Oops, I Have Invisible Privilege
How have you had to organize yourself to get to where you are today?
Privilege is a word that only offends the privileged.
By now, we all know how privilege shows up in the outer world. (If you don’t, I dunno how you got here but I suggest you buckle on up—you’re going for a ride.)
Starting with police bias and brutality (cough murders cough), school funding, job opportunities*, wage gaps**, wrongful conviction rates…
Unfortunately, these examples are just the warm up.
(*If only the authors of this 2023 article knew that a year later DEI would be labeled the villain for job inequality 🙄)
(**I was going to link you to the US Department of Labor blog post titled ‘What You Need to Know About the Gender Wage Gap’ but it looks like a certain someone recently took it down 🙃).
There is also invisible privilege.
Now I am not the first or smartest person to talk about how privilege shows up in our inner worlds (shouts outs to Kimberlé Crenshaw, Audre Lorde, James Baldwin) but I do have a voice and a Parts Work perspective and I intend to wield them both in service of making humanity better from the inside out.
This is also about you, personally, and how you’ve organized yourself to get to where you are today despite all you’ve had to endure.
In the inner world, privilege has to do with the emotional burdens and cognitive load you are forced to bear based on the body, sexual orientation, and zipcode you were born in.
I’m calling it ‘invisible privilege’ because the emotional burdens literally go unseen with the physical eye because they live in the inner world. But also because, if you’re privileged, you aren’t seeing those burdens in your inner world, either. All you’re seeing is what isn’t there.
For instance…
In a man’s body, you don’t have to experience the energy expenditure it takes to have a period every month. Or deal with the burden of an expectation from all of society that you will be the one to do everyone else’s emotional labor.
You’ve never had to be the one sitting alone on the bathroom floor holding a positive pregnancy test debating whether you should tell anyone or keep this one between you and god. And if you gotta tell them, how? When? What if they get violent when they find out?
I’ve never been in anything other than a white body, but I know for sure I have never had to think about how the granny in the window is recording me walking through her neighborhood.
I’ve never had to worry about people asking ignorant questions about my hair, much less touching it without consent. I’ve never had to bear the expectation of speaking on behalf of my entire culture as if we were a monolith.
I’ve never had to be the one getting pulled over for speeding, a part of me wondering if this is the day I die.
Let’s talk sexuality.
I’ve never been in love with someone of the same gender (yet 🤭) and have never had to stop holding hands for the night because Nana is over for Thanksgiving and you know how she feels about that kind of stuff. I’ve never been targeted with ignorant questions about “how sex works for me” or wonder if my marriage to the love of my life is still going to be recognized by the government in 4 years.
And I certainly haven’t had to bear the emotional burden of experiencing a painful chasm between who I am on the inside and the physical body I was born in to. I haven’t had to consider if taking the steps to align my physical body with who I am on the inside is worth becoming a target for so much hate and violence. Or the emotional expenditure it takes to disclose to my crush where I’m at in my transition journey.
Ya’ll already know the point I am trying to make here but listen, I’ve seen the Orange County, CA kids do a shitty talent show for their parents and charge them “admission.” They made some hundreds.
When I was their age, I was so fucking hungry in the back of my dad’s car as he drove all over town trying to find a place that would cash his check so we could buy dinner.
But I’ve still never been unable to buy fresh produce because I live in a food desert. I haven’t ever daydreamed about making it out of my neighborhood one day but knowing the odds are bleak.
I’ve also never had to worry about a family member being deported.
You already get it but here it is plainly:
The further you are from being a white, straight, neurotypical, cis, man born into a wealthy family, the more of your inner world real-estate is going to be taken up by emotional burdens.
You’re just going to have to think about things and worry about things and wonder about things that other people will never have to.
And goddamn does that take it’s toll.
This is why intersectionality is so important because it’s essentially stacking emotional burdens.
Intersectionality is, in part, a conversation about the amount of inner world real-estate that’s been stolen from you by the status quo of society.
When you’ve got to think about the perils of being Latina and queer and in a food desert, shit, there’s not much more space in there to think about anything other than making it through the day.
It takes so much reorganization and sense making and mustering up of power to organize the excess burdens of oppression in a way that will help you continue to live one more day. Much less follow your dreams.
Luckily, the inner world expands infinitely and the excess emotional burdens can always be cleverly and bravely organized in a way that propels you into more of your power. But fuck me does it take work. And a village.
(Parts Work is the modality that has helped me the most with self-organization, by the way. I created a free Meet A Part of You Worksheet to try it out for yourself.)
The more intersectional your identity the more powerfully you have to learn to hold the conversation you’re having with life. The braver you have to be amidst the emotional tension of your inner world to reclaim yourself as yours.
To the white cis man who doesn’t “feel” privileged…
Who says, “If I’m so privileged then why is my life still so mediocre and hard?”
Look, ima say this with love because I genuinely love a lot of you guys…but I’m also gunna say it.
Just because you haven’t learned to organize your personal emotional burdens in a way that allows you to feel good about yourself and your life 👏 does 👏 not 👏 mean 👏 you don’t have significantly—significantly—less emotional burdens than someone brown or black or woman or trans or queer.
You have, you’ve always had, and always will have less emotional burdens and cognitive load because you’re living in a society that has set itself up to cater to exactly your emotional burdens and easing exactly your cognitive load.
I don’t say this so you’ll feel like shit about yourself.
I’m saying this to redirect your attention to a more productive question for everyone.
Because this is VERY important.
Your life is going to stop feeling so mediocre when you start asking questions like this:
“If I live in a society with systems built by straight white men for straight white men that center the feelings and voice and power of straight white men…
…and I still feel unworthy inside and my life still feels mediocre and hard and I still feel lonely as hell…
…how good can the systems those straight white men created possibly be?”
Start thinking about how you can organize yourself into a man who wields his life in a way that makes things better for everyone.
(Again, Parts Work.)
Please hear me, there is no substitute for you—we need you. But goddamit we need you to wake the fuck up and put your money where you say your values lie.
And while I’m at it—white ladies, this applies to us too.
To the rest of ya’ll, I am just so in awe and inspired on how you’re continuing to organize yourself amidst this time of great uncertainty. Please continue to take good, good care of yourself and one another. I am sorry it is taking so long for us white folks to catch up.
I have both short and long term parts work coaching spots open. You want in on this magic? Book a call with me and let’s talk.