To frame this precisely: do you think that distinctions between cis-homosexuality/bisexuality/heterosexuality, trans-homosexuality/bisexuality/heterosexuality, and other gender-specific or gender-exclusive sexual orientation labels are necessary, or should we keep it minimal, or even abolish labels completely?
And just to make everything clear, I have to disclose that I’m NOT part of the queer community, though I try to be as allied as humanly possible (I have three trans friends [two gay trans males, one lesbian trans female], one demi-pansexual genderfluid friend, etc., and I support and help all of them in everything I can). So, precisely because of this, I want to learn and know more about your ideas, feelings, experiences, philosophies, and beliefs. As I know the queer community isn’t a monolith, I want to hear as many voices as possible so I can form more well-founded and well-informed opinions, questions, and actions. I equally support your rights and oppose all reactionary conservatives.
That said, and back to the question that opens this post as its title, I ask this because I’ve noticed that it is (or could be) a problem in queer discourse, semantics, and semiotics, and I want to know how different people try to solve it.
For example, I have mixed feelings because, on the one hand, I think that creating more specific labels could help both as a recognition of the different experiences and identities that constitute the queer spectrum, and in making communication clearer, respectful, clever, and less prone to errors, misunderstandings, misinterpretations, or conflicts (for example, I only like cisgender women, and I’m a cisgender male, but if I say that I’m heterosexual, I feel that it’s not clear if I like cis women, or if I like trans women, or if I instead like both kinds of women, without further explanation that’s not always possible, or a more specific term, and that could lead to a conflict of expectations). But at the same time, on the other hand, it feels like it over-compartmentalizes and over-atomizes something that’s not completely discrete (although it’s also not completely continuous), and can lead to division, or even to other kinds of exclusion and discrimination both inside the community and outside it.
I know this is not an easy problem, so what are your thoughts on this?
Please, keep this respectful, civil, and on-topic. To all the moderators of this space, I kindly ask you in advance that if this results in a conflict or a fight, please lock it.
Love and peace.
Labels are an approximation. There will always be people who don’t neatly fall into those labels. We can invent more labels to improve coverage, but no matter how fine-grained we try to get there will always be outliers.
But just because they’re an approximation doesn’t mean they can’t be useful. Many people take comfort in labels, even discover themselves through labels. No reason to take them away from the people they’re helpful to.
As long as we accept that labels aren’t perfect and don’t force them on people who don’t want them, it’s okay for labels to be imperfect.
I’m understanding better now. Thanks!
How about: The labels are available for those who want to use them to describe themselves, but they’re optional and we don’t label other people unless they’ve told us what labels they prefer?
This all-or-nothing crap serves no one.
because that’s not how things work. people can’t self-police that well.
people use the labels or don’t use them, and their use/non-use invites conflict. because human beings fundamentally want other people to be like them and are validated by others doing so, and feel invalidated by those who do not.
This sounds fair, tbh, but I feel that it doesn’t solve the root problem of expectations conflicts. I like only cis women, and if a trans women doesn’t explicitly states that she’s not cis when we’re flirting or whatever, I would feel violated when I discover that’s not the case, specially when it comes to sex, not because I had anything against trans people, because I don’t, but because a basic layer of trust in any commitment, relation or even adventure was broken.
It would be the same if I, or someone else, only liked trans women or men, and one cis woman or man did not stated that, or any other case where someone expectations and limits were not respected.
But I know that’s also problematic to force everyone to comply with some laconic standard of transparency about something that might be taboo or a sensible topic on someone because of their ambient or because of their own internal conflicts, and because they can’t know if the person they’re talking with will discriminate them or if they will understand them.
It’s complicated, but I hope that a solution that balances both needs could be achieved.
Genuine question, but why does the woman have to state wether or not they are cis/trans, why can you not ask them? As it seems so important to you, would that not fix all of your issues with dating women?
Also in what way would they break any trust by not talking unprompted about their gender? The trust that you live in a dream world of only your preferred partners?
Genuine question, but why does the woman have to state wether or not they are cis/trans, why can you not ask them? As it seems so important to you, would that not fix all of your issues with dating women?
Tbh, I really didn’t consider that at all, and I now feel like a stupid for it lol.
Although, while that might also work, I don’t personally feel like it’s an option to me because I’m really bad at communicating IRL. I’m introvert and really, really shy.
I’m also really, REALLY clumsy and thus I know that even if I try to ask that with the greatest possible touch, it’s probable that the other person can feel uncomfortable or bad, and that my question could trigger a trauma, or a sensible spot in their own feelings and experiences. Also I feel like she then could start hating me, or looking at me with disgust.
But aside from my own insecurity, the biggest problem is what I said: for many that issue is a delicate thing, and I don’t want to cause problems or discomfort, I feel really fatal feeling that I’m causing someone discomfort that I most likely don’t deserve.
Great now that you know you could do this, why not ask your queer friends how they would like to be asked such a question? I am sure you can find an aceptable way to ask that. Also shouldn’t it be way easier for you task the uncomfortable question earlier instead of being unhappy or maybe even angry later?
Genuinely it seems it would help you alot to work on your shyness. Maybe a bit of therapy is not bad, genuinly therapy is often very valueable even if it is a struggle with beeing social. It can help alot with how you understand yourself and others, which makes communicating better and less stressing.
Thank you really much for the insights and the advice!
I’ll for sure put them into practice.
What do you mean by “minimize/abolish”?
Absolutely the fuck not should we be “abolishing” any personal identity labels.
That doesn’t mean you can’t think some labels are excessive, even stupid. And it doesn’t mean you can’t tell a queer person to their face you won’t use their niche label. Just like they’re free to think of you as an asshole and even tell you to your face that they think you’re an asshole.
What I meant was more about gender abolitionism (something that for example gender feminists as . It’s about the linguistics of gender identity, not about identities themselves, in line with Simone de Beauvoir, Shulamith Firestone, Monique Wittig, Sheila Jeffreys, Judith Butler, Kate Bornstein, Leslie Feinberg. Alok Vaid Menon, and an important percentage of plural beings.
And I’m not saying that is should be like that, but asking if it should be or not like that, because I honestly don’t know. I just want that people were less discriminated and more free, and that everyone respects everyone else, and that includes boths their identities and their expectations and limits.
Treat each person with basic respect, and you’re fine. Labels are individual, not everyone likes them but some folks feel better with them and that’s valid too.
Putting an opinion on other people’s identities is where it crosses into problematic territories.
Just like religion; “I can’t do/am not something because of my identity” is fine. “You can’t do/be something because of my identity” is not.
Listening to your IRL LGBT+ pals will guide you right, and remember also a lot of the microlabel discourse is heavily skewed to be online. A handful of self selected randos on the internet anywhere isn’t going to be representative of a whole-ass community (myself included!)
Define ‘basic respect’.
Because it’s going to vary a lot depending on people’s preferences, backgrounds, and etc.
Personally I don’t see LGBT+ people as monolithic in anything… they are just people. They all have their own biases, hatreds, preferences, etc. And plenty of LGBT+ people hate other LGBT+ people for stupid reasons. I find the concept of LGBT+ as some sort of ‘bloc’ utterly weird, and if you look at like data about it, it isn’t really a unified group in anyway.
I’ve never seen many commonalities in belief or behaviour of LGBT+ people. If you break it down further, yeah, sure, there are.
That sounds pretty awesome actually, I now ask myself if I was just fighting mostly against ghosts haha.
Listening to your IRL LGBT+ pals will guide you right, and remember also a lot of the microlabel discourse is heavily skewed to be online. A handful of self selected randos on the internet anywhere isn’t going to be representative of a whole-ass community (myself included!)
Also, this is really insightful, I think I should do that more. I just feel that sometimes I can make them tired or bored by some many questions lol, but this could be nothing but my own insecurities.
Thanks for the response!
Ok, there are some big red flags in your question, but I’ll address the question first and the red flags after.
People should be free to choose whichever labels make them most comfortable and happy. There is no benefit to trying to police how people label themselves. And an ‘ally’ should definitely not be trying to give opinions on what is and is not the correct label.
Now to the red flags. I am going to extend you the benefit of the doubt, but these are things you should be aware of. You seem to have an issue with trans exclusionary language. Trans women are women. Trans men are men. Trying to create labels that are specifically exclusionary of trans people is harmful. I’m not trying to control who you find attractive, but making them some nebulous other is harmful.
Referring to people you claim are your friends as male and female is weird, and is going to get the hackles up on a lot of folks because that is the language frequently used by bigots.
Claiming some access to a community because you have a friend or friends in that community is a tired trope (e.g., my best friend is black). It doesn’t add anything to the conversation, and generally doesn’t make people trust you more.
Finally, your feelings on queer people’s labels is irrelevant. People have enough to deal with without their ‘ally’ questioning their labels. It doesn’t matter how specific or vague a label is, you will still need to communicate with any possible sexual or romantic partners. So that solves any issue of vague labels.
Everyone is unique.
Labels are pointless.
We need to normalize “singular they” again.
Any group that’s isolated, regardless of whose choice, will eventually create smaller groups. It will keep going untill there are thousands of labels with a max of a dozen people. It’s has absolutely nothing to do with gender or sexuality.
It happens with religion, hobby enthusiasts, athletes, literally anything.
The human brain is designed to chop up populations into demographics since we can only handle so many individuals. If you “fill up” with people all of one demographic, it becomes worthless and you need to subdivide it.
The solution is integration and everyone mixing up together. Then people experience a wide enough variation of people, that they understand no one trait determines a person.
After that it just seems weird when some people insist everyone gets defined by hyper specific labels about one small aspect of who they are as a person.
fundamentally disagree. People are not unique. They want to be unique, for sure, but they are far more similar than they’d like to admit, and micro-labels are a great way to creation ‘ego preservation’ to feel like one is more unique than actually is, and that someone makes one more valuable and special, internally. And for people with fragile egos, these labels are highly important and they require other people to acknowledge the identity label.
And when they are common enough parlance people will force them on you, whether you agree or identify with them or not. But at that point it’s mostly them projecting their own label-insistence onto you.
For some folks labels are pointless, but for some they are fundamental and deeply emotional.
Personally I don’t quite get the labeling thing… for me it makes more sense to just name the behaviour, but people love their shorthands, and in my own personal experience, people often use labels to skirt around naming their actual behaviors. It’s a great coping mechanism that way.
Frankly, people are always going to have questions, about themselves, about their feelings and identities,
so just as people are always changing, growing, experimenting it follows that the words, language, labels they choose are going to shift and grow and change
Also, in my experience labels are useful for putting words to biases, feelings, fragments of identity that can otherwise be hard, or scary to communicate. so when the labels someone chooses change, it can be less that they are changing as a person, but more that they’re more open to sharing a given part of themselves in a given context
So if we were to artificially limit what labels are accepted, we’re not reducing barriers by grouping like people together, we’re just limiting what any person could be willing to share about themselves in any given moment
I’m curious how your LGBT friends respond when you ask them this.
Actually, I felt a bit relieved (and surprised) because they had this same question themselves and, more or less, concluded something like what I concluded: clarity and conflict prevention are first, and if queer people want a better communication and a better ambient for not only they, but also for everyone else, it’s better to have labels. At the very end, humans communicate deep or complicated concepts, feelings and ideas primarily through words.
Although they said something to me too: it would be better a world where everyone just freely exists and express themselves without the pressure of labels, and I couldn’t do anything else than agree.
But what did they think of your consideration of banning them, and weren’t they the least bit curious why you are wading into this subject in the first place?
When and where did I said that I wanted to ban them? I love them as some of the best friends I could find.
I’m only asking this because, read well, the problem of expectations conflicts.
You didn’t. but because this is a ‘hot button’ issue, people are going to willfully misinterpret you to make you the ‘bad guy’ so they can feel they themselves are the ‘good guy’.
That sounds reasonable.
Sorry if I acted overly defensive.
No labels
Weird you addressing this specifically to the queer community without being in it yourself while simultaneously giving your own opinions a lot of space.
Weird thing to respond to something that is not weird at all.
It’s logically inconsistent.
If you ONLY want to hear from Group X, why would you allow someone from Group Y to frame the entire conversation and extensively give their opinion at the outset? By limiting the conversation to Group X, the Group Y interlocutor is admitting their own opinion should be excluded, yet here they are inserting it into a place of prominence.
I don’t think so. Let’s change the topic and see if it sounds weird.
Lemmings who have gotten a perm, how did you feel about it? I’ve never gotten a perm before, so I was wondering what it’s like. Here are the reasons I’m thinking about it… Here are the reasons it might be a mistake… I have X type of hair, and I think the Y style looks cool. What do I need to know?
OP isn’t trying to create an official policy on labels, they’re just asking how people with more knowledge than themselves feel about the concept.
This ^
I take it back. You are right, that is indeed weird.
I thinks it’s all a bunch off bullshit.
There are layers in society where labels make sense. Science for example but in our day to day social interactions they do more harm then anything else.
What exactly do people with those informations other then build up prejudice? Against others or themselfs. You are gay that means you have to be like that, i am gay so I have to be lime this, I’m a woman so I have to be like this blablabla.
“I like what I like”. Why does it have to be more complicated then that?
Well I guess it is because people single you out because you are, for example, gay. They imprint a identity on you and dangers meanwhile you just want to suck some dick. So it is kind of a defense mechanism to make it your identity. To build a group around it, to find safety in numbers.
So I understand that in the context of this shit world something like the labels evolved because you can’t ask someone if they would like to get heir dick sucked without getting blasted in the face, but not in the good way.
But in a perfekt world it should just be “I like you. Do you like me?”
Same with gender. I feel it is just a physical thing. You wann have tits or a dick or fits and a dick? Go for it. But to be a woman or a man? Seem to be flawed constructs to Beginn with.
“I want to be a woman because woman are like that” “I want to be a man because man are like that” go fuck yourself.
Act like you want to act but don’t bind that to some bullshit like gender.
It’s like picking presets in a game. It’s easy to just pick something that is already made and tried and known to work in a surrounding/environment but I’d rather built my own character.
I didn’t meant that, either.
“I want to be a woman because woman are like that” “I want to be a man because man are like that” go fuck yourself.
I think that this is mostly correct, tho.
Take
What I actually (tried) to mean was (and I simply copy and paste it because, like, it’s pointless to rewrite it if I already have it written in another place lol).
Imagine this:
I like only cis women, and if a trans women doesn’t explicitly states that she’s not cis when we’re flirting or whatever, I would feel violated when I discover that’s not the case, specially when it comes to sex, not because I had anything against trans people, because I don’t, but because a basic layer of trust in any commitment, relation or even adventure was broken.
It would be the same if I, or someone else, only liked trans women or men, and one cis woman or man did not stated that, or any other case where someone expectations and limits were not respected.
I only have to add that it is like that not because I hate trans (or non-binary, or in general non-gender-conform people), or because I like to exclude or discriminate them (although I know I might do that sometimes, I try my best not to do it). It’s just because I don’t like penises, y only like vaginas. And as me, there’s many people both inside and outside of the queer community (actually, one of my ftm friends is himself cis-homosexual because he only likes dicks, not pussies, and AFAIK [I haven’t asked her because she did exit from the closet just recently, and I don’t know if it will make her uncomfortable] my mtf is also cis-lesbian, because she only likes pussies, not dicks; both of them feel revulsed by their same sex genitalia).
