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

[ibnfirnas.livejournal.com]

And at the same time, if someone is hitting you, and you say, "Stop hitting me!" the response, "Look, man, stop labeling my actions, I don't believe in labels," is really irritating, you know? Likewise, as called out here, when I as a woman of color am turned down for a job and a less-qualified white man is hired, and I point that out, if he says, "Look, don't call me white, that's a label, and I don't see color" is profoundly unhelpful.
Labels are imprecise, imperfect, and shaped by context, because they are words and that is the nature of words. But we also have words for a reason, and I think what's being called out here is the impulse to say "stop describing what's going on" because the description is unsettling.