“I don’t need advice but I will take it”: Allied labor in transgender allyship

Abstract

Allies play an important role in virtually every fight to end oppression, yet are often criticized by those they are allied with for reinforcing binaries and recreating colonial models of saviorism that maintain their relative social power. I refer to the potential of allies to both help and harm those they are allied with as the “ally paradox.” I analyze the clip “Janet Mock Rejoins Piers Morgan” from February 2014 to identify the issues at the heart of the ally paradox: who knows what is best for the cause (epistemic authority), who deserves allyship (deservingness), what constitutes “good” allyship (intention versus outcome), and how allyship should feel (affect). Paying attention to the affective and emotional components of their interaction, I ask how Mock manages the complexity of the ally-allied relationship that stems from unequal power relations. I coin the term “allied labor” to describe the work of mobilizing allies as a resource while at the same time disrupting power structures. Allied labor is the work of both cultivating and resisting allies. Mock draws on politeness and respectability as resources to educate Morgan and the public about transgender issues and expose his allyship as fragile. In this way, she is both complicit and subversive, leveraging the potential of allyship for social change while engaging in respectability politics.

On 5 February 2014, CNN aired an interview between white, middle-aged, talk show host Piers Morgan and transgender writer Janet Mock during a coveted prime-time slot (CNN, 2014a). Morgan promoted Mock’s new book and asked her to speak about her life experiences as a transgender woman. When the interview aired, Mock posted three tweets criticizing Morgan for referring to her as formerly a man and sensationalizing her life. Morgan responded with nine angry tweets and an invitation for Mock to return to the show and explain herself. Their ensuing interaction was aired on 6 February 2014 (CNN, 2014b). In this paper, I argue that Mock and Morgan’s series of interactions, played out in traditional and social media, offers a unique window as to the complexities of allyship. Using this case, I identify the “ally paradox” and the key issues at its heart. I define “allied labor” as the work that allied people do to cultivate ally relationships while simultaneously advancing their political and social agenda.

Transgender people fighting for social justice need cisgender allies to leverage their resources and social power on their behalf. Allies are important strategic resources, as they can contribute not only their time and labor, but also money, political power, media platforms, and other resources (McCarthy and Zald, 1977). For this reason, prominent LGBTQ organizations, such as GLAAD, Human Rights Campaign, The Trevor Project, and PFLAG, have come out with guidelines and training programs for how to be an ally to transgender people, as have many American universities and business organizations. Allyship has potential benefits for allies as well, as they receive gratitude and recognition from those they are allied with (Asta and Vacha-Haase, 2013; Duhigg et al., 2010), construct a positive identity as people of moral worth (Sumerau et al., 2020), or advance their personal careers (Indigenous Action, 2014; Spade, 2015). Positive images of allies, such as Jill from the British drama series It’s a Sin (Davies, 2021), perpetuate the positive identity of allies as good people and powerful agents of change.

Yet allyship has downsides. Allies can be merely unhelpful, as when engaging in “empty gesture” or “non-performative” allyship that has no real impact on the lived reality of disadvantaged groups (Ahmed, 2004b; Blair, 2021; Grzanka et al., 2015). Allies can also cause harm, as when they silence those they are allied with (Droogendyk et al., 2016), tap the latter’s energy and resources (Mathers, 2017; Mathew et al., 2021), or perpetuate the social inequalities they claim to fight against (Mathers et al., 2015, 2018; Sumerau et al., 2020). Allies are liable to recreating racist models of saviorism that maintain the dependency of the allied on allies, especially when these allies are gatekeepers that have power to control the fate of the allied (Spade, 2003).

I refer to the potential of allies to both help and harm those they are allied with as the “ally paradox.” I analyze the clip “Janet Mock Rejoins Piers Morgan” from February 2014 (CNN, 2014b) to identify the contradictions at the heart of the ally paradox: epistemic authority, deservingness, intention versus outcome, and affect. Rather than viewing the ally-allied relationship as unequivocally positive or negative, I present the ally relationship as a site of struggle, negotiation, learning, and growth.

Previous research has shown that allyship is not static, but rather relational and tied to inequalities in power within social interactions (Forbes and Ueno, 2020; Mathers et al., 2015, 2018; Sumerau et al., 2020; Ueno and Gentile, 2015). Paying attention to the affective and emotional components of their interaction, I ask how Mock manages the complexity of the ally-allied relationship that stems from unequal power relations. I coin the term “allied labor” to describe the work of mobilizing allies as a resource while at the same time disrupting power structures. Allied labor is the work of both cultivating and resisting allies. Mock draws on politeness and respectability as resources to educate Morgan and the public about transgender issues and expose his allyship as fragile. In this way, she is both complicit and subversive, leveraging the potential of allyship for social change while engaging in relationship maintenance and respectability politics.

This study focuses on an ally-allied interaction as it plays out in public media, a space with a history of asymmetrical encounters between men and women, whites and people of color, and cisgender and transgender people. Using affect theory (Ahmed, 2004a; Massumi, 2015), I pay attention to the affective possibilities generated by the physical settings of Mock and Morgan’s interactions, as well as the subtle but complex emotions and power dynamics of the interactions as they unfold in real time. I reveal how different media spaces—CNN studio, satellite, and Twitter—enable or constrict the affective possibilities and behavioral repertoire of allied labor. Public media has been an arena where allies are generally celebrated (e.g., Haynes, 2020; Padgett, 2020), whereas transgender people have had little voice in telling their stories (Berberick, 2018; Wood et al., 2019). In other words, visibility tends to propel allies while disempowering transgender people (Brighenti, 2007). My analysis highlights how in this interaction, Mock exercises agency in crafting transgender representation in media, leveraging Morgan’s allyship to give voice to a narrative that is complex rather than simple and focused on legitimacy rather than sensationalism.

The transgender context requires particular attention to ally-allied dynamics because of widespread media misrepresentation of transgender people, prevalence of simplistic stylized narratives about their lives, and a tradition of cisgender people claiming to be experts on the “transgender phenomenon” (Stone, 1991). It is unreasonable to expect that on a topic as controversial as transgender rights, the relationship between a member of the privileged majority and a member of a stigmatized minority will always go smoothly (Reynolds, 2010). As a white cisgender person working through my own allyship to the transgender community, I find that current views of allyship as either positive or negative leave both allies and allied ill-equipped to deal with the inevitable conflicts inherent to any social movement.

The ally paradox

An ally is “a member of the ‘dominant’ or ‘majority’ group who works to end oppression in his or her personal and professional life through support of, and as an advocate with and for, the oppressed population” (Washington and Evans, 1991: 195). Following Young (2011), I define an oppressed group as one whose members are systematically denied access to the resources of society through exploitation, stigmatization, lack of power and visibility, and the experience of violence. Oppression is produced and maintained by social structures, such as the legal, educational, and labor system. Intersectionality means that oppression is conditioned by multiple interlocking systems on the basis of race, class, gender, sexuality, age, ability, citizenship and other constructs that “produce unequal material realities and distinctive social experiences for individuals and groups positioned within them” (Collins and Chepp, 2013: 58). People’s structural positionings in terms of these intersecting constellations of power relationships produce distinct lived experiences, usually consisting of both experiences of oppression and experiences of privilege. Someone may be oppressed, an oppressor, or simultaneously oppressing and oppressed, depending on the situation (Collins, 2000). Accordingly, allyship is situational; it arises with respect to a particular issue and where one individual is recognizably privileged relative to another.

The ally paradox refers to the observation that allies are both beneficial and harmful to social movements. As majority group members, allies have power and resources that they can utilize to advance the cause of disadvantaged groups. These resources include legitimacy, money, facilities, labor, and political power (McCarthy & Zald, 1977). Legislative allies sponsor bills and cast their votes in favor of legislation. Donors and volunteers lend their money, knowledge, and time to do the work of social justice. Celebrity allies lend credibility and access to a large viewing public and social media following. At the level of everyday interactions, allies provide support to marginalized individuals and intervene in cases of unjust treatment (Forbes and Ueno, 2020; Johnson, 2019). Because of their importance to social justice, a significant amount of academic work has been motivated by the goal of turning people into allies (e.g., Washington and Evans, 1991; Fingerhut, 2011; Swank and Fahs, 2012). For the most part, these studies present allies as moral and praiseworthy individuals (Mathers et al., 2015).

Yet in practice, allyship often does not live up to its potential to bring about real social change. Allies do not always help, and may even cause harm. Many self-proclaimed “allies” do not actually take concrete action to advance social justice (Grzanka et al., 2015). In a quantitative study of LGBTQ allies, Jones et al. (2014) found that “action” is not a core component of ally identity. As one self-proclaimed ally quoted by Sumerau et al. (2020: 7) said, “There isn’t a lot you do as an ally, you just kind of have to be there for them as they try to get the treatment they want, that’s kind of it.” A study of university ally training programs found that they rarely provide concrete skills for increasing social justice (Johnson, 2019).

Allies can cause harm by taking focus away from the actual work of social justice. For example, Blackout Tuesday was a collective action on social media meant to initiate dialogue about the financial exploitation of black musicians. Many anti-racist allies posted a black square on social media accounts with the hashtags #BLM or #BlackLivesMatter. Not only did Blackout Tuesday do nothing to improve the conditions of black artists in the music industry, it harmed the BLM movement by cluttering the #BLM feed with black squares, preventing the dissemination of important anti-racist content (Blair, 2021). Allyship also harms social justice by centering and amplifying the voices of the allies rather than the allied, thereby strengthening the very inequalities allyship is supposed to undermine (Ahmed, 2004b; Mathew et al., 2021). Allies sometimes take action without consulting the people they are allied with, offer unwanted or irrelevant advice, seek leadership roles and positions that could have gone to allied group members, or co-opt and distort the message of the movement (Droogendyk et al., 2016). A revealing study of self-proclaimed allies by Sumerau et al. (2020) found that allies make sense of their allyship in ways that justify their own superiority relative to those groups they claim to be allied with. As such, this kind of allyship perpetuates rather than challenges the cultural assumptions (heteronormativity, binary biologically determined genders) that underlie the marginality of LGBTQ people (see also Russell and Bohan, 2016).

The ally paradox is particularly salient in the transgender context. Traditionally it was cisgender male doctors who advocated for, designed, and practiced transgender-affirming treatment protocols and surgeries. Yet they did so from their own life experience and perspective as cisgender heterosexual men (Shapiro, 1991). Allyship hurt transgender people’s autonomy and self-determination by privileging cisgender people’s perspective and input over their own, thereby reifying their disadvantaged position (Stone, 1991). Though helpful toward achieving some goals, this allyship weakened transgender people to the extent that it kept them dependent on cisgender people and maintained the latter’s dominant social position (Spade, 2020).

The ally paradox raises two questions I take up in this article. First, what are the issues that determine whether an ally is beneficial or harmful to the cause of the disadvantaged group? Second, how do members of disadvantaged groups manage their relationship with allies to maximize gains and minimize harm? Following the tradition of research on emotional labor (Hochschild, 1983), this study takes as a starting point that transgender people are active managers of their relationships with cisgender allies. Allyship is a relationship, and one that has to be carefully managed by those who are meant to benefit from it, as they are in a weakened structural position and dependent on the resources of allies (Forbes and Ueno, 2020; Mathers, 2017; Mathers et al., 2015; Ueno and Gentile, 2015).

Transgender women in the media

Representations of transgender women in the media have traditionally served to maintain their marginality while bolstering the normalcy of a racialized and essentialized sexual binary. The media often highlights and celebrates transgender women who present a “hyperreal performance of ideal gender” (Berberick, 2018) through the embodiment of the norms of white womanhood: middle-class respectability, femininity, and heterosexuality (Skidmore, 2011). These representations have generally conformed to traditional gender stereotypes of decorated femininity and submission to the male gaze. Missing from most media coverage of transgender women are transitioning bodies, bodies that do not “pass” as cisgender, and discussions of the violence toward and material suffering of transgender women of color (Berberick, 2018). Also, as Gill-Peterson (2018) has argued, historically gender plasticity was racialized as white, which served to erase transgender people of color from the medical record and the public imagination. Because black bodies have been constructed as hypersexualized, nonwhite transgender people were relegated to the realm of deviance and degeneracy (Skidmore, 2011; Snorton, 2010, 2017). As a result, transgender women of color were censored out of media representations except as victims of violence (Snorton and Haritaworn, 2013). As Skidmore (2011: 60) notes, “as the subject position of the transsexual was sanitized in the mainstream press and rendered visible through whiteness, other forms of gender variance were increasingly made visible through nonwhiteness.” Thus, race and gender work together such that representations of “transgender” in mainstream media depend upon and reproduce normative whiteness. Though seemingly regressive, conformity to racialized and classed norms of femininity is the “price of admission” many transgender women have had to pay for recognition and safety as, until recently, transgender people lacked agency in how they are represented (Berberick, 2018).

Sensationalism is a common way that the complex lived experience of transgender women is obscured in favor of marginalization, entertainment, and upholding the gender binary. In an analysis of talk shows, Gamson (1998) showed that transgender people are often sensationalized as a way to distinguish them from people who are respectable. Talk shows tap into the legacy of the freak show, in which nonnormative bodies and cross gender performances “carried the taint of all that must be excluded in order to secure the ideal of an untroubled social order” (Gressgård, 2010: 549). Transgender women in the media face an objectifying preoccupation with their bodies, genitals, and surgeries (Serano, 2007). The sensationalism of tropes such as “She used to be a man!” serves to exclude transgender women from the category of normal and render them less than human, thereby strengthening essentialized binary gender norms. The cinematic tradition of transgender “reveal” moments plays to this sensationalism and to a dominant theme in transgender representation: the deception trope. This tradition positions transgender people as tricksters or deceivers who live out their genders to seduce “innocent” heterosexuals (Billard, 2019). The deception trope delegitimizes trans identity. Being revealed as “born a man” becomes another way of saying “really a man” (Bettcher, 2007). Indeed, in most newspaper articles written about transgender people, they are misgendered and misconstrued (Westbrook and Schilt, 2014).

Though this media legacy informs Mock and Morgan’s interaction, it occurred during a period when transgender representation was beginning to change. Occurring a few months before Time magazine’s seminal cover story on the “Transgender Tipping Point” (Steinmetz, 2014), their interaction had the potential to avoid the sensationalizing and marginalizing tradition of transgender representation in the media.

Analytic lens

My analysis of the encounter between Mock and Morgan is informed by Ahmed’s (2004a) affect theory, which focuses on the relationship between emotions, language, and bodies. Affect theory encourages us to consider the political implications of emotions. Rather than studying what emotions are, the focus is on what emotions do, how they work to mediate the relationship between the psychic and the social, between the individual and the collective (Ahmed, 2004a). Furthermore, rather than focusing on any one single emotion, affect theory points us toward considering multiple and even conflicting emotions. Affect theory also directs attention to the relations between bodies and our ability to both affect and be affected in interaction (Kolehmainen and Juvonen, 2018). As Ahmed (2015: 10) writes, “Emotions are not simply something ‘I’ or ‘we’ have. Rather, it is through emotions, or how we respond to objects and others, that surfaces or boundaries are made: the ‘I’ and the ‘we’ are shaped by, and even take the shape of, contract with others.” By focusing on what emotions do rather than on what they are, affect theory explores the functions of emotions in creating or undermining power relations, in creating realities, and in creating particular bodies (Ahmed, 2015). Emotions, in this view, circulate between bodies and “stick” to some more than others.

Affect theory focuses on the explanatory power of encounters, which are seen as open-ended and productive, and the ongoing adaptation and improvisation within them (Kolehmainen and Juvonen, 2018). As such, affect theory offers the exciting possibility of understanding both how and why things stay the same—how power structures are reproduced—as well as how things change or transform. As Kolehmainen and Juvonen (2018) write, “affects have a capacity to sediment power imbalances and already existing asymmetries, as well as to provide empowering experiences or pave the way for change. In other words, affects can be a site of change and transformation as well as a site that arrests.” This view enables moving beyond the binary of allyship as “good” or “bad” for social justice towards examining the complex dynamics of affect and power within allyship. Positive feelings can be viewed with suspicion, whereas negative feelings can become opportunities for social change (Wilkinson and Ortega-Alcázar, 2019).

Affect theory draws attention to embodied forms of experience that cannot be separated from the social environment in which it occurs (Hemmings, 2005). The affective atmosphere “in the air” depends on particular histories—of individuals and of spaces (Åhäll, 2018). Thus, an affective lens examines the histories that bodies come in with and how these histories shape their interaction. My analysis also pays attention to the physical space of interaction. Their first interview was in person at the CNN studio, where Mock and Morgan sat across each other at a table. Their second space of interaction was the virtual space of Twitter. The third space was an interaction was via satellite, with both of them facing the camera. Space can be seen as both a place and as an indicator of power relations where parties of unequal power vie for control (Elden, 2009). Through their histories, spaces can have a disorienting effect on particular bodies, bodies that do not historically belong there. As Ahmed (2006) writes, the history of a place can make a body feel out of place. Attention to space can teach us how the meaning of allyship is shaped in interaction.

Allyship in “Janet Mock Rejoins Piers Morgan”

“Piers Morgan Live” was a prime-time American talk show on CNN hosted by Piers Morgan. The show premiered on 17 January 2011 and filled the former “Larry King Live” timeslot. Morgan had had a long career in journalism and television in the United Kingdom and had served as a judge on “America’s Got Talent” (Vaidyanathan, 2011). Janet Mock was an editor at People magazine who had recently published her memoir, Redefining Realness, about her experiences growing up as a transgender woman in Honolulu (Mock, 2014d). Mock’s initial interview on “Pierce Morgan Live” (2014) was her first major network appearance.

Morgan complimented her on her looks and compared her to Beyoncé, a compliment Mock clearly enjoyed because she responded, “I live for Beyoncé.” He called Mock “gutsy” and “determined.” She smiled and laughed multiple times. Piers Morgan enacted allyship by using his broad mainstream platform to advance transgender visibility and provide Mock with a welcoming platform to tell her story.

Yet Morgan did a few things that tapped into the sensationalizing and marginalizing tradition of transgender representation in the media. First, he asked multiple questions about Mock’s genital surgery, an objectifying and dehumanizing practice that reduces trans women to their genitals, violates their privacy, and draws attention to their assigned sex and away from their gender identity (Serano, 2007; Steinbock, 2017). Second, he referred to her “dead name,” the name she was given at birth which she no longer uses, five times. Deadnaming disrespected Mock by failing to acknowledge or recognize her for who she is, therefore undermining her self-determination, self-respect, and her identity as a woman (Freeman and Stewart, 2021). Third, before the break between segments, Morgan said, “In 2009 you meet a man, and you fall in love with this man. But there is something you have to tell him. Something pretty big you have to tell him he doesn’t know, which is that you used to be, yourself, a man.” At that point, the camera zoomed out and Morgan and Mock are seen laughing. Mock later explained that the footage of laughter was edited in because it was apparent from her tense face that this comment offended her (Lamont Hill, 2014). She said, “I left off steaming pissed, and I said, ‘He really just called me a man to my face!’ (Lamont Hill, 2014).” Fourth, when the interview was broadcast 5 days after it was taped, a banner underneath her name read, “Was a boy until age 18” for the entire duration of the interview. Finally, before the broadcast of the interview, Piers Morgan Live’s Twitter account posted, “How would you feel if you found out the woman you are dating was formerly a man? @JanetMock shares her experience now” (Piers Morgan Live, 2014).

In response to the tweet and the footage with the on-screen description, Mock posted three tweets criticizing Morgan and his team. In the first, she wrote, “‘Was a boy until 18.’ @PiersMorganLive get it the f*k together (Mock, 2014b).” In the second, she posted “@PiersMorganLive I was not ‘formerly a man.’ Pls stop sensationalizing my life and misgendering trans women (Mock, 2014c).” In the third, she posted a photograph of herself and transgender actress Laverne Cox frowning, “Me + @Lavernecox’s reaction after @piersmorganlive tried it with the ‘man’ and ‘boy’ tag lines (Mock, 2014a).” Following these three tweets, other members of the transgender community posted criticisms of Morgan.

Morgan turned to Twitter to defend himself and express his anger at the critical tweets. He posted nine tweets in between the two interviews, including these:

“A lot of very irate people accusing me of ‘transphobia’ because I devoted a third of my show to @JanetMock ’s inspiring story. Weird.”

“Very disappointed in @janetmock ’s tweets tonight. Deliberately, and falsely, fuelling [sic] some sense of me being ‘transphobic’. Unpleasant.”

“For the record, @janetmock had no problem at the time with our interview - but now seems keen to score cheap points. Very disappointing.”

“As for all the enraged transgender supporters, look at how STUPID you’re being. I’m on your side, you dimwits. @janetmock”

“I’ll deal with you tomorrow night on air @janetmock - never been treated in such a disgraceful manner. Be proud.”

Many others Twitter users posted tweets supporting Morgan and criticizing Mock and her followers for their tweets.

The second interview occurred the next day. Mock rejoined Morgan via satellite to discuss what happened. Their interaction revolved around four issues at the heart of the ally paradox: authority, deservingness, intention versus outcome, and affect. On each of these issues, Morgan undermines his own claim to allyship. Mock finds herself in a precarious position vis-à-vis Morgan’s missteps. On one hand, she likely does not want Morgan’s allyship to go away, as it can be a valuable resource to her and to her community. Each appearance, even a flawed appearance, is an opportunity for transgender people to tell their stories and dispel the many myths that contribute to transgender oppression (Glover, 2016). On the other hand, Mock owes it to her community to point out Morgan’s mistakes and educate him and the public about how they had been harmful. Thus, Mock must perform the allied labor of both maintaining a positive relationship with a powerful ally while standing up for transgender justice.

Knowledge and epistemic authority

Mock and Morgan’s interaction reveals that knowledge and epistemic authority are central to the ally paradox. To the extent that Morgan enacts a logic of domination by placing himself in the heroic place of the individual who knows better than the oppressed person what is good for them (Mahmood, 2005; Spivak, 1988), his allyship does more harm than good. Mock, on her end, presents the vantage point of the subjugated, the ‘vision from below’ that comes from her placement on the receiving end of intersecting vectors of racism, sexism, and transphobia (Collins, 2000). As articulated by standpoint theory, marginalized people have an epistemic advantage over members of powerful groups, as they can see aspects of social power that are invisible to those with privilege (Haraway, 1988; Harding, 1986). Yet Morgan does not acknowledge and even undermines her standpoint, thereby cultivating his ignorance about her lived experience.

Morgan asserts himself as an expert on how to advance transgender justice. “I think it doesn’t do you or your community any good service to try and make people like me the enemy and the target of abuse,” he advises, “When actually I’m on your side.” Morgan mobilizes his intersecting sources of power—masculinity, whiteness, cisgenderness, age, and position as host—as resources to establish himself as an authority and Mock as ignorant, lacking, and subordinate (Martin, 2001; Pohlhaus, 2014). His claim to authority has clout. Members of privileged groups are granted more trust and credibility than underprivileged groups (Fricker, 2007). Thus, Morgan hurts transgender justice by undermining a transgender person’s authority about her experience.

Morgan states that he was deceived. “Now, I was surprised. Because you never said anything during the interview to indicate you were remotely dismayed.” As noted above, the transgender woman as deceiver is a longstanding myth that haunts the reality of transgender lives. Morgan evokes this preoccupation with disclosure in the initial interview by dwelling on the moment Mock had to “reveal” to her partner that she is transgender. He then accuses her of deceiving him about the interview having gone well.

Yet when Mock explains why she did not correct him at the time, Morgan ignores her answer:

Morgan: Why didn’t you correct me at the time?

Mock: I did not because I was scared…

Morgan: Scared of what?

Mock: I wanted to be a cordial guest. I think that was incorrect of me. I was appreciative of having two segments on a mainstream show. It was my first major appearance as a young trans woman who wrote her first book.

Morgan: I thought you were terrific by the way.

Mock reminds Morgan that the structural inequalities that characterized their initial interaction—her being a guest, a transgender woman of color, a first-time author—inhibited her from expressing her discomfort. Morgan ignores Mock’s point about the power inequality. Rather, he gives her a compliment. From then, the conversation moves on to another topic. In addition to serving as a diversion, the compliment is another assertion of inequality, since it is his to give. Later in the interview, Morgan again raises the same complaint about her not having corrected him at the time, despite the fact that she had explained why she had done it. This is an example of how minority perspectives, when voiced, are not heard. The ally denies the allied’s epistemic authority about her own experience.

Mock engages in allied labor by both acknowledging and actively challenging Morgan’s claim to authority, thereby resisting the role of the passive, ignorant, and helpless subaltern. Mock begins by apologizing, “I’m sorry that you feel offended.” She expresses appreciation for his behavior in the previous interview and acknowledges that his intentions were good. She says, “I love that you told me I looked like Beyoncé, you said all these amazing things. But I think that also being offensive and being kind are not mutually exclusive things. I think that we can completely have great intentions and be good people but also be ignorant and have a lack of understanding about these issues.”

Mock then proceeds to challenge his claims to authority, “Maybe you don’t get it because you’re not a trans woman.” She refutes his claim to knowledge about her life experiences as it does not come from a marginal position. In this sense, she is inviting Morgan to think together, or to paraphrase De la Bellacasa (2012), she suggests that caring about transgender issues means thinking with them, not for them. She continues, “Trans women are…” but he interrupts to return to the topic of himself, “Explain to me what I did wrong.” Morgan thus silences her attempt to describe the experience of transgender women. Later, Mock explicitly addresses the problem of transgender women’s lack of epistemic authority: “We’re constantly questioned ever since we’re very young that who we are is incorrect, wrong and should be kept secret… we need to give trans people space to tell their own stories.” She thus resists the stylized and sensationalized transgender story that Morgan tried to present. Mock’s allied labor of both acknowledging and resisting Morgan’s claim to knowledge is exemplified by her statement, when Morgan offers her advice, “I don’t need your advice but I’ll take it.”

Deservingness

A core feature of allyship is its precarity. Allies can withdraw their support at any point. As McCarthy and Zald (1977) note, allies can be “fickle,” deciding to abandon one cause for another, which is why disadvantaged groups must work to keep them engaged. Mock and Morgan’s interaction reveals that deservingness is a key issue in the ally paradox. Though praising Mock and stating his support for the transgender community numerous times, Morgan emphasizes that this support is not unconditional, and that transgender people need to conform to the expectations of allies in order to maintain their allyship.

Morgan alludes to the threat of withdrawal throughout the interview. He says, “How does it help you, Janet, that somebody like me who has been such an open supporter of the community that you represent so well and so publicly, that you target me for what you knew would be a load of abuse that then followed?” His statement, quoted above, that it does not do her good to make “people like me the enemy and target of abuse” hints that by making a wrong move, transgender people can lose his support. Morgan was thus participating in the demarcation of “worthy” and “unworthy” targets of allyship. He implies that worthiness comes from politeness, appreciation, and conformity to the expectations of powerful people. He taps into a “civilizing” discourse in which those in power assert their dominance by framing the “Other” as uncivilized. Allyship, in this view, needs to be earned by well-behaved allied.

Morgan presents Mock and the transgender community as unworthy of his support. He says, “The tweets last night ignited a firestorm of abuse and vilification my way.” Later he adds, “I think I just felt that you threw me to the wolves… I do think it was a little unfair that you sparked off in firestorm of abuse to me when I am a supporter of your community.” In this quote, Morgan establishes himself as the victim, as a good-intentioned supporter who is vilified by the community he tries to help, ignoring his nine hostile tweets, the numerous hostile tweets by his supporters, and the vilification and abuse faced by transgender people every day (James et al., 2016). From an affect theory standpoint, what his words do is to attach anger and hostility to the black transgender woman with no real power, even as white cisgender men send hostile tweets without being perceived as a threat. In Morgan’s speech, the words “abuse,” “targeting,” and “firestorm” stick to transgender people, whereas “targeted,” “vilified,” and “abused” stick to him. What his speech does is to present transgender activists as unreasonable bullies that intimidate those who disagree with them (Ahmed, 2016). Labeling the anger of weaker groups as dangerous is a way to refuse to hear them and advance a punitive logic of withdrawing support for those who do not deserve it (Lamble, 2020).

Mock contests this view of deservingness by emphasizing that allyship should be motivated by the injustices that transgender women face in society: “issues of poverty and joblessness, of a lack of health care, of violence, verbal and physical violence against trans women.” At the same time, she fights against his abandonment by participating in respectability politics that keep her as a legitimate subject of allyship. Respectability politics is the process by which privileged members of marginalized groups comply with dominant social norms to advance their group’s conditions. The goal of respectability politics is to disprove negative representations of the marginalized group through good manners, polished appearance, and soft speech (Dazey, 2021). Mock participates in respectability politics by presenting herself in a manner consistent with racialized norms of white feminine propriety, politeness, gratitude, and passability (Gill-Peterson, 2018; Skidmore, 2011; Snorton and Haritaworn, 2013). As Ahmed (2007: 158) writes, “even bodies that might not appear white still have to inhabit whiteness, if they are to get ‘in.’” Her feminine self-presentation is both noted and reinforced by Morgan’s compliments in their initial interview. Throughout the second interview, Mock maintains a pleasant calm manner. She listens patiently, her face composed, even when Morgan yells and curses. She nods when he talks. When speaking, she smiles, which serves to soften her words. At one point she giggles in response to his yelling. She says explicitly that she ‘wanted to be a cordial guest’ and appeals to maintain Morgan’s allyship. She says, “I want allies like you and supporters like you to continue to support us and to continue to give us space on your show.”

Mock’s polite manner builds on raced and classed norms that dictate that those in power—man, white, cisgender—should be comfortable while the subaltern—woman, black, transgender—should do the emotional labor of ensuring this comfort (Krell, 2018). As Glover (2016) observes, Janet Mock’s media persona employs an appeal to respectability politics in order to situate her as an individual worth of incorporation into heteronormative society. Successful embodiment of heteronormative beauty ideals enables Mock to challenge and critique white supremacy, transphobia, racism, and sexism, while simultaneously avoiding the label of gender deviant. In this way, Mock’s respectability is both complicit and subversive.

Intention versus outcome

A key point of contention between Mock and Morgan is whether allyship is constituted by intentions or by outcomes. Morgan focuses on individual intentions, whereas Mock focuses on outcomes for the transgender community as a whole, thereby shifting the discussion from the individual to the structural level of analysis. The disparity between the individual and the structural, between intentions and outcomes, is at the heart of the ally paradox: Morgan’s intentions are to help transgender people through his personal support of Mock. Yet his behavior perpetuates their stigmatization by emphasizing Mock’s past as a man, evoking the rhetoric of disclosure and deception, and accusing an angry transgender public of victimizing him.

Morgan begins the interview by establishing his allyship as an immutable individual trait. “Let me start from this premise. I have always been 100% supportive of all gay rights, gay marriage rights, transgender rights… That’s always been my position.” Morgan takes advantage of his position as the host of the show to establish allyship as a private, innate quality of an individual, regardless of its impact on the social reality of transgender people. Throughout their discussion Morgan keeps the focus on individual behaviors—his supportive behavior during the interview and her ungrateful behavior on Twitter. Focusing on individual rather than structural or systemic aspects of oppression allows allies to claim allyship without having to engage in concrete efforts for real change (Sumerau et al., 2020).

Morgan hurts transgender people by preemptively silencing any criticism or displeasure they could raise about his allyship. Rather than honest feedback on the impact of his behavior on their cause, Morgan expects recognition and gratitude (Ueno and Gentile, 2015). Yet research shows that members of disadvantaged groups have varied goals and expectations of allies. “As individuals involved in identity-based movements hold different expectations of their allies, allyship becomes a ‘moving target’ of sorts (Forbes and Ueno, 2020: 173).” Allied and allies need to have honest conversations about which behaviors are in fact helpful and effective, and which behaviors are not.

Mock both affirms and challenges Morgan’s claim to allyship, offering a more dynamic view of allyship as an ongoing accomplishment. She begins with an affirmation, an apology, “Well, I’m sorry that you feel offended.” She then continues,

I think that people in the trans community feel equally as offended. I think one of the number one things with trans women specifically, so much of our lives are open to dissection and illegitimacy and investigation… And I think that being someone that is very visible and in a stigmatized community, you know, I am a transwoman of color. I’m a young woman. These are issues that I think we need to give trans people space to tell their own stories.

Mock evokes the disenfranchised community she represents, reminding him that what happens between her and him has significant implications for this community. Mock asserts that transgender people were offended by Morgan, that they were harmed by his words and actions. She thus disputes the axiomatic quality of his support. She also reminds him what he does know, which is that she is a young transgender woman of color. She thus reminds him of his white privilege, male privilege, cisgender privilege, and age privilege, in addition to his elevated status as host. She reminds him that their interaction is not between equals. Whereas Morgan locates their discussion at the individual level—he the ally and she the allied—Mock pulls the discussion toward structural oppression.

Affect

Mock and Morgan’s interaction sheds light on the affective dimensions of the ally paradox. Morgan uses his power to impose his expectation of a positive affective experience in which his allyship is met with appreciation and gratitude. His allyship becomes harmful when he responds with defensiveness and anger to the violation of these expectations. Mock’s position as dependent on Morgan means she must labor to control her anger and keep their interaction positive. Her ambivalence stems from the dilemma of depending on those who hurt you, humiliate you, and misunderstand you. As Malatino (2019: 124) poignantly writes, “We feel rage and are transformed by rage wherever we sense, or are reminded, that the networks we rely on for survival are inimical to such survival.” The affective landscape of alliedship is ambivalence, dependence and rage.

The physical space of Mock and Morgan’s initial interview was a white space, a cisgender space, a traditionally male space. As such, it was a space of affective inequality where Mock did not feel comfortable enough to confront Morgan. When he raises the issue of Mock disclosing to her boyfriend that she “used to be… a man,” her tense face is replaced by a cut to an image of the two of them laughing (Lamont Hill, 2014). This affective editing prevents the audience from seeing and being affected by the disruption. Thus, Morgan uses affective power to keep the allyship interaction positive.

As noted above, Mock tells Morgan that in their in-person, interaction, she was “scared.” Although she focuses specifically on her fear of violating the norm of being “a cordial guest,” her fear likely had other sources. As she writes in her follow up book, Surpassing Certainty (2017: 63), Mock carries with her fear of being perceived as the “angry black girl.” The so-called “angry black woman” refers to some of the worst stereotypes of black women as out of control, disagreeable, overly aggressive, unfeminine, and loud. Black women must always defend themselves against this stereotype, which is used to dehumanize and silence them (Jones and Norwood, 2016). While Mock avoided anger in her asymmetrical face-to-face encounters with Morgan, when the segment aired 5 days later, her circumstances allowed her to tap into collective transgender anger. She was now physically surrounded by supportive members of her community, such as Laverne Cox. Also, she was communicating through Twitter, an online space that has been instrumental in empowering transgender people to support each other, learn, develop a collective identity, and express their voice (Cavalcante, 2016; Shapiro, 2004).

Whereas in the first interview, Morgan was considerably more physically at ease than Mock, in their second interaction, their physical bodies were separated, as the discussion was held via satellite. Although she was still a “guest” on his show, she appeared less constrained by this role, as evidenced by her extensive disagreement with his words. Yet Mock still does considerable emotional labor to affirm Morgan’s claim to allyship so as not to lose his support. Throughout the interview she maintains a smile and never raises her voice. Toward the end of the interview she says, “I would love to have coffee with you and sit down and have a real conversation off air.” Such statements are evidence of the allied labor she performs to preserve her relationship with Morgan even as their disagreement escalates.

Allyship is paradoxical to the extent that the expectation of allies to prioritize their emotional needs over those of the allied leads to fragility and defensiveness in the face of criticism and conflict. Morgan expects Mock to be grateful for their interview no matter that he did hurtful things. Although Mock does express gratitude, she accuses him of causing harm. As a result, Morgan expresses confusion, shock, and unease. The affective dimension of allied labor entails the exhausting work of keeping allies happy and engaged while mobilizing personal and collective anger to create social change.

Discussion

Allyship is complex, contradictory, and dynamic. Allies are neither solely beneficial or harmful to social justice. The simple binary between effective allyship and non-performative or empty-gesture allyship obscures the fact that sometimes allyship both does and undoes social justice, performs and undermines solidarity, weakens and reinstates power structures, advances causes and sets them back, is both praiseworthy and susceptible to criticism. I have argued that the following issues are at the heart of the ally paradox: who knows what is best for the cause, (epistemic authority), who deserves allyship (deservingness), what constitutes “good” allyship (intention vs outcome), and how allyship should feel (affect). Piers Morgan uses his power and privilege to assert his view of allyship as a positive experience governed by intention that allied individuals should earn through respectability and gratitude. Janet Mock uses her platform—on Twitter and as a guest on his show—to perform what I call “allied labor” to both affirm and contest his view.

Allied labor is the work of managing the sometimes-conflicting strategic goals of cultivating allies as a resource and advancing social justice for one’s own disadvantaged group. Allied labor means engaging in politics of imperfection rather than politics of purity. Politics of purity rejects actions that contribute to the problem one is fighting to end, thereby implicating the actor in the injustice (Shotwell, 2016). Yet as Alexis Shotwell argues in Against Purity (2016), complicity and compromise are starting points for action. Overcoming oppression requires flexibility, practicality, and resourcefulness. Transgender people live and advocate for their rights in a world governed by norms they did not choose but are nonetheless governed by. Mock exercises agency within these norms to advance both her personal career and the collective goals of the transgender community. Agency, in this view, is how people navigate the micropractices of power to increase their capacities for action (Shotwell, 2016: 162). Although allied labor takes away from activist goals and reproduces inequalities (Mathers et al., 2015), it also maintains allies as engaged resources. Allied labor is thus part of a complex social movement strategy that navigates the messy dynamic between theory (purity) and practice (compromise). “It matters both what understanding we hold (our theory) and what we do (our practice). Holding those together shapes a praxis of speculative futures—finding ways to create a world other than the one we’re in while keeping our feet in the mud (Shotwell, 2016: 172).”

The dissonance between Mock and Morgan’s affective experience exposes the ally paradox, the possibility for allies both to do good and cause harm. The disruption presented an opportunity to growth, learning, and repair. Their interaction could have been a teachable moment, as happened in the previous month in the interaction between black transgender actress Laverne Cox and white cisgender television host Katie Couric. In a similar act of allied labor, Cox had respectfully called out Couric for asking questions about genitals and focusing on transgender bodies. In a subsequent segment, Couric acknowledged that interrogating someone’s surgical status is objectifying and distracts from the important issues transgender people face. Couric showed that she understood how cisgender norms reduce identity to genitals and skin color (Steinbock, 2017), thereby expressing accountability as more than mere apology, but as a practice that leads to behavioral change and relationship repair (Mingus, 2019).

Thus, an alternative way of dealing with the ally paradox is to learn from the allied, admit one’s mistakes, pay attention to structural issues, and express commitment to creating real change. Allies would do better by doubting their own epistemic authority and reject the privileging of the ally’s point of view, as this would ignore the many ways that power informs that point of view. Instead, allies should grant expert status to the allied, with respect to both leading the movement and the nature of their experience. Allies should steer away from framing deservingness in terms of conformity with white middle-class respectability but rather in response to real injustices and material needs. Also, allyship must incorporate effectiveness from the point of view of the allied. An act cannot be considered allyship if it does not benefit the community it is meant to help. Thus, an act cannot be considered allyship if it causes harm, even if the ally’s intentions were good. Finally, allies would benefit from embracing the emotional complexity of the allyship relationship. Emotions such as anger, which are often unwelcomed in collaborative situations, play an important role in the ally relationship, particularly the anger of the less powerful group, as it is an important source of information about the injustices that the allies and allied are working together to dismantle (Lyman, 2004). Rather than rejecting or embracing any given emotion—whether positive like gratitude or negative like anger—partners in the ally relationship must consider what the emotion does, what function it serves, and whether or how it advances the common goal. This affect-informed approach to allyship would require an awareness of allyship’s “not-enough-ness” (Blair, 2021). When allyship is viewed as a dynamic relationship, a breach can be repaired, mistakes can be opportunities to learn, and conflict does not necessarily end a relationship but rather helps it grow and become stronger.