• Contrary to popular belief, gender and sexuality labels are worth more than just standing there and looking wordy.

Contrary to popular belief, gender and sexuality labels are worth more than just standing there and looking wordy.

Or, better titled: If the phrase “WE’RE ALL HUMAN” is about to come out of your mouth as a reason why no one should be allowed to label their gender or sexuality, do me a solid and shut the fuck up.

Here’s the thing: Being able to label your gender and sexuality is an important thing for a lot of people. It’s something that’s useful and it’s wortha lot, too.

Being able to put a name to our sexualities and genders can make us feel more secure with ourselves and it can make it easier for us to discuss them as they apply to us; it makes it easier for us to find other people who share the same identity and it allows us to discuss shared experiences and feelings and practices with our own words, and being able to do this makes it easier for us (if we want) to created communities or safe spaces where—at the very least—we can feel like the people around us are less likely to laugh at us or call us frauds because we know that they understand what we’re going through. Being able to put a name to our sexualities and genders also helps us put a name to the prejudices we may face due to them and that can help us try to find ways to end those prejudices and if we want to, inform others about our sexual orientation or gender identity.

“We’re all human!” is all well and good, but the fact is that just because we’re both humans doesn’t mean that we’re the same and it doesn’t mean that you can understand what it is other people who identify differently than you do experience.

If you’re straight, you don’t know what it is not to be straight. If you’re cisgender, you don’t know what it’s like to be trans*. If you’re sexual, if you’re monosexual, if you’re monoromantic, if you’re binary identified…so on and so forth. You can say that we’re all humans until you’re blue in the face, but that does not mean that you share the same experiences and feelings that everyone else does.

And the thing is that when you try to take the labels away from someone, you’re not making this big fondue bowl of rainbows and kittens and wonderful things like you think you are. What you’re doing is taking away our ability to discuss those experiences and feelings with people who do share them. You’re taking away our ability to put a name to the prejudices and oppression we face. You’re taking away our ability to feel content in our own bodies and our own minds.

And, really, what’s it for? What are your reasons? “This word is too weird!” or “this word is new!” and “this word is made up!”. Gods, just fuck that, because it’s bullshit. It’s absolute and complete bullshit.

Moist and discharge and baste are words that exist. Over one-hundred-and-fifty words were added to the dictionary just last year. No words would exist at all if they weren’t made up in the first place. There are hundreds—if not thousands—of synonyms for penis, probably even more synonyms for what happens when semen comes out of them. Fictional cocks can weep tears and those tears can feel emotions, but you think it’s out of line and weird for me and people like me to say that the handful of words that you deign to be “normal” and “acceptable” to describe gender and sexualitydon’t fit what we feel and that we’d like words that did?

And it’s crap, because from what I’ve seen most of the members of “We’re All ~~Douchebags~~ Humans Club” don’t apply their no labels policy to themselves. You can call yourself what you’d like all you want, but it’s different for us, right? You can be a man or a woman, but none of us can be anything else. You can be straight or you can be gay, but to you nothing else exists. There’s no other than that, not to you, becauseyou get to decide what genders and sexualities are valid and which aren’t, right? We have to be just humans, but you don’t. We have to be label-free and without the words to define our feelings, but you get to keep your words. You get to keep your words because you think that ours aren’t worthy of being kept.

And, just really, fuck you. Fuck you so fucking much, because I like my words. I like not feeling lost and detached and not knowing what the hell my sexuality or gender is, because I didn’t think words existed to describe them. I like knowing that there are other people out there that feel the same way that I do and who get it. I like my labels, because they’ve done a fuck of a lot for me and I don’t like people saying that I’m not allowed to have them for some completely useless reason while they sit with their own words and definitions and don’t make a single move to get rid of them like they want me to do with mine.