gradientlair:

Beware the privileged repackaging the words/experiences of the oppressed and being applauded for it while the oppressed are ignored, silenced or punished for speaking their lived truths. Further, those who only want to hear the messages of the oppressed from the privileged and call said action “progressive” are actually complicit in either facilitating the oppression of others (if they themselves are privileged) or have internalized the oppressors’ tactics (if they themselves are oppressed and still prefer the messages of the oppressed in a privileged mouthpiece, as if the privileged have to provide “credibility” to the message of the oppressed before it matters).

If this applies to you, question why White anti-racism advocates, male feminists, cis, heterosexual, or cishet allies to LGBTQIA people, rich people “playing poor” for a week or so on food stamps or low pay and thin allies to fat activists "move" you more than the oppressed people themselves.

This is not about allies not having a place and being important. They do and are. If you can’t see how allies are important BUT also cannot dominate the discourse or portray the oppressed as monolithic groups with monolithic thoughts, it’s time to re-evaluate your own praxis.

With any discussion of oppression, if your go-to voice is a cis, heterosexual, able-bodied, middle class White male to the point that you are willing to defend him against the actual oppressed people, you need to re-evaluate your theory and praxis. You need to re-examine the role of an ally. The role–not the goddamn pulpit, publishing house, bookshelf, classroom, board of directors, pundit TV spot etc. where the privileged thrive.

You need to question your privilege even as an ally, especially as an ally if that same privilege continues to allow your voice to be centered above those you claim to help, especially when you are making a living, financially profiting off of the oppression of other people by talking about the oppression of other people.

Most of all, stop expecting to be applauded all the damn time. Ally work can be noble when not self-centered, domineering and solely a salve for personal guilt, but no more noble than those in the trenches doing the work and living the experiences. Ally work needs to be noble without the incessant need for the praise of its nobility, otherwise it becomes about oppressed people applauding their oppressors, which is not revolutionary.