I feel like those of you who are saying, you dont need labels and stuff, are.. missing something somewhere, but I don't know how to explain it better. I get a little defensive, I must admit - and I want to explain why its not so much labeling or anything as it is... DE-labeling, from the way I look at it. The broad middle ground I'm staking out by embracing "labels" or, as I look at them, identifiers, gives me much more freedom than the normative assumptive labels do - and a lack of labels on a personal level turns into assumed labels, nearly universally.
When you decide what to wear for the day, you decide what sort of persona you're going to project for that day. If you wear a suit, you project formality and business and such. If you wear sweats, you project either a sense of athleticism or a sense of lazy lack-of-style. I know lots of people who wear sweats like jammies, around the house or alone or whatever, but who wouldn't go out in public in them, because they don't feel personally comfortable being the sort of person who wears sweats out in public. Not everybody cares what persona they project, but i reject the notion that caring about how you are perceived by others is the same as "deriv[ing] your identity from the perception of others." Its not that I need other people to accept my identity before I can; its that, now that I've accepted that my identity fundamentally lies outside the wide box labeled male, I'm less comfortable having people assume I'm male*.
I just finished skimming the "where all the black people at?" thread and noticed some good discussion on identifying terms for people - in this case, "mexican" versus "hispanic", or "american indian" versus "native american" versus, uh, "indian as in from you know INDIA". It's, in a way, this sense of identity (and terminology thereof) that I'm using here. If I were born in New Mexico or Arizona to parents of Mexican decent, I could identify as a Mexican or an American or a mexican-american or a Hispanic or any number of related, sometimes exclusive, sometimes inclusive, always polycombinational terms, right? And while maybe I couldn't argue very well that I'm not Hispanic, or of broadly spanish-american descent, I -could- argue that I'm not Mexican as a person born in America who never lived in Mexico, I could argue that I'm not American (or at least American in citizenship only) as someone of non-USA descent, etc. As it stands, even, I was born in Texas to Alabamian parents - but I am not Texan, and I am not Alabamian, regardless of my place of birth or ancestry, and considering i've hardly lived in either state most there would agree with me that I'm not "from" there in anything but the causal sense. I've adopted Vermont as my home state, even if I'm still a flatlander to them. But we are as a country (and to a great degree, the "first-world" countries are all in the same boat) VERY ready to accept people transcending state boundaries in identity, less ready to accept people transcending national boundaries in identity (but still friendly to being a ______-American), but very far from ready to accept people whose identity or identities transcend gender norms, ignoring the fact that gender norms and biases are at least as arbitrary as state borders, and in many ways much MORE arbitrary and unrelated to physical (or geographic) characteristics. But that doesn't mean a Puerto Rican or Venezuelan or Brazilian should get called a Mexican, just cause theyre from south-of-here (or, in the exact same vein, Koreans or Japanese or Mongolians should get called Chinese just for being from Asia), even if the borders are arbitrary, right? Because the CULTURE isn't, and the people of most countries are at least proud enough of their country to want to be recognized as not being from a neighbor, no matter how similar we find the two sides of the distinction.
It's in that sense that making my identity public, and using "labels" to identify myself, is important to me. Being read as, treated as, called a "man", a "guy", a "dude", a male, feels as accurate to me as if you called me a Canadian cause I'm from the North American continent. Its not that I expect you to treat me different as an American or a Canadian, and its not that I'm forcing myself into a little box called "america" (or "girly") versus where you assumed I was... but what we CALL things is VITALLY important to how we think about things, and letting what I feel to be a limiting and inaccurate category for me to continue as one of my defining characteristics without standing up and saying, "no, you are wrong, that term is not one I would describe myself with" lets me continue to be erased, continue to be treated in ways I don't like, continue to be forced in peoples' minds into the categoric box of "male" that I am not comfortable with.
Coming out doesnt limit or label or categorize me any more than any other identity ANYBODY holds does. Every single one of you has dozens of Identities. American. British. Musician. Salesman. Mother. Brother. Liberal. Conservative. Butch. Femme. Anything, any identity, is something you hold dear to yourself; not a limiting factor, not a box, but a tag, an indicator, a part of how YOU think of YOURSELF.
*I'm using male to refer to masculine gender roles rather than sexually male characteristics in this context. Arguably, "boy" or "man" is the more proper term - male typically indicates male physical sex rather than masculine identity - but wording it this way fits my prosaic style better, I feel, and sex/gender language dichotomy be damned
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