It happens all the time: someone will drop a [homophobic/transphobic/racist/ableist/etc.] comment, and when they're called out, they'll say, "I can't be bigoted against X, my [friend/partner/sibling/coworker/neighbor's second cousin three times removed] is X!"
This argument sucks for several reasons, so let's break it down real quick:
Your relationship to a marginalized person does not make you marginalized.
Your relationship to a marginalized person does not inherently give you any understanding of their experiences.
Your relationship to a marginalized person does not give you a pass on saying bigoted things, nor does it make those things magically not bigoted.
Your decision to use this argument rather than take criticism, especially from another member of the same marginalized group, is itself an indication of bigotry.
I sure would like to ask your [friend/partner/sibling/coworker/neighbor's second cousin three times removed] how they feel about your allyship.
"Allies" love to use this line because they genuinely believe that knowing us and not actively trying to kill us with their bare hands is enough. In their minds, we are so constantly under siege that the mere absence of active violence is a gift that we should be grateful for.
And yeah, to some extent, it's true - we are constantly under siege. But the bar is not "I'm not participating in the siege." If you want to be an ally, you need to be part of the supply chain, the defense, the reinforcements.
Last week, I detailed two incidents in which people berated and/or ostracized me for speaking out as a trans person. But those aren't the only two I've experienced, not by a long shot. Those are just the two that most perfectly encapsulated last week's point: people call themselves allies and then decide to speak over the people they claim to support.
There are several different types of "allies" out there. There are people who slap a rainbow filter on their profile, post a few platitudes about loving everyone, and call it a day without doing an ounce of work; let's call these the Optics allies. There are people who claim to support queer people (either in general terms or with specific reference to those they know), but speak badly of queer people as a whole, the queer community, or people they perceive to be queer; these are the Mean Girls allies. There are people like the ones I talked about last week, who commit to the cause as long as it doesn't have any consequences for them or any negative impact on their lives; we'll call them the Coasting allies. There are people who are allies to one group but not another (ex. "I support the gays but I think trans people are mentally ill"); the Mix 'n' Match allies. There are allies who do a certain amount of work towards genuine allyship, but then plateau when they decide they've done enough and actively resist further learning; I think of them as the Close Enough allies. And then, rarely, there are those few who truly commit to allyship as a process rather than a destination, who do their best to keep learning and growing even when they feel like they probably know most of the things they need to know: the Holy Grail allies. (Why yes, I am having a fun time with the formatting options, thank you for asking.)
Last week, I wrote about the Coasting allies. But today, I want to talk about the Optics and Mean Girls allies.
These two groups think of themselves as different, but they're remarkably similar. The Optics allies think the Mean Girls ones are hypocritical, and the Mean Girls allies think the Optics ones are lazy. But both of them are allies only on a superficial level, claiming the title without doing the work. And both of them, when called out on it, will say the same thing: that of course they're allies, and how dare we suggest otherwise?! We should be grateful that they aren't calling for us to be stoned to death! Don't we know there are poor queers starving in Africa? (Wait, wrong flavor of manipulation.)
Here's the thing, y'all: you can't just decide that you're an ally. The community decides for itself. And this is true for all allies, across all axes of oppression. Only Black people can decide if someone is a non-Black ally. Only Jews can decide if someone is a goyische/gentile ally. And only queer and trans people can decide if someone is a cishetallo (cisgender, heterosexual, allosexual/not asexual) ally.
"But Jo!" the allies inevitably shout. "What about the Mean Queers who Hate All Cishetallos and want us to Eat Bricks?"
Well, first of all, those people mostly don't exist. Very few people in the world actually hate all cishetallo people. And frankly, those who do are pretty valid; they usually have exceptional and repeated traumas that make it hard for them to feel safe around anyone who isn't queer. But the majority of us don't hate all cishetallo people. We often make jokes about "the cis" or "the straights" and, as I have been emphatically informed, "paint all straight people with the same bigoted brush even though SOME of us are allies!!!" (Actual quote! Even though heterophobia isn't real! Because it requires societal power that we don't have!) The reality, though, is that we don't actually hate y'all; it's a combination of gallows humor, punching up, and claiming space.
Second of all, even if every single queer person did hate all cishetallos and want y'all to eat bricks, guess what? We all still deserve basic human rights and equitable treatment under the law. I'm very sorry to break this to you (no I'm not), but in fact, people's negative feelings about others do not inherently make them undeserving of basic human rights or equitable treatment. Even Nazis, horrible though they are, and may they all rot, do not deserve to be tortured, deprived of food and shelter, or otherwise treated in inhumane ways. If you're a person in the "kill all Nazis" boat (which, good), just do it and be done with it. And even then, if Nazis deserve death, it's for choices they made about their attitudes and actions towards people they view as inferior. Nobody is born a Nazi, and nobody is intrinsically and unchangeably a Nazi.
Here's the thing about allyship, y'all, and I hope you're ready to be really uncomfortable: allyship, like Nazism, is a continuous choice that you have to keep making. If Nathaniel Nazi woke up tomorrow morning and said to himself, "hey, you know what? I think this isn't right for me," he could then make changes in his life that would make him not a Nazi. It happens. Look it up. Similarly, Annie Ally could wake up tomorrow morning and say, "I've done enough for the queers and I'm stopping now," and that change would make her not an ally. It's that simple. The choices you make are what give you your political identity.
The cool thing about this is that it's literally never too late to become an ally. If you were a raging homophobe for fifty years and then woke up one morning and had a crisis of identity and realized that actually, your behavior has sucked for fifty years and maybe it's time to change that, you could. It would be hard, and you would likely already have a reputation that would follow you for a long time, but eventually you would have done enough good to balance out the bad, and maybe even enough good that people could look at you as an ally. On the flip side, if you want to have the ally title, you have to keep being an ally. Actively. Forever.
People think of allyship the way they think of college: you learn the things you need for your major (Ally Studies), you get your diploma, and then you have a BFA (Bachelor of Fine Allyship). Afterwards, you can point to that diploma and say, "actually, I am a certified ally."
But allyship isn't like college. Allyship is like cooking. You start off slow, you learn simple recipes, things get more complicated as you learn more - but nobody in the world knows every recipe. If you've ever watched a cooking show, you know that even the most talented chefs learn new things and make new mistakes. There's no endpoint and there's no such thing as true perfection. And that's okay.
Allies, we don't need you to be perfect. I don't know any perfect allies. But I do know a lot of people who are trying hard to learn and grow every day. I have greater trust and respect for someone who fucks up my pronouns every single time but corrects themself immediately than I do for someone who performatively goes on rants about gendered language and then calls me "she" two minutes later. (Actual experience!)
You can call yourself an ally if you want; I can't stop you. But you aren't really an ally unless we feel like you are. It's okay to fuck up sometimes, but get back in the kitchen and try again.
Comments