The Problem with Calling Yourself an Ally

Allyship, like listening, can only be judged by people on the receiving end

Photo by Edgar Chaparro on Unsplash

The older male student spoke up as soon as I finished my comments. I had expected it. He had been doing it since the class began. Initially I’d assumed it was the enthusiasm of a first-semester seminary student who had finally found a place that welcomed his rich spiritual and professional background. About halfway into the semester, though, I was chafing at how much he crowded out other voices in the classroom.

He usually took the seat that was closest to me, his vantage point to watch for the moment that my lips closed. He was always the first one to speak, not only in response to me but also in response to his classmates. It was the type of hypermasculine bravado that I had feared would confront me at the seminary where I, not yet 40, was younger than most of my students. Some of them, I knew, did not think women should be in ordained ministry, much less teaching men who were. While others espoused more gender-inclusive ideologies, but they still had a hard time respecting women’s authority.

Early on, I had had to challenge the habit of several male students – a few being my favorite students – who felt like they just had to have the last word in class. Anytime I said something along the lines of “This is the final point before we end...” one of them would jump in to add another point. Until I pointed it out, they had not realized that they were doing it. The women in the class did. And we all recognized that they wouldn’t do the same thing to their male professors. By the time the loquacious male student showed up, I had begun to acquire the critical skills needed by any woman or LGBTQIA+ person teaching in theological education: I learned to interrupt, to challenge, and to redirect.

That day, I learned a new skill: shutting shit down. My patience ends right at the point when someone’s behavior infringes on the learning experience of other students. The first time he began to speak, I noticed another, silent, conversation happening in the room. The women students were glancing at each other and rolling their eyes as if to say, “Here we go again.” It was clearly time for me to step in. For the next hour, each time he tried to speak (which was a lot), I stopped him and yielded the floor to students whose voices were less pronounced. He did not appreciate it and as soon as the class took our midpoint break, he let me know.

“Every time I try to say something, you interrupt me. Have I done something wrong?”

“Lets talk about it after class,” I said, mindful of the lack of privacy as his peers milled around the classroom.

“I want to talk about it now,” he insisted.

I drew a breath. “You have an incredibly rich history and a lot of insight, and you’re eager to talk about it. But it often leaves very little room for other voices. I want you to practice holding back, not being the first to speak, and listening more to your classmates.”

“I am a good listener!” he protested.

“That is not for you to decide,” I said.

Listening skill is not something that we judge for ourselves. It can only be judged by those who are the recipients of our listening. As a psychologist, I have a lot of training in listening skills, but that doesn’t matter if I am not putting them to use. In my professional life, I seem to be a good listener, but at home? I am not sure that my husband and son think I’m a good listener at all!

The same is true of allyship. People love to claim being an ally, professing their solidarity with marginalized communities. But it is never the prerogative of the privileged to judge their allyship with the oppressed. Only the oppressed can do that. I can’t tell you how many times – even recently –I’ve had white colleagues claim to be antiracist allies when I know that very few, if any, people of color would describe them as such. These self-professed allies often have a trail of Black bodies in their wake, people whom they’ve harmed, usually unintentionally, often through their silence. Like my student did, they talk blithely about being allies while behind them, Black women and other people of color smirk, roll their eyes, and keep their distance.

In 2010, just a few weeks after Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi committed suicide following his roommate’s threats to out him, I wrote an essay titled, “Speaking Out: An Ally Confesses.” It was about my journey from a homophobe to LGBTQIA+ allyship. It’s wild to me now that it was a big deal in 2010 for me to name my commitment to do better about being an ally, especially as a seminary professor and, at that time, a candidate for ordination in a non-affirming United Methodist Church. I ended that essay with these words: “I am heterosexual. I am Christian. I am an LGBT ally. And I will be silent no longer.”

It was one of the most authentic pieces I’d ever written. When I re-read it, I am grateful for my journey. I stand by every word. Except these days, I am not so quick to call myself an LGBTQIA+ ally because that is not for me to decide. It is the purview of the LGBTQIA+ communities that I aim to stand in solidarity with. Allyship is kind of like love languages. Just I don’t get to decide what feels loving to another person, I do not get to decide what feels like solidarity to anyone else.

Ally is not a noun; it is not a label that I wear, an honor that I achieve, or a destination that I arrive at. Ally is a verb. It is taking one right action after another, with each action being guided by the wisdom and leadership of LGBTQIA+ communities. It is forming relationships, facing my own complicity, taking risks, speaking up, and being accountable when I mess up, as I have and inevitably will again.

Unfortunately, my student chose not to be accountable that day. After the break, he never returned to the classroom. Instead, he told other students that men didn’t do well in my class because I was a man-hating feminist. It turned out that his refusal to be accountable was a pattern. In writing this post, I did a quick internet search to see what had happened to him (I left the school before he graduated) and discovered a website dedicated to detailing his criminal history, which stretched back to a rape conviction in the 1980s and extended to fraud during the same time that he was in seminary. I’ll let y’all do with that plot twist what you will.

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