Gatekeeping is the practice of inventing additional criteria for a label. Think “you’re not a true metalhead if you don’t like Maiden”, or “you’re not really a parent if your children aren’t biologically yours”. In both examples, the criterion is foreign to the definition; nowhere mainstream is it written that metalheads must enjoy Iron Maiden, and adoptive parents aren’t truly parents.
Gatekeeping is considered pretentious and unsporting by most. But it’s not always that bad. Some labels, I think, become more powerful with the extra criteria.
And then there’s gatekeeping that I fiercely oppose. Let’s look over both.
In politics, I like gatekeeping that pertains to effort. For example: I agree with the premises of socialism, and technically, that’s all I need to qualify as a socialist. But I’m not connected to a socialist organization, I don’t participate in markedly socialist actions, and I’ve only skimmed Marx and Engels. I can’t fully claim the label, because I haven’t put effort into the ideology.
This kind of gatekeeping seems healthy to me. “You’re only a real socialist if you put in the work.”
It applies to all ideologies. Everyone qualifies for some -ism, but not everyone is politically diligent enough to make it meaningful. Those who are diligent should be our leaders and teachers, to whom we listen with open and unlabeled minds. Movements should strive to inspire as many people as possible, not encompass them.
Because, when people without political knowledge and motivation are subsumed by labels, movements become immovable, belligerent blocks. Effort-based political gatekeeping is a service to society, and I’d like there to be more of it.
Bad gatekeeping would be that surrounding grief. Grief may not be a label, but the word is often reserved for the “big five deaths” (parent, partner, sibling, child, or close friend); if you haven’t experienced such loss, you might hesitate to claim grief. I won’t say that death has prestige, because that would be an insult to the bereaved, but it does connect to a kind of gatekeeping: “You can’t really understand grief if you haven’t lost someone close.”
This is unfortunate, because grief is the universal response to loss. Loss of loved ones, yes, but also of good times, special places, desires and ambitions, innocence; all things that end, or never come to pass. Whatever the loss, whatever its severity, grief helps you sympathize with yourself, and signals others to console you. It’s one of your mind’s most useful mechanisms.
When grief is suppressed, smothered by criteria, it takes corrosive forms. Resentment. Self-loathing. Jealousy. Anxiety. If you regularly experience one or more of those, it’s probably stunted grief. There’s something you lack, or something you’ve lost – but you haven’t permitted yourself to grieve it, because it isn’t extreme enough. You’ve been gatekeeping grief against yourself.
Open the gate. Dare to claim grief. You’d be surprised at how many horrible feelings can be transformed back into that purest, kindest form.