General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: "Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is" [View all]mythology
(9,527 posts)It's easy to say something as silly as like going through life on the easy setting and think it's witty. But you realize it's simplistic thinking when you learn to look a layer deeper to acknowledge that every person has their own life to live. Every one has their own battles. Whether it's being gay, being Jewish, being female, transgender, gay, bisexual, having a mental or physical illness, was just raped etc.
Do we really want to divide the world up into well my group suffered more, but ignore starving kids in Africa, ignore the Muslim Rohingya, or that somewhere in that group there's somebody who's transgender, has a mental illness, lost a foot in war and their dog just died. And yes, in theory their life sucks. But even in the worst situations, some people can find happiness. In the words of Moreese Bickham on spending 37.5 years in prison (14 in solitary confinement) for defending himself against racist cops I dont have one minutes regret. It was a glorious experience. If that guy can find the good, we can all look a little harder.
Yes it's important to understand how a larger group identity is incorporated within society, but that doesn't fit every member of that group the same way. Introverts tend to feel emotional pain more deeply for example. But if you said extroverts go through life in the U.S. (and yes much of our society is set up to the benefit of extroverts) on the easy setting, you probably wouldn't be taken seriously. Likewise, being pretty is a hell of a leg up in life for either gender. They get paid more and are less likely to go to prison. Notoriously there has been a favoritism shown to lighter skinned minorities.
If life is so easy being a white guy, why do white men lead in number of suicides? It's easy to say that too many black men get killed in interactions with police, because it's true. Using numbers from the link below about 287 black men were killed by police in 2017. Every year, there are about 44,965 suicides, of which 70% are white men, or about 31,475. But we don't talk about that. Because it involves thinking another level deeper. It involves realizing that people are individuals and have their own struggles that maybe you can't see just by looking at their skin color. Another poster in this thread talked about not worrying about being pulled over by the cops. Do they worry about their own statistical likelihood of suicide I wonder? It's a lot more likely than being the victim of any other gun violence.
https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/
https://afsp.org/about-suicide/suicide-statistics/
Like I said, it's simplistic thinking. It has the veneer of deeper thought and so it appeals, but it really doesn't stand up if you start looking at it critically.