Ally as a Verb

Ally is a verb, a job description, not a self-appointed title.

I write this not only for those to want to be good allies, but to those of us in the queer community who exist along different axes of oppression and privilege.

I am aware of my privilege as a mostly white-passing person with an upper-middle class background. This privilege lends me a sense of entitlement to speak in places where my voice is unnecessary and unwelcome. I spend a lot of time interrogating that entitlement.

These are the questions I try to answer before I decide to interject myself.

Whose voices need to be heard right now? Whose voices are frequently silenced? Am I taking space away from someone with less privilege who is closer to the issue? Who actually needs to hear what I have to say?

Right now, we need to hear queer Latinx voices. We need to center this community in all conversation, make space for Latinx people to express our grief, our anger, our fear. The media wants to ignore that this was a hate crime against LGBT people. But we cannot forget that this was a hate crime against specifically POC queers. The shooter chose a night when the club would be full of young, happy, Latinx gay & trans people. Let us speak for our own pain.

And whose voices are silenced, over and over? Queer People of Color. The fight for queer justice has been brown from the beginning, but we still want to pretend a white boy threw the first brick at Stonewall.

If you feel the need to interject yourself into the conversation, will you be speaking over someone whose voice is already ignored? Are you taking time, attention or space away from a person who has been discouraged from raising their voice but desperately needs to scream? Is what you want to say more important, and why?

And who needs to hear what you have to say? Friends, family, allies, we do not need to hear what you have to say. We need to hear our own voices raised in anger, we need to hear our own screams and chants and songs. In queer spaces, we need your respectful silence.

So ask yourself, who needs to hear what you have to say? Because I guarantee, even though we don’t, there is someone in your life who does. Your voices are important, outside of queer spaces. There are So Many people who need to hear that you are angry, and sad, and will not be tolerating any more bullshit from homophobes. Your Facebook friends whose jokes you don’t laugh at but don’t call out need to hear that that shit is Not Funny and you won’t put up with it anymore. Your family member who says they ‘love the sinner but hate the sin’ needs to hear that hating the sin drove a man to murder 49 innocent people and they are complicit.

THIS IS WHERE YOU VOICE NEEDS TO BE HEARD. And that is so, so much more difficult than standing up in front of a bunch of queers and talking about how you were affected by this tragedy. Believe me, I get it. But this is why ‘ally’ isn’t a title. Without effort, without examining where you are needed, calling yourself an ally means about as much as me calling myself the Duke of Aptos.

This is the job description. This is the verb: this is how you ally yourself with the queer community.