Put on your hip-waders, dears. Grayson Perry (an English artist, of course) pens a rambling screed of such over-the-top self-loathing and envy, it is worthy of The Onion save for it’s irony-free earnestness.
Paddle your canoe up the River Thames and you will come round the bend and see a forest of huge totems jutting into the sky. Great shiny monoliths in various phallic shapes, they are the wondrous cultural artefacts of a remarkable tribe. We all know someone from this powerful tribe but we very rarely, if ever, ascribe their power to the fact that they have a particular tribal identity.
I think this tribe, a small minority of our native population, needs closer examination. In the UK, its members probably make up about 10 percent of the population (see infographic below); globally, probably less than 1 percent. In a phrase used more often in association with Operation Yewtree, they are among us and hide in plain sight.
They dominate the upper echelons of our society, imposing, unconsciously or otherwise, their values and preferences on the rest of the population. With their colourful textile phalluses hanging round their necks, they make up an overwhelming majority in government, in boardrooms, and also in the media.
They are, of course, white, middle-class, heterosexual men, usually middle-aged. And every component of that description has historically played a part in making this tribe a group that punches far, far above its weight. I have struggled to find a name for this identity that will trip off the tongue, or that doesn’t clutter the page with unpronounceable acronyms such as WMCMAHM. “The White Blob” was a strong contender but in the end I opted to call him Default Man. I like the word “default,” for not only does it mean “the result of not making an active choice,” but two of its synonyms are “failure to pay” and “evasion,” which seems incredibly appropriate, considering the group I wish to talk about.
If you’re still following along and haven’t fled due to fits of mirth at Sad Grayson’s pre-occupation with I.See.Phalluses, the comedic value of his piece just gets better.
I once gave a talk on kinky sex and during the questions afterwards a gay woman floated an interesting thought: “Is the legalizing of gay marriage an attempt to neutralize the otherness of homosexuals?” she asked. Was the subversive alternative being neutered by allowing gays to marry and ape a hetero lifestyle? Many gay people might have enjoyed their dangerous outsider status. Had Default Man implanted a desire to be just like him?
Is the fact that we think like Default Man the reason why a black female Doctor Who has not happened, that it might seem “wrong” or clunky? In my experience, when I go to the doctor I am more likely to see a non-white woman than a Default Man. […]
Perhaps Default Man needs to step down from some of his most celebrated roles. I’d happily watch a gay black James Bond and an all-female Top Gear, QI or Have I Got News for You.
Sad Grayson ignores that if a person of pallor were to, say, stage Ain’t Misbehavin’ with an all-“white” cast, there would be shrieks of “cultural appropriation.”
Funny how that goes in only one direction.
Personally, working in the arts, I do not often encounter Default Man en masse, but when I do it is a shock. I occasionally get invited to formal dinners in the City of London and on arrival, I am met, in my lurid cocktail dress, with a sea of dinner jackets; perhaps harshly, my expectations of a satisfying conversation drop. I feel rude mentioning the black-clad elephant in the room. I sense that I am the anthropologist allowed in to the tribal ritual.
Of course, this weird minority, these curiously dominant white males, are anything but normal.
Perhaps Sad Grayson was disappointed that he didn’t get the reaction he wanted from his in-your-face costuming? Being shown tolerance from the group he cannot tolerate just cannot stand?
Sad Grayson’s piece is also full of contemporary far-Left buzzwords and references, from “male gaze” to “white privilege”. And like most member of the Left cult of pallor, his oikophobia requires him to downplay or excuse the evil of Rotherham
In news stories such as the alleged “Trojan Horse” plot in Birmingham schools and the recent child-abuse scandal in Rotherham, the central involvement of an ethnic or faith “community” skews the attitudes of police, social services, and the media. The Muslim or Pakistani heritage of those accused becomes the focus. I’m not saying that faith and ethnic groups don’t have their particular problems but the recipe for such trouble is made up of more than one spicy, foreign ingredient. I would say it involves more than a few handfuls of common-or-garden education/class issues, poor mental health and, of course, the essential ingredient in nearly all nasty or violent problems, men. Yeah, men—bit like them Default Men but without suits on.
Sad Grayson is married to a psychotherapist. The mind boggles.
He’s not her hubby, he’s her hobby — and possibly her shot at a Nobel prize.
No correlation between proximity to psychology profession and level of sanity.
My dad the psych professor had Narcissistic Personality Disorder and had no idea that he did (they never do).
My mom says the whole psych department consisted of real Pieces of Work.
So there’s that.
If we must have a neologism in order to describe a new phenomenon (a highly questionable assumption here, I think), it seems far preferable to me that we would say “homey-fear” rather than gunk up the idea with ancient Greek — which nobody learns anymore anyhow. Besides, our plain English homey-fear makes the stupidity of the novel phenomenon all the more evident, doesn’t it?
I had a throne?
I had a fuckin’ throne!
Damnit!
Nobody tells me shit.
Nobody tells me shit.
– Just like a Noble, blame the commoners!
– This is because the only thing they care about is he’s black and his party gives them stuff.
I have a throne, but I have to scrub it myself.
I too have a throne, albeit a white!!! Throne. A racist throne. From which I no longer give a shit.
Needs? The straight, white, middle-class man has been dethroned.
Why else has the entire world seemingly gone to hell in the last twenty years?
The scrubbing part is where my white privilege comes in. If I were other than white I’d have to use an unscrubbed throne.
“They are, of course, white, middle-class, heterosexual men, usually middle-aged. And every component of that description has historically played a part in making this tribe a group that punches far, far above its weight.”
Where is the evidence to back up this assertion?
That tribe has produced the modern world we live in, with a heretofor unimagined standard of living in the areas of the world they still control, and rampant poverty, terror and squalor everywhere they have left.
If it wasn’t for that tribe punching above it’s weight we would all still be living in mud huts and the most popular past time would be picking lice off of each other.
“white, middle-class, heterosexual males”
Help me out here, isn’t white the color of the natives in the United Kingdom? Also, without heterosexuals would he even be here? Would he get the irony of my questions?
It’s the fact that Western Civilization produces such fools and lauds them, bestows honors upon them, legitimizes their depraved rantings, that make me think we WMCHM’s shouldn’t have bothered.
Civilizations sow the seeds of their own destruction as an inevitabvle consequence of their success. If someone ever figures out a way to break that cycle, though, I’m not sure I’d want to live through the result.
Maybe a SMOD now and again?
Or a pestilence.
– Nuke ’em from orbit Captain…..It’s the only way to be sure.
the four horseman of the barackyalypse are standing bye
Artiste superficielle.
That is all.
When I worked in a boiler room back in the early 1980’s, ‘artiste’ was a code word for faggot.