A Just Ally

does not exist

I’ve been vaguely uncomfortable with what’s called “allyship” for quite a long time. It’s touted as a good thing. When people without skin in any particular game decide against disinterest in favour of taking a stand, they are typically thought of as noble. They’re standing up for people other than themselves, when they have nothing to gain by it, right?

They understand there’s no such thing as an innocent bystander, that “if you’re not with me, you’re against me.” Right? In the war of life, you can selfishly take care of yourself and your own, or you can be a social justice warrior, fighting on behalf of the vulnerable, the marginalized, the victims.

So far so good. We all want meaningful lives, or at least productive ones. This is particularly true of those whose lives have only begun, who are still tentatively setting out to assault  time and eternity, figuring out how to leave a footprint as they walk toward their own death, which is still so far away they can deny that is their destination. We’re talking about the youth here. Teenagers as we used to say back when I was one.

If they’re not in the grip of despair, they’re in the grip of idealism. Surely there is more to living than what their parents do. Surely the banality of earning a living and raising a family and worrying about upcoming necessities like car repairs and dental appointments is not all there is.

I fear that I have been an idealist myself for most of my life so I understand the impulse to contribute to something Important, something Good, something that Will Make a Difference to Others. Let’s leave the world a better place than we found it, okay?

What I have not done is follow that impulse. And that is because I have smelled danger in it.

Let me tell you a story of something that happened to me when I was a child.

The girls that I hung around with at elementary school were led by a pair of friends. Connie and Diane were athletic country girls. They’d been together since forever, playing on the same softball team, skiing together, probably poring over the Eaton’s catalogue together as they looked for new jackets and shoes every autumn.

Then, in grade eight, they fell out. They fought. Shakespearean-level tragedy ensued as the eight or ten other girls in the gang had to “take sides.” All of them except me chose Diane. That was it for Connie. For a month or so she was an outcast.

But what had the other girls done? In taking a side, they had adopted the role of allies. They had allied themselves with Diane. They were in her corner. What I discovered was that there was no point in discussing the morality or the ethics or even the basic facts of the disagreement between Connie and Diane with any of Diane’s allies. They didn’t ally themselves with Diane because they agreed with her position. Only because they preferred her. Or they had an inchoate sense that she’d been hard done by. Maybe they didn’t like Connie’s tone of voice or demeanor as she entered into a fight with her best friend. Maybe they were moved more by Diane’s stricken face than by Connie’s.

Though I had only the vaguest unsure grasp of what I know today as “conflict resolution strategies,” I did find out you couldn’t persuade any of them to change their minds. That’s because it wasn’t their argument. They didn’t know the fine points of it and it wasn’t up to them anyway to end the dispute. They would stay away from Connie as long as Diane did.

I was troubled then by the knowledge that attempts to persuade were useless. If you can’t argue the merits of a case then all you have left is war – until the principals, the only people with something to lose, resolve their dispute.

Something similar had directly involved me the year before. I was, you might say, an object played as part of a group effort at compromise. I was always an outlier in this gang of girls, hanging on the fringe of it by the grace of, well, Connie. I don’t know why. I can’t say she liked me. But she was good-natured enough not to want to get rid of me.

Anyway some time in the middle of winter another girl in the group, a girl who was jockeying for higher status within it and who might have sensed her star was rising, told Connie and Diane she didn’t like me and would really prefer me not to be part of the gang.

They had a group huddle and then someone, it might have been Connie, approached me as I was heading to their part of the playground and told me the problem. “We’ve decided,” she said kindly “that you can play with us Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, but not Mondays or Tuesdays.” Fair, right? Accommodating both sides. NOT taking sides.

Being excluded from a group because one member of it wanted me excluded didn’t seem right to me then, and it doesn’t seem right now. They should have taken sides, not with me against her, but with righteousness (sorry for the old-fashioned word).

And this is what troubles me about allyship. It’s always about allying with people, whether they’re right or wrong, and ethics, righteousness, morality, whatever word still can serve to describe the Good, the True, the Right, is not part of the equation.

And that is exactly what all Canadian institutions from the federal government down are demanding – they are demanding that everyone within reach of the agents of indoctrination become an ally. To “trans people.” Forty five million of us have to pledge allegiance to 100,815. Not to a just cause – how can there be a just cause when no one knows – or cares – what a “trans person” is? Some people have complied and they form the mob that howls at women and men who protest, who try to drown us out, who fight with the smug self-righteousness of those who remain ignorant of what exactly they’re fighting for.

We’re being told to be allies to an anonymous collection of people that we’re assured are “marginalized” and “vulnerable.” And we are told not to ask questions, not to ask even about the justice of the cause. They name the cause “inclusion” and “diversity”. That’s supposed to be good enough.

Our government could be telling us to be allies to murderers or rapists or aliens, to be allies to people whose values we know nothing. Is inclusion by definition justice? If it is, we have to stop excluding all those types of people currently residing in prisons and jails. Why should thieves, fraudsters, murderers be excluded from society? How dare we judge?

We, the “privileged”, sitting on our high horses, how dare we judge the rabble at our feet? Excuse me, I meant to say how dare we judge those who are different than us, those who don’t have the resources we have?

Soon enough, I suppose, we will be told no actions will be recorded as crimes, no one will be tried or convicted of anything, prisons will be empty and police forces abolished.  Because allyship is about extending goodwill to everybody, irrespective of anything.

Except those who refuse to ally. We refuseniks are the new enemy.