Featured articles
Criticism, hostility and non-support: three different animals
If you find yourself in agreement with a dominant belief - the most popular religion in your culture, a love of the favored local sports team, or the belief that life is mostly neat and people are mostly good-hearted - you may occasionally have trouble distinguishing...
No, customer service workers do not have it easy
Every once in a while, one of my fellow Americans blows my mind with her assumption that customer service workers get insurance, paid sick days and paid vacation, and at least $10/hour. These assumptions are often of no consequence, but on some occasions they're...
Extroversion privilege
(This post has a definite US slant, simply because that's the only country whose culture I've experienced firsthand. I suspect it's different elsewhere - feel free to comment.)
This all started from a comment made by DNi on my post, Personal Privilege List. I...
Non-survivor privilege and silence
While it shouldn't be a privilege to escape abuse in this life, there are trappings of privilege for those who have been so lucky. I know it's an odd thing to say, and it's a realization I've been slowly moving toward since childhood, but it works like this:
Once...
Privilege means never having to explain why it doesn’t work for Others
One of the most annoying privilege memes I've ever dealt with is "Anyone can get rich in this great country; if they don't, it means they're just not working hard enough." I encountered this meme almost daily as a kid growing up in a highly conservative "red state"...
by Jennifer Kesler
A few months ago, we had a discussion about whether the original name of this website, Blind Privilege, was ableist. As is typical when someone raises a question like this, there were several people who agreed with changing the name and several who thought it wasn’t necessary. And a few who thought it was ridiculous to even consider changing it.
This prompted me to do a lot of reading and research online. There are a number of worthwhile opinions ...read more
by Jennifer Kesler
I recently searched online for the question of how an adult abuse survivor might go about suing his or her abusive parent. The results I got astounded me, but they shouldn’t have. I know my country wants parents abusing its kids. It makes this clear so many ways. This is just one more.
First, the cultural. Most of the search results lead to other people asking my question. The responses they get range from “You’d be much better off just getting ...read more
by Jennifer Kesler
I sometimes think one of the strongest barriers to equality is that when you’re trying to join a group you weren’t born into, you have to either smile and nod while listening to the crap those people say about the group you were born into, or stand up for yourself and your people and alienate the very group of people you were hoping to join. Except now you’re wondering if they’re worth joining – unless you’ve learned to despise your ...read more
by Jennifer Kesler
[ETA: the site name referred to in this post is "Blind Privilege", which was the original name of this site and domain. After this post, I changed both the site and domain name to "What Privilege?"]
Three years ago, I started this site. I’d heard “blinded by privilege” in a few places, and came up with the phrase “blind privilege”. It was available as a domain, so I bought it and started blogging.
Three years ago, I wasn’t very aware of able-bodied ...read more
Subscribe to the What Privilege? 
