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I wish we could stop focusing so much on the labels people give themselves. Pretty much any label you could give a person only describes a tiny fraction of what their experience of life is like and yet it feels like that kind of thing is the focus of most reporting on just about any subject as well as the primary way a lot of people identify themselves. I think it contributes significantly to the division we see in all aspects of society. We seem to have a natural tendency to use those labels in a negative way instead of as the helpful descriptor that they are largely intended to be. Let's try to focus on the fact that we're all humans for a while and maybe we'll feel a bit better for it.
I feel where you're coming from, and on the other side of that I think labels can do a lot of good. There's a lot of relief and comfort that comes when someone who might otherwise have thought themself broken discovering that there are more out there like them. Finding a label that resonates can get them there. I'm speaking from firsthand experience.
Like you're saying, it's not that we're labeling ourselves, but that we're spreading awareness on multiple levels: LGBTQIA+ folks are sprinkled in our population. If someone goes their life without knowing any, or seeing any, they might feel alone and outcast.
I'm an Asexual male and I represent in my day to day with just a themed baseball hat.
Also an asexual male - thank you for representing, it really is appreciated
I identify as a hot mess and represent by flirting with almost anyone to bolster what's left of my broken fragile ego.
Labels can be useful for quickly explaining an aspect about yourself. It's what words are for! It's when people are all judgy about it that problems arise.
Most queer people I know and have talked to agree with you. I certainly do, labels can be useful but as a society we clearly focus way too much on them.
Where queer people might take issue with your comment (I'm definitely lightly irked) is that cishet people never say "I wish we would stop focusing on labels" unless the discussion is about queer labels.
People will straight up say "omg we need to chill out about labels, we're all the same" then turn around and say shit like "men are from Mars, women are from Venus" or "boys will be boys".
I don't think the same person is saying both of those things. Or at least saying and meaning it.
That's exactly what I'm saying though. Labels (for the purposes of the point I'm trying to make) aren't generally helpful except as a generic indicator of the prevalence of a particular group in society. Even then they tend to get in the way of the discussion that those labels and percentages are trying to promote.
Any group trends towards latching on to their label in an unhelpful way. Often saying that anyone who isn't making the advancement of the group described by their favorite label a priority in their life is an enemy of the cause and therefore is against them personally.
It doesn't really matter what the label is. LGB and T are some common labels you see this happening with, from both angles I'll add, but they are far from the only ones. You see it with large groups like countries and political parties all the way down to mundane stuff like being right handed or which band you prefer in some hyper-obscure music genre. It's all the same mostly unnecessary categorization of people that generally serves no useful purpose beyond making one group of people feel superior to another. That just seems so pointless to me. It reminds me of hunter gatherers protecting their tribe by ensuring no outsiders are allowed in.
I will concede that there are instances in which in can be useful to speak in such terms but the vast majority of the time it seems archaic and shallow and needlessly exclusionary.
The queer version of "I don't see color."
I know you're at least partially talking about labels in general, but since this is in reply to a poll about queer identities, I am taking your comment to be related to LGBTQ+ labels.
I don't think most individuals with an LGBTQ+ identity think of themselves as only that identity. Race, class, religion, ability, and other dimensions of identity ultimately combine to create the whole person. In fact, most discourse surrounding identities involves some analysis of intersectionality, as coined by Kimberle Crenshaw. In essence, she illustrated how being both black and a woman brings different experiences and struggles than being a white woman or black man. As an extension, the queer identity a person has and the other identities a person has interact to inform their experiences in ways that are different than having any one of those identities alone.
If some people externally equate a queer person's whole self and their queer identity, that isn't the fault of the queer person. In fact, this is another reason why having a label (as inadequate as it might objectively be) can be useful. Queer people need those labels so they can maneuver in society to build coalition and obtain equal rights. If we squabbled over the differences between subjective experiences of queerness, our groups would be smaller and have less bargaining power.
I might be way off about what you meant in your statement, but i figured it was worth throwing this out here anyway!
I wasn't referring exclusively to queer people with my comment but I get why it might have seemed that way. I do appreciate your perspective either way. It's interesting to hear other people's thoughts on a topic like this.
Are you familiar with erasure as a concept?