Lawrence Koval on Moving Beyond Allyship

In the words of Lilla Watson, “If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”

This quote comes to mind when confronting the 556 anti-trans bills that have been attempted to be passed this year alone—and it’s only June. I have seen on forum threads how “allies” will solve problems of bathroom bills by accusing elderly, conservative white people of being trans so they have to undergo the invasive genital searches or other confirmations of “true sex” that have been threatened in states like Florida. They mean well, I’m sure, but don’t realize that they are using the same tools of separation that these bills originate from. This idea that to be trans is a wholly separate category of existence. An existence that is as an imaginary figure. A specter for the fears and worries of what will happen to society if we were to live in a gender-expansive world. One that doesn’t predict or predicate someone’s life based upon their gender alone—but that this can become fluid, expansive, even ever changing. When we imagine cisness and transness to be wholly separate experiences rather than products of the same societal experience, we all lose our humanity in the process.

In order to move beyond allyship, we cannot hold each other at arm’s length. It is realizing that anti-trans legislation means something for everyone. Because it puts into legal writing who is a “real” woman, who is a “real” man, and it doesn’t matter what your sex “actually is” to be punished for it. It is recognizing that race, size, class, ability are all bound to gender and how it is read, expressed, and experienced in this world—now with the threat of those narrowly legislated standards being able to be enforced by police, fines, and jail time.

It is all connected, which is why I cannot write about queerness as isolate. We see this through the way disability has been implicated in denying disabled, trans individuals’ access to care. All of us will become disabled in this life if we live long enough, meaning that our ability to make decisions for ourselves and our care is under attack. Have you had COVID-19 before? That includes you.

What does it mean? What are you supposed to do? When we recognize these pieces that construct the world we live in, it makes it easier to begin to change its shape. We begin to understand how to take it apart because we understand how it was built–and we have a million wise voices from the global majority, disabled, queer, the incarcerated who tell us exactly how it was created and where to begin. We cannot wait to be perfectly resourced to begin this work, because it will be too late. This is not to say disregard your own well-being entirely, but what is something you can do? Is it talking to a neighbor? Hosting a fundraiser for a friend? These will not be acts of celebrity, but rather grains of sand that can collect and grind the gears of this great machine.

If you are looking for more guidance, I must direct you to Rebby Kern who has written an entire chapter, “Moving from Allyship to Solidarity: The Roles We Each Play in Liberation,” on this very subject speaking from their life’s experience in our book Deconstructing the Fitness Industrial Complex.