Allyship Sunday: Ally Is A Verb
You may have heard or read the phrase "Ally is a verb," in feminist or social justice circles, and wondered what is meant by that.
Well, it's not a linguistic term. Linguistically, "ally" is both a verb and a noun, of course. But it social justice parlance, it (and also variations of "woke is a process") means something quite specific: You can't just call yourself an ally and lean back.
Being an ally means you are there for the fight. Not every instance and every skirmish. No one can do that. People have lives and a limited supply of spoons.
From Franchesca Ramsey's excellent 5 tips for allies video
Being an ally means examining your views and positions and striving for progress in yourself as well as in the world. It's ongoing. It's not who you are. It's the things you do. It's an action. It's a verb.
Same goes for wokeness. You aren't statically woke. That's being awake. You need to get woke, and once you are, you need to stay woke. Because new crap is happening all the time, and old crap is being unearthed all the time, and being aware takes work.
Thanks, Schuyler Sisters
Both wokeness and allyship are about your interactions with the world. They are awareness and reaction. But this post isn't here to call anyone out for bad allyship or for not being woke. It's a call to self examination, and it's a call to me as much as it's a call to you.
The world doesn't get better by itself. Plenty of people would like to go back to some version of the imagined good old days. And plenty of people are just fine with the status quo, because it works for them.
To make a better world, we gotta fight for it. So stay woke, and ally up. Let's do this.
STAY WOKE
Anthem for 2018
This post, as are all of your others on this subject, are most necessary. One does not "wake" and "stay woke," but we all must continue (diligently) to act on our commitment to allyship. 🔥
Yes! Important subject and glad you are writing about it.
Being an ally should not be a scary thing because you believe you're not 'a good enough one'. It's about wanting to be one, examining your knowledge, wanting to learn, getting better everyday. It's a lot of work indeed :-)
Sometimes I'm appalled by the strictness some activists ask from allies and I understand why people are put off and never dare to speak about any subject again. Some of the WOKE people forget they had to wake up too at some point :-) It took me quite some years to 'wake up' and sometimes I get confronted by something that I was still quite unaware off.
It's a life long process and that's totally fine :-)
I think an important distinction to remember is that when activists are assholes, they aren't assholes because they're activists. They're assholes because every group has assholes. And even the most progressive groups have every kind of person.
So important. It really does take constant vigilance. We have to be willing to keep growing, keeping speaking up and never use "ally" as a defense or a weapon.
I've been a part of an ally page that is an arm of a black nationalist group on fb for a while now, and I have learned so much. Active listening is definitely a big piece. That's a hard one sometimes.
Thanks for sharing!