*sighs* are us trans people really going to throw fellow trans people under the bus to appease the feelings of a popular "ally"?

the role and purpose of a privileged cis ally is to leverage that privilege to ultimately amplify the voices of trans people, not to center themselves in the public dialogue

I'm skeptical of any activist who makes it a central part of their public activism to position themselves as an authority on the oppression of a subaltern group they are not themselves a member of

see also:

cis male feminists
white anti-racism activists

like, how many times do we have to see these people ain't shit before a sense of pattern recognition kicks in?

I don't think the current cis ally under discussion has any sort of ulterior motives and I believe she does what she does in absolute good faith

but her existence as a primary voice for trans rights itself only perpetuates the centering of cis people in our advocacy

and she absolutely NEEDS to know when it's her turn to speak and when it's her turn to step aside and let us speak for ourselves

having a trans wife and a trans daughter does not imbue her with transness by proxy

I'm going to use myself as an example

I am VEHEMENTLY anti-racist and anti-racism

like, y'all don't even know how deeply and viscerally I feel about this but I've torn white people new assholes many times for casual racism

and every time — *every single time* — I've let it pass I've hated myself for it

because even though I have to overcome my own social anxiety and the titanic pressures to let it slide, if I *don't* I have failed at the most basic of human decency

and, yes, I put "anti-whiteness" in my Twitter bio, mostly so I can block people who try to pick a fight with me over it rather than asking, in good faith, what that means

but I don't position myself as an authority on racism, and when I speak on my own about it, it's to address white people about the ways we, *as white people*, are taught to perpetuate systemic racism

and I will always ALWAYS boost the voices of people affected by racism, especially Black people, rather than try to make myself a Good White Ally

because I am fundamentally unable to tell if I'm a Good White Ally

I was raised to be anti-racist, but in a sort of passive way, and until the Bean moved here I was utterly and completely unaware of probably 80% of the racism that people who aren't read as white deal with every day

and, as I've mentioned before, I grew up in a minority-white city where I saw the effects of racist policing and public policy on a daily basis — I knew that the cops were not friends then, and while for a time I started to forget that? 2014 reminded me in a big way

I'm *constantly* learning about microaggressions and macroaggressions that affect people who aren't protected by whiteness, as well as discovering nuggets of racist thought and assumptions I didn't realize I'd absorbed until something happens to challenge them

does all of this make sense to you?

are you following what I'm saying?

the best allies are still, ultimately, not the people we're fighting for

they can, at any time, retreat into privilege and choose to not think about this stuff if they don't want to

but I can't stop being trans

I can't stop being gay

I can't stop being disabled

I can't stop being read as a woman

and I must never allow myself to forget that I am nonetheless protected by whiteness

I am grateful to the friends of mine who have criticized me for word choices and statements concerning marginalized populations I don't belong to

it's taken me a long time to keep myself from going into a defensive mode reflexively, and I'm not perfect about it

but I think if it's so important to a cis person to be an advocate for trans people, then they need to be willing to step off the podium, to shut up and listen for awhile

and we need to not eat our own for criticizing a popular ally