What is Heterosexual Privilege?
- Living without ever having to think twice, face, confront, engage, or cope with anything on this page. Heterosexuals can address these phenomena by social/political forces do not require you to do so.
- Marrying... which includes the following privileges:
- Public recognition and support for an intimate relationship
- Receiving cards or phone calls celebrating you commitment to another person.
- Supporting activities and social expectations of longevity and stability for your committed relationships.
- Paid leave from employment and condolences when grieving the death of your partner/lover (i.e. legal members defined by marriage and descendants from marriages).
- Inheriting from your partner/lover/companion automatically under probate laws.
- Sharing health, auto, and homeowners' insurance policies at reduced rates.
- Immediate access to your loved ones in cases of accident or emergency.
- Family-of-origin support for a life partner/lover/companion.
- Increased possibilities for getting a job, receiving on the job training and promotion.
- Kissing/hugging/being affectionate in public without threat or punishment.
- Talking about your relationship or what projects, vacations, family planning you and your partner/lover are creating.
- Not questioning your normalcy, sexually and culturally.
- Expressing pain when a relationship ends and having other people notice and attend to your pain.
- Adopting children, foster-parenting children.
- Being employed as a teacher in pre-school through high school without fear of being fired any day because you are assumed to corrupt children.
- Raising children without threats of state intervention, without children having to be worried which of their friends might reject them because of their parent's sexuality and culture.
- Dating the person of your desire in your teen years.
- Living with your partner and doing so openly to all.
- Receiving validation from your religious community.
- Receiving social acceptance by neighbors, colleagues, new friends.
- Not having to hide and lie about same-sex social events.
- Working without always being identified by your sexuality/culture (e.g. you get to be a farmer, brick layer, artist, etc. without being labeled the heterosexual farmer, the heterosexual teacher).
