Posts Tagged: ally
“But What About False Rape Accusations”: ‘Ally’ Derailment and Gender-Based Sexual Assault
A while back, a dude started coming to the feminist student group that I’m the president of. He was cisgender and heterosexual (cishet). I’ll call him DudeBro 1. Now, while unfortunately, dudes coming to feminist clubs to talk about dismantling the patriarchy isn’t terribly common, it’s not like DudeBro 1 was the first. And at first, he seemed to genuinely be a dude who, despite not knowing much about it, was interested in learning about feminism, gender equity, and so on. A few weeks after DudeBro 1 started attending meetings, this article featuring alcohol, my campus, the University of Kansas, and sexual assault was released. It rocked my campus pretty hard (you can read my article about it here) and following the release of the article, my feminist group canceled… Read more »
Four Ways to Spot a Bad Ally
Society has advanced leaps and bounds over just the past decade when it comes to rights and acceptance for members of the LGBTQ+ community. Just a hundred years ago gay people didn’t even exist. Now look at us, boycotting Chik-Fil-A, framing our Civil Union certificates, and having our marriages recognized by other states like real people. And really, who do we have to thank for our progress? Who has always been there pushing us forward and forcing us to create change? I got an answer for you: straight people. They’ve been extremely busy with the LGBTQ+ community if you haven’t noticed; writing bills to keep themselves from discriminating against us and making sure everyone knows what the “A” stands for “Allies”. No but let’s be real. There are allies and… Read more »
Artistic Allyship: Considering Social Implications of Hollywood, Broadway, and Mainstream Art
By Sarah Bernstein, Chapter Member, Oberlin College Last week my family went to see The Book of Mormon, the latest Broadway musical hit. Mormon is a sing-song baby born from the creators South Park. It parodies religion, sexuality, race, other musicals, comedy, capitalism, Disney— it pokes fun at everything there is to make fun of. It does so pretty successfully. Rolling Stone Magazine deemed Mormon a “new gold standard for Broadway… marching into legend,” The New York Times called it “the best musical of the century.” While I am a big-time showtune lover, my infatuation with “the Broadway musical” started to fade-fast somewhere around my junior year of high school. Call me a cynic, but I think the shows are overbudgeted, overpriced, overproduced, and tell mediocre-at-best stories. Still. The Book… Read more »
How to be an Ally: Notes on Lending a Hand to a Movement which Isn’t Yours
Back in October, my university’s Gay-Straight Alliance hosted a National Coming Out Day panel. Instead of the usual format–which generally entails queer folks sharing their coming out stories– this panel included an equal amount of queer and straight “ally” participants, all from varied backgrounds. After having our interests piqued, several of my Choice USA chapter’s members and I attended the panel. For us, allyship comes with the reproductive justice territory. We understand that there is overlap between LGBT discrimination and reproductive inequality. That said, we only stand to benefit from exposing ourselves to these conversations about the queer experience, right? So the four of us Choice USAers journeyed to the student union theater. We took our seats, shut off our phones; my co-president offered me her usual reminders to stop… Read more »
