The Ally Organization as a Distinct Political Form

FAN is an ally organization. This is not a modifier or a softening of our politics — it is a specific organizational form with a specific political function that must be understood clearly if FAN is to avoid the contradictions that have historically undermined ally formations.

FAN's base — cis-men, white allies, and supporters across all backgrounds who share our feminist abolitionist values — is not the constituency whose liberation we fight for. This is the defining structural feature of an ally organization: the base and the beneficiary are not the same. McCarthy and Zald's resource mobilization theory (1977) named this the distinction between conscience constituents (those who support a movement out of political conviction) and beneficiary constituents (those who directly benefit from the movement's success). FAN's base are conscience constituents. The beneficiaries of our work are working class Black, Southeast Asian, and other women and queer people of color — particularly those experiencing state violence, patriarchal violence, and economic exploitation.

This split between base and beneficiary is not a weakness to be overcome. It is the political purpose of the organization.

 

What Allies Do

The function of allies in movement is not to lead, not to substitute, and not to speak for. The function of allies is to:

1. Provide material support — money, legitimacy, numbers, skills, infrastructure — to grassroots organizations led by directly impacted communities.
2. Translate — take the campaigns, political analysis, and demands of grassroots formations and make them legible and actionable for audiences the grassroots organizations cannot or should not have to reach.
3. Prevent counter-mobilization — better to organize cis-men and white people for feminist abolitionist politics than to leave them available to be organized against it by the right.
4. Transform — change the consciousness, political behavior, and material practices of the dominant group itself, reducing the harm it produces and redirecting its resources toward liberation.
5. Follow — take political direction from the leadership of directly impacted communities. The question "what should allies do?" is answered by the organizations we exist to support, not by FAN itself.

These five functions define the ally organization's contribution. When an ally organization tries to also be the site where directly impacted communities set the agenda, it creates a structural contradiction: the base and the leadership become the same constituency, erasing the political clarity that makes ally work possible and necessary.

 

On Not Fighting for Our Own Base

FAN does not fight for the rights or interests of its own base. This is the political logic of the organization.

Cis-men are not oppressed as men. White people are not oppressed as white people. To the extent that FAN's base members experience oppression (as working class people, as queer people, as people of color), that oppression is already taken up by other formations — including the grassroots organizations FAN supports. FAN's specific and sole contribution is to organize those who benefit from systems of domination to support those who are targeted by them.

This does not mean FAN's base has no stake in the struggle. Patriarchy harms men too — through constricted emotional lives, enforced violence, isolation, and the impossibility of meeting masculinity's demands. White supremacy impoverishes white working people even as it privileges them racially. But these harms are secondary effects of systems designed to benefit cis-men and white people. The route to liberation for men who want to fight patriarchy runs through women's liberation. The route to liberation for white people who want to fight white supremacy runs through Black, Indigenous, and POC-led movements.

 

The Role of Men in Feminist and Queer Liberation

Men have been present in feminist movements since the first wave. John Neal delivered the first women's rights lecture in America (1832); Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison supported women's suffrage; John Stuart Mill wrote The Subjection of Women. But the question of what men's participation means has been contested throughout.

bell hooks argued that feminism is for everybody — that men must be partners in feminist struggle, not because feminism needs men's permission or validation, but because patriarchy cannot be dismantled without transforming the people it was designed to benefit. Men who want to end gender-based violence, who want to live outside the constrictions of toxic masculinity, who want to build relationships based on equality — these men need feminism. But they need it as supporters, not as leaders of women's struggles.

The term "pro-feminist" emerged as a compromise — men who support feminism without claiming the identity "feminist," which some feminists reserve for those who experience patriarchal oppression directly. FAN takes no position on whether individual members call themselves feminists. What matters is the political practice: do they follow the leadership of women and queer people? Do they show up when asked? Do they provide material support without demanding recognition or control?

This applies equally to cis-men supporting queer liberation. The role of cis-men in queer movements is to show up, provide cover, lend resources, and follow — not to define the agenda, not to occupy leadership, not to demand that queer spaces accommodate cis comfort.

 

The Ally Paradox

Every ally organization faces a structural tension: the more successfully it mobilizes its base, the more it risks centering itself rather than the movement it serves. Well-funded ally organizations can overshadow the under-resourced grassroots formations they claim to support. The ally's voice can become louder than the beneficiary's. The ally's comfort can become the priority over the beneficiary's demands.

FAN addresses this paradox through:

1. Explicit political framing: FAN names itself an ally organization and describes what that means. There is no ambiguity about who leads and who follows.
2. Following, not originating, political analysis: FAN adapts and amplifies the analysis developed by the grassroots organizations we support. We do not develop independent political lines.
3. Material support over visibility: Our campaigns are judged by what material support they deliver to grassroots organizations, not by how visible FAN becomes.
4. Base transformation as an end in itself: When cis-men and white allies internalize feminist abolitionist politics and carry those politics into their workplaces, families, and communities, that is a victory — even if it never generates a press release.