A Seat at the Table
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I think I can understand where this attitude comes from. Just think about it: you're told, over and over again, that you need to earn a seat at the table, that you need to earn being listened to, that you need to earn being treated as an equal, until one day, you're told congratulations! You did it! You earned your place. You matter.
Now, you are the one who gets to make the decisions about who gets to be heard, who gets a place. You are now the gatekeeper. (Sorry for the mixed metaphor.) Maybe you decide to be more inclusive than your predecessors, to be less hung up on certain qualifications. But there still needs to be some sort of system. After all, the table is not infinitely large. There are only so many seats. You may have a different way of calculating who is worthy of a seat than earlier gatekeepers, and maybe you've even found a way to add more seats, so that's progress, right?
And then, these young upstarts come around and say that, not only do they not care whether you think they've "earned" a place or not, but also the table is stupid and we ought to have a system where no one is excluded at all. In fact, they're going to go over there and try to form such a system, and you're welcome to join if you want, as long as you recognize that everything you've worked for this whole time was pointless and wrongheaded and maybe even made things worse.
If that happened, you might get angry. You might be hurt, and you might lash out. You might complain about these young people being "entitled" and "weak" and even "lazy." These things might even be true, at least in some instances. But that doesn't mean the young people are wrong.
Why do we need a table in the first place? What benefit is conferred by deciding ahead of time who deserves a voice and who doesn't?
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Discussion of the benefits and drawbacks of social media as a platform for activism, as well as links and references to other discussions of similar issues:
http://inthesetimes.com/article/17584/jonathan_chait_pc