How to Be An Ally

Fear of being wrong is one of the main factors that prevents people from being even halfway decent allies, they're just so overwhelmed with the fact that they may be called out for not being perfect that they don't even bother to help their fellow humans. I will freely admit that being an ally - to any group - is tough because it forces you to examine your own privilege. You are an Ally because you are a member of the privileged class who has decided to stand up for the marginalized. That means that you benefit from privilege. Even if you are a member of one marginalized group, no person exists in a vacuum. I'm an asexual, disabled woman and yeah the last part is hard for me to admit, but I'm also white and from an affluent family which makes me pretty damn privileged despite the non-hetero, disabled portion of my existence. I benefit from "benevolent sexism" all the damn time because of my whiteness and cisgendered-ness. Just because benevolent sexism is also sexist behavior, that doesn't mean I don't benefit from it.

Unpacking Your Own Bias

In Social Justice circles, we talk a lot about examining your own privilege and understanding your own biases, but we don't talk about HOW people are supposed to go about these things. We only tell them to do it. We don't even offer any kind of support system because unpacking your own internalized bias is the sort of process you're never really done with. There are all sorts of biases that are thrust upon us as children and take a long time to exorcise from our brains and even then, nothing really ever goes away. Essentially, society is a cult and we are all child inductees. In order to fully illustrate the messy process of understanding your own hangups, I've detailed my own attempt at self-actualization here. This is going to get personal, so, consider yourselves warned.

Ableism and Disability Erasure in the Social Justice Community

I recently got into a bit of a fight on the internet over Social Justice blogs and erasure. Long story short, a blogger that I respect (much as we may disagree) argued that Social Justice blogs and sites that don't talk about the issues of disabled people are inherently bigots because they contribute to erasure. Which, valid point seeing as most SJ blogs and articles focus more on LGBTQ issues, race issues, and feminist ones, without inclusion of disabilities. Because there are disabled feminists, disabled GSM people, and disabled people of color, and even disabled straight white people. But we don't talk about them.

I tried to argue that not talking about disability issues didn't inherently make them prejudiced although some of them very well may be, but I totally stuck my foot in my mouth. Thats what I get for arguing with people on the internet on an insomnia bender.