who is a complete slacker, didn’t go to school, has never struggled a day in his life, and has no appreciable impact on the world is really equal to, say, a Martin Luther King? Or a Bill Gates? Or an Alexander the Great? Come on now.
But that’s not what you said. You said your life was worth less than those who accomplished more. That’s not comparing Joe Slacker to Alexander the Great, that’s comparing Joe Coder who drives a Prius to Joe Coder who drives a Lexus and skis at Vail.
Whose judgment are we applying in your comparisons? What’s the criteria of success? Isn’t there an inherent subjectivity in these assessments?
The ability to fully and completely evaluate the worth of a human life is beyond any human, and is, I submit to you, reserved to the divine. And for all I know, Joe Slacker is a better person than Alexander the Great–at least Joe Slacker never killed anyone. And for all the good he did, MLK wasn’t a saint, either.
The worth of Bill Gates’ life isn’t for me to calculate, but I know damn well it doesn’t come down to the dollars in his pocket, or even how many people bought MS Office.
I suggest you spend less time worrying about these calculations of relative worth, and focus instead on things you will be glad you did when you lie on your deathbed.
I think I’ll share this with my (straight, white) 16-year-old son and his friends!
“And oddly enough, no one has done that here. Nice try at the disaffected “whatever,” though!”
It’s pretty much the only response I can give you, since you abandon all ground I can argue with. You stance is pretty much, “even though my epistemology has the same faults as those who run society today, I’m right” – which is about as disaffected as me.
People everywhere have stupid fucking philosophies and guess what – you’re right in there with them. The only real tragedy is that people today don’t know what power really is. People only have power over you when you let them. Mopomi shows it in his post. A man comes up to him and wants to fuck with him, asking him for a BJ – he says fuck off. That’s power. That’s realizing that no one but you control yourself. The moment you bend your will to another person, you do so willingly, not because you’re made to. In the end, it’s your decision.
Life isn’t fair. It’s crooked. But minorities need to stand up for themselves and take life back. They aren’t going to do that whining or shoving SWM into boxes of privilege.
In the end, all people suffer. You’re welcome to dismiss my argument as “disaffected” – but it’s far more grounded in reality than your philosophy. People suffer, grow up, take control of your life. If you can’t do that, don’t complain about shit. It’s your fault, not the world’s. Whether it really is or not.
Ben, basing that on my own experience.
James Russel, that’s an idiotic comment. Being an attractive white female is an advantage in many situations, but a major disadvantage in many others, and certainly ‘invincible’ is a patently absurd characterization.
Tess, you’re quite right. I misread you. My apologies, and apologies for unintended triggering on my part. I do think, however, that it would certainly be instructive for the average SWM to pretend to be gay for a few months and see how others’ behavior toward him changed.
Steven Lee, so you missed the part where John said we’re not talking about the word ‘privilege’ here?
Sanic, white people being “proud of their ancestry” in the sense of being proud of being white are being racist, yes, because “pride” in the favored category is a euphemism for feeling that the favored category really is superior…which in the case of “white pride” is pretty much the definition of a racist attitude.
Teegan, then you’d favor eliminating such tax breaks for couples without children? And why, if that’s the point, do they get ANOTHER deduction for each actual child? You’re not thinking clearly, if at all. But I’m not going to derail into a discussion of marriage equality.
The sad thing us the model has been moving towards pay to play aka pay to win model…
Okay… I seriously don’t want to go into my personal reasons for wanting or not wanting to get married, which are none of your business. Wanting equal rights is, I think, kind of a self-evident thing; who wouldn’t? I would like to refer folks to Scalzi’s own writings on the subject over the years, because I appreciate his perspective a great deal.
And your ignorance about the benefits of marriage is astounding.
Money can’t buy me legal equality. That was my point, and it’s still true.
Coming late to the discussion here, but I figured I’d toss a few thoughts in anyway.
John, this is a brilliant analogy to explain what should be a simple concept (but unfortunately often isn’t). It’s an analogy that would never have occurred to me in a million years, but I know that in the future I’ll make use of it.
It still baffles me, though, that people weigh in here saying “So? What am I supposed to do then, if I lucked out and got the SWM setting? The game is what it is, I’m just playing it to make the best of what I got!” I’m not sure whether they don’t grasp the analogy in the first place, or they’re just taking it too far and forgetting it’s an analogy. Either way, the obvious answer is that the rules of the game are *not* fixed and immutable, handed down by some higher authority… and the goals of the game are *not* to make sure that you come out ahead of everyone else. We can and should change the rules to be fairer, because the optimal outcome is one where we *all* get to enjoy playing the game.
I’m a SWM myself, from a typical midwestern American family, raised Christian, with the added luck of good health and higher than average intelligence. Aside from being born into wealth, IOW, I drew just about every lucky card there is. These days I’m pursuing a PhD in my field of choice at a top-ranked school. From time to time my friends and I bitch about the demands and stresses of our academic program (that we competed hard to get into), or the penurious student budgets we live on (that we’re being paid to study and research). But then, regularly, we sit back and remind ourselves: “first-world problems!” (And pretty rarified ones even by that standard.)
IOW, I’m in an environment where almost everyone enjoys a certain degree of privilege, but also where almost everyone is very *conscious* of it, and we try, in our various small ways, to make the world a more just place and level the playing field a bit. I may have an easier setting than some… heck, one of my best friends here is a bisexual minority woman born to Hindu immigrant parents… but at the end of the day all of us here have lucked out one way or another. It really staggers me that some people need to be reminded of this, much less that they deny it when they are, or pretend that they’re powerless to do anything about it.
Here’s my question to everyone who denies there’s an advantage in being born white:
If you look at personal income, unemployment rates, education rates, household wealth, infant mortality, etc etc etc, you find that whites come out ahead of blacks, Latinos, Native Americans. If this gap isn’t due to advantages whites have over these other folks, and it’s not due to innate racial difference, where’s it coming from?
Albert:
“what’s the point of censoring all the comments that go against your article?”
I’m not censoring all off them, just the especially stupid ones. I’m doing it because it’s my site, and I’ll run it how I damn well please, and I don’t like especially stupid posts. And when I want your opinion on how to run my site, I’ll be sure to let you know.
Karl:
“It’s pretty much the only response I can give you, since you abandon all ground I can argue with.”
Inasmuch as you didn’t actually make a point that has anything to do with what’s in the entry, the actual useful response would have been not to comment at all. Try it! You might find not offering an opinion unrelated to anything that’s actually being discussed to be refreshing!
@Teegan
Heh, I read your message, responded angrily, read it again, thought a bit, and edited a lot. Your apology is accepted, and it’s really easy to misunderstand people on the internet. For what it’s worth, once I realize you weren’t really telling me I was an idiot but were in fact telling some imaginary not-me actual idiot that, we were all good. :)
And yeah, pretending to be gay would be instructive, I think. I’m a short round grinning little lesbian who looks about as threatening as a teddy bear and is usually drinking tea, and people *still* find reasons to drag their kids to the other side of the street. It’s a bit disheartening.
Xopher: “privilege” is a perfect example of your “logomachy”. A good clue to the existence of “logomachy” is a politically charged word which formerly meant something else. In this case, “privilege” has been redefined within living memory (don’t believe me? consult the 1911 Britannica). Other words in this class include “liberal”, “freedom”, and “right”. Everyone is for “rights”, right?
I don’t think anyone here is asking “why should I even want to decrease my unfair advantage?” But there are at least a few of us heteroblancophallicans asking “why should I even want to decrease my advantage?” Spot the difference?
As for whether I’d ride in the front of a segregated bus, my answer is: I don’t ride the bus. Ah, so unfair! I assume what you are really trying to get at here, in your fumbling example, is whether I would take advantage of a privilege — not an advantage, an actual legal privilege. See how your “logomachy” limits you? You cannot even ask the question you want to ask in a straight manner, because you lack the vocabulary. This is what comes of “logomachy” — newspeak. Concepts previously easy to discuss are rendered arcane.
But to answer your question, I probably would take advantage of any unearned privilege I had. I mean, just look at history — most privileged people have taken advantage of it. People do like playing on easy — another example is modern gamers using cheat codes. I like to think I would work peacefully to get rid of it, because unearned legal privilege is unfair, wrong, and inefficient. I bet you would like to think that, too.
I guess I’m still misunderstanding you, but it seemed like you were arguing that it’s a problem that the “first woman” is generally recognized as having accomplished something whereas the “first white man” isn’t generally recognized.
I apologize if I misconstrued what your post was about.
John:
“I’m not aware that the article says one does. It also doesn’t suggest that initial difficulty setting is the only factor in how one plays the game — indeed, it points out specifically that initial points and stats apportionment are a very significant factor.”
I’m not sure if it was clear, but my point was specifically that using games for this analogy does imply that connection. A game with a difficulty setting and a win condition is pretty much always going to have a script and the experience is going to be largely the same for all comers. I don’t think we’re even all playing the same game, and I’m reasonably certain we don’t all have the same set of win conditions.
As an example of something that’s a clear point of privilege, my not-getting-raped stat is basically maxed out. I don’t get the sense that’s the only thing that’s under discussion here, however, and when you start looking at things like that, things which are obviously points of general privilege, and separating those from things that are largely individual, it becomes harder to see the specific impact of privilege in a life.
So while I have no desire to suggest that privilege doesn’t exist, nor do I believe that it doesn’t affect me, I do, however, question the usefulness of this particular metaphor, and I think as a corollary I question this kind of rigid notion of privilege. It’s hard to leave it as a sticky, soupy statistic, because it doesn’t connect with people. But this approach to the topic, on consideration, says to me “This applies to you and everyone like you, all the time, for everything that happens to you”. It may mean something else to you. That’s just what it means to me.
@Mythago:
Thank you for your willingness to serve your country if required. I am, indeed, deeply regretful of the fact that you were not allowed to be compelled to sacrifice your life for the good of everyone else the way that men are required to do, and I have actually been a very vocal advocate for women to be allowed into combat conditions — indeed, to lead combat platoons. It is my privilege (!) to know several outstanding, dedicated women warriors in service to their country, and I am extremely proud of them and the excellent job they do.
If only the feminist community in general shared your commitment to fairness, I think a lot of the sour grapes you’re hearing from SWMs today would be mitigated — but the basic fact that men are not just expected but are required by law to submit themselves to the possibility of military conscription, death, and the possibility of killing in the name of their country while women are not is a fundamental aspect of institutional unfairness that, until it is corrected, will undermine a lot of the arguments women, in particular, want to make about equality. When I see parades of feminists demanding the right to be conscripted in the interests of fairness, I know that the movement will have been transformed from the gynocentric power-grab it has become into something worthwhile.
Until then, I will continue to weigh that very profound fact — the idea that both of my sons could be taken from me by an act of congress tomorrow, simply because of their gender — against the perceived unfairness I see protested by the feminists in my circle, and feel confident and justified in my opinions.
But thanks for offering. It means more than you know.
Nice work. I have some advice for the men who think they get it but are asking what they are supposed to do about it. The answer is: think about it before you speak the next time you think that woman/person of color/non-straight person is whining or complaining for no reason. Before you automatically dismiss their opinion or their knowledge as irrelevant or innately flawed. Before you decide they “owe” you something for any small showing of basic respect or kindness. Before you decide something about their lives without consulting them. And most especially, question yourself whenever you find yourself resenting them just for being there and wanting the same things for themselves as you want for yourself.
RE: Your tweet: “Two, for every clueless commenter, there’s a couple hundred readers who don’t comment. Some of them are Straight White Guys learning.” Just wanted to say…this is one Straight White Guy who Gets It. In part, thanks to your blog, especially for, in the past, pointing to Consciousness Raising 101 and Derailing for Dummies. Thank you.
Sounds like the old game where WASP was the lowest difficulty setting. Guess things have gotten alot easier over the years!!!
[Deleted for not being clever — JS]
[Deleted for being wrong — JS]
“Likewise, it’s certainly possible someone playing at a higher difficulty setting is progressing more quickly than you are, because they had more points initially given to them by the computer and/or their highest stats are wealth, intelligence and constitution…”
The level of ‘privilege’ or ‘TRUE game difficulty’ should be a function of both the basic difficulty setting and the initial point distribution. As you would probably agree, even the hardcore difficulty setting is easy if you install a trainer and start with level 99 on everything. And even the easy difficulty setting is difficult if one of your stats starts at level 3 and has a ceiling of level 5 (ex. intelligence, where the real life parallel is mental retardation).
As a straight white man, I’m only frustrated with the generalizations; comparing the aggregate level of privilege per class (where straight white male > gay black female) cannot be used alone to determine privilege in specific circumstances. Before calling an entire group ‘privileged’, one should look for more signals (more obstacles one was endowed with in life) before they dare include the straight white man with down’s syndrome and elephantiasis on his face in their generalization.
Ack, that was @Xopher, that last comment, not Teegan. Ooops.
I don’t think anyone here is asking “why should I even want to decrease my unfair advantage?” But there are at least a few of us heteroblancophallicans asking “why should I even want to decrease my advantage?” Spot the difference?
Well, Leonard, if you think the advantages you get by being white are not unfair, there’s a name for what you are: racist. I’m sure you can work out the corresponding terms for the other categories.
This presuposes race, sexual orientation and gender are the most important “non-fair” deciding factors of success. It totally glosses over socio-cultural background as well as disabilities.
I am a university student and I have plenty of female, “minority” and gay friends, all of whom are likely to go on to lead happy and successful lives. Admittedly they will have a tougher time than myself (I have make no bones about it – middle class, able-bodied, white straight male – true easy).
However my white male cousin has severe dyslexia – he dropped out of school at 16 with few gcses. He has now embarked on a career of manual labour jobs, unable to earn much more than a pittance. And he was one of the “lucky” ones – my family was able to send him to a specialist school and hire additional tutors at times – Throw parents stuck on benefits into the mix and….
@Mopomi No worries. I wasn’t saying it was a problem, I was just agreeing with somebody who said it happens and adding my two cents that I think the extra praise is deserved.
@ AS
“There are many, many people who are offended by the system of taxation as it currently exists. There are many people that do not give up their seats to the elderly, pregnant, or visibly disabled. There are people who do not donate to charitable causes. And I guess what I would really hope that you could understand is that these are not /bad people/. These people who do not want to give up tangible things to share them with others are not /bad humans/.”
As has been noted elsewhere, most recently on John’s post about the North Carolina amendment, people don’t have to be inherently “bad” to support bad things. Intent, as they say, isn’t magic. And frankly, if they don’t want to think of themselves as “being bad” it would behoove them to reconsider what their actions and words are that create the impression that they are “bad.” Don’t want to be thought of as a bigot? Stop supporting bigoted amendments. Don’t want to be thought of as selfish? Stop complaining that by sharing the benefits of privilege, you’re being oppressed. It really isn’t that difficult.
As well as starting at the lowest difficulty setting SWM appear to get the “Thin Skinned” flaw as well.
jamellebouie – Okay, I’m a Straight White Male. I’ve got a few disadvantages, but apparently my player put all the extra points he got for them in ‘difficult to monetize’ areas. So, with the lack of money, I’m still a bit screwed. However, that’s more self-identification than anything else, and a lead in to what I’m saying next.
Since I wasn’t increasing my ‘money’ stat anyhow, I’ve gone to work in an urban school. I think we’ve got one white student out of about one thousand. We’ve got over four hundred with some form of learning disability. All of them have a significantly worse ‘money’ stat that I do, some of them apparently used it as a dump stat. So they’ve got a harder setting than I do by a long shot.
Every. Single. Day. I hear them saying that either a) they shouldn’t have to try, because I should give them what I’ve earned because I didn’t actually *earn* it, or b) they can’t win, so they don’t have to try. Sorry, but there are a *lot* of people who spend time complaining about the difficulty setting they were assigned. What’s really odd is that even as I see them doing that, I see the results of my easier difficulty setting. Some of them defer to me, even when I’m *trying* to defer to them. I look at some of them and say ‘You’ve got forty years experience. I’ve got three. How should we do this?’, and the round table discussion eventually comes back to me as the decision maker. All I can think is ‘Wha…?’.
Mr. Scalzi – Namaste. I detest the word privelege, because as someone above said, it implies we’re getting something extra, when we see everyone else as *not* getting something everyone deserves, but… I love the ‘difficulty setting’ explanation. Brilliant.
@maryoftheassumptions
Or . . . you could just keep your damn mouth shut.
Really, Straight White Males, stop engaging — it almost never works out for you. ANY opinion you have about women, people of color, or LGBT, regardless of what it is, is automatically suspect because of your race/gender/sexual orientation, so your best bet is to just keep your mouth shut about it, nod politely, and get on with your life. Engagement doesn’t win you any friends and it makes you plenty of enemies, so your best strategy is to just stop participating in any meaningful way. When a person of color or a woman or someone you think might be gay makes a strong, declarative statement that might elicit an opinion from you . . . resist the temptation. It’s a no-win proposition. Even if you think you “get it”, no one else really thinks you “get it”, and they really don’t care about your damn opinions anyway unless they can be used as an argument against you or they can use the fact that you agree with them to justify their behavior.
So just . . . stop. You aren’t doing anyone any favors by opening your mouth. There are plenty of other non-Straight White Male people talking . . . they neither need nor want your input.
Tess, I read that as being to me and didn’t even notice it was misaddressed! It’s all good. I hope Teegan wasn’t confused…oh, wait, no I don’t.
Luke Tomlinson:
“This presuposes race, sexual orientation and gender are the most important “non-fair” deciding factors of success. It totally glosses over socio-cultural background as well as disabilities.”
Already addressed in the thread (in more than one place). Scroll up and you’ll likely find it.
When I read the title, I knew this one would be fun.
Well done, Mr. Scalzi.
I guess you haven’t tried out for a position lately where affirmative action plays a part? Try getting a job in a civil service occupation where a guy with a C+ average in high school bypasses your higher ability based on his race alone. Colleges too practice this sort of behavior, so your cute description of the ‘real world’ is lacking clarity. `
Ferret actually made a great comparison on this same thing using Magic: The Gathering decks and their win percentage. I can’t remember his exact term for it, but the main point was that playing a certain kind of deck gave you a certain incremental advantage against an opponent, like being born a certain race or having money gives you an incremental advantage in life.
That being said, though, I have a SERIOUS problem with the declaration that SWM’s can’t deal with the term “privileged” rationally. We can. The problem is that it is rarely EXPLAINED rationally. The first time most of us encounter the word, it’s thrown in our face, covered with venom, and used to tell us just how much of a despicable human being we are and how everything wrong in the world is, personally, our fault.
I didn’t get the definition, as used in discussing society, until someone posted on a blog (and it’s been years, so I couldn’t tell you which one it was) that came out and said, “THIS is what I mean by privileged.” And once I read that, I got it, understood how it’s used in discussing society, and can say, “Yes, by that definition, I am privileged.” It get that. But you know what? That doesn’t make me a bad person. I’m not going to apologize to people because of it, and it sure as hell isn’t my fault that someone else isn’t “privileged.”
@ isopod:
“Being female often gets you extra attention.”
You really have no idea how much I would give for this not to be true. I don’t want the extra attention.
Interestingly, as a white, bisexual, gender-fluid individual (but let’s go with woman today), I can change my difficulty setting if I want to badly enough. I can pass for SWF and take advantage of that difficulty setting, which comes with far more attention from SWM than I really want.
But I’m NOT a SWF, and if I am in love with a woman, I get the societal disadvantages that still come with same-sex relationships.
“For women, it’s acceptable to choose to quit their job in order to raise their kids, while men are expected to earn money and often get to spend little time with their family.”
Sorry, did you mean it’s expected for women to quit their jobs and acceptable for men to work? Or expected that both parents work? Because really, the latter is more the norm in an economy that demands two incomes to raise a family.
“Then, there are many programs to specifically promote girls/women in technical fields, politics and so on.”
Yes, this is because the men are *already* there.
“For women, it’s acceptable to act irrationally and show emotions, for men it’s not.”
Acceptable for women to act irrationally and show emotion…which is then mocked endlessly in jokes and tv ads for an endless range of products. I see how acceptable it is.
The funny thing is there’s research that indicates emotion is a necessary part of cognition, so emotion’s probably not as irrational as you think–and repressing it isn’t as useful as you probably think. Being all manly and not using your emotions probably means you’re not using your brain as well as you might be.
“Last but not least, it’s definitely easier for a woman to find a sex partner.”
Yeah, but when you brink up coerced sex, sex where the consent was dubious because of alcohol, where she said no 14 times before saying yes to get him to shut up and go away…well, there are issues there, too. “Finding a sex partner” is not always “finding a sex partner you *want*”.
As a SWM whose brother is a SBM, where all other factors are the same, I can unequivocally say that you speak the truth here. I DO have it easier than my brother, an the only real difference is the color of our skin. We speak with the same dialect, grew up in the same town, went to the same schools… but I never get hassled on the street. I never had to deal with inflammatory comments from classmates. I could go on and on about the number of things I never had to deal with because of the color of my skin.
It’s not my fault that this is the case, and this is what the negative commenters don’t seem to understand. Things are easy because that’s the way the system is built, NOT because you are a bad person for being SWM. There’s a difference between pointing out systemic bias an putting people down. Learn it!
@seantheblogonaut:
Don’t do that. The only way this really gets hashed out is if those of us who disagree at least try to engage in the discussion.
[Deleted for stupidity. Also, to the idiot white guy who posted this to see whether or not I would delete a comment by “beautiful strong black lesbian,” whose previous stupid comment I also deleted, nice try. — JS]
@Karl
“The moment you bend your will to another person, you do so willingly, not because you’re made to. In the end, it’s your decision.”
That’s easy for you (and me, SWM) to say when you’re not being suddenly told by the cops to freeze because of your skin color. When you don’t have to be afraid of being raped if some guy is too drunk or stupid to, um, not rape. Taken to the extreme, it sounds like you’d blame black slaves 300 years ago for bending their wills in the face of shackles and whips. Yes, people can be bent and broken. Not willingly.
“Life isn’t fair. It’s crooked. But minorities need to stand up for themselves and take life back. They aren’t going to do that whining or shoving SWM into boxes of privilege.”
Someone (I think Tom G) mentioned, way up there in this thread, that one thing minorities could do is work to change it like MLK did. But what MLK did was work to shame the white elites that allowed racism. If he were doing this work today, you’d call it whining.
@Ian, that kind of you, but I don’t think you can really judge the “commitment to fairness” of feminists as a whole by whether they, like me, made the ultimately pointless gesture of sending in a printed card with their name and address on it. Whatever you may think of NOW as a feminist organization (and I have my own views on that), its official position is, and has been for decades, that Selective Service registration should be required for everyone or for no one. The Supreme Court’s decision in 1981 upholding the males-only requirement was penned by Justice Rehnquist, who was nobody’s idea of a champion of feminism, and was based in the idea that since women are barred from combat the draft don’t need ’em. I’m also not familiar with any groundswell of support among self-described feminists for preserving the males-only requirement (though many are anti-military and believe nobody should register); and, of course, as has already been pointed out, it’s largely been a non-issue as far as the public is concerned because it has not actually translated into a draft in a very long time – though, now that women are honorably serving alongside men in the military, and more combat-related jobs are being opened up, there is indeed a question of “what would happen if we DID have to have a draft?” It is not at all clear that the answer would be “we’d keep it for the guys.”
And as some have pointed out, it’s very tiresome hearing an issue that most (if not virtually all) feminists agree with you on being waved around as if it were an original Black Lotus Mox. “Oh yeah? Well, what about the fact that an almost exclusively male Congress, affirmed by an exclusively male Supreme Court and subsequently by male Presidents, requires men to register for a program for a hypothetical draft? HUH, MISS OPPRESSED, NOW WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO SAY FOR YOURSELF?!”
Win:
Interestingly enough, the last job that someone told me I would never get because of affirmative action, I got. So, uh, yeah.
Well, Ian, you could take your own advice. Your snarling here has been enough to convince me that you’re a person best avoided if possible, and it’s not because you’re a SWM, it’s because of the things you said and the way you said them. You were even sarky with Mythago when she pointed out that she actually DID put in her Selective Service registration!
Sorry, stopped reading comments about halfway through, as I realized i had spent an hour doing so, so if someone has made this point, bygones, please.
You know how you made the point that using the word “privilege” makes people sort of obsess over the word, rather than just addressing it in the context it’s being used? Same thing is happening here with the word “easy”. “I’m a SWM and my life isn’t easy! How dare you use that word!” “What my friend went through isn’t “easy” so your analogy sucks!”, “Things are harder than they used to be for SWMs, therefore, it’s not easy!”, etc.
There are people who never want to engage the ideas- only the words.
[Deleted because it’s responding to a post I deleted. Xopher, dude. Do you really think I was going to let that comment stay up? — JS]
@Ian Ironwood
There are plenty of straight white men contributing to this conversation in ways that don’t suck. Like, just as an example, the guy who started it all. You’re talking about your own feelings of persecution there. I’m pretty sure some of the other guys aren’t feeling quite the way you are.
Chances are good that if you get a ton of backlash from people in minority/low-status groups when you try to talk to them about these issues, you’re saying a lot of stupid shit we’ve all heard many times before. It usually sums up in a few categories. Maybe you’re telling us our lives aren’t that hard, and you know that. Maybe you’re doing “but what about the [majority].” Maybe you’re saying that anecdote Y invalidates all of our experiences. Or maybe you’re trying to argue that if we just worked harder we’d be fine. Oh, or you’re telling us it’s not that you disagree, but we need to be nicer about it.
In general: I’m white and I don’t tell black people what it’s like to be black. It’s a good guideline.
I appreciate the work anybody and everybody does in the way of peace, justice and understanding. This piece is great, and yes it has its limitations like anything would. I’m a multiracial person that has lots of “relative privilege,” I grew up lower middle class, with educated parents who are employed, myself college educated, with tons of cultural capital. That capital is steeped in white culture, that allows for me to participate quite well in predominantly white circumstances and environments. That capital came from being a token. When a group or institution found it beneficial to pretend they were diverse or had the pulse of some community, they could look to me or any other person they had on hand. I deal with prejudice from individuals, and racism (institutional racism) every single day. Some times its subtle, other times its overt. That prejudice or unexamined behavior/thinking can look like someone trying to relate to me, and not knowing their doing something that is triggering for many people of color, or its 3 skin heads trying to curb stomp me. I’m not sure it matters wither or not this article has mass appeal, or if its all that accessible to non-gamers. This piece helps to give more language to something that is hard to talk about. We here are thinking about it, and having dialogue. I think that is a good thing. Thank you John for taking the time to make this space, and doing your best to help facilitate people coming together and better understand oppression and plight.
In my industry (publishing), race and sex, let alone sexual preference, have little bearing. Skill and quality of production, track record, and ability to perform under extreme pressure are the benchmarks. Nobody will hire you as a writer if your writing is crap. Nobody will give you an editor’s desk if you cannot edit cleanly and accurately. No graphic design spot if your work is cliched or shoddy. In my experience, this is as pure a meritocracy as you’ll find anywhere outside of pure science.
All that said, nice analogy.
I am a SWM who is over 50. I love the analogy. Great article.
Your metaphor is a thing of beauty, and I can’t tell you how much I wish I could use it to explain to my elderly cousin that no, social justice isn’t evil, it’s a necessity if we’re ever to fulfill the hope and promise on which the US was founded. Unfortunately, he’s just this side of 70, believes everything he hears on Fox News, and will never, ever play a video game. Even so, your post gives me hope that one day, I might find the right metaphor to explain this to him. Thank you!
Fuck. WordPress ate my carefully-crafted and clever comment. FFFFUUUU.
Oops, John, mea culpa. Duh, in fact. And here’s another one from “her.” Funneh.
“All of this still doesn’t mean that I should be annoyed that people don’t have a problem with the fact that women get paid less than men, black people in America are more likely to be arrested and go to jail, or that of the Fortune 500 companies there have only been 18 non-white CEOS, and only 12 woman ones.”
That’s a valid point. Now, should one be annoyed that _men_ are far more likely to be arrested and go to jail than women? In fact, straight white men are more likely to go to jail than black women.
Is it their fault? Well, I’m open to agreeing with this, but if it’s men’s fault, then isn’t it black people’s fault? If it _isn’t_ black people’s fault, then why is it men’s fault?
It’s been mentioned that back fifty years ago, there was a tiny privileged minority of SWM’s lording it over everyone else. Actually, back then was probably a pretty good time to be any kind of SWM. Black people couldn’t even vote in some parts of the USA. Unions were strong, employment was high, and women cooked a nice dinner for their husbands when they came home. Should a father have told his son that he had it made – being SWM was a sweet deal.
Except that just coming up was Vietnam. Being a young white man, as opposed to a young white woman, meant that you had the chance to go to a foreign country and kill or be killed. In fact, you wouldn’t have been given the chance _not_ to go. Of course, proportionally you were even more likely to go if you were black, but a plurality of the 58000 killed in Vietnam were on that EASY setting. How many woman killed in Vietnam*? 8.
So can one reasonably claim that choosing M will give you an advantage every time? I’ve looked at some of the examples given. Yes, a woman is far more likely to be murdered by than to murder her husband – but her husband is far more likely to be murdered. Yes, a woman is far more likely (outside the prison system, anyway) to be a victim of sexual violence – but a man is far more likely to be a victim of violence.
I don’t claim that men don’t have it easier. I do, however, think that sometimes the advantages of being male are pointed out and the disadvantages ignored.
*Of course that’s American woman. A lot of Vietnamese women were killed. Being born in the USA or Western Europe is the real EASY setting, far outweighing other privilege.)
@mythago
I am in love with you now.
I seem to remember typing that to you before, too, somewhere… maybe it was here… perhaps we talked about your handle, even?
Anyway, this was an excellent point, and you said it beautifully. :)
I was going to play Real Life until I read the EULA. The terms were brutal.
It’s a shame that you, JS, deleted my comments without considering the serious points I was making. I was deliberately abrasive in the first because that was the tone you set in your post and I thought I’d respond in kind. Ok, you don’t like that so I’ll give you the respect you deny me and try to be polite.
My point is that you make far too much of three aspects of a person’s totality and presume to say that they are more important than any others. My point is that you have no authority or justification to do that, and you are arrogant to think that you can.
I’m also rather dismayed that instead of thinking about and addressing dissenting opinions you seem to use a simplistic mental filter to dismiss any post which doesn’t confirm to some arbitrary standard which you decide and which us outsiders can only hope to meet. You come across as both closed-minded and an abuser of privilege as a result.
1:What is your point? are you saying that If a white man fails at life, he is worse at it than if a gay man fails at life?
2: are you saying that the point of life is to aquire money and status? you are what’s wrong with society than.
3: do you realise that lesbians, blacks, and all those groups have the excact same laws as us, it’s about where the fuck you grow up, not your race, white men can be born in poor neighbourhoods
4: if a black man applies for a job and a white man too, he can promote himself by saying, I’m black, you’re racist if you don’t accept me. “Accept my application because I’m a woman, ARE YOU A SEXIST??!”
5: and again, it’s all about where you grow up, about what class you are born in, NOT FUCKING RACE, what we need to fix is the economy and class division, stop trying to be the politically correct white knight, we don’t have different laws as blacks you idiots, and in fact, minorities have laws that protect them
6: Just focus on general human rights, if there is somebody that’s poor, stop blaming his colour, and just look at the ENVIRONMENTAL REASONS, and stop trying to avoid the problem by saying, oh yeah, it’s because he’s black.
rakdaddy, yeah, it was the “no one hear gets out alive” one that made me balk.
There are people who never want to engage the ideas- only the words.
This. It’s particularly evident when we see comment after comment arguing that Scalzi’s post said things he did not say or claiming that it didn’t say things which it actually said. (For example, claiming that it doesn’t address the issue of wealth.)
It sucks to take a hard look at oneself and say, whoa, I’ve been a little clueless about some of the lack of disadvantage I’ve had, and how others have had some extra crap thrown their way for no good reason; perhaps I’ve even been kind of a tool about it. But it doesn’t require one to roll around in White Guilt, or tear one’s hair, or decide one’s entire life of accomplishment is a lie.
I have had a good time reading this. It really is a great essay. To me it was written by I assume a middle to upper class white guy with a great mind. However the author’s life experience, if my assumption is correct, was and may be very different than mine.
I was the only white kid in my school. When I graduated to middle school, I was there only two days before I was removed. Because of my race. When I went for college grants and applications, I did not get them due to the fact I did not qualify, because one, of my race, then two, my parents combined income. 1980’s might I add.
Meanwhile, the kids who were of other races, or sex, with lower grades, some with parents that made a good amount more than mine, did get those grants and assistance.
I assisted the school in obtaining them for my fellow students as a social service required in my high school.
When I went for public/government jobs. I never got one.I was informed by a white interviewer once to just quit trying, I was told the fact is, being white and male is why I will never get the job. No matter how qualified I may be. I was always passed up. Now I have moved from job to job over my years and learned this is very true in almost every aspect of my life. So…where was my “advantage”, as a Black Female Teacher once told me?
Everything I have, job, car, house and life in general has been a product of luck. After almost 22 years, I now have a job within civil services. I had to take a “personality assessment test,” and wait on a list until my turn came up.
I did not expect to get the job. But after training, I had over heard several time questions about the sudden influx of white employees, and that something has to be done about it. If I were to make such a statement, I would be fired on the spot.
Now at this point I would assume some are saying racist!!! That is not the fact at all. I appreciate the Civil Rights Act and even Affirmative Action. It Leveled the playing field for a time, maybe not enough at times, but it was a great idea. I however was on the losing end. I was OK with that. I knew from my upbringing that some people need a helping hand up. But I suffered for it.
So the game you outline is not as cut and dry as you suggest. But a good read, and good idea of how it is. However, you are missing many parts that I am guessing real life will only expose for you.
I married a Black Woman, and I have children. The challenges they have are not misrepresented. But the non-challenge a Straight Whit Male you propose I feel is.
[Name of commenter changed because pointlessly homophobic; comment deleted because 20 years of being a professional writer makes me laugh at this guy — JS]
So can one reasonably claim that choosing M will give you an advantage every time?
Has one reasonably made such a claim? No. Please stop strawmanning; it’s embarrassing.
That’s an excellent point about meritocracy, @theraven, but it gets at how the difficulty settings are structured.
See, we don’t get to pick what neighborhood we’re born into, or what school we attend. And if we’re born into a neighborhood with lousy schools, to parents who lack the clout or wealth or savvy to get us into a better one, then chances are we’re not going to learn how to write beautifully or edit cleanly and accurately or any of those other things. (It’s not impossible to learn those things if you wind up at a crappy school, but the difficulty level is higher.)
And so, if the crappy schools are disproportionately likely to be found in communities where people of color are likely to be found, and clout and wealth and savvy are likewise unequally distributed, then you wind up with publishing being a disproportionately white industry even in the absence of anyone actively discriminating. Even in the presence of pure meritocracy.
As there are already 670 comments before I even read the posting, I just wanted to say one thing John. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.
@ Ian
“When I see parades of feminists demanding the right to be conscripted in the interests of fairness, I know that the movement will have been transformed from the gynocentric power-grab it has become into something worthwhile.”
I’m a female veteran. I find this position slightly disingenuous for a couple of reasons.
Women in combat is tricky. They haven’t been allowed in combat roles in large numbers, despite the fact that women have served in combat roles in the military of lots of countries, in lots of wars–a little Google-fu will get you this information. The Soviet tank corps, for example.
However, allowing American women to fight and be fully integrated in all roles IS something feminists–I suppose I can’t speak for them all–have fought for. But men typically say it wouldn’t work because it would distract the dudes.
And the other thing is that it gets really rapey for women on the front lines. Men could go a long way toward stopping that.
Fully integrate women into the military, all branches, and prosecute rape to the full extent of the UCMJ, and I say bring on equal application of selective service.
@ theraven11879 your pure meritocracy utopia ends at the printing plant. HTH.
The protests about “All my life I’ve been excoriated for being a SWM” remind me of that old commercial, “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful.” Honey, *that’s* not why people hate you.
Oh yes, life is so easy for me. Let me count the ways:
1. lost my daughter to her mom (my ex wife) who is a right-wing nut-job fundamentalist living with an ex-con physically abusive hispanic man
2. Overweight and out of shape
3. Laid off from THREE DIFFERENT JOBS and out of work even now
4. plagued with depression, tricotilomania, allergies, reflux, and carpal tunnel syndrome, and heels that split wide open til they bleed.
5. Scorned by women of all ages for intentionally being a middle-aged white male who is presumed guilty of things like perversion and rape until proven innocent
6. Scorned by other middle-aged white men for being too progressive, liberal, and not ambitious enough to victimize potential customers.
7. 7-yr-old son I can’t afford to keep educated and entertained
8. Overachieving Father with a law degree he’ll never use and a golden parachute he’ll deliberately spend so I cannot.
9. tenured professor YOUNGER brother with a much younger girlfriend he’ll never have to marry or fertilize.
YEAH LIFE IS A HUGE FUCKING PARTY FOR ME!! How DARE I complain!!
F U C K Y O U you whiny bitches. Life sucks. Welcome to reality.
http://www.youtube.com/user/manwomanmyth
Did it occur to you that this ‘privilege’ thing sets the bar higher for us middle-aged white men and that 1% of “us” make it, largely by defeating and demoralizing us then climbing over the piles of our dead or dying bodies?
I WISH I were a woman so I could get anything I need or even want just by showing a white middle-aged man my cleavage without even having to fulfill the implied willingness to put out!!
about a minute ago · Like
Steven Kurzban Your problems are not the fault of every middle-aged white man. But your and our are the fault of the 1% who are (or maybe even happen to be) OTHER middle-aged white men.
Mr. Scalzi: I have always found that instead of saying that White Males have privilege, not unlike this brilliant post, others have varying degrees of a systemic disadvantage, of which white males do not. It’s easier for white men to swallow and at the same time it concedes that others don’t have it as east as do we.
[Jackassed assertion presented without shred of proof deleted — JS]
Actually I think this metaphor is a pretty good illustration of what is wrong with the “privileged” thinking and why it is so annoying.
That people are born into the world with different life situations is the most most obvious and boring observation ever; it is between years 2 and 5 that children learn that the world is more than just their own minds and the other people have desires that may differ from their own.
There are a seemly infinite number of variables that effect life outcomes, some more important than others, but all, I would bet, only small pieces of the whole….. then people like you come along wanting to showcase how progressive they are and proclaim: “THERE IS ONLY ONE VARIABLE!”. No, there is not.
I would like to back up a step and talk physics:
I do believe that the world is deterministic in that everything that will happen has always been going to happen exactly as it will happen. The future can be predicted with 100% accuracy, if the present is known perfectly.
Yet, we must continue to pretend that we do have free will. If I were to sit down and start whining about how my conviction for theft was bogus because I had not choice, I would justly be smacked upside the head!
Very insightful article. I think it is interesting, given your premise, that Straight White Males are affected by suicide disproportionately to other races, and men have historically killed themselves much more frequently than women. In fact, the suicide rate for white men aged forty-five to fifty-four (29.3 per 100,000) is 14 times greater than the rate for black women of the same age (2.1 per 100,000) – [american foundation for suicide prevention]. I wonder why this is, and how it relates, if at all, to white privilege in america.
This is not true. A man with the strength to force a weaker person to do their will has power over that weaker person, whether or not the weaker person gives it willingly. Whether the strength is economic, physical, emotional, or anything else.
I was confident enough in my abilities to respond to a physical attempt to force me to do something I didn’t want to, but I’m just as confident that my girlfriend at the time would not have been able to fight off the aggressor.
[pointless nonsense deleted — JS]
fine with me. don’t think I’m giving any of my free starting points to anyone else, by the way.
Strayling:
“It’s a shame that you, JS, deleted my comments without considering the serious points I was making.”
It’s not a shame at all. You were being an asshole, so your comments were deleted. That you run the risk of having your comments deleted if I find that you are being an asshole is covered in the site comment policy. You may have not read the comment policy, but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t apply. And in any event, what did you expect? If the first thing you do when you come into my house is take a shit on the carpet, do you then assume my reaction will be to ask you about the weather? Please, get a grip.
“My point is that you have no authority or justification to do that, and you are arrogant to think that you can.”
I need authority to speak my mind? There is a licensing board of some sort? Can you tell me where it is? I want to make sure all my documents are in order!
I have to have a justification to speak my mind? Who is making the assessment of this justification? Does this also require licensing of some sort? Gosh, speech is so complicated in this here modern age!
I am arrogant to think I can speak my mind? Yes, it’s true! How dare I! I have no licensed authority or justification to speak my mind! Surely the Speech Police will come and teach me some humility!
Your point here is unspeakably stupid, strayling. I need no permission from anyone in order to speak my mind. My authority is the Constitution of the United States. My justification is because I can. And that makes me arrogant, then Hells yeah, I am arrogant. So what?
“I’m also rather dismayed that instead of thinking about and addressing dissenting opinions you seem to use a simplistic mental filter to dismiss any post which doesn’t confirm to some arbitrary standard which you decide and which us outsiders can only hope to meet.”
When you have a dissenting opinion that’s worth addressing with anything approaching seriousness, strayling, you let me know. So far what you’ve had is eruptions from your ass, followed by querulous mewling when your comments have been properly removed from the site. And yet, dozens of other posts disagreeing with me have remained, and people of all opinions are having robust discussion! How can that be? I leave you to winkle out the answer on your own.
First off: is that Select Difficulty image from the Bard’s Tale (on Playstation)?
Second: If just one company would make a major video game with this setting – where the difficult settings are named for orientation/race/gender and determine all the things you said, as well as character appearance – half a generation of Westerners could be educated at once.
Thirdly: High five.
Interesting article but to be fair it is even easier if you are born into a rich family regardless of your sex or skin color. I would argue that economic status means far more then skin color and sex when it comes to getting a leg up.
@Mythago
Sorry my issues are tiresome. It’s all right, however, because I am a SWM and my opinions don’t count. You can safely ignore them.
The SS issue is a non-issue, but when it comes to talk of fairness it’s a non-issue at the heart of the issue. Either we’re all working toward a fair an equitable playing field, or we’re not. Feminism has convinced me of the latter, for a number of reasons, selective service just being the most glaring. It has nothing to do with whether or not women want to serve or if their needed to serve, it has to do with whether or not it is fair for them to register and serve. And that’s a pretty basic fairness. Pretty essential. No where else does the state take half the population and tell them in advance that it reserves the right to have them enslaved, put to death, or require them to take a life, based entirely on their gender.
And beyond that, yeah, things get complicated. But thanks to forty years of increasingly negative attitudes towards SWM, the window where you had our attention is just about closed. The Patriarchy is dead and the Puerarchy is in charge, and your last hope of making a compelling argument to them is fading over the horizon. But increasingly I see the estrangement of the SWM and the rest of the culture as the most likely outcome. Which sucks — five generations of my SWM forebears fought and died to build the civilization we’re accused of “ruining” by our privilege. So now the sixth generation — me — is going to do everything in his power to ensure the seventh generation succeeds regardless of whether things are “fair” for everybody else or not. Given the current situation, giving up, taking your ball and going home is really the best strategy for SWM for a few generations.
@Karl People only have power over you when you let them. Mopomi shows it in his post. A man comes up to him and wants to fuck with him, asking him for a BJ – he says fuck off. That’s power.
What the actual fuck???
I am a straight white female. I was also the victim of stranger rape, in much the same situation as Mopomi describes. I did everything in my power to avoid it: I ran; when I couldn’t run any more, I fought; I had taken self-defense courses and used everything I had been taught against my attacker; I used the pepper spray I kept in my purse, to absolutely no effect; I screamed and shouted for help. I was still raped. I am 5’6″ and weigh 130 lbs; my attacker was around 6’1″ and weighed around 200 lbs. There was no possible way that I could have fought him off, and he certainly didn’t respond to “fuck off”. So don’t tell me that “people only have power over you when you let them.” The real world doesn’t fucking work that way.
Hmm. As an attractive white female, it’d have been nice to know about the invincibility setting before those two sexual assaults. Anybody know how you turn that on?
I’m white, straight, male, and lower middle-class. I haven’t had that many chances in life, and I’ve had to scrabble for the ones I’ve gotten. I’m sure I’ve received more opportunities than I would have if I were not white, male, and straight, but I’m not so comfortable that I can afford to give up whatever competitive advantage I have. Nor do I see the point of feeling guilty about what security I have managed to create for myself. My “privilege” is extremely precarious, and I’m never more than one illness or accident away from financial disaster. Yes, in general, straight white men are more privileged than others, but that does not mean that all straight white men are equally privileged. I believe firmly in equality for all, and I vote for equality and work for it and struggle for it as much as I can. But from my point of view, white liberal guilt is a luxury for rich folks.
I love this. Perhaps I’ll give it a shot with the people who have thrown the dictionary rebuttal at me in the past.
Society is relative:
“What is your point?”
It’s in the entry. It’s in the first couple of paragraphs, in fact. Try reading it again. Read better this time.
The rest of your comment is flailing spew.
Landrewc:
“I would argue that economic status means far more then skin color and sex when it comes to getting a leg up.”
You can argue it. I’d disagree. In any event it’s covered in the entry.
Ian Ironwood:
“It’s all right, however, because I am a SWM and my opinions don’t count. You can safely ignore them.”
Well, I’ll tell you what Ian: Try that sort weak-ass rhetorical maneuver again and she will ignore them, because I’ll just delete them. And if that is your “A” game, you might as well pack up and go home.
You forgot to mention that at a certain age you start to lose points, and that age varies depending on the difficulty setting.
I understand what you’re saying, what I don’t get is what you want me to do with it. Would you like me to apologise? I already do everything I can to fight for equality at my income level. I’m politically active, I sign every pro-equality petition anyone cares to send my way and I vote at every opportunity.
I don’t want a sodding medal or anything. At some point it just begins to feel like people are shouting at you for walking down the street in a privileged way, for taking a p*ss in a privileged way, for eating a turkey sandwich in a privileged way.
I didn’t choose jack, now please leave me alone.
@Mytheago
I didn’t even read what you were responding to, but I have something to say about men in power in the western world. For men, life is like playing roulette. If you win, you win big, but your chances of winning aren’t that good. For women, life is like placing a bet on Mike Tyson, and he’s fighting a 100 pound weakling. You’re probably going to win, but the payout isn’t amazing.
My point? The power hierarchy favors women. Men have the most to gain, but how many actually get to the top? Women occupy the second highest position as the sexual gatekeepers. They compete with each other for the men with the most resources while ruling over the masses of surplus males. And I know, how stupid am I to really think that sexuality is women’s ace in the hole? It’s not that much of a stretch if your mind isn’t rotten from feminist dogma. Men have always been willing to give everything for women. From fighting wars, to working soul numbing jobs, men will do whatever it takes to for sex and intimacy. The problem today is that women no longer respect men or their sacrifices.
@Don – with the risk of being deleted, that is the biggest, astonishing pile of horsecrap I’ve read in a good long time.
“Women occupy the second highest position as the sexual gatekeepers” – are you serious? You think of women like THAT? Good grief. What a sad, pathetic position to hold.
You can call it spew all you want. But I think your formula or whatever you want to call it, does not give being born wealthy and privileged a high enough rank. Being born wealthy and not being forced to work for your money is a huge advantage and it is an advantage that persists regardless of skin color or sexuality.
You and Luke McKinney are both my heroes.
What a well thought out article, I quite enjoyed it. If I can expand a little, I think a lot of detractors are thinking that the advantages gained by SWMs are just things like finding a job faster than women or minorites. There are other, more subtle ways that SWMs have it just a bit easier. If I can expand on the gaming metaphor, think of it this way: think about the difference it makes in a game if you’re given infinite ammo, as opposed to always needing to be on the search for more. Also, there’s a great difference between a steadily declining health bar one that maintains unless you’re actually shot.
What I mean is, an advantage SWM have is that there are things they just don’t need to worry about. Neil Gaiman posted recently about a talk he was at where the lector asked the men in the room what they do to make sure they are not raped. After some moments of stunned, awkward silence, one man raised his hand and said, “Nothing?” He then asked the women in the room what they did, and was flooded with responses. Every woman had needed to think about their safety in a way that no man in that room had even considered.
There are other examples, but this is one that was easy to hand. Sorry if something like this has already been said, as others have noted there’s a shitload of comments in here, I didn’t read them all.
@Don The problem today is that women no longer respect men or their sacrifices.
Well, no, women aren’t likely to respect men who view women as “sexual gatekeepers”. Why don’t you try viewing women as actual human beings? You might have better luck at getting respect from them.
Interesting analogy, but I would have preferred it if the “stats” were more directly related to real life thing. Something like men have more “strength” and “intelligence” so they are able to take up professions with a higher strength and intelligence requirements or straight people have more vitality so they can take more abuse from the outside world before being exhausted, or white people have more “charisma” so they can persuade people to see their point of view and get people to follow them easier.
Probably also worth mentioning other game mechanics in real life like a “handicap slider” being analogous to affirmative action, or a “language filter” being the same as censoring anything negative said about anyone except straight white males or “gold sellers” being the ability to buy your way difficulties in life if you have money. You know, just all those extra game mechanics that people take for granted.
@Tess: “In general: I’m white and I don’t tell black people what it’s like to be black. It’s a good guideline.”
Yeah, it is.
And now I have a whole bunch of non-SWMs telling me what it’s like to be SWM and why it’s all gravy and chitlins for us over here. Because I had the temerity to say “Good analogy, but what incentive does a SWM have for working against his and his family’s self-interest in a climate that perceives SWMs as being (generally) evil, ignorant, powerful, greedy corrupt SOBs no matter what they do?” suddenly everyone just naturally knows how it is for us, and doesn’t hesitate to unload their lifetime of petty grievances against the perceived Oppressor.
So, you wanna tell me what it’s like to be a SWM? I’d love to hear how YOU think I should be. And wonder if you care at all how I think YOU should be.
Thank you, this is wonderful.
My parents are first-generation Chinese immigrants (to the United States of America), and they never talk about privilege–they talk about social issues pretty much like this. All about positions of strength and weakness, and about having to push every small advantage you have when you start out in a disadvantageous position compared to many of your peers. If they were gamers, they’d be putting it in terms of obsessive level-grinding and drop farming, I’m sure.
Also, I wouldn’t say that the harder difficulty settings don’t come with any rewards at all–nothing useful, perhaps, but it’s sometimes easier to unlock bonus codex material pertaining to your particular class. Pretty much everyone who plays can unlock the SWM codex entries automatically along the way, but SWM have to go out of their way to learn much at all about the other classes.
“beautiful strong black lesbian”
Yeah. Sure. We all believe you are who you say you are and definitely aren’t some racist-ass troll.
Please don’t culturally appropriate the Holocaust for your wankish fantasies, whether they’re motivated white delusions of persecution, or (though it’s a vanishingly small probability) a genuine attempt to do violence to any segment of the population.
I have nothing really to add to the discussion other than to note that John is in rare form today.
It is quite entertaining to watch.
*totally not responding to the soon-to-be-deleted troll*
Damn, Scalzi, but you do sometimes make it hard to have fun around here.
@Don Men start wars for women? Sorry, this is real world, not Greek mythology. Men start wars for power. I can’t even stop shaking my head at the wrongness of the rest of your comment.
@Bess:
Women ARE the sexual gatekeepers, just as men are the gatekeepers of commitment. You get to decide who gets to have sex with you. We decide whether or not to keep you around for long periods of time. It has nothing to do with “real human beings”. Both genders are “real human beings”. Just because men act like men and not women doesn’t mean you can deny us our humanity.
I want to punch you with the force of a thousand suns. There so much wrong with that. I rolled a white male, what did i get? Average stats at best,
OK. Your life is hard. No one said it wasn’t.
Now take your stats, and add the :”female, black and queer” modifiers to them. See how that makes your position *even harder* than it is at present? No one is saying “being straight, white and male is a cake-walk, and nothing is ever hard for SWM, and they don’t deserve to succeed.” But given the same base stats, you have it better than someone who has the same stats as you, and isn’t SWM. That’s what John is saying. It’s really a no-brainer.
also i get a trait that makes me hated by all minorities and womyn, and i mean all minorities and womyn, you know what that means?
No, women and minorities do not hate you. Not even all feminists and all activists hate you. Wanting you to understand that other people have injustices forced on them by things they can’t control is not the same as hating you. Getting frustrated when you don’t understand that isn’t hating you. You are allowed to express your views on any forum that’ll have you without being threatened with violence, which is more than you have offered to our host.
Also, the personal pronoun is usually capitalised, and that’s *not* how you spell “women” unless you have an asinine point to make about feminists and language.
In my case, the computer rolled me up a straight white female with high int, high con, moderate strength, charisma and wealth as the dump stats, short and stout body model, and the “mental illness” quirk, then dumped me down on the west coast of Australia as a starting location. All of which makes for an interesting mix of pluses and minuses to the overall difficulty level. Oh, and this script I was handed says “random NPC” at the top… is that supposed to be there?
Now, on to the people who are asking “well, okay, we get that we were all assigned different degrees of difficulty, now what are we supposed to DO about that?” Here’s some suggestions:
1) Start by accepting that your experience isn’t universal.
This means, when you’re trying to be helpful, you have to start by asking questions, not just didactically giving advice. You have to find out where the other person has started from (rather than assuming they started from the same point as you). You have to find out what resources they have available (rather than assuming they have the same resources as you). You have to consider whether a particular course of action will be more or less socially acceptable coming from them than it would from you.
It means stopping and listening to the answers you get, too, rather than assuming those answers are going to be what you expected in the first place.
2) Start playing co-operatively rather than competitively.
I realise that social situations these days are largely set up to encourage competitive play. We’re supposed to think of this game of Life as one in which we have to beat all the other players in order to WIN. But what happens if we change the goal? What happens if we change the game so that the aim is to get as many people as possible to the “win” point, rather than just stampeding there our individual selves as fast as possible? What happens if we decide we’re not interested in the “win” achievement, but rather in maxing out the exploration of the map?
I figure this is the ultimate MMRPG. So let’s see whether we can screw with the heads of the people who like to think they’re the GMs (aka the ones who think they’re running the game, the powerful manipulators etc). They may be trying to head us all off to explore the Caves of Chaos and get us all killed by the orc army there, but what happens if we don’t go? What happens if those of us who are stationed as “the orc army” in the Caves of Chaos decide to head home and deal with the chores instead? How about re-designing the Caves of Chaos as an amusement park, complete with rides and such? You come, you see, you buy the tacky merchandise, you go home again, and nobody gets killed.
3) If you really, really prefer to play competitively, at least try not to grief and camp other players.
The players who are playing on a harder difficulty level than you have enough damn obstacles to overcome. You can do your bit by not being one yourself. So do your bit by standing up against things like misogyny, homophobia, racism, trans* phobia, ableism, ageism, religious prejudice, and every other form of discriminatory behaviour which implies that the only available difficulty setting is (or should be) the one the speaker started on. Even if you do something as simple as pointing out to the guy telling rape jokes that “hey, that’s not cool”, or turning down the invitation to gossip about someone else’s sexual alignment with a simple “that’s none of my business”, it’s a little ripple in the pool.
If you have the access and ability to influence new ideas and propositions, consider whether (for example) that new hiring policy which says “we’ll take only people who have degrees from the best universities” is as useful as it first seems as a way of finding the best candidates for the job. If you have a chance to do so, offer a helping hand to someone on a higher difficulty level than yourself (even if it’s just dropping a few cents in a beggar’s cup, it’s better than nothing).
4) Acknowledge that sometimes, there really isn’t anything you can do. And yeah, that sucks. Now pick up, and move on to something you can do.
That’s the other thing which I think people on the lowest difficulty settings need to learn, and it’s something that people on higher difficulty settings do tend to learn a bit earlier. Sometimes, there’s just no way to beat that challenge, or solve that particular puzzle at this level. It needs someone else to do something, and there’s no way of guaranteeing they’re going to do that. Or it needs an entirely different set of starting conditions, so you’re screwed from the outset. A lot of the folks playing on the lowest difficulty setting get very used to being able to Solve All The Problems, so when something comes along which either can’t be solved, or more often, which can’t be solved by them it can be difficult for them to deal with.
So I think it needs to be said: sometimes, the problems can’t be solved here and now, by you. Keep going with steps one to three above, those are still important. But don’t expect you’re going to be able to solve all the problems.
I’m not even going to try to respond to any of the egregious comments above. Suffice it to say that, as someone who came into the game pretty close to the lowest difficulty setting, I duly note that the biggest obstacles I have had to overcome are my own mistakes not the deliberate (or worse, unthinking) barriers placed in front of me by the attitudes and actions of others. That may seem petty but my awareness of the way some of my friends and acquaintance’s lives have gone makes me well aware of how easy it has been for me by comparism.
Hey, guys? The guys who are saying women and only women get to decide about sex?
Tell that to the guy who raped me. Be convincing, ’cause he sure as hell didn’t hear it when I (all-powerful woman that I am) said no.
On-topic for the original post, but arguably off-topic from the resulting comment thread: I recently saw a similar discussion(*) in which someone mentioned that one additional(**) reason for the disconnect when using the word “privilege” might be the fact that it has a very different and very precise meaning for anyone who has spent any amount of time in the military. Specifically, in the military privileges are something you earn. Which is the exact opposite of how we use the term in social progressive circles.
(*) It was only a month or two ago, but damned if I can remember where I saw it or who said it.
(**) Yeah, I still suspect the dominant factors are the stealth nature of one’s own privilege, and the benefits of avoiding any glimpse of it. But the military usage of the word was something I’d never considered, and I thought it was an interesting point.
@JS:
“And if that is your “A” game, you might as well pack up and go home.”
Perhaps you didn’t get the sarcasm in the remarks — I loathe smileys and emoticons. I’ll be certain to be more clear in the future.
This is far from my “A” game. I’ve made at least a dozen posts here, most of them cogent, polite, and well-written, and gotten ad hominem attacks and the occasional bout of hysteria in return. I don’t need my “A” game for this. It isn’t even a high “B” game for me. But hey, it’s your blog. Delete what you wish.
Although I’m half expecting this comment to be deleted as it touches on tender issues, I feel I should make the following point anyways.
One’s difficulty in life will depend not only on the groups one belongs to, but also on what one values in life. There’s no doubt that the straight white male will have the supreme advantage in the business or political world (or practically any area to do with high earning potential). But what sort of person has the greatest advantage in the interpersonal market? Attractive white females.
Sadly, for women as a whole, their “mating value” is primarily determined by factors completely beyond their control (appearance). However, for those women who do win the aesthetic lottery, they have interpersonal options galore. Now, I’m not saying that all attractive women are well off, but for those who place a stronger emphasis on interpersonal rather than economic needs… they’re set. These specific women won’t have to work a day in their lives as others will be willing to pay their bills to win their approval. I don’t support this sort of society at all, but one can clearly perceive it currently.
The “straight white male” privilege only applies in areas where it is advantageous (ex. job market). I’m not even stating that it doesn’t apply the majority of the time. All I’m suggesting is to consider the game mode when trying to consider whether the warrior or the mage is easier to play.
The word isn’t worth fighting over because the basis for the article is idiotic. Making broad claims about a gender or ethnicity is racist and sexist. Dressing up your bigotry by using a video game metaphor reveals more about you than your subjects of derision.
Ian- “So now the sixth generation — me — is going to do everything in his power to ensure the seventh generation succeeds regardless of whether things are “fair” for everybody else or not.”
And you can bet that there will be others, such as myself, doing everything in their power to ensure that seventh generations of all families succeed. And working as hard as possible to make sure that people like you, who see other human beings as acceptable collateral damage in your personal, individual rise rather than teammates in a shared rise, are unable to affect anyone but yourself.
Don- “Men have always been willing to give everything for women.”
Okay, I’ll play. Men (people) are generally willing to give all that they have (effort, wealth, time, attention, etc) to women (people they love). Absolutely.
But this has NOTHING TO DO with what SWM are willing to give TO women (or people of different skin colors, socioeconomic status, etc). And traditionally, SWM (and others in positions of power) haven’t been willing to give much at all TO those groups, or even recognize their role in withholding the benefits they themselves enjoy.
I’ve made at least a dozen posts here, most of them cogent, polite, and well-written, and gotten ad hominem attacks and the occasional bout of hysteria in return.
I admit I haven’t read every word of every comment, but I haven’t seen anything in response to you that actually qualified as argumentum ad hominem. I’m willing to be corrected on this. Please direct me to a couple of cases.
[Hey, you know what? Enough people responded to Don’s last stupidly sexist post that I didn’t want to delete it. But I can delete this stupidly sexist post! — JS]
John Mortimer:
“what I don’t get is what you want me to do with it. Would you like me to apologize?”
Well, Jesus, John. Who made me the boss of you? What do you think you should do with it? Do you think you should apologize? If you do, then do, although not to me.
Otherwise, recognize it for what it is: A statement that you, as a straight white male, go through life on the lowest difficulty setting. What you do with that information is on you, not me.
“At some point it just begins to feel like people are shouting at you for walking down the street in a privileged way, for taking a p*ss in a privileged way, for eating a turkey sandwich in a privileged way.”
Yes, it’s horrible to occasionally be confronted with the fact of one’s unearned advantages. All those people pointing out you have privilege would be really hard on your feelings.
Also: do people yell at you while you’re walking down the street? Or while you’re peeing? Or enjoying a sandwich? I guessing in actuality not. I’m likewise fairly certain that the amount you actually are made to confront your own unearned advantages is objectively fairly low. At least, that’s been my experience, and you know what? I actually run with a crowd that talks about privilege all the time. So, you know. I am skeptical.
Ian Ironwood:
“And now I have a whole bunch of non-SWMs telling me what it’s like to be SWM and why it’s all gravy and chitlins for us over here.”
Actually, what they’ve been doing is taking your very bad arguments apart and showing you why they are very bad. Why aren’t you paying attention better?
Landrewc:
“But I think your formula or whatever you want to call it, does not give being born wealthy and privileged a high enough rank.”
And?
Making broad claims about a gender or ethnicity is racist and sexist.
It REALLY isn’t. Making statements about observed facts i.e. there is racism and sexism, is making statements about observed facts.
Nothing in the article is racist nor sexist. Nor was anything bigoted.
@Ian
Women ARE the sexual gatekeepers, just as men are the gatekeepers of commitment.
Er, what?
You get to decide who gets to have sex with you.
If we’re lucky. Want to discuss rape stats? And since I doubt that’s what you were referring to — do you really believe that every woman gets the man she wants? That the number of women who do get the man they want significantly outweighs the number of men who get the women they want? Men control their own sexuality as much — and if we’re talking unwilling sexuality, a hell of a lot more, unless said man is in prison — as women do.
We decide whether or not to keep you around for long periods of time.
Really? Last time I checked, divorce proceedings are initiated by women more often than men, so that’s obviously not true.
It has nothing to do with “real human beings”. Both genders are “real human beings”.
Then I would advise both you and the original poster to start treating both genders as real human beings.
Just because men act like men and not women doesn’t mean you can deny us our humanity.
How does objecting to me being objectified as a “sexual gatekeeper” deny you your humanity? I have completely lost the thread of your argument.
John Scalzi. A question that I have for you is whether or not you believe stereotyping is acceptable in this country?
@Mythago:
As a SWM from the U.S.ofA., i wish to extend my thanks and admiration for your actions of signing up for the draft (let no one kid theirself: Selective Service System is nothing more or less than the draft board). As a SWM, I’ve long hoped to hear of a case where someone decided to take the action you did. I honestly believe that SSS should be either an ALL or NONE deal. Thanks you for pushing the boundaries.
@ the rest of the people:
some of you, like me, have accepted the fact that even if you are born poor (like I was), Race, sexual preference, and gender DO have stategic advantages in this game of Real Life. Bravo to all of you who do realize it, even if you are unsure what to do about it.
Some of you however have NOT understood the point of this article. Yes, as an SWM you might not get wealth and glory, however your base stats are likely to give you even a slight advantage over others with different Start Stats. Accept it, deal with it… TRY LIKE HELL to try to CHANGE IT!.
As an SWM in America, I’ve been fortunate to have known people who weren’t like me. No matter the situation, I know that in the same circumstances, I would have a leg up over them. I hate to say this, but once yourealize that… it pretty much FUCKING SUCKS! Why in hell should a female have to leave her home and career as a teacher to get a job as a janitor to get more money? Especially when said janitor job would pay more to someone like me? hmmmmm?? hmmmm???
@Ian Ironwood
“And now I have a whole bunch of non-SWMs telling me what it’s like to be SWM and why it’s all gravy and chitlins for us over here.”
Leaving aside the gravy and chitlins, I think another analogy may be in order: think about people’s relationships with English and where they’re born. I was born in the US, so I speak English. Do I need to learn Spanish or French or Chinese? They might be useful, but I don’t need to learn them–largely because English is the (ahem) lingua franca for much of the world. (I’ve gotten by in France, German, and Israel with English and a smile.)
But if you’re born elsewhere, you probably have to learn your native language (French, Spanish, German)–and then English on top of that.
So, let’s bring it back here: you’re a white male, so you understand what it means to be a white male. You watch movies and read books with lots of white men, right? (I mean, the majority of movies and tv shows have white men in the lead roles.) Now imagine you’re a black woman. When you’re a black woman, you may understand what it means to be a black woman. But then, since you live in a society that tends to highlight the experience of white men, you know something of that, too.
Or let’s try a different tack: I’m a Jew, but I know a hell of a lot of Christmas music because it’s all around me. I also know Jewish music for Hanukkah but that’s stuff I had to learn in special schools. If you’re Christian, you probably know Christmas music–but no Hanukkah music (with the possible exception of “O Dreidel”).
Now do you see why a white man can’t say he understands the other side in the same way that a black woman could say it?
[Deleted because responding to a deleted comment — JS]
‘The “straight white male” privilege only applies in areas where it is advantageous (ex. job market). I’m not even stating that it doesn’t apply the majority of the time. All I’m suggesting is to consider the game mode when trying to consider whether the warrior or the mage is easier to play.’
Solid point, anonymous. For example, I can’t think of anyone who has it worse than straight white males in this sort of arena. There’s a very clear hatred directed toward them that even often manifests itself in their OWN thinking about themselves.
SW men != instant privilege
STARMS-SHE-SAW men (Straight, tall, attractive, rich, mesomorphic, strong, healthy, extroverted, smart, socially adept white men) = instant privilege
Jackie M @ 9:31pm: It might explain a few instances, but I think that it’s more a sort of passive-aggressive effort to avoid arguing the actual point by arguing semantics instead. After all, people have no trouble accepting that plenty of words mean different things in different contexts — you don’t ever see someone arguing that, say, “trunk” cannot possibly refer to a part of a car because it is already a part of a tree, or that “run” cannot be both a noun and a verb at the same time.
(And I say this as someone who had a very strong negative knee-jerk reaction to the word “privilege” myself, and only slowly came around on it …)
>> Imagine how infuriating it must be for a sane white male. All your accomplishments are met with sneers and mutterings of privilege.>>
>>Any accomplishment, any achievement we make is undermined by “well sure, he’s a white dude — of course he won!” in an appropriately scornful tone. And when presented with such a situation, there is no compelling, practical reason for a Straight White Male to knock himself out with any kind of acknowledgement of privilege, game difficulty, or whatever. Because it’s probably not going to do anything for him but bite him on the ass.>>
This is not my experience at all.
When people assure me that my accomplishments are met with sneers and muttering and scorn, and that there’s no reason for me to try, I wind up wondering whether they’re just coming up with reasons they don’t have to try, they can just resent others for not valuing them enough.
My achievements have gained me praise, profit, an audience, a career and more. That I want others to have similar opportunities doesn’t change that — it welcomes more people in.
Perhaps the problem is that these people who are so worried that SWMs don’t get any credit for accomplishing things see it as giving other opportunities “instead of,” rather than “in addition to,” SWMs. Sorry, guys. Ask a few SWMs who’ve accomplished things whether they were all met with sneers, instead of just imagining that they are.
Because I can tell you, accomplishing things while straight, white and male isn’t the hellish gauntlet you’re so certain it is. It’s pretty cool. Which is why I’d like even more people to have a crack at it.
@Daveon
And you are citing a mere two anecdotal cases as defense for the argument put forth.
Another thing I’d like to point out is that, at least on this forum, people don’t seem to be hating on SWMs. They are more expressing their frustration towards those who are unwilling to see the point of the article. The hatred is reserved for those who after multiple posts prove themselves to be assholes, and come on, who doesn’t hate an asshole?
One thing I’ve only seen mentioned tangentially is the effect of what might be called ‘guilds’. In many areas of life, advancing to the ‘highest level’ requires sponsorship of some sort. This allows those at the top to act as gatekeepers to that area. Part of being on the ‘easier setting’ is that there are more people willing to sponsor your membership. In a ‘pure merit’ system that rewards memberships in these types of guilds, this tends to be an accumulating condition.
I work in a country and industry where women represent about 2% of the workforce. In the U.S., women are about 40% of the workforce in my industry, a change that has occurred within my lifetime, in large part because many of the old gatekeepers died and the newer gatekeepers put less weight on homogeneity.
@kurtbusiek: related, this xkcd strip never ceases to be relevant.
benjb: Now do you see why a white man can’t say he understands the other side in the same way that a black woman could say it?
Now, hang on. Using your own analogies, if someone whose first language is English chooses to learn Yiddish, or if someone who only speaks English moves to a city in Oaxaca, Mexico, that has a very low rate of english speakers, then they have had some small amount of experience that allows them, if they’re self-aware enough, to empathize with others.
Similarly, a straight white male who has been exposed to a modicum of similar disadvantage can, in fact, empathize with others who were born into disadvantage.
“But I think your formula or whatever you want to call it, does not give being born wealthy and privileged a high enough rank.”
And?
Wealth and Privilege trump race and sex and sexuality all day long.
Sad to say, there are a bunch of folks playing on easy commenting here who chose empathy as their dump stat.
Your rash generalization is offensive and poorly written. All gay men are not the typical flamboyant character they are often portrayed to be on TV, is this not true? I’ve met many wonderfully different gay men and have had several of them for managers. If all white males have life easier (The Real World on Easy Setting) can we then say that all gay men are Twinks? I’m surprised that things like this pass as writing and that people actual pay people like you to write. I’ve been working since I was 16 and my skin is, as the kids used to tease, the same color as Casper The Ghost. I have never in my entire 15 years of working ever thought being white has made it easier for me in the working world. I also felt like you should seek out some statistical data that backs up your theory. Unfortunately for you, white males are slowly but surely (esp. CA) becoming the minority. Are there only white male hiring managers out there in The Real World? To me your rash generalization is similar to the phrase “college graduates make more than non-college graduates”. That all depends on the career path you take. Let’s say (like my white father) you decided to become a teacher. Let’s say you were kicked out at 18, never graduated High School, lived in your car, worked two jobs, found something at a mortgage bank, changed jobs, was one of two men working in the entire building, made more than 40,000 dollars more than the teacher, and was a straight white male… would this not at least get a “most” edit. Not all college grads make more than non-college grads. Teachers make less than most.
Holmes:
“Making broad claims about a gender or ethnicity is racist and sexist. ”
Really? Hmm, let’s see:
“Typically, women often have ovaries!”
“In general, Caucasians have a relative lack of melanin in their skin!”
Both broad claims, regarding gender or ethnicity, and yet not sexist or racist.
Huh! Guess you’re wrong. Here’s another broad claim, however:
“Generally, privileged dudes trying to appropriate the language of the aggrieved look foolish when they do so!”
It’s funny because it’s true!
a student:
“I can’t think of anyone who has it worse than straight white males in this sort of arena.”
Get out more, please.
Joe:
“Your rash generalization is offensive and poorly written.”
It’s neither, although from your comment it’s clear you either read the article poorly or didn’t actually understand what it was saying. This is where I suggest you try reading it a second time, this time with an eye toward reading what’s actually written there rather than what you want to see there.
[Deleted again for ridiculous misogyny. Don, consider a break from the thread, please — JS]
“Wealth and Privilege trump race and sex and sexuality all day long.”
Wealth and privilege trump race and sexuality from 10:00 to 10:25 on alternate Thursdays. The remainder of the time, they operate synergistically with them.
@kathita
Women don’t hate assholes
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beautiful-minds/200910/do-assholes-really-finish-first
There are a lot of factors that figure into one’s likelyhood of “success”. The economic level you were born to, whether your parents were educated, self motivated or even present, the culture of your neighborhood, influences of your peers, and even choices that you make when too young to understand the consequences of those choices. I will grant you that on a difficulty scale that has numerous points, being white may get you a tick closer to easy and male might get you one too, but please, there is no way that you can say that an white male child being raised by a drug addicted mother in the slums of LA has it easier than our president’s two daughters.
And you are citing a mere two anecdotal cases as defense for the argument put forth.
A mere two? I could have just pointed out it was a pile of unadulterated bollocks and not even bothered with data points.
You honestly believe that women get all the sex they want just by asking for it and it never happens with men?
I can guarantee you that, among others, Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, Mick Jagger, Ashton Kutchner, Ryan Reynolds and oh dear gods this list could run to thousands of names, could ask any ten random women to have sex and they’d say yes.
Oh, are they attractive, famous men? I’m sorry, I didn’t realise there were controls and limits on this speculation.
Seriously, are you guys even thinking rationally about this stuff?
>> there is no way that you can say that an white male child being raised by a drug addicted mother in the slums of LA has it easier than our president’s two daughters.>>
That’d be a good point, if anyone was saying any such thing.
A shocking number of people seem to have forgotten their statistics classes. As someone smarter than me once said, “The plural of anecdote is not data.”
[Deleted because it’s commenting on a deleted comment — JS]
@Mopomi: there’s a term for this: it’s called double consciousness. Yes, empathy is easy. After all, on some level, people are always people, right? However, a black woman has to constantly be aware of being both a person and a black woman, a condition which, in the dominant narrative, is often paradoxical; to a white male, at least in the West, the state of being a person is always in concordance with the state of being white male, because “white male” is the cultural default and therefore assumed in the dominant narrative. It’s just the way it is; if you draw a stick figure, people will most likely just assume the qualities of “white” and “male” unless you put other identifying characteristics on it that suggest otherwise. Those with minority identities will always understand the majority in a way that the majority would have to make a concerted effort to reciprocate, simply because society and its culture is suffused with the experience of being aligned with the majority.
Apologies, John. I should have known to refresh before posting.
[Don, if you really have to ask how your posts are misogynistic, it’s probably for the best I’m deleting them as I go along — JS]
I find it odd that despite the article making it clear this applies in like-for-like comparisons, so many people seem to insist on using non like-for-like examples to try and prove they aren’t getting it easy. Are they doing it on purpose, or is it some sort of weird situational blindness do you think?
This especially applies to those who keep citing wealth. Yes, rich people have it easier. However, take a rich white boy, and a rich black boy and guess which one will be stopped while driving their Mercedes for “documentation checks”? Or which one will have an easier time joining the country club, and which one (even if they do get in) will have to suffer “jokes” about being mistaken for staff (or even actually being mistaken for staff). That is a like-for-like comparison.
By the same token, take two middle class professionals. One white and male, one female and black. Which one will get lower paid? Which one will be passed over for promotion? Which one has to constantly suffer “jokes” about having got the position by sleeping with someone?
Or, take two trailer park residents. One white straight male, one black gay male. Which one was beaten to death in less time than it took to read this sentence?
In all like-for-like comparisons white straight male has the easiest passage through life. That is why “white straight male” is the easy mode. It doesn’t matter which level you are on, its still easy mode.
>> You honestly believe that women get all the sex they want just by asking for it and it never happens with men? I can guarantee you that, among others, Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, Mick Jagger, Ashton Kutchner, Ryan Reynolds and oh dear gods this list could run to thousands of names, could ask any ten random women to have sex and they’d say yes.>>
Some of them.
But apparently, since women are the sexual gatekeepers and WANT to be objectified and have all the power because they’re in second place on a list of, um, two, and all that there, it stands to reason that any woman can decide to have sex with Brad Pitt.
As it turns out, though, even if you buy into that nonsense argument, and ignore sexual assault, women would still only get to choose among those who volunteer. Which is pretty much what men get to do, too. And same sex couples, and so on. When someone’s willing to have sex with you and you’re willing to have sex with them, it’s mutual agreement. Not women grabbing men off the street and saying, “Today, I choose you!”
If you’re unable to find anyone willing to have sex, it may not be because they’re forbidding gatekeepers, but because you’re not much of a catch.
@Bess:
I would LOVE to hear your objection to this cretin. I’m not sure what our wonderful host Sr. Scalzi might say, but I bet the females of familia Scalzi will back you up.
@Don:
That comment or any of its ilk would have gotten me slapped in the mouth by both of my parents, and the two grandparents that lived long enough to see me born. Misogeny is to weak a word for this type of idiocy.
Note to folks:
When I go to bed tonight I’ll be closing the thread, because I dread what might happen to the thread whilst I am asleep. So you have about until 11pm eastern to get your comments in.
Why are people grouping this based on race/gender?
Overall, wealth/social class/quality of your parents is a MUCH better indicator have your “difficulty” than race/gender. Yes, whites males in general are more wealthy, but a poor white lower class male will have a more difficult time in life than a nonwhite person born to a wealthy family.
Upper class wealthy = easy
Middle class = normal
Poor = hard
This is a much better description of our society IMO.
Thank you for this.
We all need a little of this man in our lives… his words are wise. Unlike many of the ones here, including my own (except for the recommendation to watch this video).
http://www.infinitylist.com/video/mr-happy-man/
That Don can’t even recognize that he’s saying misogynist stuff when it’s such wildly over-the-top misogyny is really something.
[Wow, I’m really getting tired of deleting misogyny in this thread — JS]
^They need a nerf
@Daveon
Come now, look at the entire market of men and women and not just the extraneous points. The median man will ask the woman out at the bar because of gender roles prevalent in our society; the man is expected to be the initiator and the woman will ultimately act as the sexual gatekeeper. I’m not saying this applies to every man or woman, but the median is more representative than the mean when variance within groups is high.
[Deleting comment commenting on comment I deleted. Not personal, Kurt — JS]
Your arguments are weak. as you are speaking as outsiders. Your perception of the type of life a Man, white or otherwise leads or has handed to him is biased and ignorant and based on perception not science.You wouldn’t dare to presume to tell a woman her value or place in the world in this way. Nor judging from the comments would it be tolerated to say anything about sexual orientation as a stat that controls privilege. Scalzi is a white male and is speaking from a place of privilege not one of experience. At no time has he stated anything other then opinion. Everyone needs to relax. Drop the judgements and just step back and see what improvements need to be made to eliminate this kind of opinion. there is no reason that we should continue to live in a world that celebrates the degradation of others
Note to folks:
When I go to bed tonight I’ll be closing the thread, because I dread what might happen to the thread whilst I am asleep. So you have about until 11pm eastern to get your comments in.
Heh… In your shoes I’d be tempted to shut it down permenantly, just to save a few hours a day policing us as we need to be policed. Much blessings to you and the Ladies/Rulers of House Scalzi.
i don’t game at all. wouldn’t recognize this world warcraft if i saw it, but i totally get the metaphor. it fits dead on.
nicely done.
i wonder, in the Real World (wink), aren’t there ways for those of us who’ve caught a break to help others with a higher difficulty setting catch some breaks as well? thereby sharing some of this greater chance of ‘winning’.
meigui, I agree that it’s exceptionally difficult for a SWM to feel that state of double consciousness, especially in the western world.
However, it is certainly not impossible. A poor, white boy (PWB) growing up in an environment where the advantage of being a SWM isn’t or cannot be realized is as predisposed toward experiencing double consciousness. Clearly that doesn’t happen very often so the generalizations that John started with are certainly valid. But at the same time, that individual PWB can actually speak with some small amount of the authority that a gay, black woman can.
@Mopomi
Similarly, a straight white male who has been exposed to a modicum of similar disadvantage can, in fact, empathize with others who were born into disadvantage.
To be fair to my analogy, it was just meant to point out that X person living in Y larger culture usually has to be more away both of what it means to be X and Y.
I’m not going so far as to say that any disadvantaged person understands the experience of all other people in that situation. That is, being poor is not the same thing as being black is not the same thing as being Jewish is not the same thing as being a woman is not the same thing as being LGBTQ is not the same…
All forms that lack privilege (let’s say) lack privilege in their own way. BUT, that said, I do think that some experience of disadvantage–of otherness–helps people to see the structures of advantage around them. As a white, male, het, middle-class Jew (to take one example), I have never been exposed to threats of rape or unjust police attention, but I know a (very) little bit about not identifying with what’s presented as mainstream/majority culture and life. (I live in a small town in Texas now, so there’s that too.)
(I might go so far as to say that even some temporary experiences of otherness may help shock people out of considering their way of life as natural/God-given, which I think is a big problem with this sort of assumed privilege. Traveling, for instance. Or even–gasp–fiction might help some people. At least, that’s my hope.)
Brilliant metaphor.
@Mysterio Yes, women will fall for assholes. They will get laid, more than the nice guy next to him. But they will also get diseases and get arrested, things I’m not looking for. Assholes will get ahead in businesses. They will then manage to screw up an entire country’s economy. Being an asshole will get you money and a piece of ass for a night. Unless an asshole has something more than that to give back to society as a whole, they are worthy of my hate.
I think wealth counts for far more than race, gender or sexual orientation. Who do you think has it easier: a Straight White Male from a homeless family or a Gay Black Woman millionaire?
…the man is expected to be the initiator and the woman will ultimately act as the sexual gatekeeper.
I think there is a degree of projection going on here. My wife initiated things, to be fair, like most men, I really didn’t pick up on any clues in the matter. According to her and a lot of her friends men are pretty poor at spotting things, on the whole.
I think Kurt really summed this issue up best and it bears repeating: If you’re unable to find anyone willing to have sex, it may not be because they’re forbidding gatekeepers, but because you’re not much of a catch.
Ken Scroggins:
Yet again, this is a point covered in the actual entry. And addressed in a number of comments, too.
Are people not actually reading the entry before commenting? Someone please tell me. I can handle the truth.
As someone who has designed a couple of unpublished table games as well as played and play-tested WAY more games of all types than is probably prudent, I love John’s analogy. Well done sir. You obviously rolled high on Wisdom.
So, I’ll point out the immediate implication to those who comment “but what can I do about it, I was just born with these great stats. Not my fault.” Namely that the point is that if we want a fair competitive game and FUN game, it needs to be balanced. To balance it, the game rules need to be tweeked so that someone who gets stuck on harder settings has a chance to unlock most if not all of the game achievements and max levels.
You will never achieve perfect game balance, but you can at least make it so that all the players don’t hate the game.
A very small conversation from Face Book (I’m Steve)
Andy Shooner: The tone and metaphor of this article is really condescending.
Heidi Pettyjohn-Barrett: I don’t know enough about gaming to entirely appreciate this, but I’m not sure how it is condescending? Is it because it assumes that guys like video games?
Matt Barrett: It’s not constructive, I don’t think.
Steven List: No it’s condescending because it assumes MOST straight white males are to stupid to understand and have to have it explained on a level a 8 year old could understand. (typical age of on line gamers, check it out) The problem here is so much simpler than everyone tries to make it. There are those of us who regardless of up-bringing, who are going to see the truth and understand. Then there are those of us who due to (and this is important) wiring in their brains, that are NEVER, NEVER, NEVER going to get it. You can’t talk, bitch, educate or lead them with water, they are not going to get it. Maybe time would be much better spent working with those of us who do “get it”, on how to deal with the SWM. I’m just saying.
It’s my fault for engaging. I should have guessed that you would censor any dissenting opinions an hour ago. But really, John, what’s the point in allowing comments if you’re going to censor the most radical? Besides the personal pride you should receive for having a free and open forum, it’s much more interesting to have polar opposites do battle than have hundreds of neutral opinions.
Anyways, no need to fret about me, I’m leaving.
This is a nice primer (of a sort). Thank you for writing it. Whomever it was that said that this post was akin to ‘An Introduction to Philosophy for RPGers’ deserves credit for an appropriately charming title for a would-be book that I am now hoping you’ll write.
So, John, is it fair to say you are playing through in Storytelling Mode? Or is that pushing this poor metaphor beyond its limits?
bobthefish:
Let’s assume, for a minute, that your essentialisms are valid. Fine.
Now, what does the fact that a man will not get to have sex with any given woman he propositions have to do with the issues raised about difficulty level/privilege? The issues raised only have to do with issues of access to sex in that they are issues of access to opportunities, and sex is a vanishingly small subset of the group “opportunities”.
The insistence on an argument about sexual roles has the effect of narrowing the discussion to sexual power, some sort of “You get to have sex when you want, why do you want to be considered for a CEO job too?” Which is just ridiculous, and I’m sure not the effect you were going for. Unless you really do think that women are able to gain CEO status by flashing some boob, and it’s just that only a few of them have, y’know, felt like trying.
Don:
“I should have guessed that you would censor any dissenting opinions an hour ago.”
Well, but, see. I didn’t censor any dissenting opinions. I did however, censor yours. There’s a difference.
“what’s the point in allowing comments if you’re going to censor the most radical?”
When the comments are indistinguishable from trolling and drag the entire conversation into a morass, the point is clearly to keep down the level of crap. And your comments, Don, were fairly indistinguishable from trolling, I’m sorry to say.
Steve List:
“No it’s condescending because it assumes MOST straight white males are to stupid to understand and have to have it explained on a level a 8 year old could understand. (typical age of on line gamers, check it out)”
“The average gamer is 37 years old and has been playing for 12 years. Eighty-two percent of gamers are 18 years of age or older.” — The Entertainment Software Association.
“The Average Social Gamer is a 43-year old woman” — Gigaom
So, hey, Steve: Where are you getting your stats?
Speaking once again as someone who plays games and is also currently writing one, I find the insistence that using gaming metaphors is somehow infantalizing the issue somewhat risble.
Excellent post. Many excellent comments. Great use of the mallet.
As a SWM if I ever climbed Mt. Everest I am not going to think less of myself because some blind guy did it before me. I’ll be impressed with what I did and the view. I am impressed by the blind guy, Eric Weihenmeyer, and his climb. I can take joy in his overcoming the challenges he faced. I find it inspiring. I also appreciate those with sight who helped him on his journey to the top.
I guess I grew up playing D and D where the players generally worked together against common adversity.
“Oh, and one other thing. Remember when I said that you could choose your difficulty setting in The Real World? Well, I lied. In fact, the computer chooses the difficulty setting for you. You don’t get a choice; you just get what gets given to you at the start of the game, and then you have to deal with it.”
So we should hate the game and not the players?
This metaphor is kind of silly. Plus, not all games have a difficulty setting.
The idea that ‘all else being equal, x group has it easier’ raises several questions. All what else being equal? Which axes are most important? Can you show that being in x group is the dominant factor that governs whatever you are measuring, or even one of the more important ones? Does it actually make sense to form the group ‘x’ in the first place? Straight white male is kind of an odd group to form out of all the possible ways humans can vary.
Don,
There is a big difference between dissent and spraying shit all over the place.
If John allowed rampant misogyny to stand most of us wouldn’t come back every day.
John, goodnight. Very enjoyable discussion to follow all evening. Get some ice on that malleting elbow. I think you had to ban three or four people today. I haven’t ever seen that many in one thread.
So, John, you’re a privileged white male?
As a black man, I’m curious to know what reparations you’ve made to minorities and womyn for your crimes?
Be specific…
Bashing straight white males, so brave!
I love the analogy. But you forgot to mention that the computer also calculates HOW you play the game,..so even if you THINK you are winning, you could actually be losing by accumulating “penalty” points or “dark matter”. You can be rich in money,..and poor in spirit…and when your KARMA COINS are calculated you want to be on the plus side because you actually do get to play the game again,..just in another form and in another dimension. If, and when, you do make it back to “play the game” again (on the other side or on earth again) you don’t want to be living life as a Gekko do you? Me neither.
I think the thing the guys who hate the analogies have in common is that they want to believe that the lesser successes of other people who aren’t them is due to incompetence and lack of basic ability rather than anything else. Trying to convince them that they had advantages suggests that other people have disadvantages, and aren’t just stupider or lazier than they are, which is what they believe.
The guy who wanted to marry a hot Latin American woman is going to be in for a shock. More female heads of state in Latin American than any other region other than Scandinavia. Argentina set a quota for women in their legislature; Nicaragua is aiming for 50% representation by women (and the head of state now is a couple de facto, if not de jure).
El:
The article doesn’t bash straight white males at all, so your snark is wan and sad. I have Malleted several presumably straight white males in the comment thread, but they were generally being assholes and richly deserved the Malleting.
Marshawn Cooper:
I’ve made no reparations. I do try not to be a willful asshole to them. How about you?
Ron Mitchell:
Well, today’s been a very busy day for the Whatever. Lots of new people, some of whom are clearly trying to troll. But the Mallet gets stronger with use.
Mr Scalzi – You make a pretty good point and I think that’s probably where a lot of the aggressive tone in my post came from. I do recognize that I have it better than a lot of people.
[What I say below only applies to the W bit of SWM so I hope you’ll forgive that]
The rest may have been from the fact that your difficulty settings leave little room for the various ethnic groupings within a race. Maybe the metaphor simply doesn’t stretch to it; I don’t know.
For example, the ethnic group that I come from spoke a unique dialect of Norman French until about 200 years ago when it was stamped out by the English rulers who controlled (and still do control for all intents and purposes) the education, political and justice systems and used those as a method of oppression against non-english speakers.
The culture and language I should have inherited is gone save for a few scraps saved in a single book by the great-grandmother of a friend and that which persists in certain inflections, ways of speaking.and the stupid road names.
Otherwise it’s been entirely anglicized
I acknowledge that in the grand scheme of things my situation is probably pretty unique and that your post has to speak to the majority of people whose ethnic descent has zero impact on their level of privilege.
I suppose what I’m trying to say in this admittedly rushed and poorly worded post is that it would be nice if people could see that race is more complicated that just Black or White, Asian or Latino e.t.c and that each person has a unique set of circumstances that can either work for or against them depending on their cultural environment.
[Racist dipshittery deleted — JS]
II have a question: In what are you basing your assumptions that straight white men have it the easiest? I think it has more to do with the country than with who you are. You see, I am Hispanic and life is MUCH more difficult where I was born than in the US, where I feel like in heaven. Don’t Homosexuals have it better in liberal Europe than say, Saudi Arabia? Don’t Blacks have it better in the US than in, let’s say, Ethiopia? And, unless you live in a Muslim country you shouldn’t worry about being a female. But what about white males? Is being white a real factor in this issue? I don’t particularly think so nor I feel oppressed by the white man for being Hispanic.
Wait…you can’t close the thread now! We were this close to solving the problems of racism, sexism and sexual prejudice in America!
[Hey, look! I’ve malleted this asshole twice! — JS]
And now I’m going to bed, so I’m going to go ahead and close up the thread, which, at 801 comments, is certainly long enough in any event to cover a wide range of discussion.
For those who came in and commented civilly, my thanks to you for some very interesting conversation. I think we had quite a range of discussion here, some it good and useful.
For those who did not comment civilly, thanks for giving the Mallet of Loving Correction a nice work out. Its malleting head has a lovely sheen on it, it does.
Night!
Update, 7:24am: I’m traveling all day today (or between 10am and 5pm, which is pretty much the same thing) and this is the sort of thread that needs babysitting, and I won’t be able to do that. So I’m just gonna leave the comments off for now.