Acknowledging Privilege

"My family threw me out of the house when I explained that I was trans."

"I feel uncomfortable in the gym; sometimes I worry guys think I'm looking at them"

"I worry that with my name, people reject my CV because they assume I'm not a strong English speaker"

"I never used to talk about my ethnic background; I knew it would make me less popular in school"

When talking about privilege, we're often discussing it from the point of view of "white privilege", "hetero-privilege" or "male privilege", indicating that the groups these various privileges refer to are given a better start in life.

This can often create the misconception that society treats them actively better than they do for, say, a transgendered individual. While this certainly occurs in some societies, in most modern countries, the effect is typically passive.

The nature of discrimination of one of negativity; we do not go out of our way to hire people with "white sounding names", we simply hire less people with names that are commonly associated with a different culture.

We don't think to ourselves; "Gosh, I'd love to work with a bunch of cis-gendered people"; we just don't hire trans applicants.

No one in their right mind would try to argue that "Men just make better coders", but if you're a woman, good luck getting your code approved in an open source project.

Privilege is so often about what you don't have to put up with, than it is the opportunities being placed at your feet. It is a consequence of discrimination; not an active goal.

The next time you feel threatened or insulted by someone asking you to think about your privilege, remember that people are not telling you that you have not worked for what you've got; more that some people might have worked much harder to get the exact same or less.

The vast majority of people are ready to accept that we live in an inequitable society; so few are ready to accept the personal responsibility implied by privilege.

The latter is a necessary consequence of the former; as light demands dark.

The only question left is how you are going to use that privilege for the betterment of those around you.