gate keepers and gate crashers: both bad

I went to Lambert House last night to do the quarterly report, and afterwards I told the director about a couple of observations I've made about the trans group that I'm one of the facilitators for. Namely, even though the total size of the group has gone up significantly in the last couple of months, youth of color have all but disappeared, and the average age has fallen.

The director suspects that at least some of these better-off, younger AFAB folks aren't really trans, and it isn't the first time he's said something like that. But we have an obligation to give them the benefit of the doubt, and judging from what I've heard in the groups, at least some of those folks really do suffer from gender dysphoria at times. Sometimes, though, they show up to group full of giggling, squirming, and whispered conversations; in other words, they act like middle-school girls without much in the way of worries when there are, or were, trans kids - especially trans kids of color - with serious problems they're trying to deal with in group. I've tried gently to discourage that kind of disrespect, maybe too gently. I wish I had The Answer.

Oh: no time for Sybil last night. Le sigh.