It’s a funny thing about labels. We have a tendency of making them exclusive. We make them very small, and tightly defined. Labels like boy, girl, mother, green, black, smart, stupid. Oh you have a y chromosome? Step over there. That’s where all the people like that go. I’ve always thought of labels as a way of defining just who we are. And I’ve even had classes about how labels can be a very bad thing. Such as labeling someone a “slow-learner”. Labels tend to stick and stick well.
There are different kind of labels. Labels we use to define ourselves, and labels we use to define others. But remember, when you label someone, it’s very hard to change that label. We often see ourselves as mutable – a label for us today may not define us tomorrow. Today I am young, tomorrow I will be not young. Wait, let’s look at that one. Okay at 20 I am young. Someone else may label me youthful, or impetuous, or foolish, or childish. And I may in turn label people much older than I as old, pointless, out of step with the times, boring.
But then I suddenly find myself that person who I saw when I was 20 as old. Maybe I’m 40, or 50, or whatever. Now suddenly I am wise, steady, mature. Unless I’m talking to a 20 year old. Funny thing about labels, there are many different perspectives to each one. And sometimes we need to look from the other side before we decide on those labels.
Why am I talking about labels? Because I realized that when I use labels to define myself (maybe that’s just me) – I’m not really telling you what I am, but rather what I’m not. For instance – I am femme, polyamorous, switch. But that does not tell you who I AM – it just tells you who I am NOT. I am not butch. I am not monogamous. I am not vanilla (although vanilla is not a bad thing!), I am not master, I am not slave. But really it doesn’t tell you much about me. And that’s my key point.
We need to think more about labels as defining what we are not. So if I meet someone that says they are butch – it should resonate in my head that they are not femme. I’ve been given a hint as to who they are not. This leaves behind the ability to see butch as a very large encompassing paradigm. Until you tell me, by whittling away the things you are not, I can’t know who you are as a butch. I just accept the fact that you are not femme. And leave it up to you to define your butchness.
I don’t know about you – but this was a wow moment. I tend to take labels as oh, that’s who you are. And make a small circle in my mind for who you are. And you are stuck there. In that label. It floored me to think that’s not what it should be. You are a very large circle – when you give me that label it just chips away a little edge. The edge that could have been femme. There is still a whole lot of you left to discover. You are not in a box labeled butch. You are out of the box labeled femme. The box is – over there, in the corner. With all the other very small boxes that are not you.
This can be applied to everyone and every piece of who they are. Slow learner? Maybe – but then I can take away the small part that says doesn’t learn quickly and work with that without sticking a kid in a box that will hold him for the rest of his school days. Okay so maybe it is just me that is wowed by this, but I leave you with a favorite quote and remember – big circles leave room for everybody.
“He drew a circle that shut me out Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout But love and I had the wit to win; We drew a circle that took him in.” -
— Edwin Markham
I really like your take on this. I think it really is crazy to think that we can ever expect one label to fully describe the complexities of any human being. I also agree that the labels that I tend to identify with do a better job of describing what I am not that what I really am.