How To Ally
While this is originally being published during pride month and I’ve therefore used a rainbow in the image for this post, please remember these guidelines are for all forms of allyship and do not apply solely to being an ally of the LGBTQIA+ community. Please keep these in mind any time you are interacting with/on behalf of a marginalized community you are not a part of.
As we learn more about power structures, chances are we are learning not only about ourselves and the marginalized communities we align with, but also those we do not. Each of us likely have some identities that hold power and some that are oppressed. The ways these identities come into play for us will vary significantly from person to person and thus we must these in mind as we move through the world and interact with folx who likely hold some identities we do not. And we must be allies to all marginalized communities because the real enemy is oppression and we cannot expect to win the fight for equity if we are divided.
Comfort those who are oppressed, and make oppressors uncomfortable.
Ok but how do we do that? Let’s break it down! (If you need a reminder of the classroom rules, click here.)
1. Do not speak over people from a marginalized community that you are not a part of.
This happens all too often. It’s like mansplaining, but not just for women anymore!
If you find yourself hearing someone from a community you are not a part of, do not try to correct them in any way. Stay quiet. Step away from the keyboard. Instead, read the comments. Listen. Listen. Listen. But do not speak. Period. I know you want to. Me, too! But don’t.
If you find the words, “well, actually,” or “not all [men/white women/Christians/cis people/etc.],” on your lips or at your fingertips, you must immediately put a moratorium on any form of wisdom coming out of your head. I promise you, it can wait.
Instead, and I am speaking from experience here: that is actually your own defensiveness, and you should dive the fuck into your discomfort. I ask myself “why” repeatedly until I finally get to the crux of the issue, which almost always just happens to be my own butthurt feelings.
2. Recognize your own place in systemic oppressions.
Y’all, this one can be hard. It feels very uncomfortable to know that we hold power, regardless of whether or not we want to, over people of oppressed identities. It feels very uncomfortable to know that we’ve likely used that power against someone of an oppressed identity, even if we did not realize it at the time.
As a white cis woman, I automatically benefit from systems in place that benefit white, cis folx. And, yes, I have many identities that are marginalized - I am queer, poor, neurodivergent, and disabled. Those identities do not excuse me from my complicity in any oppression dynamics, not even the identities I hold which are oppressed. People can and do internalize their own oppressions and we sometimes wield that against our own people. Think Phyllis Schlafly, a woman who worked to get the ERA amendment to fail, back in in the 70s. She literally worked against an amendment that would guarantee equal pay for women in the United States. Think of women who say things like “I can’t be friends with other women,” or “I’m different than most girls.” Any woman raised in the patriarchy is going to have to unpack some misogyny. And it’s also important to remember that that is lifelong work.
These are called implicit biases, and if you’d like to know more about your own biases, Harvard has a quiz here.
Intersectional feminism can teach us that oppression systems are complex and interconnected and just because we hold one or more marginalized identity, it does not mean we are free from complicity. To truly be fighting for equity for all, we must recognize and examine our own roles in these systems.
3. Be prepared to feel uncomfortable. Be prepared to dig into that discomfort.
If we are empathetic people, learning that we may be complicit or even active participants in oppressions can feel extremely uncomfortable. This can sometimes be so difficult to face that people may not be willing to continue the work of demolishing these systems. Sometimes people are so concerned with not being “a racist” that they may not be willing to see that they are benefiting from racism, even while decrying those systems. In these cases, the work ceases and may even slide backwards.
If you are feeling uncomfortable, you’re getting close to the good work - don’t stop there! Dig the fuck in! And, it’s not fun - digging through piles of shit in your psyche - but once you’ve started cleaning that shit out, the whole place becomes much better to live in and you will, on the whole, be a happier person with more solid relationships. So I think it’s necessary work regardless.
4. Don’t make it about you.
Don’t get hung up on guilt, though, because that can put an end to any good work you might do. These systems are not personal and when we personalize them by getting frozen by guilt we hold, we make the situation about our feelings rather than about tearing down oppressive systems and our work can cease. Or, we rick teaching those we are wanting to ally for that we aren’t as safe or trustworthy as they need us to be.
When we, as attempted allies, do this, we are actually centering ourselves and our feelings when allyship is specifically about not us. The whole point of being an ally is to work with people who have needs you do not have, if you had those same needs, you’d be a part of the group rather than an ally. Therefore, to ally, we must remember to keep ourselves de-centered and to keep the community we are working for centered.
We must work to balance ourselves here. We must equally hold our own responsibilities without allowing us to make it about our feelings. And most of us have not been taught how to hold two opposing beliefs so this can be a challenge if we don’t allow ourselves to feel complex and contradictory emotions.
5. Do not police the tone of people speaking for their own marginalized community.
Over and over again I hear people of oppressive groups feeling frustrated that someone they are trying to ally for wasn’t “nice” to them. Often, the person accusing of “not niceness” wasn’t even being mean, they were simply speaking their truth and that can be hard for a person of the oppressor class to hear if they are still in their own feelings about it.
But more than that, chances are that you are not the first person to have asked such a question or made such a comment and people might frankly be annoyed that they have to answer it again.
Ask yourself: are you wanting to be an ally because all humans deserve equity? Because if that is your reasoning, then you should not be expecting payment in any form, including in niceness, for your allyship. If your allyship is conditional and demands niceness, you were never truly an ally to begin with.
6. Educate yourself.
Follow folx of all backgrounds on social media including but not limited to Black and Indigenous folx, queer folx, Disabled folx, people who live in poverty or are unhoused, people who live in other countries, people who just moved to yours. Follow multiple people from each background because no one community is a monolith and people within each community have widely varying lives and stories to share. Just listen.
If social media isn’t your thing, do some Googling and learn that way. Find some podcasts. Find a booklist and begin reading the books. There are so many fiction and nonfiction books that come from communities and all have something different to tell us.
7. Be graceful when you are corrected.
“Thank you for taking the time to educate me, I apologize for putting you in a place where you had to spend your time and energy on this and I will take this information and do better in the future.”
We all have shit to learn and unlearn, just acknowledge you forked it and move on.
8. Take what you’ve learned back to your own community and become very annoying about it.
No I mean it, though. People in oppressor groups will not readily concede to the wishes of marginalized communities. They will fight back. Even good people. Sure, sometimes people are just outright predjudiced, but more often than not, people uphold dangerous power structures either because they cannot see them and have a hard time believing they exist (i.e. “I never have any negative interactions with cops, I don’t see why my Black friends are protesting the police”) or it’s because it’s too hard to fight against a seemingly unstoppable force of systemic oppression and they cannot deal with the discomfort that hard work would bring (i.e. “I’m just not political”).
Because in my experience, when I speak up for these oppressed groups, I tend to lose friends.
And, yes, I know that sucks. And I hope it doesn’t happen to you. But as fascism is on the rise and we are sliding top speed into it, now is the time that allyship is not going to feel good. It’s gonna feel shitty. Allyship is not for earning brownie points or to make you feel good about yourself, it’s being on the frontlines of a battle that some folx cannot choose to not participate in.
"If you claim to be someone's ally, but aren't getting hit by the stones thrown at them, you aren't standing close enough." -Stan Mitchell
9. Redirect people to activists within the community where possible.
There may be times when you need to do the speaking about issues that don’t pertain to you. But wherever possible, consider pointing people in the direction of someone who is in the community you are wanting to ally for. All too often white women take credit for the work of Black women (for one example) and this is unnecessary and unfortunate. Give credit and share directly where possible.
10. Be sensitive.
Be aware of how those you are allying for are feeling. Check in and ask how they are doing. Follow their lead. Be willing to switch gears if necessary. If we ally so hard we hurt those we are trying to help, are we doing the best work we can be doing?
