ALEX ON LABELS
Sunday, January 12 2025
I made my Tumblr account in September 2016 on the precipice of age ten. Me and my friend Milo, who was a year older, became deeply concerned with the various discourses.
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Should asexual people be included in the term "LGBT"?
How can a lesbian use he/him pronouns?
What the fuck is rabiosexuality?
I was familiar with every strange argument-of-the-week under the sun, and I can't help but feel that experience at a formative age has permanently influenced the way I understand queer identities, for better or for worse.
I saw the largest era of xenogender around ~2016-2017, and later I saw the wave of gender-hoarding neo-pronoun use in 2020. People would (and still do in certain circles) build their entire identity around having a laundry list of obscure micro-labels.
I think a lot about this way of queer identification. Obviously, I primarily operate on the policy of "leave people alone", ...but there's no harm in me discussing it with no-one in particular.
To state the obvious, most people who force their three-dimensional sense of self into little boxes are mostly teenagers who are still figuring it out. Erikson's Stages of Development theory states that the developmental task of adolescence (12-18 years) is experimenting with identity and social roles. Perhaps in our current environment, this developmental task can be accomplished through putting a bunch of poorly designed flags on your carrd, and that's a beautiful thing.
But on the other side of the coin, is this way of identifying sustainable? Does it make sense for people to go on this way forever? If it makes you happy go ahead-- but on a philosophical level I must ask how dicing your sense of self into small digestible bits is a good way to go about.
I was happily a "demigirl" when I was 14 (and I still am very fond of that label and flag) but these days I'm much more of a fundamentalist when it comes to queer identities. I don't think about much beyond the staple LGB and T when making characters and headcanons, for example. I like to keep it simple.
While I'm not repulsed by newer terms, I feel reverence for the history. Why use the blue lesbian-flag-recolor when you have the historical Gilbert Baker gay flag? That's just how my brain works. It's not like I approach queerness conservatively, I'm all for getting weird and freaky-- boygirls and transmasc butches etc, but it seems so arbitrary and naive to try and define each nuance of your person-hood into a series of titles. While I see the utilitarian value in having a name for your preferences and the fulfillment of having a community, but its kinda silly at a point, right?
I don't have a point or anything, it's just something interesting I think about a lot.
This year I wanna read more about feminist and queer history/thought! I'm trying to get around to the paper "One is Not Born a Woman" By Monique Wittig; I've heard interesting stuff about it. If anyone has recommendations let me know! :-)
If you'd like to respond, please email me at loldogworld@gmail.com!