In the Game of Life, What Difficulty Setting Are You Given?

John Scalzi lists this most read post of 2012 for his blog "Whatever." The post "Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is" is number one.  It's an interesting reflection, from a straight male, as to why this is an advantage without using the dread word "privilege." 

Imagine life here in the US — or indeed, pretty much anywhere in the Western world — is a massive role playing game, like World of Warcraft except appallingly mundane, where most quests involve the acquisition of money, cell phones and donuts, although not always at the same time. Let’s call it The Real World. You have installed The Real World on your computer and are about to start playing, but first you go to the settings tab to bind your keys, fiddle with your defaults, and choose the difficulty setting for the game. Got it?
Okay: In the role playing game known as The Real World, “Straight White Male” is the lowest difficulty setting there is.