Do you think they're necessary? Are there too many different labels to keep up with? (sorry if I offend anybody, but someone told me earlier that they knew a girl who was demisexual and I had no idea what that meant until I googled it)
depends if the labels are applied by oneself to oneself then they're great & the person can use as many as they like if yr gonna label someone else w/ something they've not called themself that's probably bad
Labels are tools, and like any tools, they can be mis-used. In my experience, the complaints that people have about labels really come down to people mis-using labels, oftentimes by trying to alter their understanding of themselves to fit their label, rather than altering their label to fit their understanding of themselves. They're certainly not necessary, but they are helpful. Putting a word to what someone has experienced validates their experiences. It lets them know that they're not some weirdo, that they aren't just confused, that there are other people out there who've experienced what they experience. And to be perfectly honest, there really aren't too many labels to keep up with. It can be hard to wrap one's head around the idea of there being more labels than the standard gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transsexual, but once you do, if you're open to learning more, they're not that hard to learn. Humans are very good at learning entire new lexicons of terminology; just look at any nerdy fandom and all the terms they throw around. Learning the lexicon of human identity really isn't any more challenging.
The human mind has a natural tendency to categorize things based on similar characteristics. So, like it or not, people will come up with labels and categories for everything (not just gender/sexuality). People who don't fit entirely into one category just come up with a new label.
Personally, I'm glad that labels exist because I like to have words to identify myself with and to be able to find others like me. I must agree though that it seems there are an abundance of them nowadays. I had never heard the term "demisexual" (or many of the other labels encountered here) prior to joining EC. Whatever labels people want to use to describe themselves are cool with me.
