Once, when I was young and beautiful, I was on the cutting edge of left-wing student politics. I marched, I waved banners and I even got myself elected as 'Campaigns Officer'. For one short & glorious year I was as annoyingly left-wing and politically correct as it was possible for a middle class, white, straight, able-bodied man to be.
If things had gone terribly wrong I might have ended up getting involved in politics properly. By now I might even have made a career out of it. Fortunately my lack of financial common sense put an end to all those hopes (although it doesn't seem to have stopped George Osborne).
I suppose the point was I was playing at politics. I'm pretty privileged all things considered. I've never had to struggle for anything. I have a loving family who have cushioned me from the worst that fate has - so far - been able to through at me. I've never had to worry about a place to live. I got through school (boys only grammar school) with the minimum of scars. I have wonderful friends. My life has never been impinged upon by religious bigotry, sexism, homophobia or anything else (excluding the occasional unoriginal joke about my weight, which I am perfectly capable of batting away these days with the use of a cricket sledge I picked up). My life has been pretty privileged.
Privilege is a mysterious thing. A lot of the time those of us that have it, don't see it. It's like a perception filter. So I've always been careful when getting involved in conversations about political issues to avoid stomping all over people's experiences because they aren't mine.
If you want to see what women have to put up with on a day-to-day basis: look at #everydaysexism on Twitter. Some of it might make you feel guilty. Sometimes I get confused about whether my behaviour is right or not. I see myself as acting from the best of motives but what if that is still wrong. In my view you have to listen carefully to what other people tell you. My experience is limited to my experience. Yours to yours.
We don't experience the world in the same way. We can't possibly. How different would my life have been if I'd been Toni, for example. It might have been exactly the same. Might. I suspect it wouldn't. The key thing for me is empathy and if your first reaction to someone is to say, 'no that's not how it is because I say so' then something is wrong.
You can't use language that is designed to hurt or belittle people because their viewpoint is different to yours or because they've pulled you up on something that you've said or done. There are many degrees of privilege in society, many different ways to experience it but telling someone that their experience isn't valid or is less valid than others is surely oppression of some kind.
So if you believe in a cause, the success of which will benefit a huge group of people. That's great. But if you believe that only your experience is valid & you use the platform you have to express that belief at the expense of others then something is wrong. Talking down to people, excluding their experiences because they don't fit an arbitrary set of categories or just trying to make them invisible by omission is wrong. The rightness of your cause makes no difference to this.
It is possible to be on the right side of history & still be a bully.
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