fwiw, my lived experience is that I’ve said lots of words I shouldn’t have said, and my trans friends continue to invite me over to watch TV with them, and to eat supper with them, and to generally hang out together. A quick apology and change of subject can do wonders.
I know they consider me a friend. I don’t actually know whether they consider me an ally. That’s their call, and it doesn’t really matter. I do try to lobby for a more trans-friendly world, but it’s obviously less central to my life than to the lives of my trans friends.
Oh, and thanks. I haven’t read the whole thread. There were some moderation flags on the thread, and i see those even though i don’t moderate great debates, and it’s a topic I’m interested in. I did go back and read the op. But I’m not going to watch a half hour of unpleasant material i already know. I’ll watch a couple minutes, if your or someone else points me to the relevant part of the video.
Fair call, perhaps I found using that language too convenient overlooking your specific intent, as I may have mentioned it is getting to be a bit of a task to find my way around this particular subplot that has grown to completely dominate the thread and separate the particular from the general cases.
However, still trying to do so (perhaps in vain as I just admitted), for some people out there it does seem like that’s what they fear, when it comes to judgement for their choices, doesn’t it? As I said, there is a certain element of “fragility” out there, of people who feel a need to be safe in their self-perception that they’re “one of the good ones”.
Really, there are different kinds of friends and different kinds of allies.
There’s the friend who will show up at 7am to help you move from a horrible 4th floor walk-up on the lower east side to a different horrible 4th floor walk-up on the lower east side, work all day and ask for nothing but pizza and beer when the job is done. There’s also the friend who is “busy” that day but who WILL show up at poker night with a 12 pack of good beer, lend you his sawzall, and put $50 down to support your Walk For Something Important.
They’re both friends, one is certainly more reliable than the other, but it isn’t necessarily wise to alienate the second friend because he didn’t support you in your time of need. That’s not his (my) call to make, though, since he wasn’t the person who was left high and dry.
Your relationship with people in a group you want to think of yourself as an ally to is most definitely not the relationship of a parent to a child.
I would hope that your relation to your spouse isn’t the same as to a child, either.
If they’re asking for advice, then I will give it. Whether they take it or not is up to them. If they’re not asking for advice, then I probably ought not to give it; if it’s something that I think they’re clearly unaware of that’s relevant, I may mention it once, but I’m not going to keep on about it.
In the case of a person who’s a member of a threatened group that I’m not part of, I’m strongly inclined to think that they know more about the threats to and the issues within that group than I do, and that therefore my chances of being able to tell them something they actually don’t know about are pretty slim.
(If I had had children, I expect I would have given them repeated advice that wasn’t wanted, while they were still young children. Adults should not be treated as if they were young children.)
Yeah, that triple conflation really jumped out at me, too.
I love my children, but I substitute my judgment for theirs all the time. If I treated them as equals, with full autonomy, it could prove deadly to them. Part of my job, as a good parent, is to guide them to have better judgment. I’m thoroughly paternalistic when it comes to my paternal role.
If I treated a mentally competent adult that way, I would no way in hell be an ally.
I’m talking about that, I use that very example to explain what see I as a meaningful use of the word “ally” to me. A use that is resistant to, and indeed reliant on, being the sort of person who doesn’t automatically agree.
Of course the relationship is not the same, the way in which you interact, disagree, advise etc. is different in each relationship but the fact that you see it as your duty as an “ally” (as I see it) to not automatically agree with and encourage their beliefs of course of action comes from the same place of concern and love.
well…yes, of course. That’s the point. We all have flaws in our thinking and we all take courses of action that we think are right and yet will ultimately harm us. This not a one-sided deal where any of us are fully in the right. We all need people to tell us when we are wrong.
The strength of an ally is that they will tell you that and set you straight. That applies every bit as much to me as to the others that I care about.
Someone who will not try to do that for me is not an ally to me in a meaningful way.
If you want to use a totally different definition of the word “ally” than the definition being discussed in the thread, I don’t see how anything you say is interesting to this thread.
Also, no one said anything about “automatically agreeing”. People reach a variety of opinions in a variety of ways, and whether it’s “automatic” or the result of careful considerations is completely irrelevant. Let’s be charitable, and assume that most people have put a little thought into their beliefs. But if you believe that it’s perfectly okay to refuse to sell birthday candles to Jews (to make up an example), then speaking as a Jew, I’m not going to consider you an ally, using the definition of “ally” that’s relevant to this thread.
I’m suggesting that if you want to participate, you might, just possibly, consider using the same words to mean the same things as everyone else in the thread.
And if you are the only person who mentioned “automatically agreeing”, you seem to be attacking a strawman. Why?
Obviously, there are disagreements and there are disagreements.
I’m an atheist. A Christian who says, “You believe that coaches shouldn’t pray at public school football games, whereas I think that as long as the prayer is voluntary it should be allowed” can be my ally. A Christian who says, “You believe that atheists should be able to hold public office, whereas I think that atheists are morally unfit for office and should be banned” cannot be my ally.
If the disagreement is over whether I should hold equal rights and autonomy, that’s disqualifying.