Iâve been thinking of a way to explain to straight white men how life works for them, without invoking the dreaded word âprivilege,â to which they react like vampires being fed a garlic tart at high noon. Itâs not that the word âprivilegeâ is incorrect, itâs that itâs not their word. When confronted with âprivilege,â 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 âprivilege,â in a way that your average straight white man will get, without freaking out about it?
Being a white guy who likes women, hereâs how I would do it:
Dudes. Imagine life here in the US â or indeed, pretty much anywhere in the Western world â 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. Letâs 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, âStraight White Maleâ 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 itâs easier to get.
Now, once youâve selected the âStraight White Maleâ difficulty setting, you still have to create a character, and how many points you get to start â and how they are apportioned â 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 youâre 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.
More from John Scalzi
⢠The Sort of Crap I Donât Get âThere are constantly people annoyed with me (go search âScalziâ on Twitter today and youâll see some fellows mewling plaintively about me, for example; itâs darling), but it doesnât appear anyone makes a hobby out of it.â
⢠On First-Person Shooter Games âI use video games for recreation and when I do that, I donât want to have to do a lot of thinking. â
⢠Sci-Fi Video Games That Could Make Good Movies, If Theyâre Done Right âWhen Pirates of the Caribbean was announced as a movie project, I thought someone was mad â but smart people took a theme-park ride and made it work.â
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 youâre playing on the âStraight White Maleâ 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, itâs 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 doesnât 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 âGay Minority Femaleâ setting? Hardcore.
And maybe at this point you say, hey, I like a challenge, I want to change my difficulty setting! Well, hereâs the thing: In The Real World, you donât 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 itâs like? Well, hereâs 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 donât 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 thatâs âStraight White Maleâ 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 computerâor lifeâassigns you the âStraight White Maleâ difficulty setting, then brother, youâve caught a break.
John Scalzi writes science fiction and is currently working on a video game with developer Industrial Toys. His new novel Redshirts will be out from Tor Books on June 5. He blogs at Whatever
Republished with permission
