I think there's an important distinction to be made between allies who will call out oppressive behaviour once you've convinced them that it's oppressive, and allies who are able to work out that it's oppressive on their own.
I am lucky enough to know a couple of really good allies, people who will make genuine sacrifices of time, effort, even their own social connections, to fight forms of oppression that they don't experience themselves. But even within that tiny group, I still notice this divide.
For example, if I'm describing how a trans woman was kicked out of a social group because someone thought she had "bad vibes", I'll get a couple of responses. One will say, "That's fucked up, we should help her." The other will say, "Really? She must've done something worse than that."
For the second person, I'll have to explain that this is a common pattern, that I've seen it before several times, that transmisogyny often operates this way, etc etc etc, and then we'll be at the "That's fucked up, we should help her," stage. With the first person, it was instant.
I think many allies often don't appreciate that there is a kind of labour involved in observing oppression, noticing that it *is* oppression, and then convincing others of what you have seen, and that labour is labour done by the oppressed themselves 99% of the time, even when the burden of responding to that oppression is (partially) taken on by allies.
There is no better feeling than seeing e.g. something transmisogynistic in a movie, and then afterwards your non-transfem friend points it out before you can bring it up. I am always chasing the high I get when something like that happens, and always trying to be that ally for my friends who are marginalised in ways that I am not.
(Disclaimer that I am not talking here about passive vs active allyship. I do not consider "passive allyship" to be allyship at all.)
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