when i'm worried about (genuinely distressing) behavior from queer teens online, i remind myself: they're currently teens. that current behavior not necessarily a harbinger of any particular future!
if i judged my generation that way: as a preteen i was a homophobe (then came out as bi) then as a teen i was a transphobe (then came out as trans)! and i know i am far, far from the only one in my generation for whom that's true!
is it an issue worth addressing? sure! but a kids these days moral panic both doesn't serve anyone & also just isnt right!
do i think there's a concerning wave of "puritanism" (more accurately, dangerously aggressive & unhealthy intracommunity policing that replicates larger societal bigotries and scapegoating of queer people by attacking them as deviant, degenerates, pedophiles, etc.)? to some degree, yes! but that doesn't mean it's a guaranteed future of that same generation! they're literally teenagers! they're figuring stuff out rn!
queer teens even being in the position of knowing they're queer early enough to have those sorts of intracommunity issues was a rarity in my generation of queer teens. it certainly isn't any worse than how i (and many queer adults i know) were genuinely bigots at that age! our behavior was a replication of internalized societal systems (and also a form of self-policing!) just as this wave of self and intracommunal policing! when you're under the thumb of parents, schools, etc. it takes awhile to extricate that sort of thinking! but it usually happens!
this doesn't mean that we as queer adults should do nothing. we're responsible for setting up the communal structures that transmit knowledge of queer history—of the AIDS crisis, of the way drummed-up accusations of sexual deviance & pedophilia have always been used to attack queer people, of the way that queer sexuality is demonized despite always being one of our strengths even & especially in forms that make cisheterosexual society uncomfortable—but making that knowledge available is actually more difficult when we pretend that the behavior of queer teens today is any more worrying than idk, the unfortunate behaviors demonstrated by every other cohort of teenagers ever! it's a process of learning & growing & understanding the world.
i know as an adult with a large online presence i am sometimes genuinely fearful of the incredibly aggressive policing, brigading, & harassment that certain types of intracommunally policed queer teens engage in, and i often want distance from that, but that just means we need healthier avenues of engagement than Online currently provides, and it doesn't mean these people should be doomered about when it is very much an expected process that we all went through if we put it in context!
