I am by no means a rich man, but in comparison to most of the world and most humans who lived in any age preceding ours, I live like a king. By the mere accident of birth, I came to live in a country that bombards its citizens with comforts. I woke up this morning and put two cups of fresh, clean water into a metal pan and boiled it on my electric stove. I then stirred in some 7-grain porridge and some raisins and cooked up my breakfast. I didn’t have to grow the grains and process them and I didn’t have to grow the grapes and dry them into raisins – it all came from the store, packaged and ready to go! From the same store, I also obtained some butter without having to own a cow and some honey without having to put on an apiarist’s suit and squeeze it out of a hive. I put the porridge and honey and butter into a ceramic bowl that I did not cast and stirred it all together with a metal spoon that I did not forge.

Click through to see the whole thing. I re-read this comment a lot when I’m having a really bad day and it never fails to cheer me up. (I’ve exchanged a few emails with the author of the comment EatTheWeak and he is a total mensch, too.)

For another bit of perspective that’s a bit more sentimental, try this:

The relationship you have with the world is just like any other relationship. Every now and again, even if it’s pissed you off for no good reason, you have to look it in the eyes and say:

I love you.

Have a good Friday, everyone.

Our problem is not that we don’t have enough stuff — it’s that we don’t have enough ways for people to work and prove that they deserve this stuff.

The question we have to begin to ask ourselves is not how do we employ all the people who are rendered obsolete by technology, but how can we organize a society around something other than employment? Might the spirit of enterprise we currently associate with “career” be shifted to something entirely more collaborative, purposeful, and even meaningful?

Instead, we are attempting to use the logic of a scarce marketplace to negotiate things that are actually in abundance. What we lack is not employment, but a way of fairly distributing the bounty we have generated through our technologies, and a way of creating meaning in a world that has already produced far too much stuff.

There’s lots of sci-fi that already deals with the concept of a post-scarcity world–most notably Culture by Ian M. Banks–but it’d be interesting to see how reality copes. After all, something something undeserving layabouts, amirite.

John Scalzi is a pretty popular science-fiction writer, known in particular for Old Man’s War and Android Dreams. He also runs a pretty popular blog.

Yesterday, he put up a post discussing the concept of straight white male privilege using an analogy of a video-game – a role-playing-game to be precise. Nerds aren’t immune to privileged and inconsiderate behaviour towards those who aren’t like them, and I thought this was a good way of explaining the concept:

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.

It was, well, controversial, to say the least. There were so many people accessing his blog yesterday that it actually crashed the server for a while. Ironically (or perhaps not) it’s mostly been straight white dudes who are outraged at what they perceive to be Scalzi’s condescension towards them, or otherwise “shaming” them for their privilege somhow.

I personally think it’s a fun post worth reading, and since I’ve also been embroiled in rather lengthy discussions about it elsewhere, I thought I’d repost some of my comments here as well.

*

My adaptation of the analogy, for people who maybe aren’t as well-versed in RPG lingo:

The computer is “fate”. The points are your initial starting pot – if you’d like, what “level” you start out as. In this analogy, if you see life as a linear accumulation of points society gives you that indicate your success, you could maybe start off with 5,000 points more than everyone else because you’re wealthy, or because you’re smarter, or because you’re conventionally good-looking. Scalzi’s point, whether you agree with it or not, is that as a straight white male it’s easier for you to accumulate points regardless of where you start off.

If you apply this analogy to real social issues like unexplained wage gaps, then it’s like saying that if a man and a woman with the same social, economic, educational and experiential background performed the same task to the same level of satisfaction, a man will get 100 points for finishing the project, whereas a woman would get 80. Or, to give another example, a man might get 1,000 points for getting married, having a kid, and starting a family (and in the real world, get promoted or get a raise because he now has to support a family), whereas a woman might get 300 points for performing her reproductive duty, but lose 100 points in her career advancement because people now assume she just has babies on the brain and is no longer capable of staying relevant with industry changes. Oh, and people like Romney want to take some points away from her for staying at home to take care of the kid.

If you talk about relative situational privilege, the man staying at home to take care of the kid would probably lose 500 points in social standing, where the woman might gain points instead. If you grew up in a poor household and have trouble holding down a job because the educational system screwed you over, you might only get 200 points for getting married and having a kid even if you’re a straight white dude, because now you’re “taxing the system” and “living off the government”.

So yeah, relative situational privilege exists, and is real, and is a big deal. But I personally quite like this analogy for situations of “all else being equal”, because I’m trying to have this conversation with people who are convinced that all of their accomplishments are solely the result of their own individual hard work, and that other people are given the same opportunities with the same judgment metric.

*

When have two people ever been identical but for the colour of their skin? Or their gender? Or sexual orientation?

Well, if you want to get into it, there’s proven sociological study on the effect that changing the name on a resume to a more racially stereotyped one can have on people’s perception (PDF) of that person’s qualifications for a job, or the effects of a female name vs. a male name on otherwise identical resumes. There have been examples of blind auditions for orchestra positions where women are suddenly selected far more frequently for a position. There’s even an instance of a female scientist transitioning to male, and colleagues saying that his work as a man was “much better than his sister’s”.

This stuff isn’t unsubstantiated.

*

Do we really need to talk about this? The average (N. American) 19-year-old white dude has been raised in a fairly egalitarian cultural context that says everyone deserves equal rights, everyone deserves respect, democracy is all about one-person-one-vote and so on.

I don’t know if I believe that assumption. By and large, being surrounded by middle-class nerdy dudes under the age of 25 who are often white and occasionally East Asian has taught me that few of them actually take these tenets of equality to heart, even when they pay lip service to it. They’ll tell you that women are equal, but they’ll also say feminism is basically reverse sexism. They flat out refuse to believe in the glass ceiling or in pay inequality – it must be because of maternity leave and wanting to get married. They think that rape is wrong, but that you’re really asking for it if you wear short skirts. They disdain pop culture created by women because it’s all about romance and feelings and mock tomboys for not being feminine enough. They demand nerd credentials of female nerds in a way that they would never dare question their male brethren.

Just look at the scoffing and jeering you get when some female blogger dares ask for female characters in pop culture that aren’t just eye candy, or questions the overly sexualized nature of movie posters. (Actually, that’s a whole other post. Hold that thought.)

One of the problems of paying lip service to equality is that people begin to believe that this is true, without actually lifting a finger to encourage it. The average so-called enlightened nerd–the audience that Scalzi is trying to reach–that I personally have had interactions with thinks people in the LGBTQ community are being too belligerent, that women just don’t like math or aren’t good at it even though we gave them all these opportunities, and that black people are better at basketball so what’s the problem? But they say that they’re not racist or sexist or homophobic or transphobic, and obviously everyone knows that men aren’t better than women, so clearly this isn’t a problem anymore.

And it’s true that some people who fall in the “middle class, straight, white, male” demographic aren’t like this. Some of them go out of their way to educate themselves, some of them go out of their way to try to help, or to at least moderate their language so it’s not a rape joke with every second sentence. But a lot of them are like this…enough that I constantly find myself having feminism 101 conversations, over and over again. Scalzi’s metaphor isn’t perfect, and this article isn’t perfect. But the people that Scalzi is trying to reach–the self-styled intellectuals who refuse to believe that there are unwritten social rules that favour them–they do exist. And I don’t mind if they’re forced to learn a little bit more about their social advantage.

No one is trying to blame any individual for “having it easy”. Life is hard for everyone in their own way. We are, however, trying to start a conversation about how sexism, racism, and homophobia affect individuals in ways that many have never thought about, and one of those ways is that they sometimes don’t have to think about sexism, racism, or homophobia. Privilege isn’t meant in the accusing sense, here – not like “you spoiled privileged brat”. (Well, sometimes people say that, but I try not to.) It’s meant in the sense of “you get to not think about this unpleasant thing that other people can’t not think about”. So we ask that you do think about it, occasionally, because that helps.

I have privilege, too. I’m a female minority immigrant, but I’m straight, and I was born into a middle class family and I’m smart and I somehow managed to graduate university debt free. My privilege is amazing and I can’t imagine having to shoulder half the burdens that I see other people shoulder – people who are less financially well off, people of colour, people with disabilities, transgender folks who have to fight for their right to exist. The fact that I have privilege doesn’t make me a bad person, but I’d rather be aware of the imbalance than not so I can do something about the people that don’t have what I have.

*

So hey, how ’bout that shaming thing.

It’s been pointed out to me that the “shame” angle of privilege is often used in a silencing way towards white straight men, as though they could never possibly understand and therefore have no place contributing to the conversation of equality.

Which is totally, totally fair. I have seen the word lobbed at male allies who dare to be male, and I think that’s totally shitty, too. I personally think the conversation about equality can’t happen if you don’t engage the people you perceive to be currently in power, especially when those in power have not necessarily done anything to either obtain that power or engage in oppression.

It can be a bit of a frustrating double-edged sword, though, when discussions about microaggressions and discriminating behaviour that people in the minority experience turn into discussions in which people who have not experienced those microaggressions question their validity. I think oftentimes the accusation of privilege comes in frustration, as in: “I’m telling you about my experiences being sexually harassed and you questioning my life experiences simply because it doesn’t mesh with your worldview is privileged”. That’s not necessarily the right way to engage in that particular conversation and will do nothing to further the discussion with that particular person, but…well, I can understand its motive, that’s all.

*

I’m a 28 year old white male. I acknowledge the privilege I have benefited from because of my background.  Now what do I do?

That’s up to you. You can get involved with groups that actively try to change the dynamic. Donate money to groups whose mission you believe in. Write letters to politicians.

Or you start small, and pay attention to where your privilege might harm someone else’s comfort levels or sense of wellbeing, and moderate that behaviour. Don’t use problematic language, like rape jokes, gendered insults, even if you think everyone will know it’s a joke. Think critically about the pop culture you consume, and don’t take messages that it sends about a given subgroup of society as truth. When you see friends who’re engaging in this sort of behaviour, speak up, and educate them in turn.

Is that fair?

“We found a walk-in freezer where people have been living, paying rent to live there,” Wales says. “The record was one house with 38 people, of whom 16 were children.”

Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay — anonymously wrote the Federalist Papers. Their aim was to explain and defend this new form of government, which they insisted was neither monarchy nor democracy but a republic — a system of representative government.

Translation: direct democracy or “majority rule” was NOT what the founders had in mind because they knew that left to its own devices, the majority would invariably oppress and deprive the minority of its rights.

There’s a reason things like slavery, civil rights, and women’s suffrage weren’t put to a popular vote. There’s a reason why the U.S. Senate is structured so a minority of senators can thwart the legislative agenda of a simple majority.

It’s in the majority’s best interest not to use their power to oppress the minority — if not for more virtuous reasons, then for the simple fact that they may not always be the majority.

So good.

I filled out my “Initial Health History” form for prenatal and birth care. You know: check the box if you’ve experienced [any of the following]. I got to this very interesting item: ”ANY unwanted/undesired physical or sexual contact.”

And I almost went blithely on without checking the box that means I’ve experienced it. Because nothing has happened to me, really, right? I’m supposed to feel lucky, right, given that I’m a woman in a culture where horrible things very often happen to girls and women? But then I actually thought for a second, and reality hit me.

The rest of the blog post goes into specific detail about the type of sexual harassment that she’s received in her life – and I have to say, it doesn’t sound too unlike the stories I’ve heard from my female friends. Highly recommended reading for everyone:

I’d never envisioned these little experiences as part of a larger pattern before filling out that form. They’re just so ordinary. My mother and stepmother and friends and, I’m sure, students have experienced all of this shit, and are continuing to experience it–and much scarier and more scarring shit, too. Many of you have, and do, and will. In many senses I am lucky. Yet despite my comparatively good fortune and my considerable privilege–which I totally acknowledge–the truth is that each of these ‘little’ moments in my life articulated what quickly became a powerful theme:

Your body is not for you. Your body is for men’s pleasure.

And you are at risk, all the time.

I’ve collected a bunch of things about him that I enjoyed, and that you might, too:

Stephen Colbert interviews Maurice Sendak. (I tried to find a working link for Canadians but it doesn’t look like Comedy Network has it. If you google for it there are lots of mirrors.)

NPR’s interview with Maurice Sendak following the publication of his last children’s book. It’s an audio link, but there are some highlights:

“I have nothing now but praise for my life. I’m not unhappy. I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can’t stop them. They leave me and I love them more. … What I dread is the isolation. … There are so many beautiful things in the world which I will have to leave when I die, but I’m ready, I’m ready, I’m ready.”

The Guardian interviews Maurice Sendak and covers Rupert Murdoch, US politics, and a less-than-fairytale childhood:

At 83, Sendak is still enraged by almost everything that crosses his landscape.

“I hate [ebooks]. It’s like making believe there’s another kind of sex. There isn’t another kind of sex. There isn’t another kind of book! A book is a book is a book.”

Here’s an envelope from a letter he sent a fan, full of his illustrations (via Letters Of Note):

Also via Letters Of Note, a practical question from a reader about vacations:

Tate Modern museum did a series of profiles of famous and influential people for a podcast, and here’s their interview with Mr. Sendak.

The best bit?

“Why didn’t you do a Wild Things 2?”
“Go to Hell.”

Rest in peace, Mr. Sendak. You have given us much.

Now, same-sex marriage is already banned by statute in this state, so this isn’t at all about same-sex marriage. Rather, it’s about codifying discrimination against people who don’t fit the prescribed religious edicts of how people should behave. There’s lots of good discussion here about the many ways it would harm innocents in the state.

There’s two things I want to say about this. Well, three. (Okay, maybe four.)

One: In another discussion about the perceived sexual counter-revolution, someone aptly pointed out that:

In the last 15 years, the conversation has moved away from how we should be treated towards how we should behave.

One of the main areas we control ourselves as a group is sexually. The more society tries to enforce it’s behaviour, the more we’ll see sexual norms being homogenised. What is normal will become a narrower and narrower band. The first things to be demonised will be the things the dominant group has no interest in.

This dovetails nicely with the post I put up yesterday about the war against women, since sexual control has historically been exercised against women, which precedent makes it easier to cry wolf about the pernicious effects of allowing women sexual freedom.

However, the larger point, that all things that the dominant group has no interest in will be demonized, is also important, and I think this principle is nicely demonstrated in Amendment One, which NC is voting on. Unmarried couples are godless heathens living in sin, and thus they do not deserve the same social rights as married people.

It’s interesting that there seems to be a trend of authoritarianism pushing against the modernity of organic solidarity–solidarity based on interests and beliefs rather than geographic distance. The chaotic heterogeneity of urban cities as they are currently organized seems to be triggering a backlash and a frenzied desire to police behaviour even more. I hope that we’re seeing the dying throes of the age of unbridled bigotry, rather than a return to Victorian principles.

(Not that I think bigotry will be erased; humans are exceptionally good at finding fault with one another. But every little step counts.)

Two: The proponents of Amendment One are mainly tossing out fairly simplistic retorts about “why don’t you just get married”. Why don’t I just get married? Isn’t that question a fascinating display of the social background of the asker?

I can think of a lot of reasons not to get married. I don’t want my finances to be tied to another person. I don’t want to be legally responsible for another person and their dependents. I don’t want to make an emotional commitment I may not be ready for solely for the sake of legislative protection. Marriage means something to me, and I want to enter into it with consideration, not as a rush decision forced by politicians.

(Also, the average wedding in America costs upward of $27,000.)

But for the person who asks, flippantly, why I don’t just get married to my long-term partner in order to access the same rights that a married person would receive, obviously doesn’t think in those terms. For that person, a marriage is par for the course with anyone you’ve been dating long enough to have logistical entanglements such as cohabitation. A marriage is a means to an end (reproduction) wherein the free will of either party is a secondary concern. It’s a very outdated notion of marriage, one that can’t conceive of not rushing to get married when you have the option to. The question, as they so often do, says far more about the asker than the answerer.

I’ve still yet to hear a good argument for why a battered woman should marry their abuser in order to receive domestic violence protection, by the way.

Three: In my research on this subject, I’ve been unfortunate enough to come across some comment sections on internet newspaper articles, which is always The Worst. And one theme that I’ve noticed among ideological supporters of Amendment One is that it’s about codifying what God wanted marriage to be.

I’ve always found that to be a hilarious argument, since I’m Chinese, and there are billions of us who’ve never considered what a Christian God might want us to do. I guess all those marriages that took place BCE didn’t count as proper marriages, and all those marriages that took place in non-Christian countries don’t count as marriages. If the religious right in the US is so concerned about having marriages adhere strictly to the doctrines of the bible, why are atheists allowed to get married? Why are followers of the Islam faith? Why are Christians of different denominations allowed to get married to each other?

Well, because marriage has always been a legal instrument of social order–property rights, parentage, exchange of dowry, etc.–not a religious one. Christianity has that particularly narcissistic brand of amnesia in which it assumes that everything that does not pertain directly to it, or that came before its existence, is invalid. But I have too much investment in my heritage to buy into its erasure of non-Christian culture.

My marriage, if and when it happens, will be decided by me. Not by a book cobbled together from apocryphal fables 1700 years ago by a bunch of politically motivated monks.

Four: If you’re in North Carolina, go vote. Even if you disagree with me, go vote and exercise your democratic rights.

It started because I was reading about the current movement in Texas to defund Planned Parenthood. It’s not enough that abortion-providers in the state already aren’t allowed to receive taxpayer-generated funds…but even funds that are specifically earmarked for non-abortion activities “free up other resources for Planned Parenthood to spend on its mission to promote elective abortions“. (Also, Planned Parenthood is apparently a terrorist organization.)

So the Planned Parenthood clinics in Texas that do not perform abortions at all sued the state to receive its funding back. When a federal court ruled that preventing Planned Parenthood from participating in the 90%-federally-funded Women’s Health Program would be unconstitutional, the solicitor general in Texas vowed that he would shut down the entire Women’s Health Program altogether. You know, to punish the 130,000 poor women who receive basic medical services through the $40 million dollar health program.

Arizona, never far behind in its drive to return to the 1850s, also banned Planned Parenthood from receiving public funds. Never mind the cervical cancer screenings, the breast exams, the STD testing, the birth control…no, uninsured women can go fuck themselves. Only three PP locations in Arizona are even still allowed to offer abortions…but that’s okay, the rest of them should burn on principle. Because apparently Planned Parenthood’s mission is to build Abortionplexes and get kids hooked on sex.

Meanwhile, in Kansas, doctors are allowed to withhold information about a woman’s pregnancy if they believe it could potentially lead to an abortion. So much for informed consent, right? Why should a woman be allowed to know information about her body?

Oh but wait, if she dies the doctor can then be sued for “wrongful death”…so that’s alright. We’re cool with the fact that the doctor acting in all violation all medical ethics is protected from malpractice suits in all events other than death, right? I guess that whole UN dealio about health being a fundamental human right just goes right out the window. Psyche: the US would never ratify something as silly as a right to healthcare.

Did I also mention that Tennessee wants to make public not only the names of doctors who perform abortions, but also detailed information about the women who receive them? I guess undergoing a medical procedure that the fringe extremists in your party disapprove of means that a right to medical privacy is no longer yours. That’s what you get for being a second-class citizen, kiddo. Never mind that pro-choice activists aren’t the ones showing up at clinics and shooting doctors.

And don’t give me any of your bullshit about being “pro-life”. If the health of the fetus is so important to you, where are the programs for prenatal health? If you value life so much, why do you condemn those born to poor economic conditions as being lazy and worthless? Where are the programs to encourage adoption? If mothers do some of the most difficult work there is, why are single moms derided as being immoral? Why are only married affluent mothers considered hard-working, whereas poor stay-at-home parents are lazy and indolent?

The only consistent message that I’ve seen from the Republicans vis-a-vis social policies is that women are secondary citizens. Why else would Santorum think he had a better understanding about women’s health than women themselves? Why else would the party as a whole contest the landmark Violence Against Women Act, put in place to ensure that even illegal immigrants facing domestic violence would receive some sort of protection? Rather than allowing victims to receive sanctuary from Citizenship and Immigration, the Republicans’ new version of the bill would allow immigration officers to inform the abuser that the victim is seeking asylum. Why? To prevent fraud.

And as for all the non-fraudulent cases of domestic violence in which the victim is already predisposed to remain in the abusive environment for fear of retaliatory violence? Well, I guess they’re on their own.

Tomorrow, North Carolina is voting on an amendment to codify that a marriage can only be between a man and a woman. Far from being just a bill against same-sex-marriage–which by the way is already considered invalid in this state even if the ceremony took place elsewhere–this could also disqualify civil unions, prevent children of unmarried couples from receiving health care, prevent battered women from receiving domestic violence protection if they’re not married to their abuser….where do I even go on?

If I pay attention to what’s going on around the US–ostensibly the most advanced country in the world–I get depressed. Depressed at how many people seem to believe that I shouldn’t have the right to control my body, that a consensual act in private between two adults could be enough to push me into the ranks of a second-class citizen, where the rights of a ball of cells growing inside of me and depending on my body for sustenance are more important than my rights, where a child conceived of rape can be a gift from god, where a woman who loses a pregnancy or has a stillborn child can be sent to prison for up to ten years because she did not do right by the fetus.

(How can women vote to take away the rights of women? How can men vote to take away the rights of their future daughters? How can people be so little-minded and judgmental?)

Yet if I don’t pay attention, that’s one less vigilant eye on the Republican’s assault on women’s health care, one less angry voice they have to worry about.

I often get frustrated when I’m discussing politics with some of my friends, because to so many of them it seems like it’s a game of semantics. Who can play devil’s advocate? Who can humanize the unthinkable? Who can come up with rhetorical proof that sexual assault is more likely to be provoked by a short skirt? (Who can come up with the least-convoluted argument why women’s clothing is an acceptable excuse for men behaving like under-evolved apes?)

On the flip side, I’m accused of dismissing their opinions because they don’t understand what it’s like to be a woman in this political climate. And on principle, I agree. No one’s opinion should be discounted on the sole basis of their gender.

But please, you need to listen to the women who tell you how scary it is to watch their rights get stripped away. You need to listen to the women in your life who are scared of going out after dark by themselves, because they fear sexual assault, and fear the victim-blaming and victim-shaming that follows sexual assault. You can’t understand how it feels like to be a woman in this political climate if you dismiss everything that women tell you about their experience.

Sometimes I’m told I’m too strident, too emotional. How can I not be? Your rights aren’t the ones at stake if people like Rick Santorum receive a bigger soap box. Mine are.

Let’s imagine a future in which women’s health care was a thing that people cared about, rather than racing to destroy.

Oh wait, that was 1969.

I don’t have a satisfying concluding thesis here, I guess, other than that I hope even one person who reads this post gets a little bit angrier, and a little bit more willing to take a stand.

Because god knows where we end up if we don’t.

Always ask for more money at your job, even if you don’t think you deserve it.

Surround yourself by only the books, images, music and people that make you happy.

Sometimes water is thicker than blood.

Don’t worry about living a life that looks good on paper.

Be thankful that things you wished for didn’t come true. Know that this will happen again.

Let yourself be happy when you’re happy.