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No, John Scalzi and Wil Wheaton, “Straight White Male” is not the Lowest Difficulty Setting
In Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is, John Scalzi compared the real world to a computer game and concluded “straight white male” is the lowest difficulty setting. His analogy is loved by class-blind identitarians. The rest of us know computer games aren’t the real world.
Scalzi’s post inspired one commenter, Michael Kirkland, to say, “I’m thankful for all the advantages I have over Herman Cain’s daughter. I really dodged a bullet there.”
If you include class, the lowest difficulty setting in any game set in America today is being born rich. The second is being born middle-class. Though this chart is from 2015, it’s useful for showing that, with few exceptions, your parents’ income determines your future:
Expected total earnings by gender based on parents’ income
The reason women have an advantage:
Although women are still paid less on the dollar than men, they’re likely to earn slightly more than their men from families with the same income bracket. “When women are raised in high-income families, they marry more frequently and marry more higher-earning spouses than men,” Currier…
