Privilege ? What Privilege ? 

I read it a lot these days. I'll be perusing some blog or other and reading an article about some issue of importance -- usually to do with civil rights or equal treatment for all  -- and someone will throw down with "Check your privilege, asshole" as if it were some kind of trump card. Personally, as I only rarely comment on blog posts and I don't post anything that would be considered privilege speaking, I don't get such replies often, and usually when I do it's some miscommunication or someone trolling by giving my words the least charitable interpretation. As if I had said "it's a bright sunny day" and someone jumped in with "Are you trying to insult the Albino community!??!!! check your privilege, Asshole!"  (there's always an insult added on. )



Except that every time someone says "you're privileged" I get an image of The Rockefellars, Guggenheims, Astors or WTF-Ever. Privileged ?
 Not in that way, no. I have no money, no status, no 4000 sq. foot mansion, no square mile of land to fence in and call mine. But what I do have is:
 the police are less likely to stop me on the street (as long as I stay out of Scottsdale.) The airport security are less likely to hold me up for a goosing search than someone of swarthy skin. No man in his right mind is going to approach me in a parking garage with the idea of raping me.
(but then women who see me coming run for the elevator, so we're even on that*.) I am also more likely to be the one who gets a cab if you (not privileged person) and me both step out and wave our arms. In short, no, I'm not Richie Rich with my gold plated ass wiper machine.
I am however treated better than many of my non-white, non-male, non straight fellow planet-dwellers. Not through anything I did or did not do, but simply because of accident of birth.
Of course, we need to change this. Why should we not? Does not everyone deserve a level playing field ?
*(because I'm 195+ cm tall, 300 lbs , look like Lon Chaney in a b horror movie and move like dirty harry looking for someone to shoot.)
By the way, yes, I was relentlessly tormented and bullied at school, and not at all part of any privileged clique. I know very well what it's like to be an outsider. No, I'm not claiming I know what it is to be anything other than myself. My experience is not yours, yours is not mine.
But I do wish we had a different label to describe it. Something that didn't imply I was some born-with-a-gold-spoon in his mouth snob.