Stock Rants #4: Labels

[kiya]

When you tell me you don't believe in labels, what I hear is that you don't believe in communication.

"Label" is a fancy word for "noun or adjective", and it's not even all that fancy.

You just want to be, man, without all of these words harshing your mellow. That's very nice for you. I hope you never, ever have to communicate outside of your smug bastion of solipsistic privilege in which "just being" is something you never have to explain, never have threatened, or never actually need to care about. You are not a category, you are a free person! You are colour-blind! You don't see gender! Your response to referring to someone as the wrong religion is, "But these labels, they separate us! Why can't we all just get along!"

If you respond to someone trying to make sense of distinctions with "Why define? Just be!" you are saying that precise and specific information exchange is irrelevant. I can only hope that you never wind up in a situation where you actually need to explain something you find important in a manner that requires the use of actual nouns.



The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter--it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning. -- Mark Twain

(This rant brought to you by a conversation the other day with oneironaut in which he asked if there was a "labels" stock rant yet, and "Why define? Just be!" posted as an answer to a "What's the difference between..." question on FetLife.)

Comments

[artan]

I think that the title including the Rant-Label seems to define some of the thought process as "this bothers me, I will flail at it to half explain and half complain". Though again, interpretation limitation on the Rant label may apply.

The sociopolitics of language gets even more complicated, in a kind of 1984, stripping out possible interpretation way. Though there is also the problem of redefinition of perfectly good language that other people try to do in order to "defend" whatever idea they have and fit it into an existing set. For some reason people seem to be reluctant to make up new words (or get attacked by others if they do and then attempt to explain them).

"I am a switch." Okay, well, if the question is "do you both beat people and get beat?" I don't need more information. . . . Hence, one meaning of "Labels are limiting."

Or, it could mean "flip me and the room shall illuminate!".