Allyship Is About Language

What More Can I Say?

Written in a post meltdown haze while at work, this needed to be shared as a cohesive tangent of my day-to-day lived experience. If you want to be an anti-ableist, this is something I have been trying to articulate for a while when asked how to be that.

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“How can I be an ally to disabled people?”

It’s always an innocuous question asked with the best of intentions. Allyship has been a much-used word over the past few years, in being and becoming something aspirational, obtainable.

I will never forget the white influencer I saw in Manhattan, for example; she stopped traffic to hold up a ‘Black Lives Matter’ banner, all to be captured for her Instagram page. A cause so worth the while had become social media fodder instantly in one tiny gesture that spoke volumes in the silence. The shape of a silence is what should interest us, culturally, sometimes.

The better phrasing should be “How can a non disabled person be an ally to a disabled person?” This is not a term you can give to yourself; that’s clearly indicating that this is being *exactly* not that. We can’t award ourselves the social points; that’s not the name of the game, so to speak.

To me, an ally is someone who admits they can get it wrong sometimes - and are willing to learn from someone, such as if there is a ‘feedback session’. (That’s been asked of me a lot lately by the medical establishment prone to a culture of indifference. Nothing is learned meanwhile.) An ally will ask questions politely and aren’t entitled about that - see also: what’s wrong with you? - but also go looking for resources to learn in their own free time. (“What’s wrong with you?” was demanded of me by strangers on the London Underground on too many occasions to count. We wouldn’t ask, say, “How were your smear tests?” or “Are you pregnant?” unless, say, you are a medical professional. But I digress.)

They are the person who shows up in good grace for DEI training if they work full time - and are not the person to mock it as ‘great, another e learning to complete.’ (A reference to a Reddit thread of medical professionals discussing a public inquest to do with ME, when a twenty six year old woman had in fact died. When they were *still* debating if ME was/is even real. Someone had died a horrible death - it was not the time to be ‘debating’ the aftermath or legitimacy of such a condition, in such an unbelievable manner. ) There may have been red, angry tears at reading such a thing; that woman deserved so much better, and we miserably failed her.

If there’s one whiff of something unjust like an access barrier, the allies are the people by your side. I think of the friend who told off an individual who made me cry in an instant - as they’d had a go at me for being disabled, and using a cane to walk with. Presumptions had been made about my earning capacity, as if I was not rich enough to be in the environment - people like me were not supposed to be in the venue ostensibly. We promptly left the building, to eat elsewhere - because why would we spend our hard earned cash at such a place? The same goes for establishments that place you at the back of their shop on the basis you scare customers, forget all about you, and serve your food cold but still want a tip. (Also an experience of mine last year - not a day remembered too fondly.) They let you cry it out, nursing your spirit into its resilience. They are the people who bring you up, and accept you wholly as you come. They see the best in you as a given standard every damn single day.