Reflect on the privilege walk video, shown under section 2.2: Privilege. Using those questions, how would you talk about your own sense of privilege? Are there questions that weren’t asked that you feel as especially important?
On thinking about the questions, my own privilege is quite high. Most of the questions that would make some step forward, I would have stepped forward for. Very few of my answers would have made me step back. While this was not new information, as I also understand that I came from a privileged position, thinking about it and answering the questions gave a lot more weight to my answer to the question of privilege. With all that being said, I was still surprised by the number of questions that I stepped back for. More specifically, the reasons why I stepped backwards. Without going into detail, I’ll take the question “If you feel comfortable being emotionally expressive/open, take one step forward.” I didn’t step forward to this question. But the thoughts on why I didn’t step forward, beyond stereotypical masculinity reasons, was quite interesting and thought provoking.
I would have added two questions to the list. Both of them would be focused on siblings. From my own life, I am privileged to have at least one great relationship with a sibling. In this relationship, we do our best to provide support to each other and build each other up. On the other side, I have another sibling who I don’t share any relationship with. In fact, there used to be a relationship, but the other sibling decided to abandon it. On retrospect, there are plenty of potential reasons to no longer have a relationship with family, but that didn’t change the feelings of the time. Feelings of abandonment and such were prevalent in the family for some time.
Specifically, the two questions I would add are the following,
Did you have a sibling that helped you through a challenging time? If you did, step forward.
Have you had a sibling that was in your life leave it for whatever reason? If you did, step backward.
Given your responses to the question above, what factors do you feel make up your concept of intersectionality?
I find myself considering the factors that make up my own concept of intersectionality in an interesting way. I found many elements that should give me a certain position/privilege in a situation being directly shaped by another. It shows how complex a person can be and that a person cannot be distilled into one identity. While I do not wish to share all the factors that make up my own identity, the following are a few. Male, Australian, eldest son, non-religious and low-income.
