Considering the average age of college students, it is likely that, at some point in the past week, you have been called, whether directly or through a Facebook post, an entitled millennial.

But is being entitled really a bad thing?

Of course there is that narcissistic, “I’m more important than you, so give me what I want” type of entitlement that is damaging to the individual and to those around them, but entitlement is so much more than that.

We at The Prairie are here to tell you that entitlement is not all that bad. In fact, entitlement is as American as apple pie and baseball on a lazy afternoon.

In the 1700s we felt entitled to self-governance, so we took on the British government and became our own sovereign nation. In the early 1900s, women felt entitled to vote and created a movement that won them women’s suffrage with the 19th Amendment.

Entitlement has paved the way for some of the greatest social movements to date, from ending Jim Crow laws and segregation in 1965 to marriage equality for LGBTQ couples fifty years later in 2015.

Conversely, low levels of entitlements can lead to more inequality, especially in the workplace. In 1985, researchers asked men and women to pay themselves for a fixed amount of work. Women, who generally scored lower on personal entitlement, paid themselves less than men paid themselves. This stigma is still perpetuated today by the wage gap between men and women who do the same job.

Millennials have the same types of entitlement, only for us it’s less about social justice and more about being entitled to a quality of life on par with what our parents had. We believe we are entitled to spending our lives not burdened with thousands and thousands of dollars of student debt. We believe we are entitled not to a free education but at least an affordable one.

In just the past century, we have restricted hours for the average work-week and implemented overtime laws. People used to work all day everyday with no benefits, but workers felt entitled to fair compensation for their pay.

Millennials aren’t demanding extravagant bonuses or time off whenever they demand it, but rather, we feel entitled to a livable wage so that we don’t have to work 65 hours a week to make ends meet. We feel entitled to a work environment that doesn’t discriminate on gender or sexual orientation.

So next time you hear the word “entitled millennial” used as a derogatory slur, own it because social progress comes from individuals who believe they are entitled to something that society doesn’t believe them worthy of.