[My main Tumblr can be found over at myasphyxiatedmind]
If you want your ask replied to privately, just put '****' before you start typing.
My name is: Michelle, but most people call me Dark online.
My gender-pronouns are: They/them/their.
I am: 26 years old, a feminist, liberal, an atheist, an omnivore, and an ISFJ.
The Feminist: Intersectional, body positive, pro-choice, and sex positive.
My privileged identities include: Female assigned at birth (trans* privilege), white, able-bodied, allistic (?), dyadic, monogamous.
My non-privileged/oppressed identities include: Gender-fluid, fat, gray-a, neuroatypical, and gay.
I have: Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and Major Depressive Disorder.
I like: Pets & animals, animal welfare, pet care & pet care education, ~*SCIENCE!*~, anatomy & physiology, roleplaying, anime/manga, computer & video games, rock & metal music.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
The first rule of ALLY CLUB: You do not talk in ALLY CLUB.
The first rule of ALLY CLUB: You do not talk in ALLY CLUB.
The second rule of ALLY CLUB: You DO NOT TALK in ALLY CLUB.
The third rule of ALLY CLUB: If a marginalized person says STOP, the argument is over.
The fourth rule of ALLY CLUB: Ganging up on marginalized people and/or their blogs with a bunch of your privileged buddies means you’re out of ALLY CLUB. If marginalized people come after you in droves? YOU’VE FUCKED UP. APOLOGIZE. DON’T EXPECT TO BE FORGIVEN.
The fifth rule of ALLY CLUB: If you ping a bunch of marginalized people with the same bullshit “honest question, guise!” then you’re out of ALLY CLUB and automatically inducted into TROLL CLUB.
The sixth rule of ALLY CLUB: No “what about me,” no “but privileged people don’t have perfect lives, either.”
The seventh rule of ALLY CLUB: If you fuck with marginalized people you do not get to say when the argument is over. It’s over when the marginalized people you fucked with say it’s over.
The eighth rule of ALLY CLUB: If this is your first time reading a social justice blog run by a certain group of marginalized people, DO NOT SUBMIT SHIT.
I started a hashtag
This kind of makes me mad (yes I’m a white girl with a lot of gay friends, go ahead and stereotype me) but I am a “straight ally” and I have chosen to not get married until everyone can. So I mean, not all of us straight people are like “aw that totally sucks you can’t get married but imma do it anyway k.”
Announcing that you’re a white girl with a lot of gay friends and that you won’t get married until everyone can #allyweekfestivities
POINT PROVEN!
This is either in my queue or I reblogged it earlier, but I’m reblogging again for that white girl because yeah.
Ask Reply.
greenkt1 asked you:Is it the more practical approach for the equality cause to applaud those who “ally” with us, as we live in a cynical world and those who do ally with anything they are not directly affected by deserve to by applauded, or is it more practical to hold the bar higher, say inclusion in our cause, thus demanding action?
‘Allies’ do not deserve asspats for being decent human beings.
for those who want to join the fight against ira gray: a guide :)
tahlalaliaaa said: What ever amount of victim blaming shit you get I hope the support from the rest of your followers gives you something positive. There’s a lot of us willing to do what we can for you if you want anything. X
i really appreciate things like this. thank you so much.
if folks want to support this fight, i’m requesting a couple of things:
1) make sure you have your facts straight. read lauren’s posts (here, here, and here), my gigantic explanatory post (here), and ira’s apologist post (here: be sure to read through the various notes on that post to get other people’s take on the situation). ASK about details before assuming!
2) stay aware of what’s going on. follow me, follow bloodmouthprince, and check up on ira’s blog to see what bullshit he puts forth. keep an eye on the ira gray tag to see what other people are saying. when people say bullshit things, call them out. when people say cool things, reblog them. recognize that, as he has already, he WILL bring up my mental health, probably as soon as he responds. please stand with me when that happens and call out ableism where you see it.
3) reblog our open letter. this lists our demands to ira. we want this letter to get as much visibility as possible, including beyond tumblr and into his personal real-life spheres.
4) if you are involved in anything he’s involved with beyond tumblr, PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD about who he is and what he’s done. he has a facebook and a twitter: if you have access, call him out on those platforms as well. he also has other tumblr blogs: here, here, and here.
4) send us supportive messages. it makes getting the hate a lot easier. :D
5) write about this! put forward your thoughts and tag them “ira gray” and don’t forget to use trigger warnings as necessary.
6) make sure from now on, you go out of your way to support survivors who are dmab and of color. we have gotten SO much support from trans women and people of color, while white folks and trans men have been remarkably silent. realize that rape in queer communities doesn’t just happen to white dfab folks.
7) contact the organizations that empower him and ask them to stop. these groups include the self made men, one n ten, and arizona feminist action network. please reblog if there are others you know of with accessible contact pathways. :D
8) keep listening, keep writing, keep standing up, keep sitting down. learn when you’re supposed to learn. fight when you’re supposed to fight.
things to avoid:
1) calling for the involvement of the legal system. neither of us want to go through the harrowing process of prosecuting someone for rape. i have mental illness that would make that an incredibly hurtful experience for me. also, i generally don’t trust our criminal justice system to deliver anything near “justice.” this isn’t to shame survivors (particularly poc and trans folks) who want to involve the system. i, personally, do not want to.
2) sending ira abusive anonymous messages. the angrier he is, the more he is going to come after us. as i’ve said before, he has information about my mental health that i’m sure he’s going to try to smear me with. if you want to call him out, please do so on your own blog, with your own name tied to it, so i don’t have to handle the fallout from your actions. i appreciate the sentiment behind sending people anonymous abuse, and i’m not saying he doesn’t deserve it. however, i would feel SO MUCH more comfortable and encouraged by your non-anonymous support.
3) co-opting this for your own bigoted purposes (TW: radscum, cissexism). really, just no.
CHEERS! thank you so much for your help and support here. it really means a lot to me, and i know it means a lot to lauren and his other abused partners too. i love you all and really really appreciate the love i’ve been getting. thank you so much for your continued help.
oh! and please reblog this post. :D
(Source: themisandristwhore)
thelittlekneesofbees, dionthesocialist and inlovewithrobertsheehan present: “So, You Decided to be Black.”
So, you decided to be Black. All you had to do was click a button with your pale ass fingers and vavoom! Youz a negro! Now you can derail every argument!
Welcome to the land of being a niggeaux!
Here are some steps to start living your real nigga life.
Step One.
You can never go back to being white. (We lost a lot of you niggeauxs with that one, huh?) Realize that if you aren’t in Africa(and sometime, even there), whenever you hear an adjective, people aren’t automatically talking about you.
Oh, but don’t worry, white people, like your former self will GLADLY point that shit out for you on a daily. Are you gay? No, you’re a black gay/gay black person.(And people will always forget you can be both) Are you selfish? No, you are a selfish black person.(And people will never forget you can be both) Oh, be sure to notice how people say, ‘black’ with disgust when this happens.
Step Two.
Since you started off White, you are going to be a dark skinned Black person to truly lose any color privilege. So, don’t bother watching TV because you’ll hardly ever find yourself there. Your hair, consider it nonexistent. You’re an alien to White people now, they don’t know how to really deal with ‘your type.’ You’ll be rejected from salons and told to get rid of the way your hair grew out of your head permanently.
Step Three.
Stop talking to family and friends. Chances are, if you only pretend to be a niggeaux online. Mufuckas must hate us around your parts.
Step Four:
Now that you have no family or friend, at least you have your identity right? Woah! You were planning on being an individual? Stop right there. From now on, whatever you wear, read, watch, and eat is no longer your own business, but is subject to the scrutiny of every person you know. Listen to rap? You’re a stereotype. Don’t listen to rap? You’re a race traitor. Wear Jordans? You’re too black. Wear Vans? You’re not black enough. Eat chicken? You suck. Don’t eat chicken? You suck. And don’t bother looking for any kind of perfect medium for this, cause it don’t exist.
This is a starting list for all anons who want to hide behind a face of an identity that isn’t yours. Collect yourselves.
alluding to baddominicana’s rant
hay allies
if you reblog something from a poc, be prepared to handle the garbage that you’ll be potentially sending our way. being “enlightened” and wanting to spread your ~newfound knowledge~ is only half the job.
seriously
This. The hate we get isn’t coming from our followers.
And another thing I just realized: when allies reblog our stuff and then their followers reblog it and add a ton of racist commentary, how come I never see the ally jumping into the discussion? Are they afraid of alienating their white friends? Is their follower count more important to them?
Just one of the reasons why there are very few people I consider an ally. When it comes down to it, they’ll jump off the boat at the first sign of turbulence and leave us all to sink.
I see it once in a while, but most of the time people who are allies will have already cut off the people they were following that would pull shit like that. Like a bunch of new followers I had at one point were ragging on their followers for pulling shit.
But once they were canned, it was no longer a problem there…the rest end up unfollowing at some point.
yup. white folks bet not be reblargin if they aint gon come collect. we see you.
Unapologetically Indigenous & Proud: notes on being an ally to People of Color.
These are some things that I have discovered or have been informed of over the last few months on this blog, and I wanted to pass them on in one place. I hope they can help you in the ways they’ve helped me, and I thank the people who’ve patiently helped me to understand them.
1. ‘Ally’ is something that you do, not something that you are.
I don’t call myself an ally. I appreciate it when I am referred to as such by my friends/followers who are People of Color, but a label such as ally isn’t something that a person can apply to themselves. It’s a liquid term that may or may not apply to me at any time depending on my personal behavior, and to assume the term is to assume that I am then incapable of wrongdoing or racism. I’m not. I’m simply not. You cannot label yourself an ally, all you can and should do is be one.
2. We’re still white, folks.
Far, far too often I see white anti-racists referring to all other white people as ‘you’, ‘they’, ‘them’, etc. We’re still white, y’all. We still have white privilege. When we tell white people to stop doing things, we have to say we have to stop doing this, we have problems, we have privilege, we don’t experience racism, we will never understand, we, us, ours. Rejecting whiteness and white supremacy does not strip us of privilege or somehow remove from us our ability to white.
3. We must work in the interests of all People of Color, while understanding that PoC are human beings who do not always agree with each other.
Simply put, it’s not our place to step into conversations between People of Color who are discussing racism to agree or disagree. Remember, we don’t experience racism. We can’t pick between the viewpoints of people who, from birth, understand racism from experience. As white people, and as anti-racists, we deal in our own. There are plenty of white people upholding white supremacy, we have plenty to do. And, in the rare case that this happens, if a Person of Color tells you that racism happens to white people, etc, thank them for their opinion and move on. We simply have no place to argue.
4. We support, defend, and battle. We don’t validate.
When we reblog something about experiences with racism/whiteness from a Person of Color, we don’t do so in order to ‘endorse’ or ‘validate’ their experiences, or to say that ‘as a white person, I agree that this happened to you and I say it’s awful and therefore it really is’. We must understand that these experiences are valid by the fact of their existence alone. We pass these things on because they’re real, and because people need to know. Not because we need to put our white stamp of approval on it.
5. Intersectionality.
In other words, to work in the best interests of People of Color we must also work in the interests of queer people, trans people, women, disabled folks, etc, but we must remember that these battles often share the same front. There are queer PoC, trans PoC, Women of Color, disabled PoC. Homophobia, cissexism, misogyny, and ableism work against People of Color as much as they do anybody else.
6. It’s not about us.
It’s just not. When whiteness is rightfully attacked, we have the choice to continue to battle whiteness or personally defend ourselves. We can only do one at a time, and there’s only one that we can do while calling ourselves anti-racists.
Who gives a fuck if we’re not all like that? There are still an overwhelming majority of white people who are. See point 2. We’re not here to defend ourselves or present ourselves as good people or ‘better than the other white people’. See point 1. We don’t determine the legitimacy of our ally status, and to derail a conversation on racism by defending ourselves is to say that the fact that I don’t see myself this way is more important than the fact that whiteness prevails, which is whiteness prevailing in action, and is racist.
Basic Respect for Transsexuals
Basic Respect For Transsexuals
- Please use language that corresponds to my gender identity, even if my body does not seem to match, and even when talking about my past.
- If you are still adjusting to my transition, it is normal to make mistakes with pronouns. Don’t draw attention to it. Just correct yourself and carry on.
- A transsexual woman is a male-to-female. A transsexual man is a female-to-male. It is never the other way around. Though sometimes it is referred to as male-to-male, or female-to-female because individuals may not have ever identified as the opposite gender and don’t see it as a transition from one to the other, rather an alignment of body and mind.
- Don’t assume my gender identity defines my sexual orientation. Who I am attracted to is totally separate from my gender. If I am a transsexual man who likes men, treat me no differently than any other gay man.
- Don’t expect me to conform to stereotypes of my gender. I wear clothes I like and I have a variety of interests, just like everyone else. There is no need to point out which of my behaviors are “boy actions” and “girl actions”.
- Please don’t use my old name or ask what it was. Instead of saying “back when you were _____” or “when you were a girl” say “before you came out as a man” or “prior to your transition”.
- Don’t use my name in the 3rd person as if I was someone else, i.e. “Are you dressing as Jack now?”
- If you use the word transsexual (or trans), it’s better to use it as an adjective to describe a person, not as a noun, i.e. trans people, trans man, trans woman.
- Don’t assume that I have chosen to be a transsexual person. The only choice I have made is whether or not to accept my situation and fix it to live a healthier life as I see fit.
The Do’s and Don’ts of Being a Good Ally
1. Don’t derail a discussion. Even if it makes you personally uncomfortable to discuss X issue…it’s really not about you or your comfort. It’s about X issue, and you are absolutely free to not engage rather than try to keep other people from continuing their conversation.
2. Do read links/books referenced in discussions. Again, even if the things being said make you uncomfortable, part of being a good ally is not looking for someone to provide a 101 class midstream. Do your own heavy lifting.
3. Don’t expect your feelings to be a priority in a discussion about X issue. Oftentimes people get off onto the tone argument because their feelings are hurt by the way a message was delivered. If you stand on someone’s foot and they tell you to get off? The correct response is not “Ask nicely” when you were in the wrong in the first place.
4. Do shut up and listen. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of listening to the people actually living X experience. There is nothing more obnoxious than someone (however well intentioned) coming into the spaces of a marginalized group and insisting that they absolutely have the solution even though they’ve never had X experience. You can certainly make suggestions, but don’t be surprised if those ideas aren’t well received because you’ve got the wrong end of the stick somewhere.
5. Don’t play Oppresion Olympics. Really, if you’re in the middle of a conversation about racism? Now is not the time to talk about how hard it is to be a white woman and deal with sexism. Being oppressed in one area does not mean you have no privilege in another area. Terms like intersectionality and kyriarchy exist for a reason. Also…that’s derailing. Stop it.
6. Do check your privilege. It’s hard and often unpleasant, but it’s really necessary. And you’re going to get things wrong. Because no one is perfect. But part of being an ally is being willing to hear that you’re doing it wrong.
7. Don’t expect a pass into safe spaces because you call yourself an ally. You’re not entitled to access as a result of not being an asshole. Sometimes it just isn’t going to be about you or what you think you should happen. Your privilege didn’t fall away when you became an ally, and there are intra-community conversations that need to take place away from the gaze of the privileged.
8. Do be willing to stand up to bigots. Even if all you do is tell a friend that the thing they just said about X marginalized group is unacceptable, you’re doing some of the actual work of being an ally.
9. Don’t treat people like accessories or game tokens. Really, you get no cool points for having a diverse group of friends. Especially when you try to use that as license to act like an asshole.
10. Do keep trying. Fighting bigotry is a war, not a battle and it’s generational. So, keep your goals realistic, your spirits up (taking a break to recoup emotional, financial, physical reserves is a-okay), and your heart in the right place. Eventually we’ll get it right.
How to deal with being called out
- Don’t tone police. It is NOT your right to dictate how someone should react to their oppression.
- Don’t demand a detailed explanation.* You’re basically asking the person to justify their call out. It’s exhausting, many resources are available, and often this is just a way to try and derail, start an argument, or discredit the other person.
- Don’t get defensive. A call out is not all about you as a person.
- Don’t take it personally. Calling out is not a personal attack. If someone calls you out, they’re trying to teach you something. Calling out is a way for people to educate others on how systems of oppression operate on a day to day, individual level.
- Don’t attack the person who’s calling you out. That’s just fucked up.
- Don’t assume the person calling you out is just “looking to get offended”. Nobody enjoys calling other people out. To call someone out, people often have to mentally prepare for serious repercussions. Calling someone out might mean starting an argument, during which many people will side with the oppressor by default (especially if you’re privileged over the person calling you out).
- Understand that being oppressive is not the same as being offensive or hurting feelings. The damage you’re perpetuating is part of a larger system of oppression.
- Realize that your intent is irrelevant when it comes to whether you were oppressive or not.
- Recognize the power dynamics that are in place between you and the person calling you out.
- Understand intersectionality. IE: Just because you are oppressed by classism, doesn’t mean you lack male privilege.
- Know that being privileged means being oppressive, but you can work to reduce the ways that you are oppressive.
- LISTEN.
- Genuinely apologize.
- Work on oppression reduction and being the best ally you can be. The point of calling you out is to draw your attention to how you’re being oppressive, so that you can work to change it. If you made an oppressive joke, there’s probably oppressive thoughts in place (conscious or not) that led you to think the joke was appropriate. Everyone has to unlearn the oppressive things they’ve absorbed from an oppressive society. We are all taught ways to keep marginalized people in their place, but the good thing is that we can identify these things in ourselves and change. And then we can start working on dismantling the kyriarchy, yeah!
Feel free to add to this or change as necessary.
