When Allyship Feels Like Rejection: The Lesson Before You March
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We know you’re trying. Truly.
We see the effort, the trembling sincerity, the hunger to “get it right.”
We know your questions come from curiosity and a genuine lack of knowing.
But understand that unknowing exists only because for generations, you refused to listen.
You were told. You were shown. You were invited.
And still, you turned away — toward comfort, toward safety, toward whiteness.
Remember: it wasn’t just men who silenced us.
It was all women when it was us too.
When our labor raised your children, when our pain was dismissed as too loud, too angry, too much.
So when we say, “You are new to this,” we are not shaming you; we are naming the lineage of forgetting that you now have the chance to break.
You are neophytes in the work of liberation — and that is okay.
What’s not okay is demanding that we forget centuries of betrayal so that your awakening feels safe. It’s not our responsibility to make your reckoning comfortable.
Our bones remember the betrayals — from the suffragette movements that excluded Black women, to the civil rights era where many sought equality without equity, to the present day where “allyship” often asks for forgiveness before accountability.
There’s a pattern that repeats whenever power is named: those who benefit from it mistake boundaries for exclusion, critique for cruelty, and discomfort for division.
And to the white men — you, too, have a role here.
Your work is not passive agreement. It is active protection and repair.
You named yourselves the kings, the leaders, the protectors — and yet, when the reckoning comes, too many of you shrink behind the women you claim to love.
Where are you when she needs shielding, not saving?
Where are you when the state enacts its violence — when the same system that once policed Black bodies now weaponizes its power through the sexual assault of white women in uniformed silence?
Their care should not be outsourced to the state.
Your courage, your presence, your voice, that is the repair you owe.
We need you out there with your women and children, not above them.
We need you armed in awareness and accountability, standing in the front lines of a new way; not as enforcers, but as stewards of safety, of truth, of transformation.
You too have a role in the rebuilding of a world that remembers what it means to be human again.
This lesson isn’t about shame; it’s about practice.
Liberation is not a posture of perfection; it’s a discipline of the nervous system.
So let’s move through this together, using the LIBERATE Framework© to unlearn the reflex to center and reimagine what right relationship looks like.
🌬 Somatic Pause
Before you keep reading, take a slow, full breath.
Feel your feet on the ground.
Notice where your body wants to pull away or harden.
Breathe into that place.
Let your breath remind you that this is not an indictment — it’s an invitation to mature your humanity.
You are being asked to listen differently — not from the mind that wants to defend, but from the body that knows how to remember.
Stay with yourself. Stay in the work.
The “No Kings March” Analogy
Imagine there’s a No Kings March — a global rally organized by women, femmes, and survivors.
The message is clear:
“No more rape. No more patriarchy. No more silence.”
Now imagine a man commenting under the post:
“Division is the goal of toxic feminism. There are men who want to help and be allies, understanding we haven’t ‘lived it’ as women have. Don’t push us away. Let’s unite for peace and change before it’s too late. I’m afraid of toxic masculinity too. Let me fight it with you.”
Pause.
How does that feel in your body?
Where does that land?
Does your chest tighten?
Do your shoulders rise?
Is there a flicker of anger, exhaustion, or disbelief?
That’s your body recognizing a familiar pattern: the centering of comfort in a conversation about harm.
Because what he’s asking (even if kindly) is access.
He’s centering his fear inside a conversation about our harm as women. He’s asking to be “let in” rather than doing the work where harm was born… among other men.
Even when it sounds kind, the energy is still: “Let me in.”
White women, you are your men.
There is no separation from that outside of whiteness itself.
I know that’s hard to hold; to reconcile that your greatest oppressor has also been your closest mirror.
Yes, patriarchy has harmed you deeply, but that harm does not erase the ways you have been experienced by others, as extensions and enforcers of the same system.
When you demand, as the comment below does, to be granted access, understanding, or “allowance” to be “let in,” you’re reenacting the same dynamic your men have modeled: the insistence on proximity, control, and comfort over accountability.
This isn’t about singling out one woman or one comment; it’s about illuminating an entire pattern — a lineage of behavior that keeps repeating until it’s finally brought into awareness and transformed.
What’s Really Happening
That man is not a villain — but he’s asking for access instead of accountability.
He’s asking to join the space instead of doing the work with other men, where the harm lives.
This is the same pattern we see when white-bodied women say things like:
“Don’t push us away. We’re afraid too. Let us fight it with you.”
You may not realize it, but the request still centers whiteness. It’s asking to be comforted, included, or reassured in the midst of someone else’s harm.
Unpacking: “Let me fight with you”
Hear this plainly: I — nor anyone else who is living this harm — can grant you permission to join our survival.
Asking to be “let in” exposes a deep pattern: a reliance on being authorized to feel or act, rather than a willingness to take responsibility where power has always lived.
Imagine losing your rights to your body, your democracy, the freedoms you rely on — and then pausing to say, “May I fight for it?” That pause is a luxury born of privilege. If you were truly fighting for your own life, you would not be asking for consent from the people already under assault; you would be showing up without asking because your very life depended on it.
When someone says, “Let me fight with you,” what they are sometimes really asking for is permission to be visible and praised while the people harmed continue to carry the cost. That request can be passive-aggressive: it talks like allyship but acts like entitlement. True solidarity does not wait to be authorized. True solidarity has already done the work in its own neighborhoods and systems.
But it cannot stop there.
You must center Black and Indigenous leadership.
Seek out and pay the more marginalized people already doing this work.
Use discernment — not saviorism.
Support healing liberators — those of us who have been holding the weight of transformation long before you decided it was urgent.
Fund us.
Share our work.
Donate to our efforts.
Offer your labor — your time, your skills, your platforms, your networks — without needing to control the outcome.
Pass it on.
Not as charity, but as restoration.
Become a true part of the community, not just a customer of its culture.
If the action is truly for your life too — not for performance, not for comfort — it will be obvious.
It will not come as a request.
It will come as a rhythm you have already learned to live.
🌬 A Pause Before You Go Deeper
If your body is tight, if your chest feels heavy, or if your eyes are wet, pause here.
Breathe. (🧘♀️ 5…4…3…2…1)
Place a hand on your sternum and another on your belly.
Let the breath remind you: this conversation is not punishment; it’s practice.
Everything you just read may have stirred something: guilt, grief, defensiveness, fatigue, or even relief.
That means your nervous system is listening.
Honor that before you scroll, before you explain, before you leave.
If you choose to keep going, I’ll walk you through it.
If you’re not ready, that’s a choice too.
Either way, there are paths forward, ways to stay connected, to support the work, and to keep practicing liberation in real time.
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