Our Experiences, Our Privileges
Experiences are affected by privilege or the lack thereof; compassion and intuition and academic knowledge come when one is prepared to challenge, contextualize, and understand their experiences and the experiences of others.
One part of pointing out what it means to be privileged is to show how the experience of privilege often shelters the privilege-bearer from realities that oppressed people face, and skews the perception of the privilege-bearer. For instance, when all you know is one thing, then being introduced to those other things can be shocking, unwanted, even horrific – when to someone who only knows those other things, it’s routine, normal, even laudable.
Therefore, noting how “shocking” a privileged group finds some mundane reality of an oppressed group is part of pointing out privilege. Even when it just comes down to thin people finding it “shocking” that anyone can wear over a size 12 in women’s, or that a size 30 in women's exists – the act of being shocked is equivalent to saying, “That’s not acceptable” or “only things I experience are acceptable.”
And when you hail from a privileged group, the normalization of your privileged experience is a part of oppression.
-ArteToLife
