All that said, I do think there’s value in writing about how entitled white men behave, so everyone else can make informed decisions to act similarly in some circumstances, and to protect yourself from this behavior in others.

Acting entitled in order to jump a line makes you an asshole, but acting entitled can be a helpful tool in fighting against injustice — that is, when you are entitled. Or when no one’s entitled — you want to suggest yourself as an intern for an internship program that does not yet exist — so you might as well give it a shot.

When functioning within institutions putatively committed to diversity and fairness, acting entitled can be effective for many types of people. We’ve all heard that “women don’t ask” for raises. We should. Students who need disability accommodations from universities are encouraged to constantly advocate for themselves. Simply assuming that OBVIOUSLY you will be provided with accommodations — and acting confused but polite until you receive them — might work when dealing with a modern, liberally-minded university system.

There are other situations in which acting entitled — or acting like you belong at all, even when you do — can have serious consequences for people who lack privilege. Trayon Christian dared to spend his hard-earned money on a nice belt. It probably wouldn’t work out so well for him to have played at Bank of America’s ping-pong table for an hour.

I think there’s value in sharing with everyone the attitudes and expectations that privileged people use to operate in the world. I often recommend that everybody, at every income level, read one copy of Forbes sometime, just to get an idea of how the rich think about money. (For instance, the word “income,” as used in Forbes, doesn’t mean “money you get from your job.” It means the money that is generated from your investments, which you can often live off of — or better — without doing what most of us would call “work.” Whether you want to be the people in Forbes or you want to be armed to do battle with them, it’s helpful to know how the 1% thinks.)

But the right way to talk about this — about “ruling your world” with mind-control (and servicepeople-control) techniques — involves acknowledging structural barriers that allow some people to do this while punishing others for trying. And it involves a healthy discussion of whether we should.

Jennifer Dziura is the founder of GetBullish, an organization that provides career and general badassery resources from a feminist perspective and offers a web shop and an annual conference.