How to be an Ally 101

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Time for a life update! As I’ve mentioned in some of my previous posts, I’ve recently come out as a trans woman. My chosen name is Suzana, though I haven’t decided how that will affect my blog name. One of my friends told me it makes me my own ghost writer, which I thought was amusing, so I may keep my boy name in the blog title.

I am also freelancing and driving for Lyft, so in theory, I should have more time to post things on here. No promises, though.

Within my journey, I have identified as an ally, before I was out as part of the LGBT community. With that experience in mind, I would like to extend a hand to those who are allies, or want to be allies to the LGBT community. Recently I ran into a person who insisted they were an ally despite doing and saying things that are quite harmful to the community. This is my attempt to educate people about ally-ship from my perspective.

Privilege

The first thing about being an ally is that you have to acknowledge your own privilege. And being privileged is not an insult – it just means that you don’t experience some things that make your life more difficult. Being black, for instance, means your life is in danger whenever you have an interaction with law enforcement. If you’re white, you have the privilege of not having that problem. You can also have varying degrees of privilege in different situations; I always have white privilege, but I only have male privilege if I’m talking on the phone or I’ve gone stealth.

So privilege is descriptive; it’s not an insult. With that being said, people can be assholes because of their privilege – in the aforementioned example, if someone insisted that the black man should just “do what the cop says and you’ll be fine!”, you’re ignoring that they are speaking from a place of privilege and are being a dick.

So what kinds of things give you privilege? Being white, for one. Being male, or even presenting male. Being or presenting straight. You’ll notice that sometimes, it doesn’t even take being in a privileged group to benefit from the privilege. If I go stealth, I gain straight white male privilege while I am in that mode. I don’t cease to be a trans woman – my presentation changes. And it’s not all or nothing – I continue to have white privilege regardless of my gender presentation.

In short, to be an effective ally, start by checking your privilege. Listen to marginalized people when they tell you your experience is not universal.

Intent is not magic

When someone is told they are harming someone else, their first reaction might be to say, “Well, I didn’t mean it that way!” And that statement is almost always true. However, it doesn’t change the harm that was done. It’s like this: If you throw a dart blindfolded at a dartboard, and you miss and hit a priceless painting, it does not matter that you had all the intention of hitting the dartboard – the damage to the painting has still been done. And so using “I didn’t mean it that way!” as a defense doesn’t work – your intent doesn’t change the fact that someone was harmed.

In general, the people who determine whether harm happened are the people who were harmed. In essence, allies don’t get to decide whether or not they harmed someone. So if a member of a marginalized group tells you that you have done or said something harmful, you don’t have the perspective to say you didn’t.

But how to respond? Mostly, just by listening and apologizing. If you are trying to be an ally in good faith, and listening to marginalized people, we can see that. So an apology for the harm you did, and possibly a request to see how you can make it right. Sometimes, making it right is not possible. And in those cases you just have to do better the next time.

There is a caveat to this, however. Intent is not magic, but that does not mean it doesn’t matter at all. Intent is important in the response to a problem. Someone intentionally trolling me is going to get a different response than someone genuinely trying to understand and making a mistake.

Types of Harm

Harm can come in many different forms. The type of harm greatly changes how one should react to it, and how one should go about stopping ongoing harm, and how one makes reparations.

Gross Physical Harm

This is the most basic type of harm, and it’s the one people think of the most. This is where I hit you. It is basic, physical, meatspace harm. Often, people will try and claim that since talking on the internet hasn’t physically hurt someone, they’re not causing harm. (Pro-tip: Don’t be that guy)

Incitement to Gross Physical Harm

This one is also pretty basic. In fact, it’s so basic it’s not even a form of protected speech! This is “You. Go hit him”. This covers things like mob incitement, and swatting, and, “Hey, it’d be really nice if someone punched that guy” This form of harm can be on the internet.

Harassment

This can be targeted or it can be just scattershot, but this includes things like, stalking, making new accounts to get around bans and blocks, and refusing to halt communication when someone asks. It should be noted that Harassment often quickly leads to Gross Physical Harm, most often towards Women. Basically, if you’ve been asked/told/whatever to stop communicating with or at someone, and you continue, you are harassing them.

Indirect harm

This is the hardest kind of harm to parse, and is the most prevalent. This includes things like repeating lies about Black Lives Matter, repeating lies about SJWs, supporting MRAs, disbelieving women who have been victimized, dismissing concerns of marginalized people, and to be perfectly honest, I’d categorize just voting Republican in this category right now. Refusing to listen to marginalized people is harmful to them, because the fewer privileged people are paying attention, the more physical harm can come to us.

Micro-Aggressions

This is kind of a sub-category. Micro-aggressions are things that are tiny, day to day oppressive things that marginalized people have to deal with. None of them ever rise to the level of being able to deal directly with them, but the aggregate of them is exhausting. This is things like, a mother moving her kids away from the black man on the bus, or the “up and down” look at a trans woman, or a cop just having his hand on his weapon when he sees someone with brown skin.

 

This is by no means an exhaustive look at what it means to be an ally. But if you are curious about how to be a good ally, it’s a decent place to start.

Rivers of Blood and Mountains of Bone: A Boxtroll review

Where are the rivers of blood and the mountains of bone?

I was promised mountains of bone!

-Winifred Portly Rind

 Spoiler Warning: This article spoils the movie Boxtrolls. If you have not seen the movie, be warned. This is a spoiler alert.

There is an idea that gets floated around periodically that if you criticize a piece of media, you’re saying that it shouldn’t be enjoyed, or people that enjoy it are wrong. It’s why I get annoyed comments when I mention race in Frozen, or when people freak out when people point out the problematic elements in World of Warcraft. But it’s not true. You can enjoy problematic art; for example, I really enjoy “All about that Bass” by Meghan Trainor, even though the message of the song is kind of deplorable. I analyze media because it’s important to look at the messages we’re sending; especially the messages that are a bit hidden. This often makes it seem like I’m focusing exclusively on the negative, because there’s not a lot ot talk about when media gets something right; mostly just a “hey, you got that right, good job!” That being said, if you think I’m being too harsh, comment and say something; I’ll listen and respond, even if I don’t agree with you.

So I got to watch Boxtrolls last night, and I really enjoyed it. It was a clever concept, and the overall message of the film was positive (mostly). The movie is about a boy who was raised by the eponymous boxtrolls, and believes he is one of them; he can’t fit into his box like they can because he is “long-boned”, his ears aren’t pointy like theirs because he “slept on them wrong”, etc. Eventually, the boy learns that he was given to the boxtrolls to save him from the villain, Snatcher, who has been promised a place in the “white hats”(the town council, essentially), in return for killing all of the box trolls.

The filmmakers were really good at identifying privilege systems; the white hat/red hat conflict is clearly a power and oppression dynamic, with the white hats having privilege (one of them says, “Be rich! That’s how I got [my white hat]!” In fact, the villain’s entire motivation is an attempt to move up in his society from a red hat to a white hat. He ultimately fails, not because his quest (to genocide the box trolls) fails, but because the white hats have decided they don’t want him there.

There are three main issues with the movie: transphobia, the treatment of fatherhood, and the portrayal of women.

The biggest problem with the film was the blatant transphobia. Snatcher cross-dresses as a cabaret-esque performer to gain access to white hat parties. Now, it’s not really clear whether he would be defined as a “queen” (simply a performing cross-dresser), or actually trans; the reactions garned in the film are problematic regardless. Near the climax of the film, one of the white hats says to the villain, “Why are you talking like Madame Frou Frou — I have so many regrets.” The context of the line is clearly meant to evoke sympathy for the white hat being decieved by the cross-dressing villain.

In this case, the question would have to be, “If a child who was already wanting to be seen as a girl saw this movie, what message would they come away with?” The answer, of course, is a highly negative one. So the transphobia on display is pretty problematic.

Fatherhood in the film is a mixed bag. On the one hand, the protagonist is saved because his father gives him to a boxtroll before Snatcher can steal/kill the baby. So we have an example of a selfless father. Winifred’s father, however, is an absent figure, and cares more about retaining his white hat privilege than taking care of his daughter. The movie takes the time to define a “father”: “Someone who raises you, who takes care of you, who listens to you, and always has time for you.” At that point, Eggs(the protagonist) says, “Like Fish!(the boxtroll who raised him).” Winifred starts to agree, but then changes her answer, saying that Fish isn’t Eggs’ father. Later, Winifred’s father refuses to listen to the children, causing Eggs to challenge her with, “I thought father’s were supposed to listen!” Her reply is only, “They’re supposed to.” Unfortunately, the back-and-forth the film takes gives all sorts of unfortunate implications. Winifred’s father never loses his “fatherhood”, if you will; he’s always her father, he just doesn’t act like it all the time. Eggs’ father, thought long-dead, turns up as a prisoner of Snatcher, and immediately assumes the role of father. Fish is implicitly abondoned as a father figure in the narrative the instant Eggs finds out he is not a boxtroll. Except, we are shown Fish meeting the film’s own definition of “father” in the opening montage. The film seems to be saying the only valid fathers are those who share your genes. Which is a bit of a slap in the face for those of us who don’t exactly have a standard-issue father unit.

Finally, the portrayal of women has some issues. There are actually very few female characters – the only explicitly named female characters are Winifred and Madame Frou Frou; and Madame Frou Frou is Snatcher, the villain. While Snatcher and Winifred do have conversations, all of them are about either Winifred’s father or Eggs. So even if Snatcher is a trans-woman (which is by no means clear), their conversations still revolve around the male protagonist, so it’s another movie that doesn’t pass the Bechdel test.

There is one other named woman, but she is named by implication: Madame Portly Rind. She has one role: to get mad at Lord Portly Rind when he flirts with Madame Frou Frou in front of her. Seriously: we only see her in one scene, and in that scene, she hits him in the arm after he blows a kiss to Madame Frou Frou.

In short, this movie is not great at portraying female characters.

With all that being said, I really enjoyed this movie. It had clever writing, and a bit of meta-humor, and for the most part, gave good messages. I definitely recommend this movie.

 

Note: The quote and the title refer to a line spoken by Winifred.