[effigies]

To mangle a famous quote, "The greatest trick privilege ever pulled was to convince the privileged it didn't exist."

One of the toughest problems with structural inequalities is that they hide themselves from those who are benefited, largely because they are not directly and adversely affected by the inequality. This is exacerbated by the fact that on the whole, privileged people are not bad people, and coming to grips with how much the system favors you by virtue of being born into the right family can certainly make you feel like an undeserving wretch, profiting off of the misery of countless others. It is vastly more comfortable not to think about these things, particularly when thinking about them often makes you feel even worse when you realize there's no easy way to correct them.

But that discomfort is one price we, as privileged people, should pay. We should live in a shameful awareness of how we benefit from a system that undervalues and exploits people to greater and lesser degrees. We should recognize that denigration of things through sexist, ablist, racist or heteronormative language is an expression of indifference to the suffering of people. We should live our shame because it cannot match what we collectively allow to happen to other people, because otherwise we are passive participants in the continued oppression of other people, and because maybe being painfully aware of what we are doing to them will also make us aware of steps we can take to end the structural oppression.