Male allies. We love them dearly. Those men so stalwart they’re willing, nay, eager to overcome their own privilege and biases, dip a toe into uncomfortable waters, try on the feminist label, and leave the safety of saying and doing nothing at all in the face of deeply entrenched inequality and the maligning of women, the feminine, and anything that isn’t hyper-privileged pure masculinity.

Yup, the world would be an incredibly different and much nicer place if more of those who enjoy power and privilege decided to consciously use it to challenge and dismantle the systems that give them that privilege over their fellow human planet-walkers. Why wouldn’t we want to support that? I support the carrot-topped green Jello with pineapple chunks outta that. People with privilege? Would be allies? Do that. Do that for feminism, for anti-racism, for anti-ablism, for the whole big oppression-battling cornucopia. Yes, please.

Of course, that begs the question, “how?” No matter how good someone’s intentions, nobody is going to go from Blindly Privileged to Super Ally in two-point-four seconds, fueled only by good will. Challenging systems of privilege takes a lot of deconstruction, a lot of homework, and a lot of work. It is something that can benefit immensely from proper support.

So, let’s talk about what it means to support allies, because while that term is all kinds of positive, it’s really pretty vague. What does it mean to support an ally? It’s been an unfortunate pattern in MoFem spaces that “support” starts to look like making sure the fellas never ever feel even a teensy bit unappreciated for their efforts in just being around and interested in us.

This isn’t terribly surprising. In Mormony spaces, most of us come from a very specific and particular paradigm of what support means, especially when you’re talking about how women support men, (as we necessarily are when we’re talking about supporting male allies.) We come from a culture where men are our leaders, and we support and sustain our leaders, and we’re not even generations removed yet from explicit rhetoric that put husbands in this same category. In lived practicality, supporting and sustaining men is more or less synonymous with not questioning them or giving them pushback (let alone in front of other people) and letting all kinds of things slide so they can just get on with business. Where, if it’s not obviously, inarguably, odiously, jaw-droppingly bad, then it’s the fault of the person who sees it for bringing it up. Small corrections aren’t to be bothered with, (and women don’t have the authority to decide what’s large and what is small.) Just trust that, with God’s help, they are working for your welfare and best interest with all wisdom and due diligence, and they know it better than you do. It’s not your place, it’s ark-steadying, it’s talking out of turn, it’s taking up too much of the brethren’s time, it’s just not nice. Give that RM a chance and go out with him, he’s a decent fella. If we are anything less than pleasantly and artfully nurturing in our every measured approach, we’re doing it wrong. It’s our job to do the work to reach the men where they are. If men do any work to reach out to the women, well, aren’t they just so great? We should be so grateful. We are so blessed to have good men in our lives.

I’ve been fortunate to know many women who have come to decide for themselves that this is not what support actually means, and that they can support and sustain their leaders without just going along with everything they say and do and setting their own concerns aside. However, they do so against a cultural tide, and often at the expense of social capital in their wards and communities. All it takes is a losing spin at leadership roulette for this approach to cost a woman her recommend, her calling, her social standing in her community, and all chance of ever being heard. Not even just a losing one. A neutral one that lacks explicit leadership support for such an approach can leave her at the mercy of the censure of those who don’t see things her way.

It should be needless to say: this is a dynamic that privileges men wholesale. It is a dynamic that we are thoroughly trained in, both men and women.

It is a dynamic that we, as a community comprised mostly of LDS people by faith, family, culture, and/or heritage, are at very high risk for reproducing wherever we gather. This is something we need to be constantly and carefully mindful of in order to avoid reproducing. It’s just so easy to unthinkingly revert to that default pattern and expectation, and reinforce each other in doing so.

When it comes to supporting male allies, it’s a dynamic that we cannot afford to reproduce. Men who come into our spaces in order to perform as allies cannot expect to keep such privilege intact; that is antithetical to the work of allyship. Men who come into Mormon feminist spaces need to be prepared for the fact that support from women for their allyship is going to look very different from what support from women has looked like in nearly every other Mormon context they have experienced. This will be jarring. It is what it is.

However, my sisters and my friends, it is even more important that we do the work to examine and be mindful of this training in ourselves. It’s not just men who can experience discomfort when someone deviates from the script we’ve all memorized. Even as women, we can experience it as jarring when someone dares to publically and immediately question or correct a man’s behavior, to experience it as not being nice enough, to treat the person who is pushing back like they are being mean and unreasonable instead of listening to and engaging with what they are saying. Mormons are Nice, and that’s not a Nice thing for women to do to men, especially men who are doing that oh-so-laudable superhero extra bonus golden cookie nuggets with sugar star sprinkles work of going out of their way to pay attention to women at all because it’s not their job and they don’t have to if they don’t want to so we should be grateful if they are and never make them feel bad ever or they might not want to anymore.

Except, folks, if they are here as allies then that is their job. It is the purpose of their presence. It is a bare minimum requirement pre-requisite for admission, not extra credit. (And most definitely not qualification for a TA position, let alone being the teacher.)

We can be respectful and forgiving of mistakes and acknowledge difficulty, because mistakes will happen, but we cannot protect allies from the pain of having mistakes pointed out or the necessity for correction if their presence and actions are, at any point, antithetical to their stated purpose of allyship. We cannot protect them from the necessity of learning to listen to and hear women even when they’re not being Nice.

Rushing to men’s defense against facing the discomforts of allyship, script-breaking, and un-Nice women may be supporting a male person, in a manner of speaking, but it is not supporting a male ally. He may be a good husband, brother, boyfriend, friend, or colleague, someone you respect, love, and care about. A man can express interest, sympathy, and even conceptual agreement for and fluency in feminism without actually being an ally. Being an ally is a job, and if we’re actually going to support our allies, we have to support them in doing that job. We have to expect them to do that work, to be able to take feedback, to be humble about their own mistakes, to understand that it’s not about them. We absolutely must be careful about siding with men’s hurt feelings at each other’s expense, or shutting each other down for our allies (and supposed allies, and potential allies) sake. We are always at risk of recreating that powerful and ubiquitous patriarchal dynamic of what Mormons (generally) expect support to look like. We must always be mindful. If you have the diplomacy and desire to maintain kindness and sympathy in such interactions and discussions, that is truly wonderful and there is a welcome place for you to do so, but none of us can afford to center the discussion, yet again, on men, and call it kindness. Those who feel it is their calling can work to provide a soft landing from privilege, but we cannot, any of us, protect the privilege itself. That is poor training for the ally, and always comes at the expense of the goals of feminism and allyship both. It’s a disservice to everyone involved. And, well, if the man’s desire and ability to do the work is so fragile that pushback destroys it, then he’s just not ready for the job yet.

Most of all, we have to be really and truly okay with men being really truly here for us for maybe the first time ever in our own Mormon experience. It’s a pretty significant paradigm shift from just being happy that they set out our padded chairs for us each Sunday or occasionally validate instead of shut down our desire to do something for ourselves. (Important bonus: this gives us a strong boundary against men who would use the ally label abusively or self-servingly. If someone isn’t helping you, then they’re not helping you.)

This is work that we need to do in ourselves, and it doesn’t rely in the least on the good or bad behavior of this or that man who claims to be working for our welfare. Some would-be allies aren’t ready for the job. We are not undone by it. Some would-be allies will be able to do the job. We can appreciate the help without being beholden to it. We can appreciate the friendship and other good qualities of men who are sympathetic and trying, but not quite there yet. But we cannot ever sacrifice the facts of what allyship entails for the comfort of those who want to wear it as a label. That does not support allies, it turns them into liabilities. That is a disservice to true allies who don’t want to put themselves first, and to ourselves.