Great piece. Although the claim that empire only sent out white, straight men is a bit misleading. Hyam argued quite convincingly that, in some ways, empire provided a way in which young, homosexual men could express themselves sexually. http://bit.ly/2CI9Lg

Now, should all universities have straight, white male officers, or just those where SWMs are the minority? I say, they all should. As it stands, as a SWM, I’m the only gender/sexuality/race not catered for by a Union officer at my university. Is this fair? Or am I being picky and missing the bigger picture?

Something similar was proposed at St Anne’s College, Oxford last year – http://bit.ly/9R0IN

I think there is a serious issue about representation and minorities here, but unfortunately (especially in the guardian article on the matter) it got buried in yet another discussion of state vs privately educated students at Oxbridge. They’re not the same issue, surely?

If the data exist, I should be much interested to compare the family-income profiles of the straight white students attending SOAS with those of the majority who don’t come within that category.

“Government figures show only 15% of white working class boys in England got five good GCSEs including maths and English last year. . . Poorer pupils from Indian and Chinese backgrounds fared much better – with 36% and 52% making that grade respectively.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7220683.stm

“Though white children in general do better than most minorities at school, poor ones come bottom of the league (see chart). Even black Caribbean boys, the subject of any number of initiatives, do better at GCSEs”
http://www.economist.com/world/britain/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14700670

I seem to remember that my college appointed a men’s officer for the JCR. Unfortunately, no-one seemed to have the faintest idea what he was supposed to do. On the other hand, I never felt remotely represented by the University Student Union but hardly felt it as a terrible gulf in my university experience.

the appointment of officers to oversee this difficult process of recognition could well help the white, straight young men of today identify and position themselves in solidarity with women, queer people and other minorities.

Christ, must we? I’d always assumed that it was one of the benefits of being white, male and straight that one didn’t have to identify on a racial, sexual or sexuality basis.

Great article. Can’t believe it’s the same Penny Red.
Bravo!

So, the students’ union (as part of their Diversity Week) will ‘debate’ whether or not to appoint a Straight White Men’s Officer.

Now that is a discussion I would like to listen to – it is making me smirk just thinking about it.

Will it be chaired by Rick?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxA0a5G6ccg

I like the piece. Pedantically though:

No evidence has yet come to light of such students facing racist, sexist or heterophobic discrimination on campus. James, 25, who studied Arabic at SOAS, told me that “as a white male in an aggressively diverse environment, I never felt anything other than welcome, really.”

…I’m not sure you’d be willing to accept one anecdote from a black female student who had a great time and felt welcome at Oxford as proving the university’s assertion that “there isn’t any discrimination”.

SOAS students’ union women’s officer Elly Badcock

Heh.

As a white straight male I think this is a barmy idea. I do not need a bunch of self-appointed do-gooders to represent me. For all I know we have nothing else in common.

Bzuh? SOAS should do what my university did and install an Equalities Officer that deals with all issues affecting discrimination etc. Problem solved.

I’m not quite sure why you keep saying that straight white men are “privileged”? Aren’t any straight white men at SOAS from working class backgrounds at SOAS? If not, then the lauded reasons for introducing tuition fees (”gets more working class kids into university” etc) have failed.

@4 Tim J.

At the time I asked a member of the Middle Common Room at St Anne’s about this, and he told me that most people at the college were embarrassed about this, but unsurprisingly (as it wouldn’t be such a good story) that reaction was ignored by the Press.

Now, should all universities have straight, white male officers, or just those where SWMs are the minority? I say, they all should. As it stands, as a SWM, I’m the only gender/sexuality/race not catered for by a Union officer at my university. Is this fair? Or am I being picky and missing the bigger picture?

Really? So they have separate union officers for straight white females, gay white females, gay white males, gay black males, gay black females, straight black males, straight black females, gay arabic males, etc, etc, ad nauseum?

If you define your identity as the intersection of all your possible group identities, it’s no wonder you’re in the minority.

I’m the only straight, white, male, 35-45, AB1, long-haired, beardy, allotment-holding, mandola-playing, computer-programming craft brewer in the village.

#11

Wouldn’t the obvious solution to that be to have a Working Class Officer rather than expecting a Straight White Male officer to represent both upper-class straight white men AND working-class straight white men, whose interests are antagonistic?

Richard @ 11:

I’m not quite sure why you keep saying that straight white men are “privileged”

The notion is that they are privileged all other things being equal. So a working class SWM is privileged compared to a working class gay white male, or a working class straight white woman, etc. Personally I think this falls into a category of ‘true but useless’ statements, since all other things very rarely are equal; people are individuals and cannot be analysed purely through the prism of sexuality, gender or ethnicity.

I’d regard the appointment of a SWM officer as a backwards step, since it would seem to move us further away from the point where such officers are no longer necessary. I’ve always thought that the goal should not be to reduce straight white men to a minority (note: they’re already a numerical minority, of course, but I believe that in these contexts ‘minority’ relates more to status than to numbers, cf. women as a ‘minority’) but to promote equality, such that nobody is in a minority or, if they are, they’re in a minority of one, same as everyone else.

@15 Rob: (note: they’re already a numerical minority, of course, but I believe that in these contexts ‘minority’ relates more to status than to numbers, cf. women as a ‘minority’)

ITYM Accredited Victim Group

12 – I wasn’t at Stans! And ours was a ‘men’s officer’ tout court, rather than specifically being for white straight ones. If we had had a white straight men’s club, I would have scorned it as utterly as I did our SU rep, or for that matter our JCR as a whole.

I was never a fan of student identity politics anyway. If you like rugby/cricket/early medieval drama then go and join a society that lets you do them. I don’t need a club to be a white straight man (and if I do, there’s always the Carlton…).

Great article, could have been written by a Libdem ! Obviously not the same woman who thinks children are natural faschists.

Penny:

That white, straight males are finally recognising themselves as the minority group they have always been in reality is a positive development, and the appointment of officers to oversee this difficult process of recognition could well help the white, straight young men of today identify and position themselves in solidarity with women, queer people and other minorities.

Or they will just continue to be the ‘default group’ against whom everyone else defines themselves.

The gradual movement of today’s young, white, straight men towards a positive identity model deserves all the support it can garner. Last week, Courtney Martin reported in The American Prospect on a recent conference, led by men, on the fight to build a new ‘feminist masculinity’: “There are legions of progressive men … who are struggling to redefine masculinity and live that redefinition every day. They have the opportunity to shed their socialized skin and all the anxiety that comes with trying to be a ‘tough guy’ and make a happy life defined, not by their paycheck or their size, but by their humanity. Fighting against the world that we don’t want is a critical first step, but fighting for the world that we do want is where liberation truly begins.”

This is welcome, but gives the impression of the same ‘male feminist’ strategies of the 1980s (not that women were convinced by them then). It boils down to the problem of being members of a group who will have to somehow turn ‘don’t be a dickhead’ into a functional identity politics and alternative idea of masculinity. I’m sure such solidarity with women, LGBT communities, etc.would be welcome, but I’m not sure what causes such groups would be in solidarity with SWM over in return.

on subject of discrimination in academe, I recently attended an economics seminar in which a male academic presented what i thought was a thoughtful if technically demanding attempt to answer an important research question, and afterward a female colleague dismissed all that maths as just “cock waving”* and her friends agreed and laughed.

What would be the mirror situation, gender wise? Perhaps a woman academic presenting some non-mathematical, qualitative research, being dismissed as just “fanny farting” (?!) by male academics?

Of course, we wouldn’t want men hearing such a comment to agree and laugh, but that’s life; things aren’t symmetrical, and I didn’t get upset to hear women saying something sexist about a man’s work.

If a “fanny farting” attitude toward qualitative research by female academics was prevalent in a male-dominated department, that’d be cause for concern today, right? [perhaps it is, and it is].

Is the day far off when a female dominated department might start being dismissive in a sexist sort of way about men doing maths-heavy research? In many ways, I hope not – I’d prefer it without the dismissiveness, but I think it might come with the territory.

I know it’s deeply silly to suggest white men get discriminated against in any important way today; the cards are still very much stacked in our favour. But as far as I can see human beings in institutions tend to act stupidly and be prejudiced against “others”, so if we do get into a situation where certain institutions are dominated by what are today’s minorities, I sort of expect them to start being unfair to everyone else. I’ve really not noticed any tendency for women to be less mocking of men than vice versa, for instance, even though the power relationships today are clearly not nearly equal. So maybe this SOAS idea has its merits, without Laurie’s hope it’ll teach us the arts of listening, sharing and solidarity**.

this is off the cuff thinking, and if I give this topic a bit more thought, I may be deeply embarrassed by the above … this is why I prefer to comment anonymously

* dsquared can tell you about the infamous maths cock. What’s does saying male economists use maths as a cock display count as … “sexist but true”? what else goes in that category?

** because, right, men don’t know how to do those already, you sexist pig.

So, the students’ union (as part of their Diversity Week) will ‘debate’ whether or not to appoint a Straight White Men’s Officer.

An interesting debate.

When we are sending young men to the other side of the world to be blown to pieces in a war without purpose, it seems crucially important that that the psychological well being of the white boys at the SOAS is ensured by their having a student union officer appointed to look after their rights. Right?

What about an article on whether or not lesbians should wear short skirts, and, if they do, whether heterosexual men should be allowed to look at their legs?

I’m sure you’re up to that one, Laurie and Sunny will find a sexist photo to go with the article and someone will object to it and……

@Tim J, 4
“the appointment of officers to oversee this difficult process of recognition could well help the white, straight young men of today identify and position themselves in solidarity with women, queer people and other minorities.

Christ, must we? I’d always assumed that it was one of the benefits of being white, male and straight that one didn’t have to identify on a racial, sexual or sexuality basis.”

NB:
‘it is the dominant race that reserves for itself the luxury of dismissing racial identity while the oppressed race is made daily aware of their racial identity’ (bell hooks,1981 p.138)

SOAS has a a little trouble in this area in recent times.

Remember the fuss over ‘themed parties’ that students were having?

Amongst the colleges that make up the University of London, the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) is renowned for its multicultural atmosphere and laid-back, boho-chic, bong-hugging students. Yet when the SOAS rugby club put up posters for an ‘English’ party a couple of weeks ago, all hell broke loose.

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/3989/

I seriously feel like becoming a hardcore right-whinger every time I read a Laurie Penny article. Have you STILL note noticed that there are a lot of white males who are pretty fucking disadvantaged in every way that matters, & have nothing to do with the middle-class majority on campus? Most of them won’t make it as far as university, certainly not SOAS, ability or no ability.

If someone from a family like mine ends up there he doesn’t want to be hectored, he is actually feeling quite unsure of himself because of the class factors whose existence you seem not to notice.

I have explained that I am anti-racist & anti-sexist because I know I have more in common with a working-class black or Asian woman than with the sort of entitled boy who goes from places like, oh let’s say Lewes, to leading universities as if he were born to it, which he was. I deny that white, heterosexual males are all the same.

Same again when I’m less tired, eh? As I’m sure you’ll be repeating yourself soon enough.

PS- Sorry if that seems a bit Marcus. But it all just seems a bit pointless to be reading the same things over & over.

Being one, I can understand the desire on the part of straight white men to have some kind of identity to cling to, analogous to the women’s movement, the LGBT movement or membership of a particular ethnic minority. After all, belonging to social groupings with something in common is part of the human experience. But I just don’t think this is a good idea.

I think I’d have less trouble with this if it wasn’t attempting to shoehorn gender, race *and* sexuality into one monolithic identity. If the idea was for a men’s officer then there are problems, but it at least makes sense along with a women’s officer. Whereas a straight white men’s officer seems move defined by the groups that it excludes than anything else. At the very least, I’d be willing to bet that not only are an overwhelming majority of the students there straight, but that this is still overwhelmingly seen as the default position. It is only in conjunction with the other two that straight identity even makes sense…

21 and 24:

I’ll never understand people who, just because they’re not particularly interested in a post, try to hijack it to be about issues they *are* interested in. It may come as a shock to you, but not everyone can talk about the “most important” issues of the day all the time! In fact, some people can even specialise in particular things! Not everything is about your pet issue.

And 24, do you really think right wingers give a crap about class?

We trannies are sick of being shunted to the very end of LGBT, I can tell you.

And we want our own loos, too!

Here’s something newsworthy you may have missed:

http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/casualties_of_diversity/

chin chin !

“…their roles as members of a privileged minority”

And that’s the point, they may be a minority but they are not disadvantaged in the wider world.

“growing up white, straight and male in Britain today is so often a confusing and painful experience.”

That’s why the suicide rate for this group is so high then? No, wait… I call b/s on that. It’s still far more confusing and painful to grow up a victim of prejudice… the “everyone thinks i’m a racist” whine does nothing for me.

As a white male (with some knowledge of SOAS) I think this is pandering a little to the idiots who don’t understand how racism works.

Today it’s people from groups who HAVEN’T faced a tradition of persecution claiming that they are the most persecuted – tomorrow all that BNP racism comes flooding back in.

“The gradual movement of today’s young, white, straight men towards a positive identity model deserves all the support it can garner.”

I agree, but I think this is in danger of validating the (recently popular) idea that straight white men face persecution – and therefore know all about it – and can therefore make an informed comment that “it’s not such a big problem”

(and please don’t use the word queer)

22 – Which is, of course precisely what I said. Having taken a sociology paper during my degree, I am aware of the theory. Having, however, read for a History degree, I am able to articulate the ideas in ways that don’t immediately slide into opaque pomo bollocks.

27, of course not. That’s why I hold down my occasional irritation & stay on the left. But I am still rejecting the idea that white, heterosexual men somehow all have a common interest, as my interests in a campus context would completely differ from the majority of my “community”.

I’m straight, white and male. I attended SoAS in 07/08 for a one year masters. It was about the time there was a storm in a tea cup over an English Party.

An interesting place where the majority of students are kids from home and abroad trying to get ahead in life. In one of my seminars there was me and two girls from here, two malaysian girls, a girl from Brunei, a boy and girl from Thailand, one yank bloke and a girl from a small west african country. Oh and a guy from Japan.

The common thread amongst us all, is that we would all be considered working or lower-middle class in the countries we were from. Rich kids go to Oxford, Cambridge, LSE. We had no need of ‘diversity officers’. None of us voted in their silly elections or took part in their even sillier events. We ‘had’ to get the pass to get on in life. Human desires and needs are remarkably similar when you don’t have someone around emphasising difference all the time. Lucky for us, none of the student union bores were in our seminars.

Penny says I, as a SWM would find myself ”required to confront their roles as members of a privileged minority”. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact I had my faith in humanity restored, as boys and girls, from all corners of the world, rejected the aggresively noisy minority who sought to define everything in terms of difference, instead embracing the mundane: exams, certificates, jobs, homes, family. Beer. Sex. Crap TV.

As a SWM, who grew up in a council estate in Walworth, lives in another in Peckham and the son of parents who grew up in estates in Belfast and Vauxhall respectively, I find it amusing that you would think I would be confronted by anything at SoAS. SoAS is overwhelmingly conformist.

If you want to see the real breakdown of difference, visit an inner city council estate, go to Singapore, get on a Budget Airline, go to a gig, spend a week in a package holiday resort. But then there are no middle class diversity officers making these places the melting pots of humanity that they are. Spontaneous progress is anathema to those who seek to assert their own power.

If I were still at SoAS now this issue would get about as much attention as the SU activities got when I was there. Which is to say none. It’s something to keep the little rich kids happy (and warm up their CVs for high office) whilst everyone else gets on with their lives.

SOAS, MSc International Politics, 2008

“on subject of discrimination in academe, I recently attended an economics seminar in which a male academic presented what i thought was a thoughtful if technically demanding attempt to answer an important research question, and afterward a female colleague dismissed all that maths as just “cock waving”* and her friends agreed and laughed.”

I sympathise with your reaction – although I’ve attended lectures by (rightly) distinguished academics who spent the whole of their time slot filling a backboard with mathematical proofs of theorems in economics – which could easily have been circulated in handouts – rather than by reviewing the relating critical literature and empirical work.

It perhaps needs to be said that in places, there is a tendency to regard mathematics in economics as symbolic potency in much the way that medical practitioners used to wrap up medical terms in Latin or clerics still conduct religious services in Latin.

The consequential obfuscation seems to reinforce the power of the message. A rebuttal is that for all of Keynes’s commitment to conveying his theoretical insights in The General Theory in plain English, it took the various attempts by others (Hicks, Meade, Modigliani etc) at formulating his theory in mathematical terms to illuminate the substance.

You say:

“Indeed, whilst white, straight males are now in the minority at SOAS, no evidence has yet come to light of such students facing racist, sexist or heterophobic discrimination on campus. ”

But this:

“White males are also less likely to graduate with a first or upper second class degree and find immediate employment than their female classmates”

… is prima facie evidence of negative discrimination isn’t it? If one group consistently underachieves in an institution, we usually take that to mean that there are structural elements limiting their achievement, don’t we?

As a present (mature) student at SOAS, my experience corresponds with that of astateofdenmark (Comment 32). The university provides a fantastic grounding in diversity and an opportunity to meet people from a wide variety of backgrounds, not through any particular intention but rather because it’s a melting pot of various different people all working hard and trying to get ahead. Put people from different backgrounds into a classroom together and give them tough topics to tackle, and you’ll build understanding, cooperation and friendships, not through any diversity initiative but through simple necessity.

In contrast, the Students Union, which makes so much noise around these issues, is largely an irrelevancy. The vast majority of students I have met at SOAS simply roll their eyes at the antics of the Union, and I’m aware of few who bother attending UGMs unless their society involvement requres them to. Fair play to those involved – they are passionate and devoted to their various causes and that’s a positive thing to see, however odd some of those causes may be – but it’s a little irritating, at times, to see the university and its student body being defined and dismissed according to the often ridiculous noises made by the Union, when the majority of us are just putting our heads down and studying alongside our classmates – gay, straight, male, female, and every hue of skin under the rainbow.

Excellent post Laurie. When majorities enter places where they are in the minority, they become minorities. Then they might just start to accept the fact that their treatment of minorities before may have been wrong. And they start sticking together, as minorities always have. Then this happens.

People interested in a similar role reversal in a very different situation may like to look up a post at my blog, Same Difference, titled Whose World Is It Anyway.

Hasn’t anyone thought of the clearly obvious solution? Abolish every ‘minority’ officer, if every student is equal, then groups don’t need to be stood up for – hell, if you’re going to go around spreading the gospel of “students in solidarity with each other” then get everyone involved in everything and stop being exclusive on the officer front.

Oen- for your excellent suggestion to work, we would have to have a perfect world. (Something for which I wish, since I am not a straight, white male!).

How about a JWSM officer. Now we are the only group that can be abused with impunity by all, left, right, liberal, islamists, women and any f****r else.

We are warned “Abusive, sarcastic or silly comments may be deleted. Abusive, sarcastic or silly comments may be deleted. Misogynist, racist, homophobic and xenophobic comments will be deleted.” I was going to say that the whole idea of appointing an officer for any group is totally gay, but that would be an abusive, sarcastic, silly, and possibly homophobic way of denying the legitimacy of the very identity politics on which this whole debate is premised, so it would have been deleted. I opted, instead, to write this long-winded garbage which will fail to make the point to anyone with any sense. Gads.

I’ve always believed a fool has plenty to say and your over long, boring article proves me right.