The difference between allyship and saviorism

I was recently asked to comment on a post about the pressure to out oneself through the adoption of pronoun practices. The author asserted that including pronouns online as mandatory practice puts (more) pressure on people to come out when they might not wish or be ready to.

While I can understand where this person might be coming from, I’m not sure that I find it a helpful space. It is, however, a great chance to talk about the difference between allyship and saviorism.

Let’s take this as an opportunity, to call us all in to reflect on allyship and our intentions behind it.

(Interrupting bias: The difference between calling out & calling in)

When people tell us what they need, it is not our job to question them.

Non-binary folx* have been advocating endlessly for the wide adoption of simple pronoun inclusion. It gives us a higher chance of being addressed correctly, instead of being misgendered all the time. I can tell you from experience, it is not a guarantee.

Even though I prominently display my pronouns on all channels, it does not lead to people actually using them — even if I’m being specifically contacted for my expertise as a non-binary professional.

We are empowered adults

It’s time for us to treat each other as the capable humans we are, with the agency and power that we have.

If I don’t want to be visible and out, it is entirely possible for me to choose which pronouns I want to display; even if adding them is mandatory. I can choose to use pronouns that align with the gender I was assigned at birth, or the gender I am most often (falsely) associated with.

Pronouns are one of myriad ways of including LGBTQIA+ folx

Putting pronouns on Slack, LinkedIn, Zoom, e-mail signatures, etc. (all now natively possible & accessible by a simple google search), is really the smallest moment in which there exists “pressure to out oneself”.

Non-binary, gender-expansive, and inter* individuals are always faced with the need to out or affirm ourselves in a cis-heteronormative society. Sometimes on an hourly basis.

(See also: Social psychological mechanisms contributing to the maintenance of a heteronormative status quo)

We have been capable of navigating this space and will continue to need to be — whether you adopt an inclusive pronoun practice or not.

Let’s start believing affected people and targets of oppression when they tell us what they need.

Non-binary, inter*, and other gender-expansive humans have poured time and energy into the advocacy for this one simple act of inclusion: adding pronouns. This is not the place to swoop in and “save” us from the pressures of cis-heteronormative society. Especially not, if you are not part of this affected community yourself.

If it’s difficult for you to connect with the gender lens, you might try considering this part of anti-racist education. Because the idea of the savior echoes imperialist and colonialist ideologies.

Don’t get me wrong. I get it. The knee-jerk reaction is familiar to me.

I am still in the process of decolonizing my thinking. I am reckoning with the white saviorism I sometimes default to, when I understand another layer of the othering and inequity that racialized people experience.

I recognize that my impulse of white saviorism is born out of a genuine desire to help “fix” this broken system. But also out of the guilt and shame of being a part of its brokenness.

It is important for us to realize that this type of reaction is still perpetuating the problem we are trying to “solve” ( for someone else, mind you).

Looking deeply, we can understand that our strategy for change might be somewhat unskillful. In this case: an unskillful way of dealing with our own horror and guilt and continued complicity.

(Read: Grappling With Our Complicity)

So what do we do? We can find compassion for ourselves, with our good intentions, instead of perpetuating the cycle of suffering at this point by throwing up our hands and giving up.

But it is definitely not our place to put these unresolved emotions onto other people and pretend we have — or are — the solution; Shrouding ourselves in the mantle of benevolence. Even if we “mean well” and “don’t intend harm”.

Good intentions can and do cause harm. This effect is important and prevalent enough to have received its own name: the intent-impact gap.

The intent-impact gap is the space between what we mean by our words and actions and what others feel from those words and actions. 

— Hakemia Jackson

So how do we engage in active allyship, rather than performative saviorism?

What I am practicing, in unlearning my ‘saviorist tendencies’, is to speak less and listen more. To take myself out of the equation as early and often as possible.

When it comes to creating spaces of affirmation, belonging, and celebration of queer, trans, inter* and non-binary folx, I wish that people would do the same.

We don’t need protection. We don’t need tolerance.

We need you to believe us when we express our needs.

To stop silencing our voices & invisibilizing our experience.

Maybe then, we can finally co-create a world, where every human being is valued and given the space to express themselves in the fully expanded version of who we are.

* We intentionally use the term folx. Read why, in this excerpt of our glossary of diversity, equity & belonging related terms: