if you looked at how high the walls were, and you looked at the people who were being allowed through the gate, and you looked at who was being turned away, and you decided based on this information that it wasn't worth it to try entering the walled city, that was gatekeeping working as intended.
gatekeeping is so effective because it allows the people in charge of it to frame it as a passive and natural force. "ah well, you just don't meet our criteria because of some technicalities, it's not that we are screening specifically for Your Kind Of Person, you understand, it's just that all the requirements coincidentally happen to produce a result where Your Kind Of Person is unable to enter our walled city :) so i think you'll see that we are not discriminating!"
i think a LOT less people understand how much gatekeeping impacts their lives than are impacted by gatekeeping. if you were ever prevented from participating in something bc of your inability to meet technical requirements for reasons outside of your control, that is gatekeeoing. if you ever decided to not even fucking try because you understood that the walled city wasn't for People Like You, that is the natural and intended outcome of gatekeeping.
one of the big reasons that gatekeeping is effective is because it cedes control of the narrative to the institution that has erected high walls around their city to begin with. they say the walls are natural. they have the power to make those claims because in general, no one else has the resources to develop alternative models. due to the gatekeeping.
