The problem with “privilege” is that it assumes too much and empathizes too little. The word insinuates that some people do not endure hardship or overcome obstacles. Even the phrase, “check your privilege” divides people against each other and belittles those arbitrarily deemed privileged. But what is gained in scorning someone else’s struggles simply because they do not exactly parallel our own? By comparing our own obstacles with others’ we will inevitably find that we are the “victims” of inequality because no life is exactly the same.

At the dawn of my first semester of college, I discovered that I am a statistical anomaly. Being a Christian, conservative, female college student in the midst of a Millennial resurgence of the Evangelical Left (not an oxymoron, I’ve learned) has revealed a growing problem in the consortium of private, Christian, liberal arts colleges: the divisiveness of perceived privilege.

I assumed attending a school with a little over 1,200 people and mandatory three chapels per week would only attract other students like myself: fellow religious intellectuals who fall neatly in line with mainstream Evangelicals. I was wrong.

This epiphany came one Tuesday afternoon in the student-led newspaper that landed on my dorm-step every week. It greeted me with a full two-page special feature on various morally reprehensible genres of “privilege”. The list included a few classics: white privilege and male privilege. But a few I’d never even considered were included in the litany of offences: straight privilege, able-bodied privilege, and (my personal favorite*) Christian privilege.

The piece essentially reiterated generic progressive narratives that arbitrary qualities from the moral point of view (one’s race, gender, sexual orientation, and religion, for example) contribute to/define the limitations of one’s success in life. But based on my own experience and research, I cannot believe that any of these characteristics are inherently oppressive at all. In fact, I find the mere notion that males and Christians implicitly oppress others just by the fact of their existence so deeply unsettling that this narrative needs to be addressed immediately.

Male privilege is a farce. I am not a victim. It is more than a little patronizing to be told that I am at a social disadvantage for merely being a woman. The only opposition I’ve encountered on account of my gender has been from the Left, some of whom told me that if I don’t acknowledge my own patriarchal oppression then I’ve internalized and normalized it. In other words, progressives told me that I’m too brainwashed to know any better than my victimhood.

How could a woman ever claim to be a victim in the United States? In Saudi Arabia, I would not be allowed to drive a car. In Yemen, I cannot leave the house unaccompanied by a man. In Iran, my testimony in court only counts as half a witness. It is good to be a woman in America.

In the United States, more women pursue degrees in higher educationthan men. Women are more likely to get custody of their children in divorce cases and less likely to receive the death penalty. There are far more incarcerated men than women, and men receive harsher sentencing than their female counterparts. More men die every year in work-related accidents than women. On average, women live five years longer than men. Men in college are twice as likely to be the victims of violent crimes than women in college. Shifting economies have driven male-dominated industries like manufacturing to downsize workers while women, who dominate the service industry, were far less affectedin the aftermath of the Great Recession. Where is the male privilege?

Any conversation on male privilege would be incomplete without mention of the “wage gap”. The oft-circulated statistic is that women make 33 percent less than men. By simply comparing the average man’s earnings and the average woman’s earnings does not account for education, occupation, job tenure, hours worked per week, or areas of emphasis. The statistics used to create this number are misleading at best.

In the words of Christina Hoff Sommers, “When such relevant factors are considered, the wage gap narrows to the point of vanishing.” Women are more liberated now than any other generation in human history. These falsehoods foster victim mentality in 21st-century Western women.

An even more confusing myth than male privilege is the illusion of “Christian privilege” in America. I chose my college specifically for the fact that it still boldly wears the badge of “Private Christian, Liberal Arts College”. I wanted to be surrounded by people who shared my general worldview while allowing room for debate and differing beliefs.

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