What is an Ally?

shit-zen-giggles · 2022-04-25T08:44:40+00:00

The whole concept of allyship has always been alien/strange to me for exactly the reasons you described above.

Punder_man · 2022-04-25T11:27:35+00:00

Exactly.. i've been saying this for a long time.. and it especially grates on me when I hear from feminists: "Men, we want you to be our allies in the fight for equality"

But as the list above points out.. the feminist definition of 'ally' seems to not match up with the dictionary definition:

Dictionary.com: Ally

a person, group, or nation that is associated with another or others for some common cause or purpose

Note the bold "common cause or purpose"
Feminists seek men as allies only to further their cause / purpose of raising women up. They don't care at all about also raising men up
Feminists only care about issues which affect women, they do not care about issues which affect men.

Feminists use the word 'Ally' to make it sound more palatable, but in reality they want men to be subservient to them and seem to think that if they mask it behind the thin veil of "Allyship" that they will get away with it..

The main thing here is, an alliance only works when everyone within the alliance has equal standing / opportunity.
But feminists are proposing an alliance where the sole focus would be on women's issues and no focus on men's issues.

Not only that but you don't bad mouth, insult, berate or otherwise alienate members of the alliance.
They want men to act as their attack dogs when people call them out but other than that men are expect to sit down, shut up and accept any and all abuse / misandry aimed towards them because of their gender! oh, and absolutely under NO circumstances are they to even try to steer the conversation away from women's issues or even THINK about bringing up men's issues.

That is not how an alliance works at all..
To any feminist lurkers here I'm curious.. If you truly believe in wanting male 'allies' then answer me these questions:

1) What benefit(s) would men as a whole get for joining this alliance?
2) Why should men sit there and allow feminists to make sweeping, generalized misandric statements about the male gender? Or rather, why should they HAVE to put up with that?
3) In your view of an alliance with men, is there room in the alliance to grant EQUAL focus / resources to issues that affect men? if not, why not?

That's all..

Phantombiceps · 2022-04-25T11:15:23+00:00

I remember when ally talk started and it is not worth pursuing. It is based on intersectional /privilege theory which says harm to you benefits me, but i can voluntarily refuse the benefit and try to help you, even being harmed for your benefit.
The you and me of course are social groups, but also individuals, as intersectional ideology doesn’t really distinguish, the individual represents the group.

This is all bullshit and fake leftism. It doesn’t work and i believe that is intentional. The real way to handle social justice is through people’s commonalities.

People who are in general less oppressed by something at the moment, are still not living their best life, and their future is limited by other people being oppressed. Whether one day you get attacked by a street gang because we can’t empower our youth , or your healthcare and education system is broken because the money went to bombing brown skinned folks in war a world away, an injury to one is an injury to all.

You won’t help native Americans, for one example, by apologizing for Columbus, or asking to learn about their suffering, but by remembering that a world that works much better for them, would also work better for you. ( of course many native people been saying this, re: ecology , for a long time).

There used to be a term “ solidarity’. The whole idea of ally sounds at first like that, but when you scratch the surface, it is basically the less enlightened side of the christian tradition ( self-flagellation, suspicion, original sin, obsession) applied to everything social . Worse actually. It’s toxic.

Enzi42 · 2022-04-25T13:28:40+00:00

I really hope this doesn’t sound like a ramble since I put time and effort into ensuring it was as concise and coherent as possible.

I am immediately suspicious of anyone who uses the term “ally” when asking for someone to join a cause such as feminism, racial justice or the fight for the wellbeing of gender and sexual minorities.

Feminism aside, I’m not against those causes, and indeed benefit from them, but I have seen the word “ally” used to justify horrifying acts of emotional/psychological abuse while those responsible espouse the idea that accepting this abuse without complaints is part of an “ally’s” job. People like that don’t want helpers in their fight—their desires are far less acceptable.

I think two types of “ally abusers” exist—the first and most simple to dissect are mere predators. These people want a person to emotionally abuse, they are a bully hunting diligently for a punching bag. Thus similar to people who pretend to be “woke” in order to gain clout/attain sexual partners, these people enter these movements looking for people they can target for abuse.

There’s no “nice” way to say the following (and I must confess that I’m not really sure if I’d be interested in using it even if there was). While certainly not all, a large number of people who join these movements as allies tend to carry this burden of inherited guilt on their shoulders.

They have greatly given in to the guilt and atonement culture that permeates western society in its bastardized attempt to give itself a “redemption arc” to make up for all the skulls it has stepped on to attain the prosperity we now enjoy.

Thus they are far less likely to tell someone from a marginalized group to screw off if that person has violated their boundaries or been uncivil to them. That makes them prime prey for bullies looking for a victim.

The second category of ally abusers is more complicated, and before I continue I want to make a disclaimer that this is not a “dig” at women, simply a discussion about a manifestation of “toxic femininity”, in fact one of the few manifestations of it that I have seen in both men and women though in lower numbers in men.

Anyway...

The other style of ally abusers have a more complex mindset. These people are bullies and highly cruel and even sadistic, but would never think of themselves that way.

Instead these people see themselves as victims. Not just any kind of victims but righteously angry victims. They are angry about the problems facing their group and want to rage and rant about it to the group they see as their oppressor. The person allied with them is a member of that oppressor group and thus they receive the vitriol intended for that group.

Now rationally it is morally and practically wrong to take out your hatred on someone who has nothing to do with your grievance, someone who is actually trying to aid you.

But in the minds of the people who do this it is perfectly fine. They’ve been victimized and thus have a perfectly justified right, an almost heavenly mandate to do whatever they want in return, including lash out at someone who only shares features with the people who actually hurt them.

Their point of view is very rigid really; there are two distinct sides—the victim and the oppressor. Each of them have their own “roles” to play; the oppressor hurts the victim first and the victim strikes back in righteous fury. Anything done in that anger is justified and any attempt on the oppressor’s part to mitigate or avoid it just makes them even worse of a person.

I don’t know how to link posts, but there was a very troubling post on one of the venting subreddits where a man/male feminist explained his fear of Roe v Wade being repealed due to the barrage of negativity that his female friends would throw at him and he cited a number of terrible things that had already been said to him due to fears over the endangering of abortion rights.

The responses tore into him and cursed him as a selfish bastard. But one particularly unpleasant individual told him that if he was a true ally he would suck up their abuse and practice empathy for their plight rather than burdening they even more than they already are by forcing them to “coddle his feelings”.

Simply put, they are the victims and they deserve to hurt the oppressor. The roles are set and the play has begun. Deviation from this is morally unacceptable.

Why this ties into so called “toxic femininity”:

Something I have noticed from both personal experiences and observations is that women and more feminine presenting men tend to have a sense of self righteousness when dishing out aggressive behavior.

It isn’t all the time, but it is present especially when the behavior tends towards actual abuse rather than simple natural hostility.

The closest thing I can compare it to is the expectation that a parent has that their child will not fight back when corporal punishment is being administered. There are rigid roles here, punisher and guilt party and the “job” of the guilty party is to accept their punishment without complaints.

As I said, this isn’t a woman-only thing; I’ve seen men act like this, but it seems to be very much concentrated in the female led aspects of movements.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m just talking nonsense but part of why I post here is to get other people’s thoughts on my own gender related theories and observations so I don’t become a one man echo chamber.

Sebasthos2019 · 2022-04-25T14:31:41+00:00

Back in the days, the "A" in LGBTIA meant "ally". The thinking went that being part of the community was not about inborn identity, but about intent.

The term "men who have sex with men" was used when talking about issues specifically because, as the logic went, homo and bi men who did not identify as gay were not part of the community, since they did not want to be.

We saw ourselves as a culture of change, as an actual "community", before that word got misused into meaninglessness. Straight, gay, bi, trans, cis, inter, other... it did not matter who you were, but what you did.

When I was an active militant we even had a straight guy in the board of our organisation. He had a lesbian sister and wanted the world to be better for her, us, and also himself. Free from the shackles of reductive gender roles. No one ever suggesed he had to stay silent, that his opinions were of a lesser worth, that he was unwelcome. Not one single time. The fight was also his fight.

This is how you treat allies.

reconninja · 2022-04-25T16:05:46+00:00

I know your post is meant to describe what should be, but the term ally is a very deliberate word choice. There are many other words with similar meanings that could be used instead of the intent was good: Supporter, advocate, friend, proponent, partner, helper, even comrade (if you're willing to sprinkle on a bit of cringe). What makes the word ally different is that it specifically refers to discrete entities; If someone calls you an ally, they want you to know that you can never be part of their group. They call you an ally because they want to flippantly lump you in with the enemy.

hottake_toothache · 2022-04-25T12:35:24+00:00

They aren't looking for "allies".

Sorry-Difference5942 · 2022-04-25T15:01:08+00:00

The thing that's absolutely bizarre to me is that it's entirely possible to treat men kindly as allies and yet... this hasn't happened on a broad scale.

Looking at depictions of feminism from the 1970s shows a much higher emphasis in a "we're all in this shitty boat together" approach instead of a "men put us in this shitty boat, make them fix it" mentality.

And it's crazy to me how people can say that men are harmed by the patriarchy too and seem to recognize the horrifically small box of expression men are allowed to exist in... only to say in the same fucking breath that men don't know what oppression is like and are big complaining babies if we feel any social force exists against us.

There is literally a version of feminism out there that actually values men as allies and society seems to have rejected it. For the life of me I can't figure out the reason.

Faux_populi · 2022-04-25T19:00:18+00:00

Any movement that has a outgroup such as "ally" is not worth your time, no matter how nice they treat you, they dont see you as an equal.

Now Im not saying you shouldnt support lgbt rights, you should, I do, just avoid the cliquey highschool shit within the lgbt rights movement. I will never call myself an ally, nor do the lgbt people I know and love, they call me a friend.

Lost_Martian_Expat · 2022-04-25T20:34:00+00:00

When ûber-online activists talk about 'allyship' they in all but actual definition mean 'servitude'. They find some marginalized identity and attach themselves to it because in their milieu it puts them on the top of the totem pole and you on the bottom.

The solution is simple, don't buy into the hierarchy. Don't be an ally; don't be a doormat.

SomeLo5er · 2022-04-25T15:57:24+00:00

An ally is just a passive collaborative doormat that will act like a guard dog when you find yourself in a situation where you can’t defend your ideas critically

BloomingBrains · 2022-04-26T06:10:11+00:00

Anyone that uses "ally" (in the social justice sense) unironically is pure cringe.

Whenever I see a woman agree with something we say, I don't think of her as an ally. Do you know why? Because that shouldn't be the ally position. That should just be a default good person.

Its funny. Feminists love to obsess about "nice guys" who only want to take advantage of women. But they're the ones throwing around the term "ally". Except they treat them like shit anyway and act surprised when they turn bitter and say "all girls only want assholes, so fuck them, they're evil".

Darkwolf90 · 2022-04-25T15:07:21+00:00

Its fairly simple, its an entity working to the same goal that's open to debate. No one's perfect so assuming your way is perfect and can't be improved in any way is arrogant ignorant denial of reality.

Kozure_Ookami · 2022-04-26T12:04:44+00:00

That's why I shy away from these kind of concepts. It seems to have no meaning other than “you are still an oppressor and your only value is used the privilege I believe you have”.

Title	What is an Ally?
Author	TheToxicWyvern
Upvotes	80
Comments	25
Date	April 25, 2022 5:58 AM UTC (4 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/ube4bn/what_is_an_ally/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/what-is-an-ally.1113525 https://theredarchive.com/post/1113525

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