What Should I Do With My Compounding Privilege?

I'm a cisgender, straight, white man. I understand that each one of these identities grants me power and privilege. And together? Look out––that's a whole lot of power and compounding privilege! But instead of feeling guilty or burdened or arrogant about it, I have chosen to accept the responsibility that comes with my power and privilege to advocate for others who have been disenfranchised and marginalized. I use my power and privilege as forces for good. 

But it hasn't always been that way. It's been an evolution of consciousness. 

As a child I never had to think about being cisgender; it was a given that my sense of personal identity and gender corresponded with my birth sex. I was a boy. People knew I was a boy. I knew I was a boy. It just was the way it was. No one, including me, ever questioned it. I most certainly wouldn't have known or cared what cisgender meant, or why it mattered, had anyone told me. 

And as a male, I was not interested in any real way in the lived realities and unique challenges of girls or women. Had it been presented to me for discussion or reflection, I would not have understood or shown interest in, or compassion for, the idea that things are different, often times much harder, for girls and women than they were for me. Not my concern. 

And of course I was straight. By fifth grade, at pace with typical childhood development expectations, I began to be interested romantically––in girls. Naturally. Why would it be any different? I wasn't gay, a homo, a fag. I wasn't weird or strange or a misfit. I was just. . .normal. And happy to be normal. Not like them.

And the color of my skin? I was white. Almost everyone I knew was white. It was the norm, the expectation, the measure. It wasn't that I was proud to be white––mostly because I never thought about it––but it was clear and obvious that I was white. Sure, I noticed that other people were black or brown or Asian, and I could see they were different than me. Which is why I didn't interact with them very much, if at all. It wasn't malicious exclusion, it was just that they weren't even on my radar. 

This is how I went through life for fourteen years––with my compounding privilege giving me all kinds of advantages that I simply took for granted. None of this would I have been able to articulate then, of course. What's the line––ignorance is bliss? Not sure about that, but ignorance is definitely ignorant. 

But everything changed at age fourteen when my dad told he was gay. I couldn't believe it. I didn't know I knew any gay people, and now to find out that the one gay person I know is my own dad. Unbelievable. I was in shock. I was ashamed, embarrassed, confused. I cried and cried and cried for days and days. This was unfair. Why did this have to happen to me? What does this mean? Personally? Socially? I wasn't sure, but I sure as hell wasn't about to find out by telling anyone about it. So I kept my secret.

And, like most things that are initially hard to hear and understand, my dad telling he was gay eventually opened up a whole new world of possibilities for me. It didn't happen overnight, but over time a shift in consciousness occurred. As I more and more understood my own identities, I became more and more able to understand and appreciate other people's intersectional identities as well. 

I began to get it. I began to understand that privilege and power are real things. That some people are on the upside of power and, like a marionette, get to pull the strings. And that other people are on the downside of power, the puppets who have their strings pulled for them. And that the people on the upside of power are often white, straight, male, cisgender (and rich, able-bodied, married, educated, etc. . . .)

I began to get that my whiteness carried with it the burden of history––colonialism, slavery, othering, disenfranchisement, systemic and structural and legal racism and discrimination, expected superiority and dominance. But instead of feeling guilty or defensive or dismissive, I began to explore more how I, as a white person, could do my part to make the world a more equitable place. 

I began to see what it meant to be a man in the world. I began to see how the global patriarchal structure that sees and reinforces men as stronger, more capable, more intelligent, and more competent is detrimental not just to women, but to humankind. I began to see how flawed, damaging, and unsupportable the patriarchy is. 

I began to see more clearly how my compounding privilege––being white, male, straight, and cisgender––afforded me relatively frictionless accessibility to opportunities. Opportunities not as readily available to people who don't share one or my of my identities, if they were able to access them at all. 

This evolution of awareness, however, while good, was not enough. What was I going to do with my awareness? How was I going to shift the system and change the structural dynamics? The answer: I was going to have to give up some of my power and some of my privilege so that others could have greater access to opportunity. I was going to amplify voices who are often overlooked. I was going to seek out people and communities who could use support, and I was going to leverage my social capital to elevate suppressed voices. I was going to tell the stories of oppressed and marginalized people so that they gained more positive visibility. 

And once I started I wasn't going to stop. 

I've been fighting for equity and inclusion as consistently and honestly as I can for the last twenty years. Am I perfect? Hell no. Do I make mistakes? Yep. Am I a hypocrite at times? Absolutely. Do I have a lot to learn? You bet. But that's all part of the journey. It's a journey I've been on for quite a while now. And a journey I am happy to continue forever. 

And it's a journey you can go on too. It starts with personal awareness. Being aware of how and where you have power and privilege. Aware of how and where you don't. Aware of how and where you can change your habits and mindsets and perceptions and actions. Aware of how and where you can uplift people who are on the downside of power. Aware of how and where you can challenge the system. 

I invite you to go on this journey without fragility. Go on the journey with humility and curiosity and purpose and unwavering commitment. And go on this journey without being a savior or a martyr or a pedant. Go on this journey because of something personal that happened to you. Go on this journey because it's the right journey to go on. Go on this journey because you want to change the world for the better. 

Go on this journey because the world needs you to go on this journey.