'Straight White Male' is the Real World's easiest difficulty setting

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John Scalzi wrote a pretty lengthy blog post using video game metaphors as a way to describe straight, white male privilege to people who have a hard time understanding it (i.e. - straight white males). It's a pretty interesting metaphor, and fairly well thought out and described in the article.

He does mention wealth several times as one of a "player's" starting stats and how it affects the game, and several people discuss it in the comments in more detail. Some commenters attempt to make a case that wealth trumps straight white male, and not vice versa, which is an interesting topic, too.

Also, people raise the question of what should be done about this issue, above and beyond awareness.

Thoughts?

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.

Ha! Very true. It's almost like there was a consciousness raising session somewhere that had been infiltrated by a government mole, and as the group started to close in on this concept, the mole thought: "what word can I suggest to make this as repellant as possible, especially to working class whites?" and that's how we got the term.

Louis CK snark aside, I find it hard to believe anyone could argue this point. Now, is being a straight white male an automatic ticket to success? Obviously not, but, if we're talking statistical likelihood amongst a certain populations, straight while males have it easier than anybody else does. Sure, a wealthy Latino has a more comfy life than a poor white guy, but, as a population, it's easier being white.

One of my standard lines is "heterosexual white males don't get to talk about oppression"; I don't care how you feel about affirmative action or arguments about racial profiling or anything else, if you're a hetero white male, your life is inherently easier than anybody else.

In terms of "how to handle it", it's being handled by a combination of the wealth of other demographics increasing plus the fact that "interracial" marriage is becoming more prevalent, watering down pointless definitions of race and such. As there are less people over time who think of themselves as "white", the problem will gradually take care of itself.

MilkmanDanimal wrote:

In terms of "how to handle it", it's being handled by a combination of the wealth of other demographics increasing plus the fact that "interracial" marriage is becoming more prevalent, watering down pointless definitions of race and such. As there are less people over time who think of themselves as "white", the problem will gradually take care of itself.

And we'll just replace it with another tribalism class system, like wealth disparity, or information access.

Another article that is correct, but not any more persuasive than the millions of other attempts at this. Instead, it just tries to be as entertaining and clever as possible. Yay for blogs, where we can all scream for pats on the head.

Mixolyde wrote:

He does mention wealth several times as one of a "player's" starting stats and how it affects the game, and several people discuss it in the comments in more detail. Some commenters attempt to make a case that wealth trumps straight white male, and not vice versa, which is an interesting topic, too.

Also, people raise the question of what should be done about this issue, above and beyond awareness.

These two thoughts are pretty well tied together in my head, I think. Really, the root of all straight white male privilege comes back to wealth. The stereotype of a while male is that the're clean and well groomed (not cheap), well educated (not cheap), unlikely to be convicted criminals (poverty directly raises the chances someone will be a criminal*), and make good money (which is something of a mobius strip of logic). The only part that doesn't fall directly into a wealth-associated advantage is the straight part, as gay men tend to score above average in these categories, but half the country just things those folks are, well... icky.

On the flipside, think of all the negative stereotypes about other races. They're generally related to poverty, poor education, and crime (the latter two again being directly tied to wealth).

The pain in the butt part is that even if someone is poor and uneducated, they can present themselves as a clean cut white male and people assume that the opposite is untrue. I wouldn't describe myself as poor, though I don't make a very good living, but I'm certainly very uneducated. However, people have flatly refused to believe I don't have a undergrad degree since I have an office job. Because of the car I drive (not fancy, but not very old), people think that I have good cash flow. They don't make this assumption based on those factors, they make that assumption and then reinforce it with those factors.

Personally, I think it's a matter of example and experience. We do see SO MANY white people dominating every part of our culture, and as discussed in other threads, the low-level cumulative effect becomes staggering. But in the end, the sad truth is that very few people who aren't aware of this advantage simply won't be convinced of it, because their world view isn't broad enough. Articles like this are useless because you can't tell someone that this happens, they simply tend to think things like "Well I guess it happens sometimes, but this person is just taking a few bad examples and making a generalization." It's something you have to experience or witness frequently for it to really settle in.

TL;DR: Obvious article is obvious and not particularly insightful.

(*or, to be fair, they're less likely to commit crimes that we end up prosecuting for, which is another layer of wealth-caused protection)

edit: I'd like to add that personally I get really annoyed and sometimes even offended when people think that they can ride the current social trend towards going "see I'm doing/saying GEEKY THINGS! LOOK!" to pass things off as suddenly interesting. It's horrible that people are pandering to such a trendy thing and thinking it's such a good strategy. PS, World of Warcraft doesn't have difficulty settings. If you're going to pander and pretend you're "in", try and do it right.

Bloo Driver wrote:

TL;DR: Obvious article is obvious and not particularly insightful.

I think the purpose of the article was to put the topic in terms that would convince someone who was not already convinced, not to be insightful. However, I don't think it would do that anyway. We're talking about people who have confirmation bias regarding confirmation bias.

Mixolyde wrote:
Bloo Driver wrote:

TL;DR: Obvious article is obvious and not particularly insightful.

I think the purpose of the article was to put the topic in terms that would convince someone who was not already convinced, not to be insightful. However, I don't think it would do that anyway. We're talking about people who have confirmation bias regarding confirmation bias.

I think it also serves to set the stage for further counter-blogging and a (multi-hundred) comment thread. My knee-jerk reaction is to defend Scalzi (who is currently playing Diablo 3 with his daughter) against charges of 'false-geekery', Bloo - the purpose of his metaphor was *to be a metaphor*, not to get the details of WoW raid mechanics accurate to the nth level. Also, now that dungeons have 'hard modes', WoW does have difficulty settings

Tanglebones wrote:
Mixolyde wrote:
Bloo Driver wrote:

TL;DR: Obvious article is obvious and not particularly insightful.

I think the purpose of the article was to put the topic in terms that would convince someone who was not already convinced, not to be insightful. However, I don't think it would do that anyway. We're talking about people who have confirmation bias regarding confirmation bias.

I think it also serves to set the stage for further counter-blogging and a (multi-hundred) comment thread. My knee-jerk reaction is to defend Scalzi (who is currently playing Diablo 3 with his daughter) against charges of 'false-geekery', Bloo - the purpose of his metaphor was *to be a metaphor*, not to get the details of WoW raid mechanics accurate to the nth level. Also, now that dungeons have 'hard modes', WoW does have difficulty settings :)

And somewhat related to the original idea behind the article, I remember one of the PA guys saying that the Alliance side of WoW was basically 'easy mode' in the same sense that there were more people like you and willing to help you and play as a team with you, granting a sort of tribalism privilege similar to straight, white male privilege. Interesting circle, there.

Mixolyde wrote:
Bloo Driver wrote:

TL;DR: Obvious article is obvious and not particularly insightful.

I think the purpose of the article was to put the topic in terms that would convince someone who was not already convinced, not to be insightful. However, I don't think it would do that anyway. We're talking about people who have confirmation bias regarding confirmation bias.

Yeah, although I'd argue that doing such a thing falls under "failed attempt to be insightful" still.

I just have issues with people who seem to be more concerned with being the Most Enlightened White Male on the heap rather than do anything useful about it.

Tanglebones wrote:

My knee-jerk reaction is to defend Scalzi (who is currently playing Diablo 3 with his daughter) against charges of 'false-geekery', Bloo - the purpose of his metaphor was *to be a metaphor*, not to get the details of WoW raid mechanics accurate to the nth level. Also, now that dungeons have 'hard modes', WoW does have difficulty settings :)

Sure, and the man may lay his child down in a bed fashioned from an original Pac-Man arcade cabinet before rolling around naked in a Atari cartridges, thus proving how deep his geek cred runs. It doesn't change the fact that the article's premise was a thin, poorly-delivered pander that's really just there to cash in on the current "I'm such a geek!!!!" social trend.

Bloo Driver wrote:
Mixolyde wrote:
Bloo Driver wrote:

TL;DR: Obvious article is obvious and not particularly insightful.

I think the purpose of the article was to put the topic in terms that would convince someone who was not already convinced, not to be insightful. However, I don't think it would do that anyway. We're talking about people who have confirmation bias regarding confirmation bias.

Yeah, although I'd argue that doing such a thing falls under "failed attempt to be insightful" still.

I just have issues with people who seem to be more concerned with being the Most Enlightened White Male on the heap rather than do anything useful about it.

Tanglebones wrote:

My knee-jerk reaction is to defend Scalzi (who is currently playing Diablo 3 with his daughter) against charges of 'false-geekery', Bloo - the purpose of his metaphor was *to be a metaphor*, not to get the details of WoW raid mechanics accurate to the nth level. Also, now that dungeons have 'hard modes', WoW does have difficulty settings :)

Sure, and the man may lay his child down in a bed fashioned from an original Pac-Man arcade cabinet before rolling around naked in a Atari cartridges, thus proving how deep his geek cred runs. It doesn't change the fact that the article's premise was a thin, poorly-delivered pander that's really just there to cash in on the current "I'm such a geek!!!!" social trend.

I'm not getting that at all from the piece. Could you point to anything specific in there that makes it seem like pandering, or false-claiming of geekhood to you?

Tanglebones wrote:

I'm not getting that at all from the piece. Could you point to anything specific in there that makes it seem like pandering, or false-claiming of geekhood to you?

Nah, I made the complaint as an addendum to my overall commentary, and I won't bother derailing the thread over something this minor and subjective. Although let me repeat, I didn't claim the bolded part.

Bloo Driver wrote:
Tanglebones wrote:

I'm not getting that at all from the piece. Could you point to anything specific in there that makes it seem like pandering, or false-claiming of geekhood to you?

Nah, I made the complaint as an addendum to my overall commentary, and I won't bother derailing the thread over something this minor and subjective. Although let me repeat, I didn't claim the bolded part.

Fair enough - I went back and re-read what you said, and you definitely claimed pandering, but not false-geekery. Re: the pandering aspect - it's actually pretty much mainstream to have gaming metaphors these days, especially if your audience is primarily geeky, and has at least a somewhat passing familiarity with tropes, memes and other ideas associated with gaming. Should those continue to be ghettoized, and only used under special circumstances?

Regarding the 'obvious article is obvious' part of your comment - it's obvious to you. It's obvious to me. It might not be obvious to everyone else out there:
IMAGE(http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/ten_thousand.png)

When I said that, I knew someone would plaster that XKCD in my face like it's been thrown around for the past few days. I really hate that guy sometimes.

There's a difference between "hearing about" something and "believing and/or understanding" it. The concept of straight white male privilege (or male privilege, or white male privilege, or whatever degree) is not something people tend not to hear about. The argument is whether it exists and to what degree. And to that end, the article, and those similar to it, all suffer from the same major shortfall - it's not convincing to people who it needs to convince. It points out a general problem and talks about it broadly.

I mean, I agree that there's probably people out there who have not heard of "white male privilege" in those terms. But they probably understand the concept in a general sense already, or they already disagree with it in a general sense already. The man is free to blog about what's important to him, and it's not actively hurting anything, so I'm not saying he's doing anything wrong and bad. I just think it's a bit useless and very often more about self-aggrandizing than actually moving towards a solution.

You're misusing the word "pander" and maybe that's the root of the misunderstanding here. Pandering would mean that Scalzi is providing to geeks some kind of gratification to their desires, especially in return for something. What kind of gratification is he providing? Talking to geeks in language they understand? Scalzi does that all the time anyway, the dude's a sci-fi writer, and even so there's not a lot of gratification to be had from it. What's he getting in return? Internet accolades? I'm sure they'll look great next to his Campbell and Hugo awards.

What he's done here is to try and frame a discussion in terminology and metaphors his geeky audience will innately understand. Talking to people in a way they'll understand isn't pandering.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

You're misusing the word "pander" and maybe that's the root of the misunderstanding here.

I'm really not. I'm saying he's pandering to people by using the metaphor not as a teaching element, but to draw attention to himself and his article from a segment of the population. That's the tone I get from the article.

Ah, so any time you write to your audience (because that segment of the population you mention is already his audience), you're pandering? By that logic, every front page article on Gamers With Jobs, not to mention every single gaming website ever, is shamelessly pandering.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Ah, so any time you write to your audience (because that segment of the population you mention is already his audience), you're pandering? By that logic, every front page article on Gamers With Jobs, not to mention every single gaming website ever, is shamelessly pandering.

Gettin classy up in here! I think I managed to successfully and accidentally completely pull this away from the actual topic at hand, and I couldn't help myself when people wrongly accuse me of misusing words. Obviously the above is a bit of a tortured reinterpretation of what I stated, but hey - maybe I'm doing that to this guy, too. Maybe I should have used way more words, like "undue attention" rather than "attention". Now that we've gotten to the strawman/snark segment of this particular disagreement, I'm gonna get back to my sandwich and client entries.

As is my privilege.

Bloo Driver wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

Ah, so any time you write to your audience (because that segment of the population you mention is already his audience), you're pandering? By that logic, every front page article on Gamers With Jobs, not to mention every single gaming website ever, is shamelessly pandering.

Gettin classy up in here! I think I managed to successfully and accidentally completely pull this away from the actual topic at hand, and I couldn't help myself when people wrongly accuse me of misusing words. Obviously the above is a bit of a tortured reinterpretation of what I stated, but hey - maybe I'm doing that to this guy, too. Maybe I should have used way more words, like "undue attention" rather than "attention". Now that we've gotten to the strawman/snark segment of this particular disagreement, I'm gonna get back to my sandwich and client entries.

As is my privilege.

I think people are just a little confused about how or why a sci-fi writer, video game developer, and consultant for shows like Stargate—so essentially a professional geek—would be in any way wanting or needing to draw attention to himself from geeks by writing an article about white privilege in geeky terms. The audience you're suggesting he's pandering to are people who were already his audience.

I'm not saying there isn't some kind of weird geek chic movement in popular culture at large, but it's a little weird to accuse John Scalzi of being a participant in that. It'd be a bit like accusing George R.R. Martin of bandwagoning on the dark fantasy trend when he published A Dance with Dragons.

I'm not trying to be a jerk here, but you did know who John Scalzi was before you made your comments, right?

Edit: And yes, Scalzi can come across as an ass, but there's a difference between being patronizing and pandering.

Bloo Driver wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

You're misusing the word "pander" and maybe that's the root of the misunderstanding here.

I am a big John Scalzi fan. At first, I took exception to Bloo's responses and in typical white-straight-privileged-male fashion I tried to articulate an argument that Scalzi only sin here was to be an uppity-white-straight-privileged-male. That sounded far too arse-holeish for my comfort so in a rare moment of restraint I thought about it for a bit first. (Which was good, becuase unsurprisingly, this thought was dead wrong.) Correct me if I'm wrong Bloo, but the criticizm appears to be Scalzi's tone not his content or his message.

As I said, I'm a big Scalzi fan. However, it cannot be denied that his blogging voice is "condescending didactic asshole". Exhibit A in defense of this is the book he published of his early blog posts: Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded he's just the kind of condescending asshole who would respond to hate mail or criticism with editorial marks. Upon further review, that tone seems to be the thing that Bloo is reacting negatively to. To attempt to put this criticism in another context:

Scalzi is patronizing. I think he's right and I enjoy his work, but there can be little doubt that he's taking the role of enlightened straight white male who is going to teach the unenlightened masses how to be good like him. I liked the blog entry, but I can understand how easy it would be to have the tone grate on someone's nerves. Not everybody enjoys being lectured or talked down to. (Even when they could use a good lecturing.)

This conversation makes me feel like a bee girl in a Blind Melon video.

I won't deny he's stirring up the game community with a controversial post. But that's not pandering.

I posit that what happened over the last few replies was similar to what happened to me a few days ago:

MCA: dies
Seth: "good. Beastie boys sucked."
The World: "f*ck YOU FOR PISSING IN MY CHEERIOS OMG."

Stop pissing in Scalzi's fans' cheerios, Bloo!

Also, if I were black and said that Beastie Boys sucked, I would probably be labeled a racist mad at the white boys who took my music, or something.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I'm not trying to be a jerk here, but you did know who John Scalzi was before you made your comments, right?

This has become some sort of amazing Escher staircase back on itself of the model of white male privilege thought patterns. I couldn't have known this and also come to the same conclusion? I can't even begin to guess if you're asking me this in seriousness or not! I really want to be done with this particular part of the thread, and I hate to keep coming back to it, but as a part of this community I just ... I dunno. I can't let things like this stand for later. It's really feels like a personal slight.

So, yes - I know who he is. I do not follow his blog, though. As someone who deals a lot in writing and game development*, I am familiar with him.

Yes - I think you can pander to an audience, even if they are part of your regular audience. Go look up some of the keynote speeches for political groups and hobby groups. Those are usually people cramming as many needless references to rally people as often as they can. That is pandering. Making references (edit: the specific references to a certain way/ideal is the more important part, here) and talking in a language about something specifically to get a reaction out of people rather than letting your logic and reason do it is pandering. While it seems that you guys have decided "pandering" implies "false presentation", that's not really the case.

And, no - I still think this is a horrible way to go about educating people about white male privilege. A horrible way. He is also condescending, but he is talking on the internet, so honestly that aspect of the whole article completely zipped past me. I really don't even notice anymore when someone is being patronizing, just long-winded and useless.

(*to avoid further psych 101 funtime twisting of what I'm saying, I am not trying to make a "do you know who I am!?" moment here, I am not claiming I am even very good at these pursuits, as evidenced by the amazing breakdown of communication here)

I actually prefer to be pandered to because I know I deserve it.

Seth wrote:

I posit that what happened over the last few replies was similar to what happened to me a few days ago:

MCA: dies
Seth: "good. Beastie boys sucked."
The World: "f*ck YOU FOR PISSING IN MY CHEERIOS OMG."

Stop pissing in Scalzi's fans' cheerios, Bloo!

Also, if I were black and said that Beastie Boys sucked, I would probably be labeled a racist mad at the white boys who took my music, or something.

I posit that it's not at all similar to that.

Seth wrote:

MCA: dies
Seth: "good. Beastie boys sucked."
The World: "f*ck YOU FOR PISSING IN MY CHEERIOS OMG."

This so needs to be a meme.

Person A: does something
Person B who has no connection to Person A: "comments on it"
World: "CAPS LOCK OVER-REACTION"

He's just mad he got the atomic backhand on his own facebox for it.

edit: CALLED OUT.

CheezePavilion wrote:
Seth wrote:

MCA: dies
Seth: "good. Beastie boys sucked."
The World: "f*ck YOU FOR PISSING IN MY CHEERIOS OMG."

This so needs to be a meme.

Person A: does something
Person B who has no connection to Person A: "comments on it"
World: "CAPS LOCK OVER-REACTION"

I don't mean to derail but when "does something" is dies" and "comments on it" is "good." it's not exactly the situation you're trying to describe here.

Historically, pandering meant to acquire a prostitute for someone.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

I won't deny he's stirring up the game community with a controversial post. But that's not pandering.

The potential source of the pandering is that he's giving the {Scalzi-Wheaton-consortium-of-sensitive-new-aged-guys-on-the-Internet} yet another reason to pat themselves (ourselves) on the back. The danger in writing a post like this is that structurally, it is indistinguishable from man-splaining. The post assumes that Scalzi (and those who agree with him) are the "good" kind of straight white dudes because they understand.

At least for me, when I read the post I felt good about myself for being an enlightened feminist man who, while heterosexual, is not hetero-normative. If one were to assume that spreading that kind of feeling to people like me was the main point of posting the article, then that is textbook pandering. I think it is more complex than that and I'm more likely to cut Scalzi slack, but I see where Bloo is coming from.

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