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 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.
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”.
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.
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.
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 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 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.
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”.
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.