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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."
This is a great comparison for people who are aware of racial issues but aren't as informed about LGBTQ+ stuff, I'll definitely keep it in mind!
When people say they are tired of LGBTQ labels, what they are saying is "I'm too lazy to learn them" at best or "I think your delusional" at worst.
When they complain about there being too many new LGBTQ labels (neopronouns, pansexual, agender, etc.) compared to decades past while not complaining about the fact that there are too many new tech words these days (Bluetooth, QR code, Hotspot, NFC, etc.), it shows that their issue isn't with vocabulary but with queer people.
I think what attitudes like this tend to forget is that with things like queer labels particularly is that these are not tribes in the strictest forms. Not every queer person seeks community. We are talking about demographics that interface with differing and overlapping challenges under kyriarchy. There are specific issues faced by every single letter in the rainbow coalition and seeking solidarity even inside the inclusive movement is a series of conversations made by those groups.
It's not about superiority. It's about specificity and solidarity.
Different groups have entirely different needs and interact with each other in different contexts, sometimes with friction. Labels help with discussion of the overlap of different issues faced by someone. If you are a gay asexual non-binary trans masc you get a very good snapshot of the interlocking layers of where they might feel welcome or uncomfortable... And also a pretty decent set of assumptions you can makein regards of how to behave towards them to make them feel more comfortable and supported in a space without nessisarily having an intimate bare-your-soul one on one talk that would otherwise be nessisary.
Folk going off about queer labels is oftentimes just a reflection of their privilege. You don't have to tell anybody what your "deal" is. It's just assumed. When people don't "get it" it's because they aren't uncomfortable in the status quo. They don't have to ask for accommodations... Or realize how tiring it is to frequently have to explain exactly what you need and how much of a relief it is to summerize it in so few words. How we introduce ourselves is basically us presenting you a short hand guide to what queer etiquette we might need out of future social interactions with you so being around you doesn't become a chore. Sometimes we need to relax in spaces where we feel understood and where our needs are legitimately considered. It's not to gatekeep or serve as some kind of exclusionary secret handshake between members of an in group. Most of the spaces inside the LGBTQIA+ are actually very anti-gatekeeping in regards to individual labels. You identify by whatever social code words make your needs best understood in a social setting. Not the strictest of definitions.
I disagree with this position in this context. I do think that there are cases where labels are unimportant, but they have a primary purpose. For people who feel broken, labels can help them put a word to something they didn't understand otherwise. I didn't realize I was asexual because I hadn't heard the word, or didn't understand it properly, until late high school. For me, my journey of discovery of many queer identities has largely been led by learning about new labels. Underpinning these labels is the perspective of the community that coined a term for it, to put a name to their shared experience.
I think it is incredibly important to remember that labels are descriptive, not prescriptive - they should always be seen as approximations of a person's understanding of themselves, not strict categories, and I think that's the essence of what you're trying to say, but I disagree that we need to focus less on it overall.
8% of the population is a lot of people, and the self-report rate is much higher among younger generations. For queer people this is a show of strength. After all, we are a minority group whose rights and social status are being threatened. I find immense comfort in knowing just how many of us there are now, because unfortunately we do need sheer strength in numbers to achieve justice.
So I think it's very important for queer people to be loud about their labels, I think it is a social good and seeing the sheer size of the community helps me sleep at night. The more people that know how common it is, the more likely it is to be fully tolerated and the easier it gets for people to recognize it within themselves.
The only people sowing division with their use of labels are majority groups touting supremacist ideologies (or bigoted gatekeepers within the queer community); everybody knows what "white pride", "straight pride", and "cis pride" really mean. It is frustrating to see this argument get made in the context of queer labels which are loud by necessity, as if they have the same motives or serve the same purpose.
I don't agree with everything you said, although I do agree more than starting my response that way would normally imply, but I was pleasantly surprised by the way you expressed yourself. You gave a thoughtful and well reasoned reply but more than that you were attempting to see what I was getting at without assuming ill intent on my part. I've grown accustomed to conversations that turn sour very quickly because, despite what the say, I don't think most people actually like talking to people that hold different opinions than them.
This is the kind of discussion we should be having more of as a society. In fact, that was a large part of the point I was trying to make from the start. People often use labels to pre-judge how a conversation will turn out and end up ensuring it goes poorly as a result. Thank you very much for not doing that.
You have also given me some interesting ideas to consider related to labels and how people identify themselves so I thank you for that as well. I still think humans have a tendency to use labels in a negative fashion but the same could be said of a lot of behaviors that aren't inherently negative. There's certainly more angles I could approach this topic from and you've helped me see some of them a bit more clearly.
Thank you for being open-minded.
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?