performative allyship
A way that I genuinely feel bad for trans people is that woke cis people are often embarrassingly bad about patting themselves on the back for engaging with their identities. I made an eye appointment for me and Terry a few weeks ago to get our scripts updated and I got called first to do the basic eye chart / eye wellness test. The tech made a big deal out of asking me Terry’s pronouns and then clearly expected to be praised for it, so I was like ‘uh, thanks for asking’.
performative allyship
The weirdest thing is this person was engaging w/ each of us one on one so pronouns were not really even an issue and their opportunity to misgender was pretty low, even by accident. The biggest irony is I didn’t mention any of this to Terry because I knew they would feel better thinking the tech just presumed female pronouns, if it came up at all. I guess maybe this was an important issue to the tech or maybe they are not cis? But it really felt like they wanted praise.
performative allyship
I’ve read accounts of younger binary trans people who are not ready to come out and hate being asked pronouns because the options are out yourself or invalidate yourself and it makes me wonder if a lot of the (especially corporate) drive behind this stuff isn’t mostly a way for people to feel like they’re doing activism while not really doing anything.
performative allyship
I wanted to add that I think performative allyship is easy to fall into and I’ve definitely been guilty of it in different circumstances throughout my life so I’m not saying it’s evil or anything, just that I think it’s worth examining