Why I define myself as a feminist – rather than an ally
In a lot of liberal parlance there is this idea of being an “ally” which I find just a wee bit less than satisfactory.
The thing about an ally is that they’re not there because they actually believe in your cause, but because they feel they can benefit in some way.
Hence for example during WWII the US and the USSR were allies – even though for most of the rest of the century they were on the brink of ending the world over each other’s continued existence.
Allies are not friends; they’re people who seek mutual benefit in order to achieve strategic goals. That is an important distinction when we talk about social justice.
When we say we’re being good allies, what we’re actually saying is that we’re going to paint ourselves as being in favour of a cause basically for some sort of benefit to ourselves.
To be an ally to feminism is that to not so much embrace the idea that women are equal to men and should be afforded to the same rights and general treatment as men, but to say that the movement that says that is in some way useful to me.
And allies come with demands. A lot of digital ink has been spilled in the atheist community over being good allies to various other communities, but this comes with an inherent idea that those communities would owe us in some way for basically being minimally decent human beings.
And I cannot do that. I cannot say that racism is wrong because that aligns me with a movement that will pay me back some day for saying that, I say it is wrong because it is wrong.
And as an anti-racist, I will accept the leadership of those impacted hardest by racism in the battle against it, because I recognise that they are the ones who know best what they’re talking about.
I do not do this uncritically, anymore than I would do so with any other sort of expert, but rather with an understanding that I have inferior knowledge.
The same thing goes with feminism. I do not define myself as a feminist ally because I do not believe that those fighting for gender equality are potential useful assets to my other causes, I believe that they’re right hence I call myself a feminist.
I am happy to accept the leadership of women in that fight, because they know much better than I do what they’re talking about.
And that is an important point here. Men like me can end up overpowering voices that actually are much better suited to the argument, voices whose authority is layered with lived experience and data that I easily miss because my frame is fundamentally informed by the accident of birth that rendered me male in a male dominated world.
So I have to learn to shut up and listen, something which is not exactly in my nature in most cases. The ability to recognise my own incompetence is a difficult one to master, and I have not fully done so yet.
But I have no better label for my beliefs than to say I am a feminist, not as a mark of pride, not as a member of a movement I seek to dominate, but as a statement of what I believe to be true.
I cannot call myself an ally, because that is not what I am. This isn’t some sort of transaction to gain myself some sort of benefit.
And simply believing feminism to be correct – is no guarantee of personal perfection. Too often people like me like to say we want to hear a variety of voices – but all singing from our own song sheet.
Saying that I am a feminist is not saying that I should not be criticised for my sexism, but that I should listen when such criticisms are made. I’m a slow study, but I have the duty to learn.
This is very interesting. I’ve thought about this quite a bit, myself. The “ally” term annoys me, too, so I disdain it, but I’ve also tended not to say that I’m a feminist, either. For one, many men who proclaim that they are feminists have turned out to be rather foul, once you get to know them. So for a man to say that he is a feminist is something that always raises a red flag in my mind. What is his motivation in saying so? Perhaps good, perhaps bad, and I’ve encountered a lot of the latter. For another, it seems clear to me that in this movement, women are the obvious choices to be the leaders and voices, and every group that men join eventually ends up having men pushing their way to the front. Finally, I’m not active—I’m not writing columns, I’m not giving talks, I’m not protesting anything. So although I agree with many feminists in general and with what I believe to be the fundamental goals of feminism, I don’t call myself a feminist. What should I call myself? I dunno if it even matters. Perhaps “friend” would be the right word.
I don’t identify as a feminist. Either I am one, or I’m not, and I’m happy for women to decide which without my prompting or oversight.
More on the topic of the post though, “ally” does irk me. Back in the 1990s I used to stifle a giggle inwards whenever one unionist would call another “comrade”. At the time, to my mind, this hailing seemed largely without purpose, and a vestigial relic of yesteryear, like the union choir singing Billy Bragg songs, or the tapestries of Lenin you’d occasionally see in an organizer’s office.
But “Brother” or “Sister”, even without being problematic in the way some in recent times would claim, tied into conservative gender roles and norms, and somehow seems indicative of the kind of creeping patriarchy that snuck-up in the left to found exploitative communes in the ’60s and ’70s. “Ally” seems to me to at least entail a kind of creeping neo-liberalism – the implicit reciprocity, ultimately, doesn’t seem altruistic,
Aside from the fact that there’s nothing intrinsically left about being in an alliance, the progressive connotations of “Good Ally” come across as being only skin deep. At first glances, a “Good Ally” doesn’t punch down – the contingencies of the alliance are about liberation. When someone more oppressed than you speaks, you shut up and listen, except when you don’t.
Exceptions get made, and the basis of these exceptions is always the same; in-group status.
When you do Get It Wrong, or Fuck Up, you will be expected to show contrition irrespective of whether or not you did Get It Wrong, or Fuck Up, which wouldn’t be such a problem if not for the fact that the extent to which you are to show contrition – how expensive this contrition is for you – is decided by the most powerful within the in-group, in the interests of the most powerful within the in-group.
Unless there’s a falling out, the higher-ups within the in-group can and do assign themselves contritions that are personally inexpensive (but may be drastically taxing on an organizational level), even going as far as not having to show any contrition at all if the person they’ve punched-down to is a Known Problematic Person – e.g. it’s a Bad Thing for a man to gaslight and mansplain feminism to women, unless that man’s an Approved Person and the woman is Ophelia Benson.
Low ranking folks within the in-group are assigned tasks of contrition based superficially on the extent of any misdeed, heavily modified by their potential utility to the higher ups. Because what is good for the higher-ups in a self-declared social justice network, is good for social justice. It positively smacks of Animal Farm.
At first glances, being a Good Ally entails being decent towards disadvantaged people, but in an increasing number of settings, “Good Ally” seems to entail buying into the above kind of schema while simultaneously not acknowledging the nature of the schema. This, it shouldn’t need pointing out, doesn’t serve social justice, and simply serves to re-engineer or covertly re-enforce privilege, albeit within a sub-culture rather than more broadly in society.
Like I said, I used to giggle at “comrade”, but with options like “Good Ally” kicking around, and with the ethos of not trying to get too far ahead of your comrades, socially, clearly being in opposition to the vicious, small-scale social climbing of “Good Ally”, “comrade” may be well placed to make a comeback, it’s own problematic history ala Animal Farm not withstanding.
Even though I also consider the baggage accompanying the current use of the term “ally” hopelessly contaminated, I view the situation differently.
What’s the problem with saying that you *do* embrace the idea in question while still *not* defining yourself as a feminist? For a useful reference, here is one of my favorite texts on this topic, written by Ally Fogg. (“Favorite” doesn’t mean that I agree with everything – just that I like the general direction a lot.)
Ally states that “Feminism is and should be a movement of women, for women and led by women”. This sounds to me like a very strong declaration of a ‘trade-union’ vision of feminism. It’s like … well, a bus conductor might generally support the mineworkers’ goals – and why not! – but really, there is no place for a bus conductor in the Union of Mineworkers. With this approach, feminism is not a label for someone who is simply “generally progressive”. It’s also not an all-encompassing progressive ideology, no way. It’s more like … hmm … a trade-union “of women, for women and led by women”.
I do not think it’s a fully accurate description of how feminism in fact functions, no. Personally, I view it more as an issue of *focus*. Belonging to the movement focused on women, for women and led by women makes you a feminist. On the other hand, if you are focused on something else, I can see nothing wrong in your refusal to define yourself as a feminist. That’s my perspective and that’s a part of what (I think) Ally is also saying.
From this point of view, there is nothing wrong with the idea of aligning oneself “with a movement that will pay me back some day”. My focus is on X, your focus is on Y, I will invest my time and effort to support you on Z, counting for some reciprocity. Like: my focus is on male victims of domestic violence and I will support your appeals for funding (I don’t have to do it, this has nothing to do with my cause and I can’t support everything which is noble – sorry, no time for that!), hoping that in the future you will support mine. What’s wrong with this? Imo, nothing at all. Completely nothing.
Okay – writing too long comments is definitely one of my many sins. So sorry!!! Just one last remark and I’m done.
After reading some manuals of “being a good ally”, I decided never to become one, with the reason being that substituting “a pet” for “an ally” preserves too much of the manuals’ content. I staunchly refuse to be someone’s pet! I mean it! I never do it, never in my life … except for those situations in which I do. :)
I don’t consider long comments a sin! (Unless they’re crap and boring and pointless, which yours aren’t.)