How Allists Can Act Like Haunted House Husbands

When liberating movements break into individual and mundane peoples, going about their daily and well-burrowed lives, there is always the hope, or at least the expectation, to find pieces of that collective belief, no matter how far apart the group is, within the sparkle of their personal actions. That momentarily, witnesses could witness the opposite of a combust (a loud sparkler, perhaps?) and feast their eyes on the loosely thawed boundaries of a once believed separation of all comrades, even across town; one at the drug store, one at the mini-mart in an entirely different state. Yet, there's no reason for their physical and momentary split to halt their calls for justice - when abuse from the state is felt by one, it's felt by all! And together, all move with the intention of challenging the normalized violence of the world.

But what if one of the witnesses enjoys liberation's aesthetic? Meaning that they don't find the act of disenfranchised people seeking the freedom to live their own lives, artfully beautiful, but instead romanticize their proximity to survivalists' pursuit to conquer a capitalistic value placed of their life - I am talking about self-opposed allies, of course. A person who loudly proclaims themselves a side-line supporter, not out of respect and a desire to stay in their lane, to not speak about things they do not personally know, but because they are far more interested in the merchandizing of a movement. In aestheticizing their support with products like buttons, t-shirts, and anything with snappy slogans, instead of further funding anything they had ever promised. Wiping their hands clean after receiving the public's approval for their heroic products and calling an end to their day.

Performative allyship is not just a parasite birthed from a commodified existence, but also of stone. It's a rocky shallowness that mocks the un-locking mechanics and refuses to actually unlearn the active ways we keep the system alive. It's a keeping of face, one that appears to listen only when aware of being watched, and nodding as your fortressing walls, your heart of granite, actively rejects the impending internal and relational work required of you, since it moves as something that you can not socially buy. In ways that you can not prop up for a theatrical depiction of actual care.

As we speak of mental health and disabled freedoms, it's important to note that self-proclaimed allies, who scream against the stigmatization of psychological therapies, but refuse to acknowledge the colonizing effects of the psychiatric industrial complex. Nor are they interested in "decolonizing" their own personal uses and weaponizing ableist language, sanist beliefs, and police-inspired, carceral-modeled care for the homeless, and others actively attacked by the state. This is a performance as well - there's just so much material, ready to be harvested for moral uplifting, that one proclaimed ally cannot possibly "advocate" for them all! Thus, the existence of the cherry-picking of the most comfortable, reachable focus or foci to the cause. The enamel pin on the jean-jacket of nothing, if you will - This can look a lot like an overemphasizing of respectability politics. A cry to dispel a symbol of evil rather than recognize how it was not only easy for evil to be invited in, but how the system itself perpetuates both the harm weaponized by the evil and creates violence within itself. Racism is normalized through an office's strict dress code. Doctors that refuse to affirm the bodily autonomy of trans and fat people. Religious homeless shelters withhold food from anyone participating in poverty-coping drugs; These are not all one bad leader, but a hive, housing home to hornets, producing one societal sacrifice upon a self-serving factory line.

Horror stories sometimes asks us to focus on one ghost rather than the entire haunted house that exists and homes a bullying spirit - and the denial! Oh, the rebuttals that come from the mouths of people so eagerly agreeing to dismantle systematic ableism, but once challenged to set fire to a sheltering home for caregiver abuse, to the horrid misuse of guardianship, and of inaccessible entryways stationed at most institutions, they are immediately stabbing with buts. Their quickness to slice and dice up the foundational elements of their own, proclaimed alliance, is hilarious if it wasn't not frightening listening to someone, who previously prided themselves on their listening, try to actively silence the truth, kindly served to the listener! An example of this is obviously gaslighting. Second-guessing and doubting the experiences that supposedly inspired the ally's call to solidarity; an oppressor just waiting for the trust to come.

What does a person look like when they spend most of their "activism" seeking opportunities to frustrate the central people of a movement? Leeches, maybe. Energy Vampires, like Colin Robinson from What We Do In The Shadows, would suffice. Yet, I found my mind circling around another creature. A character specifically speaking to me after watching The Watcher (2022); a husband, so committed to planting doubt, that he almost convinces his wife to walk directly into her own death! Questioning her instincts and safety. Distracting her from ending a serial killer's rampage a lot sooner and killing more women, as a result!

After, as the credits rolled, I realized there are thousands of people like this. It was only through horror that I could see the pattern. So separate these persistent agents of the ruin of political momentum seemed to me as they appeared as grouchy husbands. As skeptics, possessed by the toxic nodes of patriarchal pride, who seemed to routinely get in the way of any person, trying to resolve their haunts. That so much time is wasted trying to get the disbelieving figure to just consider the possibility of the supernatural, further wasted by their stubborn insistence on their partner's "delusional" wrongness, insisting that they should "seek help" by suggesting to lock them away in carceral psych wards, that damage has already taken some sort of casualty. Making the husbands possibly as sinister as the ghost, stealing both safety and the main character's chance for agented and urgent aid. Their "love" standing in the way.

A lot of us, without even knowing it, can sometimes be someone's haunted house husband, worsening their attempt for societal and personal reconciliation; what I found was useful, a caring way to communicate with your loved ones, is to always Shut It, Shut It, and importantly Shut it until you are directly spoken to. To not rush to a title, unready to ever be personally grabbed. Ignore the temptation to "ally". Fight against the commodification of human struggle.