It's a point of view

CNV00001, a photo by Lillput on Flickr.

My friend, Dru, posted a link on Twitter to a blog article, yesterday.
Dr Ben Goldacre also referred to it today.

I really like to read other people's perspective on gender, what it means and what effects it has on people.

I commented to Dru that I like the premise...(or, on reflection, the metaphor) of the article but I don't agree with the conclusion.


We agreed that Twitter doesn't really lend itself to long discourse on a subject and my schedule's a bit too hectic at the moment to suggestion a discussion over a coffee...that's sad.

So, with another 24hrs to muse on the subject I thought a blog entry of my own might be in order.

Do read the article, it's pretty well written and I did find it thought-provoking, but if you don't have the time right now, the premise is that in the game of life, being a straight, white man is like playing on the simplest setting.

As a straight, white woman, I'm reasonably confident that would be classed as the next easiest setting but even so, I'm not totally convinced that my male counterpart really has a free ride.

I have many, many male friends.  Some straight, most white, all different.  I worked in a male-dominated, white dominated part of a largely male-managed industry. I mention this to illustrate that my life has been pretty male-rich all my life.

Don't get me wrong, it drove me insane when said male colleagues assumed that I knew nothing about computers because I'm a girl.  I still get pretty prickly if I think I being patronised by anyone, but infinitely more so if it's a bloke (no matter what his colour or sexual orientation).  All that said, I'm not so sure that white straight guys really get all the breaks.

I'm assuming that the blog author is talking about things "on average" - and that's fair enough, it's not good enough to point to exceptions and then decry an entire theory.  But here's the thing...

...I think that "on average" there may be a generalised assumption that straight white men have an easier time of things and so the bar is set a little higher - or maybe set differently for them.

Men are supposed to be strong, practical, brave, high-aspiring, high-achieving and the one who is the bigger earner in a family or couple.  No, no, I don't hold this view either - in fact I'm usually repelled by men who fit the traditional "alpha-male" model, but I'm talking about the generalised, or average view.

When the whim takes us girls, we also expect the man of our dreams to be romantic, affectionate, thoughtful and accept the fact that sometimes we earn a little more than them.

We already know that men who suffer from depression and similar conditions are less likely to seek medical help to deal with the condition because it betrays a sense of weakness. They feel they should be able to deal with stuff alone purely because they're men, because on average, that's what society expects of them.  They don't have anything to fall back on, or any excuse for any aspect of their lives.

I think what I'm saying is that as a white, straight woman I don't really have much of a frame of reference outside my gender, colour and sexual orientation - nor can I have since none of these things are readily alterable. As a result it's not really fair for me to say that someone else has an easier life than me - even on a "on average" basis.

I've got a metaphor I prefer.  The first instrument I played was a guitar.
Guitarists have to look at music, decide how you create a given note on one of six strings (and there's a big overlap of range on each string) and play up to six notes at a time.

I always said that playing the 'cello was far easier since there are only four strings and you don't play more than one note anything like as often as on a guitar.

Then I played the 'cello and learned that the trickiness in the 'cello is that you have to learn a new musical clef and, more importantly, there are no frets on a cello to tell you where each note appears.  Of course, playing a piano must be far easier since all the notes are there in front of you and ready to be pressed.

Of course, when I started to play piano, I realised the real tricky thing is that you now have two lines of music to follow at a time and each line can have more than one note to play at a time.

So maybe being a white straight man is a bit like playing the recorder - it looks really easy if you're not a recorder player.  You just blow and get a note, right?
Maybe so, but to play the thing to a degree good enough to stop people setting fire to your hands as you play you have to have subtlty of breath control, incredible dexterity and the patience of Job to practice for about 10,000 hours in order to get good at it.