“Choppy Waters”: Navigating Political Generational Conflict in Social Movement Organizations

Social movements are composed of distinct political generations. Yet empirical work documenting distinct generations is limited, and work detailing the conflict and problems created by generational turnover exceedingly rare. Based on interviews with 39 leaders of LGBTQ+ organizations, supplemented with longitudinal administrative text data from 1,840 LGBTQ+ organizational mission statements, we demonstrate political generational change, and conflict, in the U.S. LGBTQ+ movement. The prior “Legacy” generation is confronted by an “Emergent” generation with different understandings of sexuality/gender, intersectionality, and organizational strategies. These conflictual differences produce material and emotional consequences as the “Legacy” generation takes their resources away and members of both generations feel erased from the movement’s collective identity. Leaders navigate these “choppy waters” by taking either a harsh approach, which seeks to dismiss whichever generation is viewed as hindering their organization’s work, or an inclusive approach that views generational tension as an opportunity to grow and strengthen their organization and the larger movement. We highlight how the observed conflict between political generations prompts a serious re-evaluation of the “unity through diversity” mantra associated with this movement. Ultimately, political generations are a critical link to understanding transformation and change in social movements with clear implications for collective identity, resource mobilization, and other core social movement processes.