This week: On how to be an ally for the long haul.
Please excuse my lack of newsletter last week. To be frank, I wasn’t quite sure what to write or more accurately, how to write it. It’s tough to amplify Black voices in my personal newsletter where my voice is central to the entire format. It’s much more conducive on Twitter and Instagram, where I can share donation links and repost the work of Black voices without inserting my perspective.
The thing is, I’m not the person to write “How to Be a Better Ally to the Black Community.” A better bisexual ally? Yes. But I’m struggling as much as every other white person right now with how to best support the Black community. (And we should be listening to Black voices on how to be a better ally, just like gay and straight communities should listen to me when I talk about how better support bi folks). That said, some books I recommend:
White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo
Me and White Supremacy by Layla F Sayad
What If I Say the Wrong Thing? by Verna A. Myers
But yeah. This is a personal newsletter about all things me: my life, writing, and sexual experiences. Really, it’s the latter that we’re here for, but it doesn’t seem right to share last week’s Sexplain It! which was rather um… pornographic? Intense?
Don’t get me wrong, there will soon come a point where this newsletter returns to focus more on sexuality, and I’ll do better to write about it through a more intersectional lens. But not yet.
What I will say for this week, is that white folks, or perhaps I’m simply projecting — I — need to find a better way to balance being an activist/ally.
I went through it last week. My mental health took a turn. I took a couple of days off from Men’s Health. I never do that. I was depressed. Anxious. Wasn’t sleeping. Stress eating like it was my job. I felt I wasn’t doing enough while simultaneously felt there was nothing more I could do.
I spoke to family members and friends and the only actionable conclusion we came to was “taking breaks.” Real breaks though. My breaks had been, Let me stay home and scroll through Twitter until I lose my mind. That’s not a break. A real break means that you’re not focusing on activism for a set number of hours. You focus on yourself so that way when you are being an ally and activist, you can do it thoughtfully and effectively.
“This is a marathon” is something people keep telling me, and I continue to repeat the phrase to myself. I burnt myself out after two damn weeks. That’s all it took. That’s why yesterday, I went to a park with two friends and spoke about our dating lives for five hours. Now, today, I’m heading to Brooklyn Liberation: An Action for Black Trans Lives. While there, I will be able to be present and listen because I took the time off yesterday to focus on myself.
Finding this balance is key if we want to keep being an ally. Not just one for a week, two weeks, or five weeks. And while I can’t speak for anyone else, I know I’d like to be an ally to the Black community for the rest of my life.