"Not sure what the problem is -- people whistle at me all the time and I love it."
"The best part about historical fiction is, I always have someone to relate to. The past is pretty sweet."
These are the type of obnoxious musings that make up the White Male Privilege twitter feed. The tweets, set to the voice of a completely clueless white dude, explore the built-in advantages that come with having a certain skin color and belonging to a certain gender when it comes to personal safety, the workplace, the media and historical visibility. And the person behind this new meme just happens to be one of those straight, white men.
Canadian Geordie Tait, a 32-year-old writer and game designer living in San Francisco, is the man behind @MalePrivilege. He told The Huffington Post that he was inspired to create the Twitter account by his wife's experiences and his time in the gaming industry.
"As a gamer, I tried to include the love of my life in my hobby, and through her reactions I slowly learned that the industry is...well...sorta embarrassing," Tait wrote in an email. "So, I started really paying attention. And once I became unplugged from the Matrix, I realized that the problem is absolutely pervasive and that my wife has almost no safe space to go to get away from any of it. Many of my tweets come from personal experience or from observations about the way content is created in the game industry."
In September 2011, Tait wrote an article titled "To My Someday Daughter" about the sexism that exists in the gaming world. The piece got a lot of attention through social media, and in addition to costing Tait a few friends, he told The Huffington Post that it also further sparked his interest in male privilege. Tait chooses to address these issues with his blogs -- and his tweets.
"Guess what it's cost me to completely acknowledge my privilege?" he wrote in his email to us. "Nothing."
[H/T The Gloss]
LOOK: The Best Of @MalePrivilege
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