Gen X Is Kicking Butt in This Revolution

And as one of them, I couldn’t be prouder

Photo by Markus Spiske from Pexels

Every time my Instagram feed presents me with a political skit by a millennial comedian that pokes fun at the ways each generation is reacting to current events, I always stop to watch. You might think I’m looking for a laugh or that I love to see boomers get dragged (and they always do in these skits), but no. I have a totally different reason for watching them.

I watch these skits only because I’m curious to find out if Gen X — my generation — will appear. And if so, how will we be portrayed?

If you’re Gen X, too, then I have no doubt you will understand this. We were the invisible kids, the forgotten generation, so much so that even in adulthood, we’ve been forgotten by the media. Sandwiched between the boomers and millennials, we’ve always gone unnoticed.

Gen Z literally doesn’t even know that we exist. To them, everyone over 40 is a boomer.

Sure enough, you’ll find this same vibe in these political skits. I’ll wait and wait through the verbal jousting and witty comebacks between boomers, millennials, and zoomers, and then, finally, 57 seconds into the 90 second reels, Gen X will appear and make a comment that is funny but always gives me the impression that millennials have absolutely no idea who we are as a generation.

In fact, if you watch these videos as closely as I do, the overwhelming theme seems to be that millennials were shortchanged by the boomers, they’re the only sane generation among those alive today, and their relationship with Gen Z is mercurial, often landing somewhere in the neighborhood of protective annoyance.

And hey, that’s fair. For one thing, they’re not entirely wrong. Everyone post-boomer has, indeed, been shortchanged. We have inherited the Dumpster fire that previous generations left for us.

Plus, these skits are created by millennials, so of course they’re going to center the millennial experience and cast themselves as the heroes who deserve our empathy and respect. Again, fair.

And that’s perhaps why I’m here — to do the same thing for my generation. Because from what I’ve seen these last few months, we are doing what Gen Xers are so good at doing: ignoring the fact that no one really notices us or cares that we’re here, and just doing what needs to be done.

The end of my forties have come with a lot of change — including my newfound involvement in politics. I have attended protests for the first time this year, as well as a town hall, and I intend to do even more in the months to come.

I’ve got my focus set on reaching that ever-important 3.5% tipping point — which means everyone who can show up needs to show up. Including the anxious, middle-aged introverts like me.

At every event I’ve attended, I have found myself curiously scanning the area, taking an informal headcount of various demographics. I want to know who I’m fighting alongside.

I’ve been absolutely fascinated to discover that the vast majority of people at these events (in my region, at least) are boomers. So much for those comedy skits that position boomers as out-of-touch and ever so slightly narcissistic. Based on the elder generation’s clever signs, intelligent questions, and large numbers, I’d say millennial comedians got that one very wrong.

And who else is there? The Gen Xers. Everywhere I turn, I see folks like me, in early middle age, both men and women. They are the ones organizing these events, manning the tables, and doing crowd control. The Gen Xers are in charge here.

I was also pleased at my first protest to see several Gen Z men in attendance. They were living in their vans, touring the Pacific Northwest, living such a minimalist lifestyle they said they often ate cabbage steaks for dinner. (When did cabbage become something you could call a steak?)

Strangely, the one cohort I did not see were the millennials. Don’t get me wrong — I’m not trying to start anything. Gen Xers are more than happy to sit out the boomer-millennial feud.

Further, I suspect it might have something to do with where I live. Most people in my town who are in the midst of raising families are deeply conservative. I imagine there are probably millennials aplenty in the more liberal areas of my state showing up at protests and town halls.

But it turns out I might have been right about millennials not understanding the first thing about Gen Xers. Because where I live, we are literally leading the revolution.

I’m not gonna lie. I’m proud as punch of my fellow Gen Xers.

I couldn’t be more thrilled that we are taking time out of our busy middle age, where we’re taking care of our boomer parents and in some cases, still raising kids, in order to show up to these events on weekends and even weeknights.

I’m so proud of the Gen X women in my town who are running political meetings, arranging carpools to the state capital, and sending out reminder emails for every protest.

Two of these women made the rounds recently at the latest protest, towing a wagon full of water bottles and snacks that had been purchased thanks to the generous donations of local citizens. They stopped and talked to us several times, at one point vehemently pushing miniature packets of M&Ms into our hands.

Each time they passed, music played softly but insistently from the Bluetooth speaker attached to the wagon. It became clear to me early on that they had created a protest playlist because every song was just so on the nose.

At one point, they rolled by, grooving and singing along to Childish Gambino’s This Is America. I felt like a 5th grader again, pleasantly surprised every time my mother sang along to my favorite Bangles songs. I wanted to ask a stupid question, stupid because the answer was so obvious: You know this song?

Of course they knew it. They’d put the song on their playlist. And it became clear immediately that they knew more of the lyrics than I did.

Damn right they knew that song.

I was so proud of our little group of middle aged women at a protest rocking out to Childish Gambino that I wanted to say, “Damn, we’re so fly!” even though it’s not at all fly to say fly anymore.

But don’t worry. I didn’t say anything, at all. I just nodded my head in time to the music.

Look, I don’t really think we’re fly. Don’t tell my fellow Gen Xers that, but let’s face it. We were never considered cool — though we did produce some damn fly individuals.

In fact, it’s only now, as we’re journeying through very definitely uncool middle age that our level of coolness is being culturally reassessed.

Regardless of where the zeitgeist lands on our level of awesomeness, we are showing up. And that’s what matters to me.

Here we are, the generation that grew up with parents who didn’t care if we were home or not so long as we showed up by the time the streetlights went on, and we are giving back what many of us didn’t get in the first place. We are committed, we are motivated, we are determined.

And I’m not saying any of this to ask for gold stars. I know why I’m showing up, but I don’t know why my contemporaries are. I’m not claiming the reason is our selflessness.

All I know is many of us are scared. We confess it to each other as we stand on sidewalks holding our signs and smiling with a level of confidence that our voices suggest is just a show.

We’re scared, but we’re trying. We’re scared but we’re not ready to give up on the dreams we had for the future — even as those dreams have grown a little more desperate.

I passionately want to leave a decent country and healthy environment for my niblings to inherit…and yet my motivation has moved beyond that.

My biggest worry, not so long ago, was that my niblings would have to navigate the climate crisis we have left them. But now I’m scared that my nieces’ bodies will become incubators controlled by the state. I’m scared that my nephews will have to hide who they love and who they are in order to avoid being beaten or jailed.

And I’m not the only one who is scared by how bad things have gotten. At the last protest, I ran into an old friend, someone I haven’t seen in fifteen years. She told me her adult children have decided not to have kids of their own.

“I’m so relieved,” she said, her voice heavy. “I never thought I’d say that, but I don’t believe a child will survive this world anymore. We’ve destroyed too much.”

It was a surreal conversation to have on a Thursday evening, standing on the side of the road. And yet I felt the truth of her words in my bones.

If we’re going to talk about fear, then I have to talk about bravery, too. Because I see it everywhere among my fellow Gen Xers.

I’d like to think I’m getting braver with age, as evidenced by all the things I’ve started to do that I wouldn’t even have considered a couple years ago. But when I go to these political events and see other Gen X women, I realize I’m probably the least brave among us.

You see, I’m still afraid to attend protests. And I mean extremely afraid. I’m afraid to wear my Bans Off Our Bodies t-shirt. I’m afraid to carry my Love Not Hate Makes America Great sign. I won’t even put a rainbow bumper sticker on my car and my pride flag is hidden safely in my backyard where my neighbors can’t see it.

Over the years, even as I’ve quietly gone about my activism without making any statements about it, I’ve been confronted in the streets by angry, violent men, and harassed by my neighbors to the point where I had to buy security cameras in order to protect my property.

Wearing and holding messages that overtly declare my political stance in this MAGA town is absolutely terrifying to me. And I feel like I’m in a constant state of fight or flight when I’m there in the crowd, as men in their diesel pickup trucks scream “motherfucker,” “libtard,” and “bitch” out their windows.

I made a decision early on that I will never attend one of these events alone, and I’ve even gotten to the point where I feel more comfortable meeting them ahead of time so we can walk to the event together instead of meeting there.

So you can imagine how awestruck I feel when I watch the other women there, women in their 50s and 60s, walking around the event by themselves, blowing on kazoos, pumping their arms, and trying to get people to honk their horns in support. Women who are passing out food or trying to get everyone to sign up for the protest newsletter.

They’re either not afraid of these MAGA bros who rev their engines and flip us off…or, incredibly, they are, but they do the work anyway.

These are my people, my Gen X cohort. We have been through so much in our half a century(ish) of life and things didn’t get better — they got worse. And we’re the generation that’s cynical (or realistic) enough to understand that there might be no fixing this.

At this point in our lives, we are most likely going to be dealing with a declining society and environmental collapse until our last breath.

And yet we haven’t given up. We’re showing up anyways.

I think those millennial skits with the barely present Gen X characters got it all wrong. We’re at the frontlines — not popping in with an irrelevant quip like an extra in a TV show.

And I’m so damn proud of us.

© Y.L. Wolfe 2025

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Y.L. Wolfe is a writer and artist on a quest to wholeness in the transformative fires of middle age. You can find more of her work at ylwolfe.com.

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