Posts tagged terms
Posts tagged terms
Most people who complain about “why do we all need labels!? Can’t we just be PEOPLE?!” have likely never felt the flood of relief that there is a WORD FOR WHAT YOU ARE after spending years wondering if you were broken, what was wrong with you, feeling ridiculously isolated and having other people complain about things you can’t change about yourself. If there’s a word for it, that makes it a real thing.Knowing that I am real, that I am not alone, has done so much more for me than this idea that homogenizing everyone by refusing to recognize our differences is supposed to. I felt invisible and/or mocked for most of my life by people who thought we should all just be “people.” Why in the world would anyone think that could be a good thing for me now?
“Why does everyone need a label, GAWD!?” is code for “I haven’t given my self and who I am much thought, and the fact that you have, and have had to, upsets me. So stop it and be more like me, dammit!”
Plus, a lot of the time if you haven’t felt ‘labelled’ it’s a privilege. Labels don’t exist actively for anything society considers ‘normal’ (white ablebodied heterosexual cis Christian men)… active labels are a mark of ‘otherness’. When people start to embrace that ‘otherness’, and reclaim their labels, the line between ‘normal’ and ‘other’ begins to blur and ‘normal’ begins to slowly lose its power. That’s why people who have had the privilege of living without labels, people who have lived as the yardstick that the rest of society is held up against, say “Aren’t we all just people?” They aren’t saying that because they actually believe it; they’re saying it because this intrusion of ‘otherness’ into their space threatens their privilege. They just don’t want to stop being the yardstick.
That’s what I think anyway.
(via ineedmymorningtea)