A Mason's Work

The next thing I want to talk about in our dark rhetoric series is gatekeeping.

And gatekeeping is a technique used by people who are really looking to assert control over

who gets to participate in a conversation or who gets to participate in a group.

It is a way to elevate oneself and gain essentially control and power over others by taking

and asserting who gets access or who gets privileged or whatever that might be.

And you'll see this in conversations, you'll see it in behavior in the form of people saying

things like, well, you know, you didn't go to the right school or you didn't read the

right book or you didn't, you know, you're not a member of my favorite organization.

You'll hear it in the form of, well, you're a X in name only or you are a false, you know,

Y. And whatever that might sort of be or sound like, it's always about essentially

creating an in group and an out group that the person who makes those statements is essentially

the controller of by saying, well, I'm, you know, I'm in the group and you are not.

And therefore your conversation or your opinion or your emotional content or whatever

it might be has no value is essentially again, part of that sort of elevating process.

So when you hear these things in conversation, you will immediately see that kind of what

they're really trying to do is puff themselves up.

Right.

The subversion here is a self elevation and a reduction of everyone else.

When you see it, they're, it might be tempting to say you may have heard this in old conversations,

well, you know, who died and made you king kind of thing.

When you look to get around gatekeeping as a thing, the important part of the conversation

there is to understand that if you continue to give them the authority to set the goalposts,

whatever they might appear to be, rest assured they will forever move.

So there's no point in engaging in the conversation when it comes to like, well, you know, I went

to this school or that school or, oh, I know this or that or I've done these X things,

X, Y and Z. There will always be yet another hurdle.

It's a moving goalposts kind of situation.

So when you're confronted with gatekeeping, you want to help talk about or essentially

move the gatekeeping conversation out of the possession of one individual and perhaps

into a larger organization is one way to talk about it.

As you start to look to resolve this, you might say things like, listen, you know, there

may or may not be a difference in education or experience or background here, but everyone

is impacted by whatever it is you're discussing.

And so as, you know, people that are impacted by this, we get to participate in the conversation.

There might be opportunities for debate like, hey, listen, I don't know what it is you

think that you're protecting.

Let's talk about that.

What are you protecting the, you know, what's the thing you're trying to keep these other

folks out of is there's some sort of integrity there.

Is there some sort of, you know, specialized knowledge or expertise that you are essentially

putting out of reach of everyone else?

As you go through the process of dealing with people that are gatekeeping, you're going

to find more often than not, it is just projected emotional content about their own insecurities

or again, deceptive ways to essentially maintain and gather power.

As you process this, look for those opportunities in yourself when you find yourself gatekeeping

because it will happen.

This is not, you know, we're talking about these as dark rhetoric techniques, but everyone

has probably done something like these once or twice in their life that may do it all

the time.

They may do it only periodically, but as you do understand that that's actually just pointing

you to opportunities for self growth and self development.