Every queer person I know over the age of 30 is fucking appalled by the state of the queer community, and I have heard some absolutely stellar anti-gatekeeping tirades from queer grandparents. I had a long conversation with a 43 year old pansexual who told me the infighting is almost certainly because we’ve collectively forgotten our joint history and have become more interested in individual social clout than actually advancing the movement for across the board queer equality.
So this is a reminder, I guess, that our elders are on our side. The gatekeeping and the exclusionary behavior is crap.
I guess, technically speaking, I would be one of these queer elders. (47, used to identify as a shy bi, now demisexual, old enough to remember the height of the AIDS crisis…)
I do think that the infighting is not just because we’ve forgotten our joint history, but also because non LGBTQ+ individuals are feeding the flames. It’s a divide and conquer technique. We discovered that we’re stronger together, so so those that seek to destroy us are trying to tear us apart.
