Do you think that mentioning my privilege is a form of bragging? Because any time I’ve seen someone labeled as privileged, they always take it as an insult, every time. From my experience, calling someone privileged is one of the most effective ways of triggering white fragility. The accusation did trigger me the first few times I heard it, but eventually I decided the sensible thing to do was to embrace it. It’s the same principle so frequently expressed in Game of Thrones. If someone gives you an abusive label, it’s better to go with it than run from it.

Nevertheless, I must admit that a lot of people do brag by saying they are affluent thin etc. And I’ve seen a lot of posts by other privileged people who really believe they should be honored for being privileged. (The attitude of Slitheryn pure bloods.) I was told the opposite: That I’ve been given all sorts of opportunities other people weren’t lucky enough to get, so if I screw up, I’ve got no one to blame but myself. So accepting the idea that privilege was an insult eventually came naturally to me.

These days I try to just accept it, and to understand what it means to be privileged. This is not as easy as it sounds, as one of the hallmarks of the privileged perspective is the assumption that it isn’t a perspective at all; that you are just seeing the world the way it really is. Once you realize that being privileged is just one more perspective you see everything differently. A lot of my writing is about what it is like to become consciously aware of how your privilege shapes your experience. Only a privileged person can write about this from the inside, but almost all of us are completely clueless about it.