There are worse character traits, I know, than sanctimony. After all, it’s really just good liberal instincts taken to overly pious extremes. But the urge to sit in self-righteous judgment on everyone else, to luxuriate in one’s own moral superiority, is so often what helps the left make enemies out of potential friends.

So when the phrase “check your privilege” began to be bandied around on social media some years ago – as a sort of rough shorthand for “you can’t possibly know what you’re talking about, because unlike me, you have never truly suffered” – it grated. I told myself that was because it was invariably deployed by sanctimonious people when losing arguments. But in the last couple of years, as “check your privilege” has gone wherever fashionable catchphrases go to die and been superseded by a more thoughtful examination of what privilege means and what responsibilities it confers, I’ve come to realise that isn’t really why I hated it. It’s probably not why anyone hated it. The real problem is that nobody likes to think of themselves as privileged, with its connotations of pampered ignorance and thoroughly undeserved success. Yet most of us are vulnerable to the charge on some level, myself included.

If you got a degree for free, or went to university full stop then you are in some senses a winner in life’s lottery

This autumn, reading Reni Eddo-Lodge’s Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race just as the Harvey Weinstein affair was breaking, it dawned on me – that spasm of irritation, triggered every time a genuinely nice, well-meaning man tried to say something sympathetic about sexual harassment and got it wrong? That’s what nice, well-meaning white people must sound like on a regular basis, trying and failing to say the right thing about race. You only have to be a fraction off, a tiny bit careless with words or unaware of nuances, to make someone wince. And in truth, most of us are a fraction off on something.

Oh yes, you are. If you’re a man, or straight, or healthy and able-bodied; if you have more than the median national household income coming in, or would be secretly surprised to know that that is £27,700, then you’re privileged on at least one score, and there may well be some experiences you don’t properly understand.

If you’re old enough to have bought a house while that was still even remotely possible, or to have got a university degree for free, or to have gone to university full stop – well, then you were in some senses a winner in life’s lottery, and should bear that in mind when judging others. Failure to check generational privilege is behind virtually all articles suggesting millennials could become owner occupiers by spending less on avocado toast.

Privilege isn’t reserved for those who went to Eton, and it’s all relative. If you can read this, you’re privileged compared to the 15% of Britons who aren’t functionally literate, and so should think twice before making snotty assumptions about people who don’t follow the news.

And yet to confess to having been dealt even one good card in life invites the charge of not having succeeded on merit, which is why so many people refuse to accept it. We’d rather see ourselves as the deserving guys, the ones who made it against the odds, and so we dwell lovingly on the ways in which we were disadvantaged, because most people can tick at least one of those boxes too.

Like many people, I could tell my life story in two ways, and both would be true. In one version, my dad grew up on a council estate and left school at 15 with no qualifications. Money was tight when I was small, and he was often out of work, so despite earning a good living now I’ve never lost the fear that it could all be over tomorrow. Growing up, I didn’t know anyone in journalism and wasn’t encouraged at my state school to consider that as a career. Life in a male-dominated industry hasn’t always been easy and yes, #metoo.

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But in the version without the background violins, my mother was from a middle-class background and our fortunes changed dramatically in my teens, when my dad got his big break as an actor. I went to Cambridge, which must have opened some doors for me. And being white, the closest I’ve ever come to experiencing racism was ending up on some far-right hate list of Jewish journalists despite not actually being Jewish (foreign-sounding surname, apparently). Privileged? It all depends who’s asking.

And if that’s what used to be called checking a privilege – recognising that you’ve been lucky in ways it would be churlish to ignore, that consequently it sometimes pays to shut up and listen, that truths each of us hold to be self-evident may look very different from a different perspective – well, then I was wrong. It’s no bad thing, or at least so long as everyone strives to avoid sanctimony in response. Because I definitely wasn’t wrong about that.

• Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist