Quote:
Originally Posted by GirlySports
You all make great points and this is the conversation I want to have. I want to be an ally. But I get shut down when I slip up. And for those who say this only happens online and not in real life, that's not true. We had someone at the office a few years back who transitioned from female to male during his time here, and it was really toxic. Immediately, we had people who really supported him and people who did not. But when the people who supported him slipped up, they got shamed moved the transphobe side until there as nobody left.
And this is one specific incident, but on issues like race and gender, from my experience, supporters can get shot down and accused very quickly for unintentional things which I find counter productive to an already marginalized group. Again, learn from each other, don't expect perfection.
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I'm gonna go ahead and say this never happened, or you're not being entirely honest in your interpretation. Not because it's negative, but because it's unbelievable on both sides.
You're saying half your office was transphobic, and then over the course of a few slip-ups and in response to being shamed, your entire office became transphobic? How wretched was this one trans person to you all that you all decided "nah, all trans people are bad"? That seems crazy, but feel free to go into a little more detail.
And, again, because you kind of breezed right past this: being an "ally" should not be dependent on how well you are treated by an individual, it should be dependent on what you believe, and it should be reflected in your actions. You want to be an ally? Then be an ally, this isn't a difficult thing. Slip up? Apologize. Don't want to, or get shamed anyway? Cool, keep being an ally because you want to be an ally.
If we're talking about counterproductive, saying you want to support people but you can only support them if every single one of them is completely supportive of you first, or otherwise you're gonna be on the "transphobe" side, is... kinda ####ty.