Question for my queer friends, especially gen z: why do you need a specific label to feel happy about whatever you are? Like, you’re not allowed to love yourself until you’ve found a specific combination of sounds to denote where exactly you fall on every gender, sexual, and mental spectrum?
As a millenial, we were largely doing away with labels and it felt empowering. Just be whoever you are and do whatever you do. I can’t wrap my head around wanting a label.
Because you actually need to organize together to achieve political power, and you can’t do that without choosing something to organize around.
It’s pretty easy to say “well just abandon labels” when no one is using your labels against you to strip your rights away. But when they are, you need to find other queer folk and create power with them, and the words are how to do it.
Also it seems exactly backwards to demand we reject labels, when the problem is the people using them against us.
I’m a millennial / gen z edge case (born in 96) so I encounter both those perspectives with my friends.
It helps me feel calm to find out there are categories of gender and sexual identity I can identify with bc it means there are more people like me and it’s easier to communicate my identity to others using those labels. It’s sometimes nice to have something to adhere to because it makes you feel understood and valid as opposed to just internal chaos and insecurity. And labels can always change, they’re not something to fix your identity in place. They can enable you to be confident in some situations.
On the other hand I comepletely understand no wanting to be defined by the labels you choose for yourself. I think with some people it’s nice to have them (e.g. because my friends already know me as a person and don’t use the labels to define me instead) and in others it may not (e.g. anti-lgbtq discrimination online, in public or in the workplace, being misunderstood by uneducated or ignorant people).
Not gen z but a bit older than that… I’m only just beginning to understand and accept my queerness and it is very frustrating and mentally/emotionally exhausting at times not having the vocab to express how I feel.
Labels do help with that… provide some basis of common lingo. Somewhere to start with actually being able to speak about how one is feeling.
It helps you find a like minded group. In my case knowing there are other people on the spectrum helps me find other people and groups who are similar to me in that way and have similar struggles. They can give more targeted and therefore potentially more helpful advice than someone who doesn’t have and can’t fully empathize with those issues.
my identity was stolen from my by abusers. I was who they wanted me to be and nothing else. I knew I was different from my peers, I could tell just as much as they could, and they did not let me forget for even a split second. I was never given the language or space to explore and figure out what was so different about me (turns out it was that I am autistic and trans and a bunch of other things, go figure)
Not knowing was agonizing. Seeing notcable differences. Between yourself and your peers yet not understanding why or what or how left me so isolated. Labels can bring understanding, peace of mind, self acceptance and community
Now I label and microlabel everything and I will not stop
other than that, labels can open doors: In this society you wont get your needs acknowledged unless you have a particular label. Should that be different? Yes! Does that make labels obsolete? no IMO
That said you dont have to understand, just, please as a fellow millenial, don’t do the unhelpful, unproductive and frankly dismissve “stop labeling yourself, labels belong on products not people”. That’s someone’s understanding of themselves you are dismissing by doing that
Question for my queer friends, especially gen z: why do you need a specific label to feel happy about whatever you are? Like, you’re not allowed to love yourself until you’ve found a specific combination of sounds to denote where exactly you fall on every gender, sexual, and mental spectrum?
As a millenial, we were largely doing away with labels and it felt empowering. Just be whoever you are and do whatever you do. I can’t wrap my head around wanting a label.
Because you actually need to organize together to achieve political power, and you can’t do that without choosing something to organize around.
It’s pretty easy to say “well just abandon labels” when no one is using your labels against you to strip your rights away. But when they are, you need to find other queer folk and create power with them, and the words are how to do it.
Also it seems exactly backwards to demand we reject labels, when the problem is the people using them against us.
I’m a millennial / gen z edge case (born in 96) so I encounter both those perspectives with my friends.
It helps me feel calm to find out there are categories of gender and sexual identity I can identify with bc it means there are more people like me and it’s easier to communicate my identity to others using those labels. It’s sometimes nice to have something to adhere to because it makes you feel understood and valid as opposed to just internal chaos and insecurity. And labels can always change, they’re not something to fix your identity in place. They can enable you to be confident in some situations.
On the other hand I comepletely understand no wanting to be defined by the labels you choose for yourself. I think with some people it’s nice to have them (e.g. because my friends already know me as a person and don’t use the labels to define me instead) and in others it may not (e.g. anti-lgbtq discrimination online, in public or in the workplace, being misunderstood by uneducated or ignorant people).
Not gen z but a bit older than that… I’m only just beginning to understand and accept my queerness and it is very frustrating and mentally/emotionally exhausting at times not having the vocab to express how I feel.
Labels do help with that… provide some basis of common lingo. Somewhere to start with actually being able to speak about how one is feeling.
It helps you find a like minded group. In my case knowing there are other people on the spectrum helps me find other people and groups who are similar to me in that way and have similar struggles. They can give more targeted and therefore potentially more helpful advice than someone who doesn’t have and can’t fully empathize with those issues.
Not gen z, millenial who loves labels
my identity was stolen from my by abusers. I was who they wanted me to be and nothing else. I knew I was different from my peers, I could tell just as much as they could, and they did not let me forget for even a split second. I was never given the language or space to explore and figure out what was so different about me (turns out it was that I am autistic and trans and a bunch of other things, go figure)
Not knowing was agonizing. Seeing notcable differences. Between yourself and your peers yet not understanding why or what or how left me so isolated. Labels can bring understanding, peace of mind, self acceptance and community
Now I label and microlabel everything and I will not stop
other than that, labels can open doors: In this society you wont get your needs acknowledged unless you have a particular label. Should that be different? Yes! Does that make labels obsolete? no IMO
That said you dont have to understand, just, please as a fellow millenial, don’t do the unhelpful, unproductive and frankly dismissve “stop labeling yourself, labels belong on products not people”. That’s someone’s understanding of themselves you are dismissing by doing that