That's a terrible way to put "being aware of the other side of the fence". At its worse, this may be as the author describes, but "checking your privilege" is intended to improve awareness of the other gender identities, the other classes, the other races. It's reminding yourself that there are other cultures whose challenges you should consider. There's no reason why a "more privileged" person should be discounted from a discussion, but it is a reminder to listen to the perspectives they might not themselves have experienced.A certain sort of self-deprecating privilege awareness has become, in effect, upper- or upper-middle-class good manners, maybe even a new form of noblesse oblige, reinforcing class divides.
I agree with everything you said, but really this is only how it should work. In practice all this talk about privilege is only serving to divide people who should be working together. I have legitimately seen trans activists spam a transman's tumblr with hate because he refused to apologise for having a cis roommate. Then there are really popular blogs like Misandry Mermaid who proudly talk about how much they hate men and how cishets don't deserve to call themselves feminists. This is making it harder and harder for social justice movements to gain traction among members of privileged groups, because they're not going to take a movement that produces catchphrases like "die cis scum" seriously. This is especially annoying because tumblr is by far the largest trans presence on the internet, and could be doing a lot more to help their movement. It's integral to social justice that you remember you have advantages other people don't, but right now privilege-checking culture is in a very bad way.
Are you referring to yesterday's TumblrInAction post? That was crazy - although I think those trans activists are like, on the super-extreme detached-from-reality end.I have legitimately seen trans activists spam a transman's tumblr with hate because he refused to apologise for having a cis roommate