Immediately, students in the back rows complained. As opposed to the complaints in Orenstein's example, these were legitimate calls against discrimination. Those favoured simply because they happened to be sitting in the front seats would have to work less hard and have more luck on their side, while those sitting in the back rows were immediately disadvantaged. The conclusion was simple. The closer you sat to the target, the better the odds of you hitting it. This is what privilege looks like. It is easy to think of ourselves as deserving when we are favoured by the odds. It is easy for a world which favours men and class and white skin and cisgendered heterosexuality to pretend that the benefits bestowed for these attributes have been earned by individuals, and not simply engineered in their favour. But equality for all cannot exist while maintaining privilege, because the latter demands that its recipients be given special priority and consideration. Equality can only be realised once privilege and power is dismantled - and the dismantling of this privilege and power can only be achieved by taking it away from those who have it. A few months ago, I posted a photo of the musician Kathleen Hanna on my Facebook wall. The photo was a still from a documentary made about Hanna called The Punk Singer, and it showed her standing on a stage in the early '90s. In the documentary, she says, "All girls to the front! I'm not even kidding. All boys be cool, for once in your lives. Go back… back." The importance of this scene cannot be understated. One of the motivations behind the Riot Grrrl scene Hanna was part of was to challenge the accepted belief that women couldn't play instruments as well as men. In standing on that stage and calling for the men to move back, Hanna was making space for women not only to participate but to feel safe and free and involved and in control. It was an enormously powerful gesture. So I posted this on my wall and explained the context. Within the space of a few comments, people - mainly young men - began arguing that this was sexism. That this wasn't what equality looked like. That men being *forced* to lose their space at the front of the stage was actually a form of reverse sexism (which, as we all know, is the worst kind of sexism there is).

Men, it was argued, shouldn't have to lose things in order for women to gain. I followed these arguments with no small amount of frustration. Has the perception of equality and striving for it been so twisted that we no longer understand what it looks like? From a practical viewpoint, if the first three rows at a concert are only made up of men, how can women equally share in that space without a proportion of those men having to surrender it? Those who have never experienced discrimination cannot be harmed by being suddenly exposed to what it feels like. Asking men to stand at the back of a room so that women can, for the first time, take their place at the front is not throwing the balance of power out of whack. It isn't spitting in the face of equality activism. More to the point, it is not substantially or even remotely hurting those men who have considered without question that it is their right to stand wherever they want and take up as much space as they like. And nor should their feelings be prioritised when embarking on a course of action to redress imbalances of power. The oppressed and marginalised have no responsibility to ensure that those with power will be left unscathed by the revolution. Change bruises and scars and leaves behind the marks we must carry as a society to remember the mistakes we have made. If you are holding onto power while pretending to advocate for equality, you are part of the problem. If you are speaking for the marginalised when you enjoy power and privilege over them, you are part of the problem. If you refuse to address the ways in which you benefit from other people's oppression, preferring instead to talk about equality as if it's a matter of simply giving people a hand up to the platform on which you stand, you are part of the problem. These are the hard and uncomfortable truths that we need to face, especially those of us who enjoy an intersection of those privileges and the associated power. For true equality and liberation to be possible, we have to be willing to sacrifice that which gives us power. It is necessary to address the representation of people in power, not just according to their gender but according also to their race, sexuality and able-bodiedness. Gender equality cannot be conceived as a fight to make white women equal with white men, but to make all women equal with all men.

Equality comes from people either sacrificing their privilege or having it forcibly taken away from them. It does not come from waiting from the oppressed to rise up and meet it. Men with power cannot hold onto it and argue in favour of gender equality at the same time. It doesn't work like that. The battle for gender equality WILL mean a loss of power and privilege for men, and this isn't a bad thing. It's time we stopped pretending otherwise. But if all you can think about when you think about equality is everything you stand to lose, then you're not trying hard enough. And yes, you are part of the problem. This is an abridged version of a keynote presentation delivered at the Communities in Control 2015 conference, hosted by Our Communities.