I mean, as far as I can tell, Gen Zers are having nuanced conversations about consent and gender and are way ahead of the rest of us there, but let’s be careful about They Will Save Us rhetoric.

They’re still human beings and while we millennials are better on some social issues, 3 out of 5 millennial men aren’t comfortable with the idea of female engineers, let alone CEOs or presidents.

Progress is a million parallel streams, and they don’t all flow at the same rate.

Like, as frustrated as I am by Boomer selfishness and Gen X apathy and cynicism, they didn’t give us GG and other organized harassment chan ops. That was overwhelmingly millennial men. There are a lot of millennials that are reactionary on some issues.

The same is going to be true of Gen Z, so let’s not put the responsibility of ushering in a queer utopia on them before they’re old enough to drink.

Especially, since as we’re seeing, acceptance of some queer relationships and of gender fluidity can coexist quite easily with bi- and acephobia. There’s no silver bullet that cures all gender/orientation issues. Including the coming of age of a new generation.

Hell, the number of “economically left, socially conservative, 17, they/them” profiles I’ve been seeing lately should be a pretty clear indicator that The Kids are ahead of us in some ways and reactionary in others, and not a monolith.

So yeah, I’m uncomfortable with the messianic rhetoric about them both because it’s the age-old flip side of fear of the next generation, and no generation has Saved Us, and also because it takes the responsibility off us. The oldest of them are 20. Stop putting this on them.

Like fucking let them be KIDS, not promised saviors. For all the hagiography of Greta Thunberg, if you actually LISTEN to her instead of projecting onto her, she’s not a savior. She’s a kid BEGGING adults to fucking adult up and let her have a childhood.

Like look, trying out extreme positions is a normal thing. But when I see reactionary rhetoric coming out of the keyboard of teenagers identifying as leftist, I always have that moment of wondering...

...if, in addition to the nuclear-level pressure of knowing that the planet will likely become mostly uninhabitable in their lifetime, the adults who wrecked it going “we just have to hold out until you grow up and save us” is causing some of that to reify.

Anyway, in conclusion, we’re not living in fucking Childhood’s End.

The kids are wise in new ways. They’re also fucked up in new ways.

Let them be human beings, because they are whether you accept it or not.