This is a guest post by the always fabulous Angie.
Disclaimers and clarifications: I’m not telling people how to be an ally or how to interact with allies- I’m sharing my experiences. I’m also talking about how I would like my allies to interact with me. For the purposes of this post I’m going to use the term “oppression” as a catch-all term, covering but not exclusive to: racism, classism, homophobia, transphobia, discrimination based on religion, survivors of sexual assault, rape, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse, incest, the experiences of those who have developmental or physical disabilities, the experiences of those who struggle with mental illness or are non-neurotypical, and almost certainly a bunch of things I forgot. Oppression is not the best word to cover this rather large list, but it’s the best I’ve got at the moment- I am very open to suggestions for a better word. Now for the actual post. Many thanks to Abigail and Sara for their edits and support.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Pax’s Victim Blaming 101 post and the comments which followed. I’ve been thinking about what it means to be a good ally, both from my own experiences working with allies and my experiences being an ally.
Being involved in anti-oppression work is tricky (massive understatement). It’s tricky because we all swim in a sea of interlocking oppressions and privileges. It’s tricky because being part of the sea means it’s hard for us to examine it, and when we try we’re still part of the sea and directly impacting how it moves. It’s tricky because hearing “you are looking at this issue from a place of privilege” is hard and scary, because it’s easy to interpret this as “you’re a bad person.” It’s tricky because you are almost guaranteed to hurt someone you care about without intending to, or even understanding how it happened.