My Privilege

Sometimes I feel like I can’t possibly have much to say since I am a middle class white girl who is straight and identifies comfortably as the gender I was designated at birth.  I mean, sort of an ideal, or at least “easy” identity, right?  My dumb problems are the dumb problems of straight, cisgendered, middle class white girls which pale in comparison to the problems that exist in the world.

But sometimes I can remember that in ministry, I need to look for my strengths.  Maybe I can use my privilege for good.  Maybe I don’t have a powerful story that brings tears to your eyes because inherent in the problem of “eating disorder” is that I have enough food to eat and inherent in “depression” is that I am not overwhelmed by trying to feed my family or escape slavery and I have time to consider how my situation doesn’t merit the way I am reacting to it and that there might be something wrong inside my head.

Privilege.

But the thing is that there are kind of a lot of middle class white girls in this country.  Maybe they need ministry, too.  And maybe they need someone to open their world larger and make their world less about them and maybe sometimes they need a sermon to be about them and their struggles, however much they pale in relation to the struggles of others.  We all need to feel validated in order to feel effective.  We all need to be loved in order to love.

And maybe (and this is terrible, but) some poop who would be disinclined to listen to an Asian man or a a lesbian woman will listen to me because I present in ways that conform to much of society’s expectations about what is “normal.”  I don’t think I am a person who grabs attention as I walk down the street.  I am aware that your purple hair is no reason for character assumptions about you, but I am also aware that the world will make judgments about people based on their appearances.  And so maybe that crotchety old guy will listen to me because I don’t have purple hair and I can start getting him to realize why people with purple hair are nothing to be worried about and maybe we need some justice for people with purple hair.  

I don’t know if that came out right, but sometimes I think being unassuming and boring has its advantages.  I can sneak up on you because you’re not going to assume that I’m a crazy liberal heretic by looking at me because looking at me doesn’t tell you much other than that I am a privileged white girl, which could also mean that I am a crazy conservative dogmatist.  

Anyway.