Like all men of a certain age, I am regularly implored to check my stools for signs of bowel disease, my testicles for unusual lumps and my opinions for symptoms of privilege. All three tasks are distasteful, undesirable and best conducted privately in a moment of quiet contemplation. All three are probably worth the effort.

You may have noticed a bit of a gender-related stooshie in media circles recently. I have no wish to reopen that wound, but a related debate that has been running for a while was brought into sharp focus by recent events. There is palpable resentment among sections of the commentariat that their readers and online correspondents sometimes like to remind them of their privilege. It is significant that such complaints (seen here, here and here) usually come from the centre left, not the right. People who would never criticise feminism or anti-racism projects suddenly start grumbling about identity politics when asked to consider not just a single axis of oppression (patriarchy or racism) but several simultaneously. It is surely not coincidental that their problems with identity politics seem to arise at the precise moment they are reminded of their own multiple privileges, or if you prefer, when identity politics moves from the sectional to the intersectional.

Identity politics can easily become a kind of oppression Olympics, with the winner the one wearing the most section badges of oppression. Intersectional analysis does not add to that puzzle so much as attempt to solve it. It implies that you cannot address forms of oppression in isolation, that you cannot argue that injustices facing some parts of society are a distraction from bigger issues, and that you should be aware that your words and deeds can serve to exclude potential allies from that fight or even add to their oppression.

In social theory, according to Peggy McIntosh's classic metaphor, privilege is: "an invisible, weightless backpack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks". It is not the same as power, wealth or control, and is no guarantee of such rewards, it is better thought of as a mechanism which societies use to ensure power, wealth and control remain concentrated in the usual hands. The most important aspect to privilege is that we are often unaware of it. Since the lives of the privileged are described as, portrayed as and experienced as the norm, other experiences are seen as aberrant deviations from how things should be. For example, leaving aside the validity of the sums and arguments about the gender pay gap, it is striking that it is almost invariably presented as the average women earning 20% (or whatever) less than the average man, not as the average man being 20% overpaid. The male experience is considered par, standardised at 100%.

Alternatively, I am not oblivious to the irony that when the stalwarts of Cif's You Tell Us wanted an objective and fair-minded overview of concepts of privilege, they requested a straight, white, middle class man for the gig. Consider it an exercise in self-referential satire.

There are many philosophical and political problems with privilege theory. The complex mechanics of oppression are not simple or self-evident and academics can and do devote lifetimes to debating the detail. Personally I believe that most of us are oppressed in various ways by economic systems, and that racism, sexism, class prejudice and the rest are actively fostered and sustained by the demands of capital. Socially prescribed gender roles, for example, can be oppressive for men too, which would imply that female privilege must be acknowledged in some contexts.

The obscuring of male victims of domestic and sexual violence would be a case in point, as would the equating of parenthood with motherhood. The counter-argument, that accruing wealth, power and career progression is everyone's primary ambition while domestic and relationship sacrifices are simply costs of dominance, strikes me as yet another privileged, middle-class perspective. Instructions to check our privilege remind us of these complexities. They assert that we cannot insist people of different backgrounds and experiences should share our precise political concerns, and that issues which concern members of a vulnerable group cannot be discounted as trivial. They do not mean that one perspective is necessarily wrong, just that it cannot be assumed to be correct or the whole story.

As a straight white middle-class male with an interest in gender issues, I am inevitably accused of abuse of privilege and "mansplaining". Sometimes it strikes me as disingenuous, an attempt to close down discussion or restrict the voices in a debate to preferred perspectives. Sometimes it is entirely deserved, and with hindsight I'll agree that yes, I was being a condescending jerk. At other times I will think I've checked my privilege, and I'm sorry but I still don't agree with you. That is not an abuse of privilege, but an essential option in an inclusive debate. A privilege check is not really a trump card in a debate, so much as a call for a time out for tactical reappraisal by those on our own side. That strikes me as no bad thing.

Privilege-checking can be irritating and frustrating, but it bothers me less than pronouncements from those with the highest platforms and largest megaphones demanding acquiescence to their status, acceptance of their values and the right to police the tone or limit the range of objections of their detractors. Now that really is an abuse of privilege.

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