I feel sorry for white men, sometimes. I mean, think of all the white men, fairly intelligent white men, some of them really very intelligent white men, who will tell you, quite, quite earnestly, how easy it is for women and minorities – but most of all, probably women who belong to a minority – to get ahead in the world.

„White men just aren’t being employed at universities anymore,“ they’ll say, sadly. OR: „Actually, it’s not that easy for men, and white men especially, to get published nowadays. It’s very easy for a woman to get published – especially, say, a Muslim woman, or a Muslim-looking woman, at least – especially if she has nice breasts. As long as she puts a picture of herself, smiling, on the cover of her book. But white men? We can’t get published just for being white men, we have to actually have something to say.“

And even when it comes to that, well, erm, not exactly the most lucrative industry in the world, the Lesebühneszene, even here, apparently, women have this huge advantage, as my friend told me once: „Come on, Jacinta,“ he said, „you know the Lesebühne audience prefers to listen to women than to men! Especially if the woman is speaking about sex! You know how easy it’s been for you!“

I always found it surprising, when people said things like this to me, because even though there’s so much discrimination against white men, they seem to be doing okay? Like all the universities seem to be full of white men, loads of published authors seem to be, er, white men, the Lesebühneszene seems to be full of white men. They seem to be holding their own against all this discrimination. It’s funny, though, that one demographic of people could be so discriminated against and then, at the same time, so overrepresented, but I suppose it’s to be expected because, for some scientific reason I can’t go into now, it has been proven that having pale skin and being of the male gender automatically means you are far, far more talented than anyone else.

The thing is everywhere you look there’s a white man, IT’S RAINING WHITE MEN. It’s literally RAINING them. In fact, it’s a Sintflut. It’s an ocean, an ocean of white men. You can’t see where one starts and the other one ends. They’re everywhere.

I don’t really think the „discrimination“ they face (there is no discrimination, it’s just sometimes every now and then a woman or a non-white person or even shock horror a non-white woman writes a book and it gets published or does dance at HAU or wins a poetry slam or something, that’s literally all) is what’s traumatic about the white male experience. I actually think they find it exhausting, thinking they should rule the world. It’s too much pressure, the automaticness of it. I am white, I am male, I should be Donald Trump, I should be a pilot, I should be in a band. I can never just BE. That’s why they send weird hate mail to Margarete Stokowski and Sarah Bosetti, that’s why they can’t bear it when a Muslim wins the Great British Bake-Off or an alien time-lord regenerates into a woman. I think what happens a lot is that white men look around, see how everyone successful is basically white and male, and feel like losers compared to what they should be achieving, and repaint the world inside their heads so it’s more bearable. I think they’re petrified that they’re not allowed to be average. I think when white men complain about discrimination, what they’re really saying is: Make the world fairer, so I don’t have to be a White Man anymore, I can just be me. Let me be me.