After reading more than one
post and more than one meme on the topic of allies, I wanted to speak as
someone who’s been an ally to anyone that I’ve known needed me. Indulge me,
please.
I don’t think there can
ever be a single guidebook on What Is An Ally. When you’re someone’s
ally, you give that person what they need.
To ally (verb) with someone or with a group is “to
unite or form a connection or relation between” yourself and that person or
group.
This connection and/or relationship will
vary depending on the person with whom you’re allying.
Different people have different needs in
their alliances. The men to whom I was a mother needed a mom when they were
young boys. My little sister in the Northwest needs different support from her
big sister than my little sister in New Hamster does. My friendships within the
body modification community have varied from person to person; and those are
based on common interests and not on the person or people they go home to (or
don’t). My symbiotic relationships with my girlfriends are different than my
relationship with my husband. Gender and orientation don’t play into any of
this. People are multifaceted and fluid; therefore, so are our needs.
The CONSTANT should only be that our support
for people should be consistent: if we’re offering support, it shouldn’t be
because some President declared a certain month is [Fill in the Minority]
Month. A person’s need for support and friendship doesn’t go away when a
calendar page is turned.
Another thing about this mysterious
guidebook for being an ally: Allies are people, and people are human. We make
mistakes even when we do our best. An ally (noun) is “one that is associated with another as a helper : a
person or group that provides assistance and support in an ongoing effort,
activity, or struggle.” The word “infallible”
is not part of the definition. Don’t
like it? Take it up with Merriam-Webster.
There are two men who will tell you -
today, yesterday, a decade ago, and twenty years from now - that I was a
wonderful mom when their mom was absent. (She asked me to - that was the
alliance, the relationship, we had.)
There’s another young man who, I’m sure,
has focused not on how kindly I treated him for years, how I’d held him when
his mother called him a failure, but rather on my - isolated - unkind response
to his nasty comments that not only upset me but that hurt my husband and that
made my mom cry. I said to him, during my ensuing panic attack, that I’d never
help anyone, ever ever again, because of how he treated us. The next day, when
I could breathe again, I was back to helping anyone who needed it, because that’s
how I was raised. I may not be proud of how I reacted, but I reacted in
response to a true threat to the happiness of people I love.
My response doesn't “take away” my ally “status,” as he claimed his family said. My response shows I’m a fallible human being. I can’t take back any damage I may have done, but neither can he. (It’s not “tit for tat;” I’m just pointing out that there’s not just one victim here. Damn it, he made my mom cry.)
Think about this: Equality isn’t liking
someone because of who they are. It’s treating that person (or
that group) fairly, and not separate. We need to
support minorities until there is a recognized baseline, at which there is no “special”
treatment for *anyone* based on who they are. Martin Luther King, Jr.
eloquently said that he wanted his children to “not be judged by the color of
their skin but by the content of their character”. That’s a fair bar to set -
the content of one’s character.
Example: a person shouldn’t be hired
because an employer has a quota (e.g., must be sure that 15% of employees are,
say, Asian-American); one should be considered for a position based on
verifiable past performance and abilities. I should not be in the running for
an EMT position just because I’m a woman, as I don’t have the medical knowledge
or the stamina. I should, however, be considered for a legal support position
in Connecticut, where I have a strong resume and an understanding of CT laws
and regulations.
You don’t have to like me, nor you should
you like me, because I’m a woman who identifies as heterosexual (with the hots
for Pamela Anderson). If you like me because I helped you with a spreadsheet,
well, that’s different.
We shouldn’t like someone purely because
they fit a boxed criterium or because it’s cool. If you hate me because I’m
Jewish, it’s not my place to tell you how to feel! I don’t control how you
feel, and I won’t try to. I will emphatically say, though, that I don’t want
you to throw pennies at me because you don’t like me. That’s just mean (and
yes, that’s happened). You’re entitled to think I’m a bitch (depending on the
situation, you may well be right) - but we’re afraid to say that we dislike
someone within a particular group when they behave like a jerk, as we’re afraid
of sounding prejudiced or bigoted. It’s okay to hate someone because
they are a dick! You can despise me and to not want to associate with me
because I’m a bitchy Jewish female with white, tattooed skin. You’re not
entitled to be intentionally unkind to me for those reasons.
I can lay my head on my pillow every
night knowing that I did my best to be good to others. I know that sometimes my
best wasn’t good enough; but every day I try to be a little better than I was
yesterday. Not to fit any category - wife, daughter, Jewish, female. Just as a
better person than I was the day before. There are people who call me their big
sister, and there are kids who call me Auntie. They don’t have to be proud of
me - I’m not telling them how they should feel! - but I don’t want my actions
to negatively affect them, either.
I’ll take a moment to remind you that if
you make a commitment to someone, be it to a spouse, or to a friend, or to a
group, they’re counting on you to be there. How you handle that responsibility
is up to you, but realize that, good or bad, there are consequences.
I wouldn’t tell someone that they should
have my objectives and goals.
And I won’t tell you that you have to fit any definition of “ally.”
