Humpday open thread: Don't be an ally. Be an accomplice.
We see it all over social media. "BLM ally!" "LGBTQ+ ally!" "Latino ally!" I look side-eye at anyone who claims "allyship". Oftentimes they bestow that title upon themselves. They do so because they use the right hashtags, they chant the right slogans, they watch The Daily Show every night. For those of us in the above categories, it's performative and rather insulting. Shouldn't we be the ones to confer the status of ally upon you? Shouldn't we be the ones who judge the validity of your claims to be allies? It's like, say, forming your own medical certification board and saying that you're "board certified". That dog just don't hunt. But this abuelita? Oh yes, she got the memo. Calling yourself an ally is cheap. I can call myself an emperor, and it would have the same effect. And as we've seen, allyship is conditional. It always has been. If the ally is made to feel at all uncomfortable, then all that go...
