An Observation

[Content Note: Privilege.]

Some marginalized people are entitled. Because some human beings are entitled.

But something I've noticed is that a lot of people with multiple axes of privilege tend to translate as "entitlement" what is actually better described as a really desperate yearning, a particular yearning that comes from getting close to what you want over and over, but never quite getting there.

There's a certain kind of thwarting that happens to marginalized people that doesn't happen to privileged people. And those of us with complex identities, who are privileged along some axes and marginalized along others, understand this keenly. Because we see how the marginalized parts of ourselves are used to thwart us in ways that the privileged parts of ourselves never are.

And people who never experience that particular kind of failure don't really understand the frustrated desperation it can engender.

So lots of them develop a habit of translating it as entitlement, which is something they do understand.

Some of them do this unconsciously, but some of them do it because misconstruing desperation as entitlement is one of the many ways that marginalized people are thwarted.