Allyship Sunday: Ally Is A Verb

You may have heard or read the phrase "Ally is a verb," in feminist or social justice circles, and wondered what is meant by that.

Well, it's not a linguistic term. Linguistically, "ally" is both a verb and a noun, of course. But it social justice parlance, it (and also variations of "woke is a process") means something quite specific: You can't just call yourself an ally and lean back.

Being an ally means you are there for the fight. Not every instance and every skirmish. No one can do that. People have lives and a limited supply of spoons.

From Franchesca Ramsey's excellent 5 tips for allies video
Being an ally means examining your views and positions and striving for progress in yourself as well as in the world. It's ongoing. It's not who you are. It's the things you do. It's an action. It's a verb.

Same goes for wokeness. You aren't statically woke. That's being awake. You need to get woke, and once you are, you need to stay woke. Because new crap is happening all the time, and old crap is being unearthed all the time, and being aware takes work.

Thanks, Schuyler Sisters
Both wokeness and allyship are about your interactions with the world. They are awareness and reaction. But this post isn't here to call anyone out for bad allyship or for not being woke. It's a call to self examination, and it's a call to me as much as it's a call to you.

The world doesn't get better by itself. Plenty of people would like to go back to some version of the imagined good old days. And plenty of people are just fine with the status quo, because it works for them.

To make a better world, we gotta fight for it. So stay woke, and ally up. Let's do this.