I posted this comment in the gay men and feminism thread and was ignored but I felt my post deserved some discussion at least so I decided to make a thread. Below is my original post, context is not really necessary. I think the problem with a lot of these debates/arguments is that people are absolutely obsessed with labels and fitting things under specific criteria. Discussing the exact definition of what is and what is not a feminist, as an example, is somewhat irrelevant; there are so many variations of the term and so many people with opposing views each claiming to be the same thing according to that restricting label. What's more important than what you choose to call yourself is what you actually believe in and what you actually do. Actions speak louder than words, as the old saying goes. Personally, I dislike labels. I wouldn't go as far as hate, because I do see the advantages to them; it's easier, it breaks things down, it allows us to generalize (which seems to be an inherent instinct in humans and one which nobody is innocent of) and without them a lot of us would be confused. The trouble is it also makes things more complex and abstruse in the long scheme of things. If people lived more as individuals and didn't always conform to their primitive tribal instincts, which although prevalent are avoidable, then it'd be much easier to have mature, reasonable discussions about sensitive topics. As it is, half the time people don't really know what they truly believe because they're subscribing to beliefs conjured up by somebody else and they don't want to look inside themselves for their own answer. I'm not for one second objecting to rules or order. I'm no anarchist. But what I am saying is labels are detrimental to our society. It sounds like a drastic statement, but think about it. From the moment you're born, you are suddenly squeezed into a label. You're either a boy if you're born with a penis or a girl if you're born with a vagina (excluding those unfortunate enough to be born with abnormalities). Straight away, this brings up connotations that you will be forced to live by for the rest of your existence unless you're a particularly strong willed individual. It doesn't stop at gender though. The colour of your skin, your sexuality, your music taste, your religious beliefs, your fashion taste, your physique and many other things come into contention as you grow up and find that many of the decisions you would like to make are being made for you by stereotypes. Conform to these or live life as an outcast. What we do is we take these labels perpetuated by society and we apply some to ourselves because it's comforting. It makes us feel wanted. It gives us meaning. I'm utterly guilty of doing this myself and I don't for one second claim to be some unique exception. Every day I feel myself fighting to fit in with the crowd, even though I know it's inherently stupid. We decide that we should form allegiances with others who share similar traits or characteristics to ourselves and those that do not share these shall be shunned by our group. If I'm a white heterosexual girl at a high school, I'm most likely going to hang out with these. Not exclusively, no, although in some parts of the world that will be true. And if I'm a black heterosexual boy at a high school, I'm most likely going to hang out with these too. And so on. It doesn't apply so much with other sexualities because it's too much of a minority but my point still stands. If I ever have kids (which is a huge maybe, but nevertheless), I want them to grow up in a world where they're free to make their own decisions. I don't want them to be forced into choosing sides in an argument because they belong to a particular gender or skin colour or whatever. They should make their own choices their own way. We're all individuals and I cannot stress this enough. We all undergo hardships in our lives. Some have it easier than others, true. A lot of this is based on things we cannot help (such as our gender, our skin colour etc.), again, true. But what we can help is creating a perceived enemy and making things worse for ourselves. In my life, I've received more abuse from girls than from boys. Does that mean I think that girls are more abusive than boys? No. Do I instead form the opinion, based on popular stereotypes, that boys are more abusive than girls? No. I believe some individuals are more abusive than other individuals, and although this is unfortunately affected by ridiculous societal constraints and expectations, it is not inherently because of a certain thing. It pains me how much gender stereotypes are accepted. It's becoming a taboo for someone to say something such as "oh he's black so he's a criminal" (a stupid and basic example, sorry) because that's perceived as racist and of course it is. And yet, why is it okay to say "he's a man so he's only interested in sex"? Why is it okay to say "she's a girl so she likes dolls and pretty dresses?" Why is it regarded as acceptable to say these and many more things that create rigid constraints upon both men and women as genders? Of course they're often implied by people and not directly said (although sometimes they are directly said) but the meaning still strikes with equal impact. If you want equality like I do, then stop looking at things in terms of gender (in this case). Yes, biologically we're split up into males and females. I was born male and I identify as a guy. It's fine to do this. What is not fine is to expect certain things of me simply because of that, and the same goes for women of course. Apologies for the lengthy post, but I feel very passionately about this subject.
Actually, thank you for your post. You write very well and make cogent arguments. I learned to articulate better after university, when I both had to read more and also became a voracious reader on my own. Labels come with pros and cons. The pros are that they make things easy to understand and categorize. The cons are that they aren't all encompassing and don't allow for variations. About abuse, I haven't been abused or bullied. There was a short chapter in my life where I've been ignored and it was painful. I have gotten snide remarks. More of them have come from women. They felt this need to determine where I stood sexually, even if they were married, in a detached setting, and had no need to know. I've gotten snide remarks from men, too, but at a ratio at 4:1. One of the worst was when I was getting my teeth cleaned. The hygienist was from Florida. My upcoming vacation was in fact in Florida. I rattled off where I was going. She tauntingly added: "Will you be going to Key West?" That's a premier gay tourist destination. (If I was, I would have told you). Great dentist, but I couldn't stand the hygienist from thereon. In general, society allows constraints upon gender roles, and I don't see it loosening up quickly. Associations made about ethnicity, race, and religion have become increasingly taboo. For some reason, the slams made on gender nonconformity have not yet hit the realm of PC, yet they can be just as painful to the nonconformists. I use "labels," but around friends and relatives who use them, too. Mostly, they are meant to be light-hearted and humorous. Oftentimes, they are acronyms that serendipitously came out of nowhere. The problem I encounter, like you, is that I subscribe to most male attributes but am amiss on a few: sports, sports ... and did I mention sports? I'm just not that good at them, except for skiing and tennis, so why look like a dork? This is a huge faux pas and has cost me friends or potential friends. But, damn, I know more about how cars work than a lot of jocks. I applaud your writing. I'm even mildly envious that you can articulate so well what I was only able to feel at that same age.
People are generally* unwilling to think any more than necessary. This isn't any fault of their own, because biologically speaking, thinking more than necessary is inefficient. It wastes energy and in a world where food is not plentiful (aka nature where there are no grocery stores) it could mean death. So there's that. We are programmed to simplify things down basically as far as they can go while still retaining enough meaning to be functional. If we boil every situation down to its real sources, it wouldn't give us any means to predict what would happen in other situations like it, because there are just too many bloody variables. My point is that labels are useful to the point at which they are proven to work, mostly like physical laws. Beyond that is the realm of theory, which must be adjusted if conflicting results are found. *See what I did there? Of course some people like scientists do a ton of thinking, so they won't always fit the pattern. It's important to see that labels and generalizations *mostly* apply, but not literally all the time.
Thanks for trying again with your post, it certainly is worth a discussion! Yes, I think that labels as a concept are fairly benign- words are labels, which is to say that a label is simply a concise definition of something. Part of the problem comes in because labels get quickly lost in a sea of assumptions, inferences and consolidations in other peoples' minds which lead to 1 label being accompanied by several others. As soon as 1 label is accepted or verified, 10 others spring up. I think it's really just an instinctive mishandling of labels. People take them too far. Instead of thinking, for instance "straight male, therefore likes girls" people think more like "straight male, therefore likes girls, sports, cars, DIY and guns". This is not the case, this is just people jumping between labels and making something relatively precise and simple hugely blown out of proportion and all-encompassing, which defeats the original point of the label. That's part of what makes them complex imo. If people didn't bring so many stereotypes and entirely unrelated things into the mix when it came to labels, they perhaps wouldn't be so restricting. Also, I think our society places far too much emphasis on labels, and bias towards certain labels. It's something of a paradox that we're encouraged to be individuals yet are always herded to think certain things about certain labels. As you say, our society is built in a way in which labels give a person meaning, couple that with a mentality that says labels are inflexible and similar labels are more compatible than differing labels and you have a recipe for separation and conformity. It's not labels per se which are bad, it's just how people use them (i.e. using one label to arbitrarily stick on a few more that seem appropriate to them), and what society tells us about them, that they make you more of a person and that you will get along with people with the same label that have made them problematic.
Thank you so much! I really appreciate that. I've never been bullied either. It wasn't my intention to make it sound like I had, apologies if my choice of words was misleading. Your experience is something I can empathize with to a degree, although my own situation differs. Nevertheless, all I was saying is that I've definitely been hurt more by girls than by guys in the past. But I don't use this as ammo to attack the female gender. I strongly feel that we are individuals, and the only differences between males and females are physical ones. Society has influenced us so much that I can't actually say that's true in reality now but it is in theory. Were it not for stereotypes (which I suppose do naturally arise) then I don't think people would make such vapid contrasts between men and women. The problem with so many people is that when an individual does something to harm them, their immediate instinctive response is to blame the whole group of which that individual is involuntarily a part of. Be that the fact they're a man/woman, or that they're black/white, or that they're French/German, or something along those lines. The truly detrimental thing about this is the fact that not all of their "group" (and I put this in quotes because like I said it's predisposed and not agrees with them. In fact, lots of their "group" will agree with the person who is now vehemently against them as a result of the actions of one individual. And yes, it is confusing that gender stereotypes are still largely accepted and condoned. Perhaps it's because neither males or females are a minority. Whatever the reason, I hope society progresses past them eventually, if not entirely, at least to a stage where they do not affect everyone in such a pernicious manner.
