I would like to begin by acknowledging the obvious irony in me, a white man, saying the following:
WHITE MEN ARE THE FUCKING WORST.
Of course, you know, I'm a liberal guy with a sociology degree. I've always known in the abstract that white men are awful. But having taken a commuter train from central London home yesterday with my six-week-old baby (context: I had a baby six weeks ago), I now understand far more viscerally just what colossal cuntbags white men can be.
I would like to pause to acknowledge the obvious truth that sweeping generalisations about any group of people based on their gender and/or race are by necessity not accurate for every person belonging to that group. Though I think white men can handle it.
More than any other kind of person with whom I came into contact last night, white men were far more likely to (a) fail to acknowledge the existence of another person trying to wrestle a large pram through commuter pedestrian traffic on a narrow pavement; (b) (on a related point) cut me off, especially with their own LARGE FUCKING SUITCASES; (c) just stand in the fucking way because they were too engrossed in their own newspaper/smartphone/wet dream to pay any attention to the world outside their own soma. Once I finally got on my train, parking my pram in the doorwell because there was nowhere else to put it, some dude in a suit proceeded to stand next to me and block the other half of the door for the rest of the journey reading his goddamn broadsheet, even when the train stopped at the next station and people needed to, you know, get off. That's right: the person standing reading a newspaper didn't move a fucking inch, so that the person standing with a pram had to awkwardly squeeze around said pram to make even half a channel through which other passengers could get off, and through which many of them had no choice but to jostle the sleeping baby while squeezing out the door.
I would like to pause once more, by the way, to acknowledge the perhaps less obvious but no less important truth that, in the business district in central London, the sample is heavily biased towards incredibly egocentric assholes who wear suits and read broadsheets on busy trains, and also that this population self-selects heavily for white men — and so the fact that I observed a lot of white men acting like douchebags last night doesn't in itself prove as much about white men in general as it does about rich pricks in central London. Then again, the two black dudes in the doorwell on the same train immediately offered to move, and the white woman who had to jostle my sleeping baby on her way out apologised to ME, even though I was more (inextricably) in her way than anyone.
(And if I could just digress from this digression, I would also like to once more acknowledge my own inherent privilege as a white man and wonder what might have been different about all of the above interactions had I been, say, an Indian woman. Other than the fact that my book would be a few spots to the left on the general fiction shelf and I would have won the fucking Pulitzer already, perhaps white asshole would have moved; perhaps polite black dudes wouldn't have; perhaps apologetic white woman would have silently glared at me. Identity politics, amirite?)
When I did get to my station, by the way, in marginally more suburban London, two white dudes did offer to help me get the pram off the train and over the particular large gap beside the platform — so maybe it really is more about rich pricks than white men. But then again, show me that Venn diagram and I'll show you a guy with a pram and a chip on his shoulder.
WHITE MEN ARE THE FUCKING WORST.
Of course, you know, I'm a liberal guy with a sociology degree. I've always known in the abstract that white men are awful. But having taken a commuter train from central London home yesterday with my six-week-old baby (context: I had a baby six weeks ago), I now understand far more viscerally just what colossal cuntbags white men can be.
I would like to pause to acknowledge the obvious truth that sweeping generalisations about any group of people based on their gender and/or race are by necessity not accurate for every person belonging to that group. Though I think white men can handle it.
More than any other kind of person with whom I came into contact last night, white men were far more likely to (a) fail to acknowledge the existence of another person trying to wrestle a large pram through commuter pedestrian traffic on a narrow pavement; (b) (on a related point) cut me off, especially with their own LARGE FUCKING SUITCASES; (c) just stand in the fucking way because they were too engrossed in their own newspaper/smartphone/wet dream to pay any attention to the world outside their own soma. Once I finally got on my train, parking my pram in the doorwell because there was nowhere else to put it, some dude in a suit proceeded to stand next to me and block the other half of the door for the rest of the journey reading his goddamn broadsheet, even when the train stopped at the next station and people needed to, you know, get off. That's right: the person standing reading a newspaper didn't move a fucking inch, so that the person standing with a pram had to awkwardly squeeze around said pram to make even half a channel through which other passengers could get off, and through which many of them had no choice but to jostle the sleeping baby while squeezing out the door.
I would like to pause once more, by the way, to acknowledge the perhaps less obvious but no less important truth that, in the business district in central London, the sample is heavily biased towards incredibly egocentric assholes who wear suits and read broadsheets on busy trains, and also that this population self-selects heavily for white men — and so the fact that I observed a lot of white men acting like douchebags last night doesn't in itself prove as much about white men in general as it does about rich pricks in central London. Then again, the two black dudes in the doorwell on the same train immediately offered to move, and the white woman who had to jostle my sleeping baby on her way out apologised to ME, even though I was more (inextricably) in her way than anyone.
(And if I could just digress from this digression, I would also like to once more acknowledge my own inherent privilege as a white man and wonder what might have been different about all of the above interactions had I been, say, an Indian woman. Other than the fact that my book would be a few spots to the left on the general fiction shelf and I would have won the fucking Pulitzer already, perhaps white asshole would have moved; perhaps polite black dudes wouldn't have; perhaps apologetic white woman would have silently glared at me. Identity politics, amirite?)
When I did get to my station, by the way, in marginally more suburban London, two white dudes did offer to help me get the pram off the train and over the particular large gap beside the platform — so maybe it really is more about rich pricks than white men. But then again, show me that Venn diagram and I'll show you a guy with a pram and a chip on his shoulder.