on allies

i had a great ally experience this morning:

in class, we were talking about, of all things, evidence-based practice and evaluating research articles. we got to a point about different types of categories for data: nominal, ordered nominal, and dichotomous. in giving an example of each type, my professor said, "dichotomous--you're either male or female. well, what do you do with someone who's had a gender reassignment?" there were some nervous giggles (my class is full of girls and i'm the only one who even has short hair), and we went on, because this is actually something that people in my profession deal with, but it wasn't the focus of the lecture. it did, however, brilliantly prove the point: even those categories in research we think are dichotomous may not be.

coming off a talk last week which stressed the value of straight allies in a way i'm not accustomed to hearing out loud, i thanked her after class. it was nowhere near as big a deal to her as it was to me.