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1. Know you are privileged

2. Stand up for those who are underprivileged

3. Educate others around you

For more ways you can help underprivileged people read the article below.

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Privilege maintains itself through silence and denial. So while you cannot get rid of your privilege, you can acknowledge it. When we force privilege into view and discuss it openly we engage in solidarity with those who do not share in certain privileges with us.

1. When engaging with the media, keep in mind that privilege exists and it is real. See if you can identify it while watching television, listening to the news, or playing video games.

2. Point out instances in which members of groups other than your own are being hampered by their exclusion from privilege. Help to educate others around you about the operation of privilege in the media.

3. Don't be afraid to make a statement, write a letter, post a blog, get into a discussion, or create dialogue and criticism in some way to comment on instances of privilege in the media.

4. If you benefit from privilege of any kind, you will undoubtedly someday be addressed about it. Acknowledge your privilege when it is pointed out to you and take that opportunity to learn something new about privilege.

5. Privilege will never go away until the systems in our society that cause discrimination go away. In your own daily life, work to make those systems visible and call them into question when you can so that someday we all enjoy the benefits of being on equal footing with each other.

Further reading:
For more information on privilege from a social justice standpoint see some of the following organizations:
Wellesley Centers for Women Transformative Justice Law Project of Illinois
Harvard MIT School of Architecture and Planning diversity resources, Identifying privilege checklists

Project Implicit - An online assessment tool for exploring conscious and unconscious preferences.

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Privilege maintains itself through silence and denial. So while you cannot get rid of your privilege, you can acknowledge it. When we force privilege into view and discuss it openly we engage in solidarity with those who do not share in certain privileges with us.

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There is so many kinds of privilege including: Male privilege, attractive privilege, and white privilege. This article discusses the multi-realms of privilege.

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Disclaimer: This page, as all other on this blog, is a work in progress. If you feel I am lacking a discussion of any privileges, please be aware that I'm not trying to exclude. I will continue to add summaries as I have more time. In addition, my research on these subjects is continuous and...

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The video below encompasses stories of those who believe they are privileged. The Buzzfeed video allows people to understand the effects of societal privilege. "Some people have things and other people do not have things" is a quote from the video that simplifies what privilege means. However, the aspect they are missing is that those things were unearned by those who already have them.

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Oppression is defined as "the prolonged, unjust treatment or control of people by others." Many people have suffered from oppression their wholes life and most do not even know they are being oppressed.

In today's society, oppression can mean denying someone language, care, and education that may make them full in mind and body. Either definition is unfair and unjust.
The image below is powerful because it shows that no one should deny opportunities to people of color or different ethnicity. We were all born human and should all have EQUAL OPPORTUNITY.

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In early years before women had the same rights as men, women could not own property. In reality, women were treated like property themselves by men. What causes men's desire for oppressing women? Two words: Power and Control.

The article below discusses the why men oppress women and their need to steal any power women may have.

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Even if they belonged to higher social classes, most women throughout history have been enslaved by men. Until recent times, women throughout Europe, Middle East and Asia were unable to have any influence over the political, religious or cultural lives of their societies. They couldn't own property or inherit land and wealth, and were frequently treated as mere property themselves. In some countries they could be confiscated by money lenders or tax collectors to help settle debts; in ancient Assyria, the punishment for rape was the handing over of the rapist's wife to the husband of his victim, to use as he desired. Most gruesomely of all, some cultures practised what anthropologists have called ritual widow murder (or ritual widow suicide), when women would be killed (or kill themselves) shortly after the deaths of their husbands. This was common throughout India and China until the twentieth century, and there are still occasional cases nowadays.

Even in the so-called 'enlightened' society of ancient Greece - where the concept of democracy supposedly originated - women had no property or political rights, and were forbidden to leave their homes after dark. Similarly, in ancient Rome women unable to take part in social events (except as employed 'escort girls') and were only allowed to leave their homes with their husband or a male relative.

In Europe and America (and some other countries) the status of women has risen significantly over the last few decades, but in many parts of the world male domination and oppression continues. In some Middle Eastern countries, for example, women effectively live as prisoners, unable to leave the house except under the guardianship of a male guardian. They have no role at all in determining their own lives; they are seen as nothing more than a commodity, property of the males of the family, and as owners, the men have the right to make decisions for them. Their male owners have the right to have sex with them on demand too. In Egypt, surveys have shown that the vast majority of men and women believe it is acceptable for a man to beat his wife if she refuses sex.

There have been attempts to explain the oppression of women in biological terms. For example, the sociologist Stephen Goldberg suggested that men are naturally more competitive than women because of their high level of testosterone. This makes them aggressive and power-hungry, so that they inevitably take over the high status positions in a society, leaving women to the more subordinate roles.

However, in my view the maltreatment of women has more deep-rooted psychological causes. In my book The Fall, I suggest that most human beings suffer from an underlying psychological disorder, which I call 'humania.' The oppression of women is a symptom of this disorder. It's one thing to take over the positions of power in a society, but another to seemingly despise women, and inflict so much brutality and degradation on them. What sane species would treat half of its members - and the very half which gives birth to the whole species - with such contempt and injustice? Despite their high level of testosterone, the men of many ancient and indigenous cultures revered women for their life-giving and nurturing role, so why don't we?

The oppression of women stems largely from men's desire for power and control. The same need which, throughout history, has driven men to try to conquer and subjugate other groups or nations, and to oppress other classes or groups in their own society, drives them to dominate and oppress women. Since men feel the need to gain as much power and control as they can, they steal away power and control from women. They deny women the right to make decisions so that they can make them for them, leave women unable to direct their own lives so that they can direct their lives for them. Ultimately, they're trying to increase their sense of significance and status, in an effort to offset the discontent and sense of lack created by humania.

But even this isn't enough to explain the full terrible saga of man's inhumanity to woman. Many cultures have had a strong antagonism towards women, viewing them as impure and innately sinful creatures who have been sent by the devil to lead men astray. This view was at the heart of the European witch-killing mania of the 15th to 18th centuries, and has featured strongly in all three Abrahamic religions. As the Jewish Testament of Reuben states:

Women are evil, my children...they use wiles and try to ensnare [man] by their charms...They lay plots in their hearts against men: by the way they adorn themselves they first lead their minds astray, and by a look they instil the poison, and then in the act itself they take them captive...So shun fornication, my children and command your wives and daughters not to adorn their heads and faces.

This is linked to the view - encouraged by religions - that instincts and sensual desires are base and sinful. Men associated themselves with the "purity" of the mind, and women with the "corruption" of the body. Since biological processes like sex, menstruation, breast-feeding and even pregnancy were disgusting, women themselves disgusted them too.

In connection with this, perhaps men have resented the sexual power that women have over them too. Feeling that sex was sinful, they were bound to feel animosity to the women who produced their sexual desires. In addition, women's sexual power must have affronted their need for control. This meant that they couldn't have the complete domination over women - and over their own bodies - that they craved. They might be able to force women to cover their bodies and faces and make them live like slaves, but any woman was capable of arousing powerful and uncontrollable sexual impulses inside them at any moment. The last 6000 years of man's inhumanity to woman can partly be seen as a revenge for this.

We can only be thankful that, in some parts of the world at least, this antagonism - and the oppression that it leads to - has begun to fade away.

Steve Taylor is a lecturer in psychology at Leeds Metropolitan University, UK. He is the author of The Fall and Back to Sanity: Healing the Madness of the Human Mind. www. stevenmtaylor.co m

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Even if they belonged to higher social classes, most women throughout history have been enslaved by men. Until recent times, women throughout Europe, Middle East and Asia were unable to have any influence over the political, religious or cultural lives of their societies.