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ID: Drawing of a duck billed platypus underwater, they're wearing a rainbow coloured t shirt and a pink bum-bag, and saying: "Ally is not something you can self-identify as, it's a title that you earn. Let your actions speak for themselves!"
Credit: Sophie Labelle
ITT people are thinking this post is about them, but it feels like it's more targeted at the "The A is for ally!" types. (Thinking A in LGBTQIA is for ally instead of asexual.)
Why not both? 🤷♀️
I feel like the two groups are close to a circle in a Venn diagram - privileged people there to make it about themselves (in the form of self aggrandization and claiming non-existent victimhood and marginalisation) rather than about the marginalised people they claim to support (and only do superficially and entirely conditionally).
I hope you realize part of the reason politicians are now getting ready to make gay marriage illegal again is because people like you pushed for this. You lost the unimportant "filthy" centrists.
You wanted to make sure that any kind of rude, disagreeable people understood that you no longer needed their hesitant help and incomplete acceptance. You didn't need or want support from people who only sort of accept you, that you don't want or need their help preserving your capability to legally even be some kind of gay.
The gay community in the last decade has ended up fundamentally misunderstanding what support is.
They think it means friendship and participating in protests and emotional support. The reality is that you should desperately want some support and also from the hesitant and questioning. You should have strategically worked to gain their support.
The people who stand up for you in a group and say, "Hey, they're not that bad!" are fucking VITALLY IMPORTANT to your continued freedom and survival.
But you've lost them, so now a few not so cruel people in an Arkansas town hall are keeping their mouth shut while the really cruel ones go on and on. The woild-be-kinda-allies don't really like trannies and that freaky kind of gays who parade in leather chops, but they still used to speak up and try to appeal to compassion and defuse people's enthusiasm and strategizing when they started talking about "doing something" about the gays in town. They didn't really like gay everything about the hay movement, but they didn't want them to get hurt and harassed either.
The actual raging homophobes want to help conservatives push to make gay marriage illegal, start reinterpreting public indecency to include being visibly gay with your partner in public, start following and arresting them. Beating and killing gays as feds look the other way. Et cetera.
You feel like you don't need mild compassion, you feel like you need only allyship from those who unconditionally love and accept you and all your queer friends.
You're an idiot who fumbled the game and is about to lose your rights. You and most of your friends are idiots.
Now ban me and make sure you don't have to think about this again.
I've had people misgender me and try to convince me not to transition and then go claim to be trans allies because they don't call people slurs and will say that killing trans people is bad if asked
That sucks. It's bigotry and then gaslighting, and then on top of it all we're somehow to blame for them being that way because we're not eternally grateful and fawn all over them for reluctantly giving us the barest of bare minimum decency and respect, and therefor leave them no choice (in their eyes of course).
I agree with speaking with your actions here, but at the same time, this seems like some weirdly unnecessary gatekeeping.
Divide and conquer is a strategy as old as time. Can’t fault you for trying.
Counterpoint: you can absolutely self identify as an Ally. For example, I self identity as an Ally and there ain’t shit this adorable platypus can do to stop me.
I’m an Ally because I choose to be, by my words and my actions and the example I set for my children every day. I don’t need an attaboy from any marginalized group to confirm I’m on the right side of history. We do what’s right because it’s right. Full stop.
Slightly unrelated rant.
I'm tried of these culture wars. It's complete nonsense. I'm not particularly LGBT+ but it shouldn't matter. This is about freedom for fucks sake! People just want to live and exercise their human rights! Anybody telling others they mustn't exist their way is an enemy of humanity! The fact that people get denied jobs and even have their rights restricted, just because some asshole finds out the ID doesn't match is fucking repulsive!
Recently had a chat with my aunt and she just "you can't expect people to immediately accept changes", shut the fuck up! It's not a change! It's a core value that's been in our constitution for longer than any of us have been alive. But clearly, despite being raise on these values, I'm the only one who believes them. Like some fucking santa claus shit!
I got mine from the Emperor of Gay People in the mail just this Friday. I framed it and put it next to my n-word pass on the mantle.
Taking actions to be an Ally has risks for folks in some places. Where I am LBGTQA+ support is the norm and doesn't really need to be spoken and when it is I've never heard anyone in over 10 years say a negative thing.
I have online though seen folks who try to speak up in Allyship of someone else get taken down. Subjected to purity tests by folks in an LGBTQA+ supporting community. It felt like the same bi erasure I've experienced and the same transphobia I've seen from parts of the LG community in the 2000s. It's like saying someone isn't gay if they haven't come out. All it does is lessen the crew.
LGBTQA+ shouldnt be treated as a club with a rainbow dress code. It should be the future default standpoint of all of humanity.
Before I realized and came out as bi, I was in the GSA (gay-straight alliance) in high school as a "straight." My state was voting to ban gay marriage at the time, and we campaigned against it. I got just as much if not more hate from people than the LGBT members. Maybe because they viewed them as a lost cause? It was usually adults yelling at a 17-year-old kid for being a "betrayer" and a "pervert lover" (I liked that one), just because I supported two consenting adults marrying regardless of gender. Staunch allies definitely earn the title.
it can be as simple as flying a rainbow flag
My wife and I are queer and have a pride flag on our house. One day a couple of kids came to our door while we were out of town. I was very worried because they were young and alone in the evening and we weren't home. We answered them with the doorbell camera. They said they were queer and just wanted us to know that they're happy to see pride flags in the area to know they're not alone.