The Straight White Male Experience: Part the First

If you identify as a straight, white male, you better pack your opinions back into that privileged pie-hole of yours, because nobody cares. You, as an entire group, speak from a perspective of overripe sexism that has reigned supreme since the dawn of time. So shut up. Nobody cares.

Nobody cares about your champagne problems. You probably went to private school–what would you know about the real world?

Nobody cares about your representation. Do you even have any meaningful moments in your history besides enslaving and destroying those less fortunate than you? No, Straight White Male, you don’t. You, as a villainous, upper crusted, elitist golfclub, don’t deserve representation.

And, most of all, nobody cares about your sunny skin, your button noses, your attempts at a painfully generic Captain America physique born from hours of “curls for the girls” and #LegDay and on and on and on thus practiced in your hallowed weight rooms. There is nothing special about a Straight White Male.

On Saturday, I spent time with a good friend of mine who happens to be straight, white and male. He is also educated, wealthy, handsome and well-proportioned. By any standard, he would be considered undeniably privileged.

However, as we walked by a huge two-story ad in the Macy’s window featuring two black women, one Asian man and one ambiguously gendered Latino(a), my SWM friend said this: “They have forgotten me.”

I asked for further explanation.

“Straight white men,” he said, “We are the Honda Civic of people. You pick the Civic because it’s are reliable. Not because it’s fun to drive.”

In that moment, my eyes were open to the oppression that he, a straight white male, feels every day. He and his brothers have been reduced to reliable, basic machines. This is not just gender-shaming. It’s ethno-shaming and class-shaming and body-shaming and it is an utter shame that, in the idealistic pursuit for equality, the straight white men in our midst feel forgotten, unwanted, unheard.

Thus I have decided to delve into the SWM world. To understand exactly how society has denounced an entire group of people. To walk a mile in their Cole Haans and Nike Frees.  To, as we journalists say, shed light on those who have no voice or, in this case, who will be slaughtered on Twitter if they use their voices.

This is the Straight White Male Experience, part 1.