YES oh my god, yes this. I haven't worked in intergenerational spaces, but I've had enough connections to people with vastly different contexts to me--including folks who were active in early nonbinary communities, for example, or folks with big generational gaps, or or or--that I have had lots of experiences that actively align with yours.
The exclusionist gatekeeping just... it doesn't square with the lived realities of any of the people I've sat down and gotten to know, and it always speaks to a really incredibly narrow idea of what this broader community is and has been and will be again. It's so weird. Especially in the incredibly narrow sense it has of what people are like! People are so messy and complicated and unsure!
I tell you what, I think the earliest sense I had of that kind of "people are more complicated than this" was watching folks on the old AVEN forums handle people who are questioning, and seeing the kinds of questions people came in with. And watching how more experienced people handled those questions, but also just... being so amazed by what you can find out about people if they trust you enough to tell you.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
Re: Yes! I agree.
Date: 2019-01-22 09:17 pm (UTC)The exclusionist gatekeeping just... it doesn't square with the lived realities of any of the people I've sat down and gotten to know, and it always speaks to a really incredibly narrow idea of what this broader community is and has been and will be again. It's so weird. Especially in the incredibly narrow sense it has of what people are like! People are so messy and complicated and unsure!
I tell you what, I think the earliest sense I had of that kind of "people are more complicated than this" was watching folks on the old AVEN forums handle people who are questioning, and seeing the kinds of questions people came in with. And watching how more experienced people handled those questions, but also just... being so amazed by what you can find out about people if they trust you enough to tell you.