ID: Drawing of a duck billed platypus underwater, they’re wearing a rainbow coloured t shirt and a pink bum-bag, and saying: “Ally is not something you can self-identify as, it’s a title that you earn. Let your actions speak for themselves!”
Credit: Sophie Labelle
This smug copypasta can be applied to any minority or marginalized group, but it’s still not helpful.
Intersectionalism is important because everyone has a different experience - to expect me to internalize their struggles by reading a book or watching a video essay is absurd. You need to tell your story, we need to give space and listen. Crossing your arms and saying “do your own research” is unproductive - a well meaning ‘normie’ who is not terminally online doesn’t know where to start, autodidacts almost always have terribly shallow knowledge pools.
You, the person living through your experience, are the subject matter expert - why reject that authority that people have granted you and shown that they are ready and willing to listen to you?
Lmfao, not how it works, labour digger.
Edit just to clarify: Millions of people have already written about their lived experience of oppression (as a disabled person, as a queer person, as a Black person, as a Muslim, as a Jew, as every. single. marginalised group out there), you people don’t get to demand a personalised education from every marginalised person you come across, we don’t owe you shit especially when you won’t even open a search engine and make the most basic effort to learn for yourself.
And like I said, your average normie does not exist in the circles and spaces where those stories are highlighted and shared. Their biggest exposure may very well be a literature teacher years ago at school, broadcast news’ puddle deep coverage of the topic, or workplace sensitivity pamphlets.
You can scold them to do better, to do your own work, just like you did to the prior commenter who was asking a genuine question from a place of well meaning ignorance, and wanted to do better and requested help with a starting point. And you basically told them to gtfo - great message, screw them for exposing their lock of understanding and trying (humble as it may be) to be better.
I have a bigoted uncle, and despite knowing and being in a circle with a trans woman, he still deadnamed her regularly behind her back and openly confessed astounded bewilderment as to “why anyone does that”. Until I shared a personal anecdote of my lightbulb moment that took me from (admittedly) privileged indifference and ignorance, to understanding why people transition and how living your life wearing the mask society assigned you whilst grappling of gender dysphoria destroys you slowly from the inside. I had no personal struggle to share beyond that understanding, I could have also smugly told him to “do your own reading” - but guess what? He no longer deadnames her, and more and more frequently mentions her positively without the follow-up commentary. THAT is the kind of change that can exist if you try to meet people where they are at.
Nobody says you owe them emotional/mental labor to be seen or deemed worthy of human rights, but snapping at potential allies turns away people who might come onside. I was one of those people, who could have very easily continued to do nothing.