as small as a world and as large as alone

6:23am October 22, 2013

isabelknight:

youneedacat:

madeofpatterns:

the A has meant allies for years and years and people only started wanting it to mean asexual recently

I can attest to this from when I was involved in that community years and years ago. Asexual wasn’t even on the map yet.

Given the option, I think I’d rather be inclusive of another group of people whose sexuality is also seen as deviant than bending over backwards to make cookie-seeking straight people seem like “honorary” members of the queer community, regardless of historical precedent.  

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I’m not denying any of that.  I’m just saying that people are wrong when they assume the word has never meant “allies”.

But also.  Straight cis allies are not the same as male feminists in a lot of important ways.  Because quite often, they do face the same dangers we do.  They’re considered queer-by-association in a way that male feminists are not considered female-by-assocation.  They often face the exact same dangers that we do, because in the eyes of homophobes, their mere interest in the subject is considered suspect as to whether they’re just closeted queers.  Friends and allies of queer people have been beaten and tortured to death in a way that male feminists haven’t, because anyone who associates themselves with us that strongly is considered possibly queer.

I think the word “ally” has gotten twisted in recent years until people freak out at its very use.  They actually ASSUME it has to do with “wanting cookies” or whatever.  They assume that’s AUTOMATICALLY what it means.  But that’s not what it meant when ally was added to the LGBT umbrella.  Back then it meant someone who would stand with us, who would help us create places we could meet up where nobody would know just by who was there, who was actually queer, people who would protest with us, march with us, do work behind the scenes with us, and would face the possibility of being beaten to death with us.  And for that they were considered part of our community.

And I think there’s something really fucked up going on nowadays.  I don’t know the exact words for it.

But it’s where a community dealing with oppression has to be made up of oppressed people only, or it won’t be real enough, or it will be overrun with do-gooders, or something.  The queer community actually has a long-standing word for those do-gooders.  It’s called a pseudo-ally.  But nowadays on tumblr and elsewhere everyone seems to treat the word ally as if it means pseudo-ally automatically.  That there can’t be such a thing as a real ally anymore.  And that our communities can’t include them because they haven’t been through oppression and therefore … I don’t even know what.

I’m not saying any of the problems you describe don’t exist and don’t happen.

And all I was doing with my initial post was acknowledging a history that I can actually remember that most people here don’t seem to be able to remember, and seem to be trying to erase, because it’s more convenient to say it’s always meant asexual.  I was not trying to say that A should forever and always stand for ally.  Honestly I don’t actually give a shit what it should forever and always stand for (and why couldn’t it stand for both?), because I’m not that fond of the queer community anyway, or of identity politics.  But I do give a shit about remembering your history and not twisting it around to mean something it never did.

But… there are problems here that aren’t addressed by assuming that straight allies are in the same position as male feminists.  Because they’re not.  Straight cis allies are far more thrown into the same boat with LGBT people by our enemies, than male feminists will ever be.  And there was a time when our communities actually recognized that.  Recognized the mutual danger they faced with us, recognized that they were literally putting their lives on the line for us, and recognized that this was, at the time, considered worth considering them a part of our community.  Because back then communities of this sort weren’t automatically divided along the lines of privilege versus oppression.  They were divided along the lines of whether it was actually a community.  And a community is, among other things, a group of people who get together and help each other to survive.  And allies were part of that.  Were absolutely part of that.  And in many places where there’s still a lot of danger, still all are part of that.  And to belittle their contributions by automatically seeing them as “looking for a cookie”… I can’t even.

Because when I think of cis straight allies, the ones I’ve known.  I’m talking about friends and allies and relatives of queer people who have been willing to be bashed or even die right along with us for being seen with us in public, for being publicly our friends, for starting gay-straight alliances, for going to Pride marches in places where a Pride march is a dangerous thing to do, etc.  When someone’s willing to die for you, they’re part of your community, or ought to be.

And this is fairly specific to the queer community, because of how queerness is viewed in many different cultures around the world.  Association is considered proof of guilt.  Men who hang around women aren’t automatically considered women, nondisabled people who hang around disabled people aren’t automatically considered disabled.  But straight cis people who hang around LGBT people are absolutely, by many, automatically considered queer.  And that means they automatically face the dangers we face.  And that means their actions as allies are far more than lip service.  And this is especially true in regions where it’s still very dangerous to be LGBT.  (And I think it’s usually people in the relatively more safe regions who are the most able to forget these facts.)  They can’t just step into our communities and then out again as the whim takes them, because once the rumor exists that they are queer it will follow them wherever they go… same as it does for closeted queer people, same as it does for people who aren’t queer but are assumed queer because they’re “sissies” or “tomboys” or the way they dress or something.

It’s just… it’s different.  I don’t mind that people may disagree with me, on all of this.  But at least understand what I’m saying and not saying.

And really honestly ALL I was saying with my initial post was “Yes, I remember that time period too, and some people are willfully erasing that time period, and all the reasoning that went into considering allies a part of our community, sometimes because they want to retroactively fit a modern idea into the past, or sometimes because they just had no idea that it hasn’t always meant what it means now.  And I want people to know what really happened and why.”  No more, no less.

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