Ally or comrade: What is your role? // by Kristin Vierra

   

    I think we can all agree that as scholars studying psychology and branches of feminism, it is important that we do our part to resist structural oppression. Along my journey to build consciousness, I became familiar with the concept of allyship. I was intrigued, so I put in the work to learn more. I learned that an ally is characterized as a person that holds some form of privilege and wants to do something about oppression. For example, a person who identifies as male, labels oneself a feminist, and supports the push for gender equality. To be considered an ally, one is often encouraged to educate themselves on the “do’s and don’ts” of allyship. In fact, several online resources are available to guide individuals through the proper methods of allyship. These recourses educate allies on strategies such as appropriate language choices, and how to navigate settings of privilege or oppression. It seemed that allyship was right for me! However, I was recently encouraged to consider replacing my ally label with comrade. I wondered, why the push to step away from the ally label?

    While I’m not saying that allyship is a negative label or something we should completely shy away from, I do think it is important to critically analyze the requirements of allyship. As mentioned above, to be an ally, one is required to educate themselves (awesome). However, too much self-educating could be isolating. This is because you are required to consume information, mostly from online guides, without any form of group discussion or support. This could be troublesome considering intergroup dialogues provide a space to promote conflict resolution, highlight commonalities between opposing sides, and motivate individuals to work together to create social change. Overall, it is important to educate oneself, but it is also important to spend time working together to cultivate solidarity and comradeship. Comrades are devoted to working together on the same side of a movement for equality, and justice. 

    As a final note, I want to recognize that this blog post is a brief overview of the difference between an ally and a comrade. I encourage my readers to learn more about comradeship.

By Kristin Vierra