An English Major on the World of Gatekeeping

Graphic by Emma Baynes

Even though gatekeeping as a term has just entered into our conversations in the past year or so, the concept of excluding others for not reading a certain book or eating a particular food is a concept that I would argue has existed within society for a long time; in fact, I’d argue that this information is common knowledge. Remember the “hipsters” of the mid-2010s claiming to like things before they got popular?

I remember my friends in middle school treated me so differently when they found out that I hadn’t read Cassandra Clare’s series, Mortal Instruments. I felt I couldn’t sit at my own lunch table because not only was every other girl talking about the characters in the books, but they also would repeatedly remind me that since I hadn’t read it, I “simply wouldn’t understand.” Professors in college would swear off “No Fear Shakespeare” because they told us that since we were a class of all English majors, it was only acceptable for us to understand Shakespeare as he wrote (in an outdated form of English). It was easy for English majors in workshop classes to conglomerate together and bash a specific person’s story for not being up to their standards, not understanding that these types of classes were open to any major. I’m not going to lie--there were times I found myself being the one mocked and other times I was the one doing the mocking. This is the vicious cycle of gatekeeping.

As an English major, I find a lot of gatekeeping in the center of academia, but the reality is gatekeeping is everywhere. We have the film snobs on Letterboxd writing snarky reviews questioning the taste of people who like certain movies, and when someone blasts a TikTok song in their car, it’s always accompanied by an eye roll and “Oh, you actually listen to TikTok music?” There’s a debate about whether skinny jeans or mom jeans are the way to go when clearly fashion taste varies slightly from individual to individual. This idea of there being a singular standard or acceptable preference that everyone may not have been exposed to or have enjoyed reinforces centuries-old elitism. 

I think at one point or another, we’ve all teased our friends about not reading Normal People yet, and part of recognizing gatekeeping as it happens begins with acknowledging that we’ve all been gatekeepers at one time or another; it’s almost culturally acceptable, especially in this “light-hearted” or “joking” fashion. However, we should try our best to not let the joke be taken too far because many times our preferences for art, music, film, and literature root themselves in comfort and self-expression. We should never make people feel self-conscious or not intelligent if they like a book that isn’t taught in schools (i.e. YA like The Selection and Percy Jackson series, or romance like Since You’ve Been Gone). Part of recognizing gatekeeping begins with myself--how will what I say impact someone else’s journey into an interest or a potential passion? Will my comment deter them from pursuing creative writing? How can I encourage others to read certain books without making them feel bad they haven’t read them before? Those in academia, especially humanities and art majors, need to mind what they say to avoid this common trap of gatekeeping. 

Thank goodness I’ve been a witness to a counterculture that fights the persistent gatekeepers who refuse to see any wrong in what they do and say. We have comments on Youtube videos telling snobs to fuck off, or instead of expressing our disbelief about them not knowing about a certain TV show, we instead tell them it’s on Netflix. We acknowledge that there’s a fair amount of TikTok bops that are worthy of blasting through our car’s audio system or while we’re working out (that Kostromin song? Could definitely listen to it while at a cycling sesh). If there’s a lack of knowledge about a piece of art or something along those lines, it is NOT acceptable to equate the person with stupidity or uncultured.

Gatekeeping is a symptom of a comparison-driven culture, and it’s not ever going to go away, but the more people realize its inherency in our society, the more aware we can be of correcting it. It all begins perhaps with a simple reminder that engaging with different films, music, anime, TikTok, and the like is not one massive competition revolving around who reads everything first. Gatekeeping prevents us from freely enjoying the classics and the contemporaries, so I’m going to start by doing my best to dismantle my part.