Today, in politically correct 21st-century Britain, you might think things would have changed but somehow the Great White Male has thrived and continues to colonise the high-status, high-earning, high-power roles (93 per cent of executive directors in the UK are white men; 77 per cent of parliament is male). The Great White Male\u2019s combination of good education, manners, charm, confidence and sexual attractiveness (or \u201cmoney\u201d, as I like to call it) means he has a strong grip on the keys to power. Of course, the main reason he has those qualities in the first place is what he is, not what he has achieved. John Scalzi, in his blog Whatever, thought that being a straight white male was like playing the computer game called Life with the difficulty setting on \u201cEasy\u201d. If you are a Default Man you look like power.
\n(…)
\nIn the course of making my documentary series about identity, Who Are You?<\/i>, for Channel 4, the identity I found hardest to talk about, the most elusive, was Default Man\u2019s. Somehow, his world-view, his take on society, now so overlaps with the dominant narrative that it is like a Death Star hiding behind the moon. We cannot unpick his thoughts and feelings from the \u201cproper, right-thinking\u201d attitudes of our society.
\n(…)
\nWhen we talk of identity, we often think of groups such as black Muslim lesbians in wheelchairs. This is because identity only seems to become an issue when it is challenged or under threat. Our classic Default Man is rarely under existential threat; consequently, his identity remains unexamined. It ambles along blithely, never having to stand up for its rights or to defend its homeland.
\n(…)
\nWhen I was at art college in the late Seventies\/early Eighties, one of the slogans the feminists used was: \u201cObjectivity is Male Subjectivity.\u201d This brilliantly encapsulates how male power nestles in our very language, exerting influence at the most fundamental level. Men, especially Default Men, have put forward their biased, highly emotional views as somehow \u201crational\u201d, more considered, more \u201ccalm down, dear\u201d. Women and \u201cexotic\u201d minorities are framed as \u201cpassionate\u201d or \u201cemotional\u201d as if they, the Default Men, had this unique ability to somehow look round the side of that most interior lens, the lens that is always distorted by our feelings. Default Man somehow had a dispassionate, empirical, objective vision of the world as a birthright, and everyone else was at the mercy of turbulent, uncontrolled feelings. That, of course, explained why the \u201cothers\u201d often held views that were at such odds with their supposedly cool, analytic vision of the world.
\n(…)
\nOne tactic that men use to disguise their subjectively restricted clothing choices is the justification of spurious function. As if they need a watch that splits lap times and works 300 feet underwater, or a Himalayan mountaineer\u2019s jacket for a walk in the park. The rufty-tufty army\/hunter camouflage pattern is now to boys as pink is to girls. Curiously, I think the real function of the sober business suit is not to look smart but as camouflage. A person in a grey suit is invisible, in the way burglars often wear hi-vis jackets to pass as unremarkable \u201cworkmen\u201d. The business suit is the uniform of those who do the looking, the appraising. It rebuffs comment by its sheer ubiquity. Many office workers loathe dress-down Fridays because they can no longer hide behind a suit. They might have to expose something of their messy selves through their \u201ccasual\u201d clothes.
\n(…)
\nThe outcry against positive discrimination is the wail of someone who is having their privilege taken away. For talented black, female and working-class people to take their just place in the limited seats of power, some of those Default Men are going to have to give up their seats.<\/p>\n
Perhaps Default Man needs to step down from some of his most celebrated roles. I\u2019d happily watch a gay black James Bond and an all-female Top Gear<\/i>, QI<\/i> or Have I Got News for You<\/i>.
\n(…)
\nEarlier this year, at the Being A Man festival at the Southbank Centre in London, I gave a talk on masculinity called: \u201cMen, Sit Down for your Rights!\u201d. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Das st\u00fctzt ganz wunderbar Antje Schrupps<\/a> zentrales Hinterfragen dieser Standards: Es geht nicht darum, Frauen in diesem M\u00e4nnersystem nach vorne zu bringen, sondern zu untersuchen, ob es Alternativen zu diesem System gibt, die automatisch Frauen enthalten.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Um drei Uhr morgens von Hubschrauberl\u00e4rm aufgewacht: Da w\u00fcrde doch nicht um diese Zeit einer auf dem Not-Not-Not-Landeplatz inmitten der Innenstadtkliniken landen m\u00fcssen? Ich stand auf und sah hinaus: Nein, keine Absperrungen und Feuerwehrwagen hatten eine Landung vorbereitet. Doch ich h\u00f6rte den Hubschrauber noch sehr lange sehr tief fliegen. \u00a7 Nochmal bei offenem Fenster crosstrainergestrampelt. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essen","category-fotos","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vorspeisenplatte.de\/speisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vorspeisenplatte.de\/speisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vorspeisenplatte.de\/speisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vorspeisenplatte.de\/speisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vorspeisenplatte.de\/speisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23172"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.vorspeisenplatte.de\/speisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102775,"href":"https:\/\/www.vorspeisenplatte.de\/speisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23172\/revisions\/102775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vorspeisenplatte.de\/speisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vorspeisenplatte.de\/speisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vorspeisenplatte.de\/speisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/a><\/p>\n