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Discussion in 'Gender Identity and Expression' started by larkcarmen, Jan 20, 2016.

  1. larkcarmen

    Regular Member

    Joined:
    Jul 13, 2015
    Messages:
    5
    Likes Received:
    0
    Location:
    southern usa
    Gender:
    Other
    Gender Pronoun:
    Other
    Sexual Orientation:
    Lesbian
    Out Status:
    Out to everyone
    This is inspired by an essay written by my lovely friend Cody. I promise I'm not trying to attack binaries, by the way.

    Labels are stupid, in my opinion. Why do we need labels, anyway?
    We don't.
    We put on these words like 'male' and 'female', sometimes 'nonbinary', among others. But why? Why do we feel the need to put these words on ourselves?
    I think it's due to the fact that genders are pushed on us right from our birth. We even assign genders to the clusters of sound we call 'names'. Why is this even a thing? Labels are, well, just that- labels. They mean very little. They're just sounds that we expect to describe us.
    What if we were all raised to believe that gender is unimportant? I suppose we'd all be agender. Is this such a bad thing, though? It eliminates gender discrimination and homophobia (and LGBTphobia in general). Labels do not define us. These words that we attach- they mean nothing.

    Thank you for reading.
    -Quinn
     
  2. darkcomesoon

    Full Member

    Joined:
    May 17, 2014
    Messages:
    1,359
    Likes Received:
    1
    Location:
    New Jersey
    Gender:
    Male (trans*)
    Gender Pronoun:
    He
    Sexual Orientation:
    Bisexual
    Out Status:
    Out to everyone
    I like the way you think. Labels can be very confining. And I agree that if we could all be raised to believe gender was meaningless and unimportant, life would be so much easier. Sexism wouldn't exist. Homophobia would be greatly reduced. Trans people with physical dysphoria would still exist, but it would be so much easier to get permission for physical transition when there weren't any socially constructed ideas of gender attached to transition. Social dysphoria would be eliminated entirely.

    I think there's still some merit to having labels. I'm a trans guy, and having a word to describe that experience helps me find other people who have similar experiences. But you're right, labels don't define us. We define the labels. I call myself a trans guy because it describes how I feel, but I'm not wedded to it. If, some day, I realize it no longer describes how I feel, I will change my label to fit my feelings, not the other way around. Having a word to describe how we feel can be really helpful, but not if we allow our labels to confine us (or if we force them onto people who don't find labels useful).