One of the things I've been thinking about a lot since a panel I was in on Friday abt accessibility in horror games is that, if you successfully advocate for change, & live long enough while advocating for change, eventually the things you advocate for will become outdated.
1/

16 years ago, people advocated for a rabbinic responsa which expressly affirmed "transsexual" inclusion in the URJ.

30 years ago, people pushed for the inclusion of bisexuals, in a move which split off bi folx from lesbian and gay communities, which has had mixed impact.
2/

The work that I and others like me do right now in terms of inclusion, of accessibility, of advancing the causes we work on, means that as we are successful, the goals move, and the window of acceptable discussion moves...
3/

... and that's great! That's what we want! But it also means that the things that people in their 40s advocated for in their 20s are outdated, & as we learn from our work, it sometimes means that we argued in good faith for debunked theories or things we now know better than.
4/

I'm not thinking about anything in particular wrt that panel or anything, really. I'm just thinking about how hard some people in their teens or 20s argue with absolute fervor for a particular point, without realizing that *if you're successful,* at some point...
5/

... what you do will become unacceptably outdated, and that you WANT that, because that means that the conversation has continued to progress.

I guess for an example... in the mid 00s, I was a huge advocate for Asperger's visibility, right after I was diagnosed...
6/

... because at the time, people had a very specific image of autistic people, and fighting for accommodations for AFAB folx and people all across the spectrum meant rejecting a "one size fits all" mentality, which I was up against at the time for myself and my kid.

7/

Now we don't use Asperger's as a term anymore, autism is seen as not a "more to less" spectrum as it was at the time, we reject "function" language, and so many other things.

And that's BECAUSE of advocacy and learning and continual work. That's not BAD. It's great!
8/

I'm not talking about advocating for things we have always known to be harmful. I'm just thinking about how far the goalposts have moved since I was 20 - in a good way - and how far they still have to move.

And I'm really excited about that latter part.
9/

If you are a successful advocate for change, at a certain point you will look back at what you were working on earlier in your life & be shocked you ever had to have a particular fight at all, and shocked at the arguments you made, bc you will have achieved, learned, grown.
10/

Be willing and ready to constantly reassess what you understand and believe, because progress REQUIRES moving on from beliefs and practices you hold which become outdated, which you learn are harmful, etc.

If you are lucky, you will see your work become history.
11/

Today's radical inclusion is next year's dusty and abandoned trope, if you're lucky.

We should all be so very lucky.

12/12