ext_26528 ([identity profile] mhw.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] mousme 2003-03-06 09:33 am (UTC)

Well, I think there's a difference between labels used by oneself as a kind of shorthand for navigating one's space of possibilities, and labels used by others as a pigeonholing device.

I thoroughly approve of the former, and much less so the latter. Self-labelling tends to be descriptive, not prescriptive. Labels also don't have to function like the little cards on cabinet drawers - real life and real feelings and experiences rarely have a clear-cut either/or taxonomy, and that's something that you have to be quite stern with other people about. If someone says "You call yourself 'X', but I Happen To Know that X people believe A and B and C, and reject D, but here's you sounding dubious about A, uninterested in B, and admitting to the possibilities of D - how dare you?" *chuckle* and that's not a rare reaction, the world's full of amateur taxonomists bent on shoehorning us into neat boxes - you don't have to swallow it. If you feel a kinship with a label, use it, under the advice that people often will ask you "What do you mean by [fitb]?", and way too often do the Taxonomy Tango if your labelling doesn't match their prejudices.

Would it be too invasive to ask which, if any, labels you're debating the use of?

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