The Cisgender Privilege Checklist

Earlier this week, I was surfing the internet and came across the Cisgender Privilege Checklist released by Oberlin College. This is so important. We hear about white privilege, class privilege, and male privilege all the time, but too often is the full extent of gender privilege  truly considered. I could not imagine the amount of pain that comes with the feeling of being a prisoner in my own body. It's heartbreaking to think of, and what's worse is that people rarely ever think about it. Really, cisgendered privilege seems to be the redheaded stepchild of privilege discussions. And yet it's something that most of us have. We really need to step it up. Not only should we be more mindful of this privilege, but more active in the way we acknowledge it. The transgender community is so unapologetically discriminated against, if there's any minority group that deserves some extra compassion and empathy, it's them.

We'll dive deeper into cisgendered privilege in some later posts, but for now I highly encourage everyone to read through this checklist as well as this one, posted by ASU's Project Humanities. Both do an excellent job of describing all the bullets most of us dodge as cisgendered folk.