LGBTQIA

[SilverAlchemic 355]

A little while ago, I'm not sure exactly when. I'm still figuring some shit out, so I just stick on the "queer" label until I find something that fits me better, if anything. I'll definitely always be some flavor of neutrois.

[LLmao ?✊? 1276]

Feel free to disregard these questions if they seem offensive, but...

 

-Are you looking for a label?

-What do you get from a label? (solidarity, pride?)

-Are you looking through a list of labels and then seeing which fit you?

-Do you think that if you find a label that vaguely fits you, that you may be "filling in the blanks" or something? Like maybe you meet 9 out of 10 "requirements" for fitting a label, and that maybe in your head, you convince yourself that you fit the 10th requirement?

 

Not trying to be a dick. But I think with this kind of thing (retroactively looking at labels and then picking the one that suits you best), it is kind of like a horoscope. The situation in which a person can say "oh, now that I think about it, I AM a ______!" after a label vaguely suggests that that person is _______. Their behavior might even change to fit the description of their self-diagnosed label. 

 

I just think that labels are really confining, especially when a gray area is being divided up into different terms. I honestly just think that it's a way for people not to feel so lost, or so that they can have an easily digestible "group" to identify with. is that about right?

[PrimaGaga 1025]

Labels make dating easier

[LLmao ?✊? 1276]

"Neutrois" doesn't clarify anything, though. How does that make dating easier?

[PrimaGaga 1025]

i meant labels in general. I guess i donno wut a neutrinos is. I'm assuming it's like a eunuch. Silver, do you no longer have testicles? 

[SilverAlchemic 355]

-Are you looking for a label?

Not really, but I'm just so used to having some kind of label that the idea of NOT having one just feels kind of foreign, I guess.

-What do you get from a label? (solidarity, pride?)

I guess nothing, really. Solidarity maybe.

-Are you looking through a list of labels and then seeing which fit you?

I was earlier, but couldn't really find anything. I'm still doing some(to use a term that I feel is overused) soul-searching, and once I get through with that, or at least closer to sure of myself than I currently am, I'll pick it back up.

-Do you think that if you find a label that vaguely fits you, that you may be "filling in the blanks" or something? Like maybe you meet 9 out of 10 "requirements" for fitting a label, and that maybe in your head, you convince yourself that you fit the 10th requirement?

I would like to think that I don't do that kind of thing, but as a rule I usually do. It's not a conscious decision or anything, just a thing that happens when I look at something that kind of fits.

Not trying to be a dick. But I think with this kind of thing (retroactively looking at labels and then picking the one that suits you best), it is kind of like a horoscope. The situation in which a person can say "oh, now that I think about it, I AM a ______!" after a label vaguely suggests that that person is _______. Their behavior might even change to fit the description of their self-diagnosed label.

Nah, I don't think this is dickish at all. You actually went a lot different of a direction with this than I had thought(no offense). I definitely agree with you on that one, too. It's almost hard not to, I guess? I dunno.

I just think that labels are really confining, especially when a gray area is being divided up into different terms. I honestly just think that it's a way for people not to feel so lost, or so that they can have an easily digestible "group" to identify with. is that about right?

Yeah, labels are definitely confining. And I definitely think of labels like that. I do feel sort of lost, I guess, but not as much as I had expected upon discovering I'm non-binary.

Neutrois is a type of trans* identity where a person doesn't feel like a male or a female, but feels like neither, both, or somewhere in-between.

At least, I think.

[Chimetals 344]

i thought neutrois was just saying "yeah, well, ill probably somewhere in the neutral zone" in a really fancy word form.

 

just looked it up. on the one hand, immediately jumping to the conclusion that anyone is trying to be a label or looking for something from a label strikes me as an extreme thinking in itself. on the other hand, i wish people would stop generating sub-labels. i have no idea what half of this shit is, and im not gonna be arsed to keep up. if people wanna use sub-labels, im fine with that as long as they dont get excessively offended at some minor thing i do that is somehow offensive to their sub-label. though i dont think theres a whole lot of that, honestly.

 

my main problem with all these labels is just that im pretty sure that half of them are what the other half of them are, and theres no sense of organization or anything.

 

the whole label thing has kainda started ticking me off in its own way, though. my mom is p much convinced that because i know so many people that are X or Y or Z or whatever, im "becoming" those things due to that and that alone, and if i had some nice, heterosexual cisgender friends, i wouldnt be in this "phase" or whatever. when it comes out of left field every few phonecalls or so, it gets old. "you know, just because you dont feel like a Y doesnt make you a K" and shit.

 

just, asking people about labels constantly reminds me a lot of the people that dont take bisexuals seriously. like, yeah, there are those people that really are just going with the flow and it basically is a phase for them--there are those people that do label-hop in the most unnecessary ways (i know one), but there are other people that simply see those labels as an easy way to sum up their feelings and situations with someone else that understands what that term means.

 

i guess thats where my irritation with the sub-labels comes from--if there are too many people using all these sub-categories, but no one is keeping track of any of it, it quickly loses all meaning it might have had as well as any applicable use, and rapidly degenerates into pompus-sounding bullshit code that no one can really interpret anymore.

append: ninjad.

 

hrngh, i feel like im probably coming across angrier than i actually am? to clarify, im more irritated at the disorganized system and the results it has generated than anyone that uses or questions it. because its supposed to be used, otherwise it wouldnt exist, but because its so haphazard, its only logical to question it and anything that spawns from it.

[LLmao ?✊? 1276]

Yeah, it's not even a thing that you can easily navigate. If there was a spectrum or chart or something it'd be different. MAYBE that could have a purpose. But I feel like some people just really need labels to make sense of their lives. Or to feel special.

Edited 17 Jun 2013 by °ᵕ° (see edit history)

[Grandmaster Phoenix 26]

I think we should stop adding letters to this before it gets confusing.

[Teto 2609]

LGBTQIAFTWLMAO

[pheonix561 2080]

YOU HAVE TWO L'S AND TWO A'S YOU'RE CHEATING

[LLmao ?✊? 1276]

Lets keep adding letters until everyone is included and all labels lose their original purpose.

What if special interest groups were subjected to the same mind-numbing techniques that they endorse? Advocating a bland and unrelatable thing that includes everyone and doesn't hurt anyone's feelings.

[emsomniac 239]

This is what the term 'queer' is used for - generally covers everything. I think GSM (Gender and Sexual Minorities) also works nicely. I mean you can say that we shouldn't need labels but thats just what humans are wired to do. We try to categorize things to understand them and remember them better.

 

On a similar note, interjecting that I pretty much just identify as queer. My orientation falls somewhere between the classical definitions of bisexual and pansexual and that shits just too hard to explain succinctly (though its not something that I talk about alllllllll that much).

[Sahaqiel 1232]

Whatever this neutrosis thing is it sounds like I fit somewhere in there. But then it's like, do I even care? I think people should be more chill with these things. I don't need any label other than "myself" etc.

 

Labels are for records, not people, fufufu. :3

 

At a certain point it becomes a bit nitpicky imo. I'm pretty sure it used to be simply, "do you like boys, or do you like girls, and do you identify as a boy, or as a girl?" Really binary stuff. But rather than a quantized system (a series of absolute values with no in-betweens) it becomes more of a continuum (infinitely many in-between values), and to me that just says that people are different. And as complicated as that sounds, as many categories as that creates, it's actually probably the most simple reasoning for it. People are different, and that's all we need to know. If you find a different person with similarities, cool. But no one is really the same; the magic of knowing other people is finding where you're different, and you can't boil that down to a category because it's not a quantized measurement. There are so many variables. It might give you comfort, but at the end of the day I think it just complicates things. There's no way you're ever going to hit the nail right on the head.

 

Labels are good for feeling a sense of belonging or a feeling that there's something different (special) about you, but to me that's redundant. Everyone's different, and everyone has similarities. It's a continuum. What you do to set yourself apart is up to your actions, not what you go by. And for me, at least, that's good enough.

[LLmao ?✊? 1276]

Total agreement

The concept of looking at a list and "learning" that you are something is weird to me. Like "discovering" yourself by likening yourself to an existing thing on a list is kind of doing yourself a disservice. It's limiting yourself and you may or may not be subconsciously making yourself fit into the list.