Essay – The assumptive ally, and the corruption of chivalry
I have recently experienced several instances of what I would describe as performative allyship at best, and White Knighting at worst. They are most usually circumstances in which clear differentiation can be made between a genuine ally having made an unfortunately incorrect assumption, and those simply attempting to white knight on a trending social movement. But the two seem to have become so convoluted, so interconnected with personal bias and misinformation that any good intent of the action becomes utterly lost.
The phenomenon presented itself to me most prolifically in the following scenario; I boarded the train on my way downtown to my weekly physical therapy appointment. It was not particularly crowded, and I preferred to take the blue disability / easy access seats, because they face outward and fold down, and given my own differential abilities, they are easier for me to get up and down from, as is their design intent. Sometimes when I’m only going a few stops, I prefer to stand against the folded seat, within the squared off area, because it’s easier than sitting down just to have to get up again in less than a few minutes.
Standing and blocking the row of those marked off folding seats were two men, not elderly, but definitely older than me. They both seem to be fully fit and able, but given my own state at such a young age, I try not to make such assumptions lightly.
I politely excused myself and tried to make a place for myself at the seats. I received no reaction from either of them. I excused myself again, stated my intentions clearly, moved forward and guided my steps with the tip of my cane; a subtle but very clear message that I needed access to those special seats. They did move off to the side this time, one without any obvious grievances. But for the other, this became the trigger of a more direct and aggressive reaction toward me. As he grudgingly moved aside, he began to make pointed and rather offensive comments to the effect that by the movements made with my cane, I am “faking blind”, not truly in need of those accessible seats, and that they should be saved for “real disabled people”.
I was shocked, and felt completely gutted. He caught me off guard, in a vulnerable state, just having come from that critical physiotherapy appointment, in which I have my twisted back and hips painfully set back into place. It’s an exhausting process that I endure with hope that it may help to keep me in a functional state for as long as possible. I was born crooked, with faulty connective tissue, and bubbles in my brain that gave me a lifetime of poor muscle control, spasmodic tics, and poor posture. There isn’t any potential for reversing the damage done, only for moderating how much more of it I will endure. That said, I make the best of the shape I am, and try not to feel anything but blessed for what mobility and strength I do have as compared to so many others. But when I’m dismissed so openly, judged so harshly in this way? It’s an interaction that leaves me feeling hollow, worthless, and worst of all, unseen.
I wanted to speak out. I wanted to tell him that people like him who look at me and don’t see me for what I am are the kind of people who make it most difficult for me to live well; that he was the cause of the problem for me, rather than any offering any real assistance to anyone truly in need. But I held myself back, because I believe that one should turn the other cheek, as the saying goes; not because my offender deserves that forgiveness, but because I have the ability to choose to forgive him. My hurt faded, the moment passed, and the man moved on, remaining blissfully ignorant in his skewed version of the events which had transpired between us.
What was worst for me was that this wasn’t the first time I had experienced something like it. I had often been accosted by random people on the street through the years, making underhand comments like, “you shouldn’t be using a cane unless you need one” or “You’re too young to need a cane / be disabled”. And as I looked at this experience and those others in retrospect, I began to notice the same pattern in other areas of our supposedly awakened and supportive society. I began to see the ironic absurdity to what those individuals, and others, attempt to do in their responses to a perceived act of marginalization, while themselves in that moment becoming that which creates an environment of marginalization. Whether it be in the context of disability, gender politics, or the crisis of the under-housed in our urban centres; “You shouldn’t be on welfare unless you need it” ; “You shouldn’t present to be trans unless you’re actually going to have the surgeries / hormone treatments” – And so many more comments of the same gravity that seek to imply that the individual being judged is simply not genuine, not who and what they say they are.
Not only did the man in my personal experience assume and accuse that I was impersonating a person of disability, but he was doing it with an air of injustice on behalf of the supposedly “real” disabled persons which I had been accused of impersonating. The irony of it stung me; an individual openly discriminating against a visibly challenged person for taking the easy access seats, because they got on a high horse to defend a cause, that they couldn’t even see me standing right there in front of them. Furthermore, he was ignorant to an even greater level, in accusing me of impersonating it badly, clearly demonstrating that he had absolutely no idea what a white cane (the visual walking aide) looked like or how it actually functioned.
In conclusion;
The idea of being an ally has become corrupted with the sense of reward gained by the individual attempting to speak on behalf of the marginalized.
I came to coin the term as “Defensive marginalization”; turning ones own inaccurate perception, their skewed assumptions of what marginalization looks like back upon the marginalized individual, completely overlooking the fact that they’re the ones now doing the marginalizing, that by their aggressive attempts at being an ally, they are practically speaking overtop of those most in need of a voice.
What have any of us really accomplished, in rallying a pantheon of these so called allies around us? We have encouraged them to speak out, but they so often have so little to say, and now it seems that it is those voices which speak out on our behalf that are actually talking over us. Whatever the original goal of the allied in these movements, the message has been corrupted by those we have relayed it through. Those allies now seek to claim the movement in the image of their own chivalry. Our stories, our lived experiences have been shared downward and downward through their hands, like a game of broken telephone, until they are no longer ours to tell.