The White Guy: A Field Guide
By Stephen Hunt
Douglas and McIntyre
204 pages
$22.95
Life was strange in Toronto. A freelance writer with inconsistent success, I was forever earning extra money with odd jobs like walking dogs, deceiving people in call centres and handing out flyers at fetish masquerades.
The latter was quite the gig. It saw me standing on the lame side of a velvet rope at 5ive Nightclub, watching a parade of sexually liberated people decked out in the height of vinyl regalia as they did salacious and subversive things, like whip each other with riding crops, lead their partners around at the end of dog leashes and allow 60 years of accumulated lard to hang over nothing more than a leather thong. I stood there in jeans, a hoodie and a baseball hat, looking for all the world like a man utterly afraid of what his penis might rather he be wearing.
In part because of this job, I one night found myself drinking with some lesbians that didn’t trust me on account of my heterosexuality and inescapable whiteness. I had just finished saying the word “cunt,” which, to me, has lost almost all gender-connotation, probably because of its widespread use in Trainspotting and certainly because of the way I’ve employed it ever since . I was about to say the word “fag,” which, to me, has never had much to do with sexual preference, probably because it was used in my schoolyard as a substitute for “moron” and certainly because I’ve used it that way ever since.
And then it all came out.
“You can’t say those words,” said one mortified girl. “Not ever. You are a straight, white male. Your time is gone.”
“But what about slur-mitigation?” I argued. “The more people say ‘cunt’ without a gender implication, the less it has traction with misogynists, no?”
“You don’t say ‘nigger’, do you?”
I fell silent. “Nigger” wasn’t in my standing army of general insults. Nor could I command it to the frontlines, even to help fulfill the admittedly shaky agenda I just finished explaining. Just the same, there was something contrary at work here.
I’m sure Stephen Hunt would have a handle for me. Author of The White Guy: A Field Guide , Hunt seems to have a category for almost every sort of white dude you’ve ever encountered. There’s Canadian White Guy and Australian White Guy. There’s Art Opening White Guy and Foodie White Guy. There’s Downtown Artsy White Guy and Crystal Meth White Guy. It goes on. I bet Hunt would call me Wannabe Iconoclast White Guy. The first part hurts, but, as is apparently the norm for most white guys, I have too little access to my feelings to be significantly affected.
There are those — and I can’t quite decide if I’m one of them — who might call Hunt’s breezy and often insightful book a guilt-inspired study in race and gender-based apology. Some people call this White Liberal Middle Class Guilt. Its promoters are exclusively white, and they often forget that racism exists in spades between groups completely devoid of even the faintest of white colouration. But Hunt should be excluded from that tier, if only because he acknowledges existence of hatred between most every ethnic derivative.
The premise holding up his satirical foray is that white guys have had it easier than any other denomination throughout all of history. We white guys have all the power. We write the history books, man the airwaves, wage the wars and count the money. We don’t take shit from chicks — not even Hillary Clinton — and we don’t easily countenance black leaders in North America — not even Barack Obama.
Part of me knows this is true. That part of me might be called Sober Second Look White Guy. But part of me wants to resist it. This part of me might be called I’m Only 27 And So Nothing’s My Fault White Guy. I don’t really like either of those punks, and it shames me to know they consume some of my food energy.
But maybe that’s the point. Generally speaking, white people create mass culture that does little to encourage reflection. There just isn’t much money in being all dreary and ponderous. And besides, why consider the scope of a massive historical inheritance when it’s so much easier — and more fun — to get unapologetically shitfaced in front of a monolithic plasma screen transmitting the latest chapter of the NHL playoffs? And, if you don’t like hockey, there’s always American Idol . Look: Now you’re Vapid Entertainment Sponge White Guy. Quick: call your coke dealer.
If that is the point, then Hunt is something of a literary hero. We need more discussion on race and gender. That Hunt himself is straight and white makes the dialogue more inclusive, leaving the irony of it all to long ago Toronto soirees.
