It makes me really sad when I see some people treat inter-generational friendships, especially queer inter-generational friendships, as inherently suspicious. Such friendships have an incredibly important place in the lives of many young people who have a less than perfect relationship to their parents, especially queer young people.
If all the adults you know are straight, it can be incredibly difficult to figure out what sort of person you want to be and what your future could look like. Without queer adults, it may feel like queer kids don’t have a future. And meaningful contact with queer adults fills that void, provides examples and a way to start imagining your own future.
On top of that, when queer youths are rejected by their biological parents it is often queer elders who use their experience and resources to provide support, advice, care. Which can range from advice to emotional support to telling queer youths how to get access to health care to literally providing shelter and preventing youth homelessness. The ‘queer family’ as a support network for queer survival is and always has been a place of inter-generational friendships.
Do crushes with large age differences happen as a result of those friendships? In part the concept of a ‘queer family’ makes that less likely. Labeling someone your ‘queer mom’ helps conceptualize someone as ‘not-dating-material’. But sure, let’s be honest: crushes do happen. And when they do, the people involved have to figure out how to deal with that, what age difference is too big and what to do next. And of course people also make mistakes. And although the network of a ‘queer family’ has the primary function of protecting queer youth, predators do sometimes sneak through.
But to vilify queer inter-generational friendships because of that, or to treat them as inherently predatory, is wrong and vile and cruel. It means you deprive queer youth of role-models, of support, of guidance, of shelter, of a sense of belonging, of survival.
QueerAnarchism 