Oliver Meow
Jul 27, 2017 · 2 min read

Is this….what you call allyship?

“I will vouch for your humanity unless one of your people is rude to me, then yall can just die lmao”

The hell?

See, what I don’t understand is how allies try to make it so that they are the ones with the jurisdiction on what allies should or should not do for marginalized peoples. Like you do realize, that if you’re making some sort of attempt to vouch for trans people and their rights, that you are doing a service FOR them, right?
Obviously you do since you’re acting as if it’s such a generous and uncalled for favor on your part that IF some trans person vocalizes how it hurts them, you have every right to revoke any support you have in the community.
If you claim to support any marginalized group, a group that is clearly MORE marginalized than the group in which you are a part of, then here’s what you should do:

LISTEN to the marginalized person on what is hurting them in your allyship and HOW you can do better.

It’s a sad sight to see people act like their allyship is some profound favor or gift or whatever that if marginalized people don’t express the most gratitute then you can revoke it and they can suffer by themselves. Helping people more marginalized than ourselves is a duty, it’s something we SHOULD be doing, not some extra activity to showcase how much of a good person we are.

I find it somewhat disturbing but not at all surprising that people would be so open to letting trans individuals flounder in the violent discrimination that takes place worldwide towards trans people if an individual is being open about how you’re hurting them. You’re placing your feelings and your comfort over the potential safety (or lack thereof) of trans people. If that’s what you call allyship, fine. It’s unfortunate that Angela expects anything better out of you lot.

    Oliver Meow

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