Part 2: Privilege

I am freaking out a bit about privilege.

I was in a meeting the other day with three women of color. And I was thinking, gosh, isn't it nice that we have these four women with quite a bit of power between them, being successful and all that jazz. And then I realized - in a few short months I'm not going to be even perceived as a woman anymore.  And I'll have lost that little "womanhood" thing that professional women have.

So that kind of sucks. I don't really want to be "the man" that I will be when I'm perceived as a straight white male.  That's not me at all. I've always been queer, and I've always had that sort of thing where I could say to myself, "at least I'm perceived as a woman," and have some street cred among women.  But now I'll lose that, I guess.

So I guess it all comes down to, "what do I do with my privilege."  And I guess I'll need to use it to support women. But then that sort of smacks of a weird paternalism - like that woman needs my help because she's a woman and she's not as respected or whatever. But that's not true.

I have never ever felt like a second-class citizen as a woman. I've never felt like I've been treated differently, or talked down to, or any of those things that I've heard about. But just in recent times I've thought about losing that camaraderie of women thing. That thing that's like, "we're women against the world" kind of thing. I've NEVER felt that way before until I was about to lose it. You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone, I guess. Weird.