Revealing Privilege

Convincing men to be allies of women can oftentimes be frustrating. The talk of “privilege” itself can easily fall on deaf ears if the audience feels attacked. How do I demonstrate privilege while pushing for empathy at the same time?

For me, I let the experiences of those around me be my own.

Content-warning: Sexual assault

This story is from way back when I was still in college. The middle of job-training so I had already moved back into on-campus housing. My first night inside my own room and training often goes late into the night.

It’s getting late, 1:00 am, but my phone starts to ring. I answer it and find that it’s my friend who happens to be nearby and she wants to come by and say “hi!” Sure, first night back in the dorms, everyone is excited to be back.

Knock knock. I open the door and I see my friend standing there, no shoes on, swaying left to right a little, excited to see a friend. It’s immediately apparent that she might have had a little too much to drink, but still pretty coherent as she knew where she was and who I was and even knew where her missing-shoes were.

So I thought to myself, I better help her back to her room. I had her recite where she lives (literally the building next to mine) and walked her to the elevator and told her “the moment you get back to your room, call me, okay?”

I sat at my desk and I waited for her call.

And she called. She tells me that she’s at her door, and that she’s keying open her door, and that the door is open. We exchange “Good-nights” and that’s that.

Pretty anticlimactic right?

A month later, I’m talking to the same friend again and that night comes up in conversation. While I was thinking that night was pretty uneventful, she begins to tell me that after finishing our phone call, a friend of hers (not a stranger), followed her into the room and that she was raped.

Up until that moment, it didn’t even occur to me that such a thing could happen. 

I didn’t have that perspective. Ask any woman and they will tell you about all the things that they worry about when they have to walk alone, things most men will never ever have to think about.

That is a privilege. Not having to worry about certain risks and boundaries others experience - that is what privilege is.

From not worrying about whether my gender affects if I get a promotion or not, to not worrying about being assaulted going to and from my work or home, what can we, as men with privilege, do? When my friend told me what happened that night, I remember asking myself “what could I have done?”

Next time you hear “cooler talk” and overhear a sexist joke amongst “the guys,” will you forego your privilege and say something about it? Or next time you hear your colleague say she feels unsafe, will you support her?

But remember, we aren’t champions. We were already given a leg up. If you call yourself a good man, what good is a good man when a good man does nothing?

We don’t know what we don’t know and that often goes hand-in-hand with privilege. In that lack of perspective, we can be an ally and let the experiences of those around us be our experiences too. My friend’s story has stuck with me and it will be part of me for the rest of my life. I cannot claim to completely know another person’s experience, but I can try to feel the weight. I pray that you or your friend or loved one never experiences anything like this, I pray for healing and strength if they have. I hope that my sharing my friend’s experience with you gives you the same empathy that I found. And in these shared experiences, maybe a community can arise.

Let us be a community that lifts each other up. Let us let others point out the boundaries that we might not see. And then let us forgo those privileges so we can someday be equals.