Privilege-checking has its roots in academia (of course) but when it first emerged three decades ago it was a minority pursuit. Back in 1988, Peggy McIntosh, professor of women’s studies, wrote a paper called “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences Through Work in Women’s Studies.” In it, she helped rehabilitate the then-unfashionable view that men and women, white people and black people, are born differently and as a result experience the world in different ways.

“Check your privilege!” It happened again last week. I was speaking about feminism to a large and vocal audience and my views were, rightly, coming under scrutiny. I was accused of criticizing #MeToo but ignoring domestic violence, using pay gap and employment data selectively, and focusing exclusively on the experiences of middle-class women. It was a robust and stimulating debate. Then, just before the end, came the now-hackneyed retort: privilege! My criticisms of feminism were, I was told, simply a reflection of my own privilege, and I should shut up and listen to those with less of it.

Privilege-checking has its roots in academia (of course) but when it first emerged three decades ago it was a minority pursuit. Back in 1988, Peggy McIntosh, professor of women’s studies, wrote a paper called “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences Through Work in Women’s Studies.” In it, she helped rehabilitate the then-unfashionable view that men and women, white people and black people, are born differently and as a result experience the world in different ways.

McIntosh’s work preempted later thinking in critical race theory and gender studies; it lent weight to the idea that people can be categorized according to gender, race, and sexuality, and that each group membership confers particular advantages or disadvantages. Intersectionality became the word of choice to describe how individuals, who might belong to several overlapping groups, faced multiple layers of interconnected discrimination.

Privilege-checking took off around 2013 when it moved from academia to social media. The idea that people gain special advantages—privilege—based on the groups they belong to rapidly became a convenient means of keeping an intersectional score card. In the minds of those keeping count, privilege is something that must, like original sin, be acknowledged and atoned for. Over the past five years, calls on anyone making an argument that challenges the intersectional orthodoxy to check their privilege have become ubiquitous. It’s the go-to response of those determined to stake a claim to the moral high ground but unable to formulate a coherent argument.

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