There seems to be a lot of preoccupation with labels on this site: how we label our sexuality or how we relate to those labels that are available to us, if we could only choose which one...etc. I work in the pharmaceutical industry where labels are particularly important. They must convey a fairly large quantity of important information, while staying legible. The warnings are especially tricky, you're taking the medicine to get better, but there are all these side effects... I chose to label myself Gay, and I am happy with it. To the few that I have told, there was no need to explain any further, unlike that little Patient Package Insert that comes in the box with the pills, I don't need to provide people with a page of explanations in fine print; you are gay, I get it (by the way this is often not the case with the transgendered, at work especially, it is better to provide people with some literature on the subject). I could have chosen a more subtle and possibly more accurate label for myself. After doing the research, I came across the term "Demisexual", or someone whose sexual arousal only manifests itself with people with whom there is an emotional attachment. I think that's kind of beautiful actually, but I digress... The label Gay is powerful precisely to the degree that it is fairly well-understood generally, it doesn't require explanation, but it's power, for me anyway, was its ability to support an important decision, coming out to myself....and somehow I am happier than I've been in a very long time...
yeah, FDA regulates labels of pharmaceutical industries because in the past companies have bullshit or lied about what their medicines and pills do lololol. like when people ask me, i usually say I am Chinese, less of Asian, because it's more specific of a country. but i don't usually say Cantonese or Mandarin because some people don't understand...
it's understandable that some people like to describe themselves in a more specific way and want others to understand them fully. Especially for younger people. l think if l had been on this site at 16 l'd have a few more descriptors tacked onto my label, or at least one. That said l think the estimation on the labelee's part of how much interest other people will have in all of the things that make them interesting and unique is vastly overreaching lol.
Well said. My friends always ask me to "define" my sexuality though. They ask a tun of questions and it's super annoying.
