The contemporary atmosphere of paranoia and conspiracism has frequently reminded me of my childhood in the 1990s when the Satanic Panic was vibrant and mainstream, with allegations of Satanic cults attempting to pervert and destroy society through secret messages encoded in Heavy Metal music and other media. There was also a terror of Satanic cults that kidnapped, assaulted, and ritually tortured or murdered babies and children. People in therapy might “discover” a “memory” of being ritually tortured in this way and accuse their parents.

None of this surfaced any real cults that engaged in this activity, and since then it’s become clear that such memories “reconstructed” in therapy are more a reflection of the secret wishes and biases of the therapist rather than a historical occurrence. (And all of which made us so collectively focused on the boogeymen that the children actually being molested in Catholic churches were missed.)

The recent resurgence of conspiracies of blood-drinking pedophiles secretly running the world and kidnapping children makes it hard not to reflect on those times. But paranoia even seems pervasive on the Left, though in a different form, as I read articles of people going to great lengths to indict people for harmful thinking with little evidence.

Often I’ve thought about my interest in loneliness a few years ago, when I learned that chronic loneliness leads to rejection sensitivity and paranoia. The person who has been too lonely too long starts to be so vigilant against social exclusion that they start to assume people are cruel or out to get them by default, making them more likely to interpret warm or neutral social interactions as signs of rejection. Frequently I wonder to what extent this past couple years of isolation, social distancing, and masking has contributed to this paranoid atmosphere.

Moments like these make me so grateful to live in a moment where I could go to my computer and type “red head christian demon exorcist from 90s” and be led to the Wikipedia page that validated this was a real memory and helped me find a linkthe full video of the debate between Christian exorcist Bob Larson’s and Satanists Zeena LaVey and Nikolas Schreck. (As a note, I will refer to LaVey and Schreck as the Satanists, but in this video they suggest it would be more appropriate to refer to them as Setianists who honor the Egyptian god Set, and my understanding is that since the filming of this debate both people have moved into different spiritual paths.)

Looking back, it seems daring and necessary for the Satanists would participate in this interview during the heat of the Satanic Panic. I admire the calmness with which they mostly sustained in weathering Larson’s challenges and at times aggressive questions. I also appreciate that Larson offered a measure of generosity in allowing them to articulate their points.

While he frequently interrupts the Satanists and throws out misleading claims, it’s an almost refreshingly civil and thoughtful debate compared to your average Internet discourse. The sour note comes in his intervening clips where he talks directly to the video viewing audience, portraying these folks as cartoon villains—clearly a canny entertainer who knows how to play to the sensationalism of his audience, and the Schreck and LaVey themselves don’t seem above knowing how to draw and keep attention for entertainment purposes.

In all honesty, I absolutely love thoughtful but strident debate between different perspectives of people who can show up with mutual respect. But when I remembered this the other day, before I found the video, I was surprised and confused. Why on earth would the Satanists subject themselves to dialogue in a venue hostile to them, with an audience completely unlikely to be curious or willing to listen? What a waste of time.

Yet, I realized, even decades later I remembered it. I remembered how their calmness and thoughtfulness came through in spite of the bluster and sensationalism. I remember as a kid thinking Larson’s attacks of them and depictions of their beliefs were clearly unfair, and revealed more about his agenda than theirs. Though I am not aligned with either of their theologies—referencing the distinction Schreck offers between Right and Left Hand paths, I’m a person who thinks both hands are perfectly good and you may as well make use of them—witnessing that conversation opened a door for my own path.

Hard, direct, civil, and respectful conversations with one’s adversaries is always exceptional. And I’ve seen myself and others like me ground down by the effort to be openhearted, curious, and firm in the face of sheer unwillingness to engage. And I’ve seen minor disagreements become increasingly polarized into irreconcilable gulfs because those conflicts could never be fully surfaced, named, and worked through in an effort to stay connected.

Lately, my heart has felt scaled over with familiar cynicism and the sense that history is a serpent that undulates left and right regardless of our best efforts, and there is nothing to do but to hold on. But remembering this debate, and realizing it has stayed with me all these years—that felt important. That feels like a reminder that our efforts matter and have impacts greater than we can know.

These days, I feel minimal interest in engaging in debate with folks on the Internet, and I’ve had to work on strengthening my capacity to stay engaged when in person with the people whom I can disagree with and stay connected. Yet I’m also no longer willing to engage in bad faith arguments or imagine I can persuade the people arguing with me directly.

What I’ve absorbed is the wisdom not to JADE – Justify, Argue, Defend, or Explain. Make your point, answer earnest questions, and offer a clarifying perspective if needed, then lay it down. Don’t make persuading or defeating your adversary a condition of victory.

To some extent, I see this in the Larson debate linked above. Frequently the Satanists are challenged to justify, argue, defend, or explain their beliefs and practices based on the basic assumptions of Christianity—”How can you believe that when the Bible tells us this?” Instead of accepting defeat by accepting those conditions, the Satanists remind the entire audience that the Bible is a book of mythology not relevant to their lives and not their foundation for truth.

To do otherwise—to attempt to argue with Christians using the Bible—implicitly concedes the terms of debate, as though accepting Christianity as the measure of morality by which everything must be justified. When that territory has been ceded, then you are already at a great disadvantage.

Standing firm in our beliefs and values, and having esteem in our own identities and traditions, mean we are under no obligation to justify it on other people’s terms. That’s the whole point of a secular democracy with separate religions.

Yet also there is no reason to shy away from vigorous debate, if you have the will and energy. Whether another person is persuaded is perhaps less important than whether we have honored ourselves and maintained our own dignity in the face of adversity.

The first time I heard about “being an ally” was during my undergraduate years in the early 2000s. “An ally” generally meant a person who is outside a particular group but supportive of the group’s needs and aims. Being a small community, we needed our straight allies to amplify our power and voices; though at times some of us felt resentful at the effort required to include and accommodate them in our spaces and work. Sometimes straight people took up space and demanded energy, attention, and accommodation that felt draining and unsupportive. When possible, it was a joy to have spaces where we didn’t have to consider straight people at all.

That tension between needing allies and resenting them seems to have evolved over the years as social justice discourse has transformed via the Internet and cultural change. Now the onus is on the ally to prove their allyship through demonstrating right understanding, not asking for validation or praise, knowing when to take up space and when to be quiet, not centering their own needs, not arguing with people in the group, and recognizing the diversity of opinions in the group.

The sharpest expression of these boundaries is something like: “We don’t need allies. We don’t need to spend the energy educating you or kissing your ass. If you want to be an ally, you need to do the work and not expect our validation or acceptance.” The call is essentially toward prioritizing the group’s interest and needs and falling in line or shutting your mouth if you’re not in the group. Which is, to be honest and clear, not an unreasonable boundary, and entirely appropriate for certain kinds of work.

But is ally the best word for that kind of relationship?

Being an ally doesn’t seem to be the same as being in alliance, wherein compelling common interest between groups makes cooperation mutually rewarding. When I became the Outreach Chair of my queer organization in the early 2000s, I took the call as an opportunity to build alliance, find common cause and common struggle with other political and identity-based student groups, which was easier when we didn’t default to centering white LGBTQ people and remembered that queer people are in every identity group.

From the perspective of global politics, countries in alliance might not particularly like each other, but depend upon the maintenance of their agreements for stability and prosperity. In a recent interview with Jeremy Scahill, Noam Chomsky offered an illustrative example of such an action, that of Mexico allowing Chinese military to gather on the borders of the United States. While there are political tensions between the United States and Mexico, there’s a common interest in not escalating tensions to the danger of a land war.

But looking through that lens, it would be deeply problematic for one nation to demand all the accommodation and unflinching, unselfish support. I observed this personally later in life when I was in a meeting of LGBTQ spiritual and religious leaders talking about the need for interfaith work, with my Neopagan group.

One of the Christian leaders came to us and warmly invited us to attend their church services some time. Our clergy member thanked him, and similarly invited him to attend one of our seasonal rituals, and the Christian visibly blanched at the offer and never, to my acknowledge, showed.

That moment made clear to me that alliance requires mutuality. If one group expects us to extend ourselves for them, and makes no effort for us, why would we attend their services? The attitude did not suggest respect for us or an interest in collaboration—at best it was facile acceptance, at worst it was proselytizing. If there is not mutual effort and shared value, what is an alliance?

What’s become clear is that “ally” in activist rhetoric is almost without exception a term applied to people in a privileged group who support a more marginalized group. At best, it seems self-serving to call myself an ally—like virtue signaling, like calling myself your best friend—a term I need to earn rather than claim. And “being an ally” has connotations of meaning both “being a good person” and “prioritizing the comfort and needs of marginalized people over your own.”

As a therapist, it has become clearer to me over the years that a relationship without mutual benefit is a deeply unhealthy one. I have quietly sat with this concern that allyship is about self-sacrifice for the other without expectation of any gain or reward and made exceptions due to the enormous imbalance of historical economic, social, and cultural injustice. Yet I have also seen this dynamic play out to the detriment of all involved. Well-meaning white or straight or cisgender people who take this too literally and end up sacrificing too much, then becoming toxic.

To be clear: It’s not healthy for anyone to be consistently compromise their needs, wants, and desires for the benefit of another. It’s not healthy for marginalized people. It’s not healthy for privileged people. Such a relational dynamic leads to abuse, burnout, and toxicity.

I believe some allies overcorrect in response to marginalized people expressing frustrations or setting very healthy and reasonable boundaries in the crucible of social justice discourse and disembodied Internet communities. It is honestly no wonder that folks tire of being the representative and educator on behalf of their identity groups, expected to replicate the same scripts to dialogue with people who they don’t have any relationship with, who might not be acting in good faith, who have cousins and coworkers and random people who jump on the threads to add their bullshit, who come from such different lives that it’s not even possible to have a productive conversation without a lot of context-building.

“I don’t need to educate you” is a healthy personal boundary for those of us not being paid to do the work, and have other things to do with our time and energy.

Through the Internet we are connected to more people than ever in human history, but at a distance that allows us to flatten and objectify each other. From the outside, allies seeking for guidance in being right and good look to these myriad and contradictory expressions of clarity, power, grief, frustration, rage, and powerlessness, and reshare them to show their understanding and support, which amplifies a message and makes it seem even bigger. It’s too easy to see a meme shared once or fifty times and begin to think of that as a universal truth coming from a group that has diverse perspectives and needs.

For a time, for example, I saw memes floating around calling upon allies to cut off their bigoted or Trump-supporting family members, calling into question the dedication of those who would not. A person who would make such a call, I imagine, really wants to know that the folks who call themselves allies are truly on their side and committed to their safety and well-being.

But if an ally truly did cut away all of their family, and all of their privilege, who would provide the emotional and material support their family offered? That marginalized person who makes it clear they’re not here to give you cookies for doing what’s right? Who’s already got enough to manage emotionally in life? A person who posted a meme who has no relationship with you in your day-to-day life?

Maybe those allies truly doing the work would luck into being welcomed by a new, socially just family, but I suspect most would not. More often, I expect, those allies who make themselves too at home in certain communities will find themselves firmly reminded that they’re merely guests.

I was once one of three men in a group of mostly white women talking about anti-racism. Knowing that often men take up a great deal of space I was mindful about how much I participated, while also noticing that many of the participants were very new to thinking about whiteness and anti-racism. At the end of the call, one of the women expressed her concern that men were taking up too much space.

Which left me confused—was she talking about me specifically? Or the other men? Or all of us together? Was her focusing on male participation a way of dealing with her discomfort of talking about her whiteness? Did we have agreements or facilitation that could’ve helped the men find boundaries of our participation, or were we supposed to guess? I would’ve appreciated direct feedback to know how much I needed to adjust my participation, but I was left feeling mildly unwelcome and confused.

When a perspective like this arises, the typical response is that privileged people need to do the work to figure out whether they’re being talked about or not, and anxiety or discomfort may be a sign of one’s own complicity. It’s not their job to explain if they meant you. Or, alternately, you should feel grateful they felt safe enough to share this in front of you.

While these perspectives make sense, what’s being asked for are sophisticated social skills that would be complicated by growing up in families that, for example, did not have consistent expectations or give you clear, actionable feedback. Or families where perhaps a behavior was okay one day and offensive another day with no explanation about the difference. Or families that avoided direct conflict but talked about you behind your back, or chastised you with vague statements that you needed to magically divine. Or families that simply froze you out or punished you when you did wrong.

If a person happened to experience any of those communication patterns, or others, then being anxious and confused in response to indirect feedback about a group they’re in is a totally normal and expected experience. Feeling defensive or angry may be less a sign of personal guilt and more a sign of being habitually blamed and attacked.

Since asking for clarity might be condemned as demanding emotional labor, the ally is left having to deal with this indirect feedback as best as they can, which usually ends up meaning using one of their maladaptive coping strategies they learned to navigate those confusing family experiences. Strategies such as shaming and policing anyone else who does something similar, or indiscriminately taking in all feedback and overfunctioning so that they’re always good and never bad, or getting defensive and attacking back, or questioning the expectations, or shutting down. All the behaviors that exhaust the targeted activists in the first place.

These aren’t alliances, with clearly contracted agreements and a process for working through disputes and conflict. Or perhaps it is an alliance, in that there’s not open war but rather tensions expressed indirectly or through proxies.

In What White People Can Do Next: From Allyship to Coalition, author Emma Dabiri calls upon white people who care about racial and economic justice to find our own values and desires in this process. Not to see anti-racism as an act of charity or service we’re doing for another group, but to find its necessity in our own lives, families, and communities. To know what is at stake for us, so that we’re working for common cause.

For these and other reasons, I’ve stopped using the word “ally” to describe myself, and instead challenge myself to find my personal values and stakes in the work toward social and economic justice. I can prioritize my needs and desires appropriately, not trying to get them met by people with healthy boundaries but getting clear about which relationships are about shared values and which relationships are about emotional and material support. I don’t need to feel welcome or accepted in every space to recognize we have common interests, but I don’t have to sacrifice myself either.

It’s been important to me to move from the abstract and universal categories toward the specific and concrete, to my communities of people with whom I have relationships that can be negotiated and engaged with, where others may be willing to extend themselves to educate, challenge, affirm, or argue with me, but I can also give energy and value back. Mutuality is important to any healthy, thriving relationship—if we are constantly giving more than we receive, we are in danger.

As Facebook is no longer a useful tool for reaching my audience, I am establishing a New Year’s intention to begin using my e-mail newsletters again.

My plan is to send out seasonal newsletters, though I may increase them to monthly if inspired. Each newsletter will include personal reflection on being a therapist and spiritual seeker in these times, a brief Tarot card reading, information about upcoming classes or publications, and links to works that I’ve enjoyed reading, watching, or hearing.

To sign up, pop your email in this: