Straight White Males as default: How it's wrong.

[Forster Keys]

Oh well, the lions in the Lion King had eyebrows. And could also talk.

And sing Tim Rice lyrics...




...I really like Tim Rice lyrics. It's my only 'musical theater' thing.

And they do have a strange familiarity with the plot of Hamlet...

[Aina Lani]

And sing Tim Rice lyrics...




...I really like Tim Rice lyrics. It's my only 'musical theater' thing.

And they do have a strange familiarity with the plot of Hamlet...

The lions themselves didn't have a familiarity with the plot of Hamlet, or they would have pointed out at some point that "Hey, this is a lot like Hamlet".

[Forster Keys]

Would even non-straight white males think that though?

I'm a non-straight Asian female and even I fall into the same trap of going SWMs as the default. So yes. It happens.

Hmmm... I see what you mean, and it's actually a little disturbing if understandable that this sort of thing happens, but as Forsher says, that's probably this society. If the story was translated and read elsewhere it would be different.

[Forster Keys]

And they do have a strange familiarity with the plot of Hamlet...

The lions themselves didn't have a familiarity with the plot of Hamlet, or they would have pointed out at some point that "Hey, this is a lot like Hamlet".

It was either unconscious, or they didn't want to ruin the story.

[Individuality-ness]

I'm a non-straight Asian female and even I fall into the same trap of going SWMs as the default. So yes. It happens.

Hmmm... I see what you mean, and it's actually a little disturbing if understandable that this sort of thing happens, but as Forsher says, that's probably this society. If the story was translated and read elsewhere it would be different.

Maybe. And then again, given the fact that SWMs sell quite well overseas...

[Forster Keys]

Hmmm... I see what you mean, and it's actually a little disturbing if understandable that this sort of thing happens, but as Forsher says, that's probably this society. If the story was translated and read elsewhere it would be different.

Maybe. And then again, given the fact that SWMs sell quite well overseas...

It's like a disease. :/

[Individuality-ness]

Maybe. And then again, given the fact that SWMs sell quite well overseas...

It's like a disease. :/

Which is why we're here today discussing and saying "hey, you know what, this sucks". *nod*

[Forsher]

But what is the social context of your upbringing?

Living in the US, reading books like Harry Potter that had white people protagonists, watching TV where it's mostly a white cast and with one token minority thrown in, picture books mostly depicting white people if they're not animals, etc. That's the context.

This demonstrates a bit of a problem with one of the things I wanted to say earlier (i.e. when this morning was last night).

Most people on NSG are white males (NSG has a healthy non-straight population as well as female and non-white populations so I would be extremely hesitant to say most of NSG is SWMs) so when we want to explore the possibility that the default are just people somewhat like us it's problematic as the place to go from that is finding people like you who do not fit into the white male category. However, as you've just demonstrated most people like this are growing up in the same world with the SWM default so that's going to come across.

I mean, it's not like we can point at Maui and say, see, the default is Maori, because, when the variety of Maui stories popped up, well, Maori didn't have any contact whatsoever with non-Maori. Maori is just "people of the land" in Te Reo (or something very similar).

Then there's the other point. A fantasy set in a pseudo-China works quite differently to a fantasy set in a pseudo-Britain.

Don't believe me, look at Avatar (the real Avatar not that blue people piece of crap).

[Forsher]

It's like a disease. :/

Which is why we're here today discussing and saying "hey, you know what, this sucks". *nod*

It's partially the legacy of colonialism.

Look at it this way, NZ has a great many more British and America influences than Maori.

[Conserative Morality]

Hmmm... I see what you mean, and it's actually a little disturbing if understandable that this sort of thing happens, but as Forsher says, that's probably this society. If the story was translated and read elsewhere it would be different.

Maybe. And then again, given the fact that SWMs sell quite well overseas...

In many cultures, paler skin is (Or was) associated with the aristocracy (Japan, Europe, India, some south Asian countries), which leads into a bunch of bullshit regarding class and attractiveness.

Men are often also associated with military castes (In a general sense, not in the sense of Hindu castes), which has connotations of strength, agency, and attractiveness due to the positions of such castes in many societies, all commonly considered desirable traits.

The three Abrahamic religions are all about condemnation of homosexuality, so that means we've got about 3.8 billion people spread across the world who have a good chance of being not-too-hot on the idea of LGBT individuals, plus China because of some Marxist bullshit or somesuch.

So sadly, this isn't something that can be combated on anything less than a global level.

[Individuality-ness]

Living in the US, reading books like Harry Potter that had white people protagonists, watching TV where it's mostly a white cast and with one token minority thrown in, picture books mostly depicting white people if they're not animals, etc. That's the context.

This demonstrates a bit of a problem with one of the things I wanted to say earlier (i.e. when this morning was last night).

Most people on NSG are white males (NSG has a healthy non-straight population as well as female and non-white populations so I would be extremely hesitant to say most of NSG is SWMs) so when we want to explore the possibility that the default are just people somewhat like us it's problematic as the place to go from that is finding people like you who do not fit into the white male category. However, as you've just demonstrated most people like this are growing up in the same world with the SWM default so that's going to come across.

I mean, it's not like we can point at Maui and say, see, the default is Maori, because, when the variety of Maui stories popped up, well, Maori didn't have any contact whatsoever with non-Maori. Maori is just "people of the land" in Te Reo (or something very similar).

Then there's the other point. A fantasy set in a pseudo-China works quite differently to a fantasy set in a pseudo-Britain.

Don't believe me, look at Avatar (the real Avatar not that blue people piece of crap).

I'm aware of the fact that I grew up in the world where it's the SWM default. Despite the fact that theoretically only 21.8% of people in the US happen to be straight white males (calculated here if you're curious), most of the media that we consume is 90-99% white, with maybe one or two token minorities thrown into the mix because "hurr durr diversity". And we're accustomed to thinking default = SWM. This idea pervades the media (TV shows, movies, etc), it pervades the perception of people on the Internet (no girls on the Internet, for example, the GIRL acronym, etc), it pervades literature of all types, it pervades music, it pervades society as a whole.

I presume that if we were taught differently we'd think things differently, but as of right now, we've grown up in a world where our heroes, our archetypes, our tropes, are shaped by the SWM, with everyone else as a deviation of that.

[Aina Lani]

The three Abrahamic religions are all about condemnation of homosexuality

While I understand that you are not actually saying that condemning homosexuality is the primary purpose of the Abrahamic religions, I still think that you should probably word this sentence a bit differently.

[NERVUN]

I'd actually state that ANYTHING added to a story requires justification, including making them straight, even if said justification is "I need a straight guy here because I want the dragon to eat his girlfriend to set up for a bad joke".

But if EVERYTHING needs justification, then we need a default to fall back to when we can't justify any particular race or gender or sexuality, and SWM seems as good a default as any.

No we don't. Falling back on default means you're not doing too well in telling an original story. "I need a stock character for an innkeeper" is fine if the innkeeper isn't doing more than charging the cast some money for a room, but it doesn't automatically have to be a SWM. The more the innkeeper becomes important, the greater the justifications needed.

[Individuality-ness]

Which is why we're here today discussing and saying "hey, you know what, this sucks". *nod*

It's partially the legacy of colonialism.

Look at it this way, NZ has a great many more British and America influences than Maori.

Hell, the US has more European influences compared to Native American.

Maybe. And then again, given the fact that SWMs sell quite well overseas...

In many cultures, paler skin is (Or was) associated with the aristocracy (Japan, Europe, India, some south Asian countries), which leads into a bunch of bullshit regarding class and attractiveness.

Men are often also associated with military castes (In a general sense, not in the sense of Hindu castes), which has connotations of strength, agency, and attractiveness due to the positions of such castes in many societies, all commonly considered desirable traits.

The three Abrahamic religions are all about condemnation of homosexuality, so that means we've got about 3.8 billion people spread across the world who have a good chance of being not-too-hot on the idea of LGBT individuals, plus China because of some Marxist bullshit or somesuch.

So sadly, this isn't something that can be combated on anything less than a global level.

China's obsessed with light skin too, whitening creams are really popular over there.

Masculinity, being macho, that's a huge thing in most societies. I don't think I need to point out the patriarchy in that one.

I would say that the Abrahamic religions weren't ALL about condemning homosexuality, but about enforcing a patriarchal society as a whole. Condemnation of homosexuality (between men) was a part of it, but it also enforced men's superiority over women (the one example that I can think of off the top of my head is 1 Corinthians, which has a few passages saying that women are made in the image of men, ergo woman is inferior to man and inferior to God).

So yes, this needs to be addressed on global scale.

[Meryuma]

I prefer Pratchett too (and about half a dozen others), but that by itself does not make Tolkien a bad writer.

Tolkien was a bad writer because he was a bad writer - he was clunky, overwrought, and far too long-winded.

He's an inspiring figure for philology and the study of mythology regardless of what you think of his writing style.

Would even non-straight white males think that though?

I'm a non-straight Asian female and even I fall into the same trap of going SWMs as the default. So yes. It happens.

I'm writing a short story and I admit to having sorta presumed all the characters to be white. They're all male (at least the ones introduced so far) but that's an intentional thing (it's a dystopian medical compound and the sleeping quarters aren't coed). It's explicitly pointed out that not everyone is straight, though. I guess as a gay white male I reflect my own biases just as much as the heteros.

Living in the US, reading books like Harry Potter that had white people protagonists, watching TV where it's mostly a white cast and with one token minority thrown in, picture books mostly depicting white people if they're not animals, etc. That's the context.

This demonstrates a bit of a problem with one of the things I wanted to say earlier (i.e. when this morning was last night).

Most people on NSG are white males (NSG has a healthy non-straight population as well as female and non-white populations so I would be extremely hesitant to say most of NSG is SWMs) so when we want to explore the possibility that the default are just people somewhat like us it's problematic as the place to go from that is finding people like you who do not fit into the white male category. However, as you've just demonstrated most people like this are growing up in the same world with the SWM default so that's going to come across.

I mean, it's not like we can point at Maui and say, see, the default is Maori, because, when the variety of Maui stories popped up, well, Maori didn't have any contact whatsoever with non-Maori. Maori is just "people of the land" in Te Reo (or something very similar).

Then there's the other point. A fantasy set in a pseudo-China works quite differently to a fantasy set in a pseudo-Britain.

Don't believe me, look at Avatar (the real Avatar not that blue people piece of crap).

The blue people Avatar is basically just Atlantis: The Lost Empire except live action and way less cool. (They're both cool linguistically though).

[Conserative Morality]

China's obsessed with light skin too, whitening creams are really popular over there.

Masculinity, being macho, that's a huge thing in most societies. I don't think I need to point out the patriarchy in that one.

I would say that the Abrahamic religions weren't ALL about condemning homosexuality, but about enforcing a patriarchal society as a whole. Condemnation of homosexuality (between men) was a part of it, but it also enforced men's superiority over women (the one example that I can think of off the top of my head is 1 Corinthians, which has a few passages saying that women are made in the image of men, ergo woman is inferior to man and inferior to God).

So yes, this needs to be addressed on global scale.

"All about" in the sense of "John Smith is all about his job these days. He never stops talking about what he does at work.". Not as in "That is literally their entire composition".

[Individuality-ness]

I'm a non-straight Asian female and even I fall into the same trap of going SWMs as the default. So yes. It happens.

I'm writing a short story and I admit to having sorta presumed all the characters to be white. They're all male (at least the ones introduced so far) but that's an intentional thing (it's a dystopian medical compound and the sleeping quarters aren't coed). It's explicitly pointed out that not everyone is straight, though. I guess as a gay white male I reflect my own biases just as much as the heteros.

Since I do non-NS related RP on this site, I was thinking of all of the RP characters that I've made up as of so far.

Alison Carter - mixed race (mom was Japanese and dad was white), sexuality indeterminate.
Ilsa Martin - straight white female, initially created for a pesudo-medieval Europe fantasy RP. No excuses for that one.
Divia Esha Patil - Indian female, sexuality indeterminate.
Holly Serow Koboi - ginger, so she's white, female, and lesbian.
Amala Bahenchod Pati - Indian female, sexuality indeterminate.

I usually don't make a huge deal on the races/sexuality/gender thing, but you can see that all of them are female, and if they're not Asian characters, they go to the default white. The variety in sexual orientations is due to my own indeterminate sexual orientation, which is why you see a wide range from indeterminate to lesbian to straight. But it confirms to my biases as well.

Also, to note, some of the character's backstories (Alison's father, Ilsa's lost lover) do involve males. They all happen to be white.

This is just something to think about, for me to ponder on as a writer.

[Individuality-ness]

China's obsessed with light skin too, whitening creams are really popular over there.

Masculinity, being macho, that's a huge thing in most societies. I don't think I need to point out the patriarchy in that one.

I would say that the Abrahamic religions weren't ALL about condemning homosexuality, but about enforcing a patriarchal society as a whole. Condemnation of homosexuality (between men) was a part of it, but it also enforced men's superiority over women (the one example that I can think of off the top of my head is 1 Corinthians, which has a few passages saying that women are made in the image of men, ergo woman is inferior to man and inferior to God).

So yes, this needs to be addressed on global scale.

"All about" in the sense of "John Smith is all about his job these days. He never stops talking about what he does at work.". Not as in "That is literally their entire composition".

Ahhh, okay. Lots of misunderstandings then.

[Aina Lani]

But if EVERYTHING needs justification, then we need a default to fall back to when we can't justify any particular race or gender or sexuality, and SWM seems as good a default as any.

No we don't. Falling back on default means you're not doing too well in telling an original story. "I need a stock character for an innkeeper" is fine if the innkeeper isn't doing more than charging the cast some money for a room, but it doesn't automatically have to be a SWM. The more the innkeeper becomes important, the greater the justifications needed.

When you get write down to it, until recently, in western society (which is where the kinds of books I'm thinking of take place), women were unlikely to get a chance do much of actual importance, as were non whites (who were also pretty rare or universally 'the enemy' or slaves, depending on how far back you go), and homosexuals were discriminated against and thus tended to stay "in the closet." Therefore, any given 'adventurer-ish' type character was most likely to be a straight, white male, and any deviation from this (at least in this sort of setting) requires some explanation, or at least some recognition that this is unusual from the other characters, which violates the 'law' of conservation of detail if it's not done for a reason relevant to the plot.

[Orcoa]

I prefer Pratchett too (and about half a dozen others), but that by itself does not make Tolkien a bad writer.

Tolkien was a bad writer because he was a bad writer - he was clunky, overwrought, and far too long-winded.

...............

You.....my god....I....REALLY? FUCKING REALLY?!

I....I think I need a drink...

[Forsher]

This demonstrates a bit of a problem with one of the things I wanted to say earlier (i.e. when this morning was last night).

Most people on NSG are white males (NSG has a healthy non-straight population as well as female and non-white populations so I would be extremely hesitant to say most of NSG is SWMs) so when we want to explore the possibility that the default are just people somewhat like us it's problematic as the place to go from that is finding people like you who do not fit into the white male category. However, as you've just demonstrated most people like this are growing up in the same world with the SWM default so that's going to come across.

I mean, it's not like we can point at Maui and say, see, the default is Maori, because, when the variety of Maui stories popped up, well, Maori didn't have any contact whatsoever with non-Maori. Maori is just "people of the land" in Te Reo (or something very similar).

Then there's the other point. A fantasy set in a pseudo-China works quite differently to a fantasy set in a pseudo-Britain.

Don't believe me, look at Avatar (the real Avatar not that blue people piece of crap).

I'm aware of the fact that I grew up in the world where it's the SWM default. Despite the fact that theoretically only 21.8% of people in the US happen to be straight white males (calculated here if you're curious), most of the media that we consume is 90-99% white, with maybe one or two token minorities thrown into the mix because "hurr durr diversity". And we're accustomed to thinking default = SWM. This idea pervades the media (TV shows, movies, etc), it pervades the perception of people on the Internet (no girls on the Internet, for example, the GIRL acronym, etc), it pervades literature of all types, it pervades music, it pervades society as a whole.

I presume that if we were taught differently we'd think things differently, but as of right now, we've grown up in a world where our heroes, our archetypes, our tropes, are shaped by the SWM, with everyone else as a deviation of that.

SWM is definitely an unrealistic assumption but it's passable among extra characters in some settings because of the major influences. The attack here is "You accept dragons but not blacks" but, strictly speaking, that's not actually a very good rebuttal. Ethnic diversity began to increase with trade and general improvement in transport. This is one reason why black people are more common in southern Europe historically than northern Europe... it was closer and the area is where the colonial ball began to roll. Also, the Moors did live in the area for centuries. So, if you are basically putting magic and dragons into real world Britain around 1300, you're going to have mostly white people in your story. You're by no means going to have none who aren't but, at the time, there was no thriving black community anywhere in Britain. If you have magic accelerate the transport timescale, then yeah, it works... and the reason why is the same reason why having a majority Black British cast is possible if instead of 14th Century Britain being your base model you use a 21st Century London model for your world.

Now, in today's media the image doesn't work. It's not reflective of society in any way at all. It still happens because it always has and because it is what audiences are accustomed to. It's naive to think that it can change overnight because it is an underlying influence. All it would take is a programme like CSI, which was/is incredibly influential, with a more realistic mix and there would soon be copy cats and from there there is a starting point to alter the mentality where SWM majority doesn't look weird.

That said, sometimes it doesn't work to have very many white characters anyway because of what the story is about... e.g. Bro Town, No. 2, Harry (to a large extent)...

[Aina Lani]

"All about" in the sense of "John Smith is all about his job these days. He never stops talking about what he does at work.". Not as in "That is literally their entire composition".

Ahhh, okay. Lots of misunderstandings then.

Even then, when you say "John Smith is all about his job these days", you're saying John smith is very involved with/interested in his job, or is paying his job an unusual amount of attention. Many, many religious scholars would disagree that homosexuality is much of an issue in Christianity (and probably other Abrahamic religions, although I know less about them), especially since (as many liberals like to point out to conservative christians) Jesus never mentioned homosexuality.

[Individuality-ness]

I'm aware of the fact that I grew up in the world where it's the SWM default. Despite the fact that theoretically only 21.8% of people in the US happen to be straight white males (calculated here if you're curious), most of the media that we consume is 90-99% white, with maybe one or two token minorities thrown into the mix because "hurr durr diversity". And we're accustomed to thinking default = SWM. This idea pervades the media (TV shows, movies, etc), it pervades the perception of people on the Internet (no girls on the Internet, for example, the GIRL acronym, etc), it pervades literature of all types, it pervades music, it pervades society as a whole.

I presume that if we were taught differently we'd think things differently, but as of right now, we've grown up in a world where our heroes, our archetypes, our tropes, are shaped by the SWM, with everyone else as a deviation of that.

SWM is definitely an unrealistic assumption but it's passable among extra characters in some settings because of the major influences. The attack here is "You accept dragons but not blacks" but, strictly speaking, that's not actually a very good rebuttal. Ethnic diversity began to increase with trade and general improvement in transport. This is one reason why black people are more common in southern Europe historically than northern Europe... it was closer and the area is where the colonial ball began to roll. Also, the Moors did live in the area for centuries. So, if you are basically putting magic and dragons into real world Britain around 1300, you're going to have mostly white people in your story. You're by no means going to have none who aren't but, at the time, there was no thriving black community anywhere in Britain. If you have magic accelerate the transport timescale, then yeah, it works... and the reason why is the same reason why having a majority Black British cast is possible if instead of 14th Century Britain being your base model you use a 21st Century London model for your world.

Now, in today's media the image doesn't work. It's not reflective of society in any way at all. It still happens because it always has and because it is what audiences are accustomed to. It's naive to think that it can change overnight because it is an underlying influence. All it would take is a programme like CSI, which was/is incredibly influential, with a more realistic mix and there would soon be copy cats and from there there is a starting point to alter the mentality where SWM majority doesn't look weird.

That said, sometimes it doesn't work to have very many white characters anyway because of what the story is about... e.g. Bro Town, No. 2, Harry (to a large extent)...

And I think that in the overall scheme, we can totally do better. I understand "historical accuracy", and I know that in the past there really wasn't a whole lot of diversity. Nowadays, we do have this huge diversity, and yet our media hasn't caught up to reality. In fact, I think part of the reason why Modern Family is so successful is that it tried to depict what modern families in the US looked like -- and so we have the traditional family, the male gay couple with adopted Vietnamese daughter, and the older male who married a pretty Hispanic trophy wife with a mixed-race child from the wife's previous marriage. And even then it's not perfect.

Then again, I'm rambling a bit now, so yeah...

[Conserative Morality]

When you get write down to it, until recently, in western society (which is where the kinds of books I'm thinking of take place), women were unlikely to get a chance do much of actual importance,

Entirely untrue. Outside of a military context, women could and often did wield a great deal of power.

It's only a brief window of democracy in which women held almost no legal political power, and even then, they found ways to make their voices heard.

as were non whites (who were also pretty rare or universally 'the enemy' or slaves, depending on how far back you go),

Late 17th century-early 19th century, maybe.

Must I remind you of Othello? Non-whites were usually considered unusual and exotic, but scientific racism denoting all non-whites as the enemy or slaves wasn't present for most of Western history. The myth of Prester John and the cordial relations between the Japanese and European powers during the Sengoku Jidai shows this pretty handily.

A relevant Rennasaince-era painting, early 16th century, I think.

and homosexuals were discriminated against and thus tended to stay "in the closet."

Despite this, we have significant evidence for the homosexuality of many history western figures, complete with various reactions by their peers and varying degrees of openness.

Therefore, any given 'adventurer-ish' type character was most likely to be a straight, white male, and any deviation from this (at least in this sort of setting) requires some explanation, or at least some recognition that this is unusual from the other characters, which violates the 'law' of conservation of detail if it's not done for a reason relevant to the plot.

Any 'adventurer-ish' type character was more likely to be an outcast of some sort, considering the danger, time, and lack of security in terms of finance associated with travel in a pre-modern era.

So no excuses.

[Conserative Morality]

Even then, when you say "John Smith is all about his job these days", you're saying John smith is very involved with/interested in his job, or is paying his job an unusual amount of attention. Many, many religious scholars would disagree that homosexuality is much of an issue in Christianity (and probably other Abrahamic religions, although I know less about them), especially since (as many liberals like to point out to conservative christians) Jesus never mentioned homosexuality.

I suppose many, many religious scholars don't pay much attention to the theological positions of some of the largest sects of Christianity in the modern world.