Has the term 'straight white male' really become an insult?

Last Friday, Josh Denny, a Food Network host and comedian, tweeted: “Straight White Male has become this century’s N-Word. It’s used to offend and diminish the recipient based on assumption and bias. No difference in the usage.”

Denny followed this statement up by arguing that “when you call someone [straight white male] in conversation – you know exactly what you’re doing: attempting to devalue their POV based on negative cultural stereotypes. That’s racism.” He then had the audacity to say that Martin Luther King Jr would have agreed with him.

Comparing the phrase “straight white male” to the “N-word”, which has been used to systematically subjugate people for centuries, is plainly ludicrous.

However, Denny is far from an outlier when it comes to his views on the victimization of straight white men.

In 2016, Simon Jenkins wrote in the Guardian, for example, that “pale, stale males are the last group it is OK to vilify”. The Spectator followed this up by proclaiming that “‘White men’ is the most dehumanizing insult of our times”. And when I did a very scientific poll of straight white men I know (who may have been moderately surprised to get a late-night text from me asking: ‘U up? For a quick discussion of modern masculinity?), many of them admitted they’d started to feel the “straight white man” had become enemy No 1 in today’s culture.

Let’s be very clear: while straight white male may sometimes be used in a pejorative way, it is not a slur. As Michael Kimmel, a distinguished professor of sociology at the Stony Brook University, and a leading expert on masculinity, explains: “The ability to use a slur towards someone else comes with a certain kind of institutional power behind it.” Kimmel, who coined the phrase “aggrieved entitlement” in his book, Angry White Men, further asks: “What’s the opposite of the straight white male? It’s the black lesbian, right? Please name all the big corporations who have black lesbians as CEOs. Please tell me the countries that have black lesbians as heads of state or in any political position of power. As far as I can see straight white males still dominate the world. There are still more CEOs named ‘John’ than female CEOs.”

While straight white male is not a slur, it could be said to be the modern equivalent of Wasp, the acronym coined in the late 50s to refer to the privileged white Americans of Protestant origin who dominated society. Tristan Bridges, an assistant professor who specializes in gender and masculinity at University of California, Santa Barbara, notes that, like Wasp, straight white male has become “a cultural shorthand for a collection of privileges that you carry around with you if you happen to occupy all three of those categories”.

Bridges believes that the reason some straight white men find the label pejorative is because they’re not “used to having their privilege shoved in their face”. Bridges explains that while the privilege they have is not new, it’s never been so visible. “Straightness, whiteness, and maleness have never been so much in the cultural spotlight. And that changes the experience of it. It feels different. And that’s what this [anger] is a reaction to. Their dads and grandpas get to collect privileges and entitlements without really thinking about it. Now they’re forced to think about it. It’s uncomfortable to feel as though you have benefited from unearned advantage – and that’s what the straight white male label points out.”