I don't know what your relationship is to social justice. Maybe you're really well-informed and very passionate about it. Maybe you don't pay much attention at all, but you think it's probably a good thing. Maybe it annoys the crap out of you. Regardless, I can be pretty sure you've heard the word "privilege."

White privilege. Straight privilege. Male privilege. Thin privilege. Abled privilege. Cis privilege. The list goes on. if you are one of those people who has been told to "check your privilege," you might not be the biggest fan of the word. I understand that point of view, but I also think it comes from a lack of information about privilege itself.

So here's your article: what is privilege, why does it matter, and why does the idea that you have it kind of bother you?

Try imagining privilege as a grocery store membership, the kind that gets you access to specific products and discounts. You've had this membership for your entire life; it belonged to your parents originally and now it belongs to you, too. You've never really registered that it's a thing, because for as long as you can remember, you've just been able to walk into the store and shop there the way the membership allows you to.

One day in, say, ninth grade, a friend of yours is telling you about how expensive his school supplies were this year and how his parents were a little stressed about it. You're confused about this; you got yours at the grocery store and they were cheap enough.

He explains to you that he pays regular prices at the grocery store. His parents never had a membership, so he doesn't either. Or maybe his mom has one, but his dad doesn't, so he could get the discounts but everyone would look at him a little funny. But it's the only grocery store in town, so that's where he has to shop.

This is a little weird for you. You haven't thought much about what it would be like not to have a membership. Your whole family has a membership. Most public figures-- politicians, celebrities, even the characters in books and on TV-- have memberships. You're just not very familiar with what life is like if you don't have one.

And then when you're a freshman in college, perhaps, your cousin tells everyone that she doesn't have a membership. Her parents are very upset by this. They think she should have just kept pretending she has a membership, or that she's just saying she doesn't have one so people will pay attention to her.

When you talk to your cousin about it, she says she just never had a membership, that people just always assumed she had one, and that she just went with it for a long time because she wasn't sure how people would react.

From where you stand, it's hard to tell how much the membership affects the lives of those who don't have it. But the difference is there. They don't feel comfortable in the same spaces you do. It might cost more for them to have the same things that you do. Some things, they can't have at all. When they tell people they don't have a membership (which they have to do, because everyone assumes the opposite), it can make people uncomfortable.

But you have a membership, so it doesn't affect you most of the time. You don't usually have to think about it at all.

Obviously, it's kind of a dumb metaphor. The real-life nuances of privilege are much more complicated-- depending on who you are, you are part of some privileged groups and not part of others. You are born with most of your privileges, and you can't abandon them or pick up new ones as you go along like you can get a Costco membership whenever you feel like it. Your privilege affects your life in far more significant ways, from your physical safety to the way a job interviewer looks at you.

But in some ways, this is what privilege is. If you have it, you're born with it. If you have it, it's almost invisible to you. If you have it, it doesn't seem real at all because you are not usually faced with a situation that recognizes a lower privilege than yours. That's why talking about privilege can irritate you: your life has been the hardest thing you have ever done, and it has taken all your energy, and now someone is trying to tell you the deck has been stacked in your favor all this time.

There are a lot of things that seem unfair without the context of privilege. Maybe LGBT+-exclusive spaces seem counterproductive to you. Maybe it rubs you the wrong way when affirmative action gives someone with a lower GPA a scholarship you can't get. Maybe you don't understand why the hashtag is "black lives matter" instead of "all lives matter."

But next time an equality movement talks about your privilege, just listen. They are not accusing you of anything. They are examining a system that has hurt them. They are asking you to understand what it would be like for the world to treat you differently than it has.

They are basically requesting that you read the terms and conditions on your grocery store membership.

Try it.