Gatekeeping in the Vampyre Community

In recent days gatekeeping is usually a dirty word when it comes to any sort of community or group. The connotation is one of elitism and restricting access. In the vampyre community of twenty or so years ago a lot of effort was put into keeping the wrong element out of our groups and communities. The "wrong element" was, of course, people that were criminal or dangerous in their intentions as well as people that aimed to misrepresent or exploit the community (such as producers or documentarians). Another type of "wrong element" were the "posers"; the lifestylers or the people that were not "real" vampyres. This used to be defined as people that did not have an actual need to feed. That could include people that liked dressing the part of a fictional vampire, occultists that used vampiric techniques for their magickal or spiritual practice, or people that had health issues that were not actually related to vampyrism.

In recent times many of the previously excluded categories are welcomed into the vampyre community as just another flavor of vampyre. The impulse to restrict communities to insular groups with very specific definitions of what a vampyre is has largely fallen by the wayside in favor of a more inclusive view of the vampyre label and a more welcoming attitude to any and all genuine seekers. Personally, it took me a while to come to grips with this but I think that it is a positive development moving forward. That said, I think that there is still a necessity for gatekeeping.

I think it goes without saying that it should still be a priority to keep dangerous people out of our spaces. I think that people with certain psychiatric conditions should be cautioned before being brought into the vampyre community, primarily for their own safety. I also think that we should still be extremely cautious in regards to researchers and media looking to make our community the subject of their work.

Dangerous people include those that are violent or have a history of antisocial behavior within the community, and I would even more broadly lump inveterate troublemakers and drama mongers into this group. By “antisocial” I mean the Oxford Dictionary definition of “contrary to the laws and customs of society; devoid of or antagonistic to sociable instincts or practices;” not merely people that would rather lurk and observe rather than interact.

People with psychiatric conditions that interfere with their perception of reality should be cautioned. They must be capable of handling the mature subject matter that involvement with the vampyre community entails and judge whether there is any risk to them of falling victim to dangerous delusions or thought patterns. The dangers of escapism within this community are not unknown. The last thing we should want to do is potentially make someone's life worse because we failed to warn them sufficiently, fed into an unhealthy delusion of theirs, or offered them advice that turned out to be dangerous to them.

As for the final category, the researchers and media, I think that a major determinant of how hard to scrutinize them would be whether they are from within the community or from outside. Too many times the vampyre community has been the subject of sensationalist "documentaries" full of spooky music and goths drinking blood for shock value. Very few of the documentaries about the vampyre community have been done in good faith and with respect. With this in mind, many vampyres seem to be averse to being the subject of a research project or media piece created by someone outside of the community.

There has been some talk lately of wider representation of the vampyre community and what that would or should look like. I think that if we wish to present ourselves positively, in an educational manner, it is in our best interest to make sure we are policing ourselves with the above categories in mind. The community is a much more welcoming place than it was twenty years ago and I believe this to be a good thing. However, we can be welcoming without letting bad actors into the fold. If the goal moving forward is to maintain a positive and informative community then we must continue to gatekeep the vampyre community for the right reasons rather than the sake of elitism and self-validation. No gatekeeping at all allows for chaos to reign, the signal to get lost, and ultimately the dissolution of what it even means to be a vampyre in the first place.