‘I wish I had the security of a straight white man’ is a phrase we’ve adopted in my group, and one we say more often than we’d like. We’re mostly gays and girls and we don’t have that many straight white male friends. Perhaps because of that, because we’re not used to it, we can quickly distinguish the overconfidence of some of them. They are gestures with which they show that the world loves them unconditionally, that they always land on their feet, that they don’t have to ask for permission or forgiveness, that they don’t have to question anything. It’s doing things without having thought about it at all, advice they assume you need, a comment or an unfinished sentence with which they expect you to make the effort to understand them, instead of them making the effort to explain themselves. It’s a feeling of impunity and immunity that is frightening. It’s audacity, in short. And I love them all the same, though, because they are my friends.