Discovering my sexuality was not an awakening per say, because I had never identified with being straight in the first place. It was instead an addition. It was an identity added to the list of things I call myself. It served as a line of demarcation by which I could now describe my attractions (or perversions depending on who you ask). To me, ascribing the label gay was similar to the labels Jewish or white; they describe certain characteristics about me.
But one month after coming out, my father sat next to me on the beach and began asking questions. Questions most queer people eventually get. Questions like how I
knew or why I told everyone or if it was a phase.
But one question stuck with me: “Why put yourself in a box?”
“Why not just date who you date,” he continued, “sleep with who you sleep with, and live a life undefined by the cardboard faces of a box you built for yourself?”
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I had to ask myself: what are boxes?
Boxes are tools to define ourselves, often built on stereotypical associations to make the act of connecting easier. Boxes can be very useful. When someone describes themself as a jock, it can be inferred that they are interested in physical activity. Boxes can also be claustrophobic. If someone is a churchie, they may avoid activities dictated to be abnormal for their box; no matter how desirable. Boxes can be oppressive. Boxes can be ticky. Boxes can be tacky. Boxes dictate normality.
So, why do I choose to call myself gay? Is it because I exclusively like men? What happens when the concept of man itself is a fallacy? Is it because I am attracted to masculinity?
And what happens when the concept of masculinity itself is a fallacy? What then?
I choose to associate myself with that label not out of a recognition of its validity, but its necessity. The word has one major value: it makes me a part of a community.
Are you gay? Translation: can I trust you?
Queer people in America are hurting. Hurting from institutions and societal arrangements that dictate their humanity as an abnormality instead of a different way of being. They use these words as tools of community association to integrate themselves into queer spaces deemed safe.
But If being gay means I only like men, but I find myself attracted to a nonbinary person, am I excluding their experience as a nonbinary person? How do I use these labels as a tool for community healing, and not one for the propagation of systems that exclude people?
Firstly, it is important to recognize a difference between labeling and identifying. The reason being gay should be seen as an identity instead of a label is because of the option for
fluidity it allows. If I label myself as gay, I am saying I am that label. In essence, I would trap myself in the cardboard walls of a box I built. In identifying instead, I say that I currently feel closest to that label.
The second step becomes not only accepting the abstract nature of these labels, but actively working for liberation. What does this look like? It means that we as a community of queer people work towards political equality. It means advocating for workplace protections, banning conversion therapy, and extending the civil rights amendment to everyone. It means accepting the fact that homophobia is rooted in patriarchy, and that there is intersectionality between race and gender/sexuality. It means calling out people associated with hateful religious ideologies. It means valuing our own lives above the economy in the voting booth.
The main thing is remembering how language is a living form that is fundamentally abstract. It is a progression that changes as time does also. The use of labels defining sexuality reflects living during a time in which those very labels still hold value. Liberation comes by using these words in conjunction with laughter at the inherently absurd nature of their very existence. By recognizing these words as abstract, it becomes possible to evaluate their very lack of concrete existence in the real world and accept them as an identity instead of a label. By identifying, we break down the walls holding us in and walk out to see the freedom we yearn for.
frapachino
Labels are what people use against others who say things they don’t like! Thanks to the radical woke crowd racism has lost all meaning! I once said that I didn’t care for Beyonces music and was then called a racist! Sad insecure people resort to that kind of name calling!
PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS
What a hypocrite! You are a vile troll who has spewed toxic and negative comments towards many other commenters here.
Stop the feeble attempt at playing the victim and take your repugnant troll arse somewhere else
Cam
Except when people label their homophobia as a religious belief. Then you are here rabidly defending them right?
We get it, you will always, defend anti-LGBT bigotry. End of story.
Donston
That’s one way of looking at identity, and it’s a perfectly justified way of looking at identity. The problem is not everyone views identities that way or uses them for the same purposes. The definition of all these identities are themselves constantly up for debate. While the reasons people attach to certain words (or chooses not to attach themselves to certain words) varies between personal, political, sociological and ego. So, not only is there no unified understanding of these “labels”, these words can signify someone’s desire to unify or desire to segregate.
PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS
Jacob, first I commend you for your speaking out on the horrific practice of “Gay conversion”. It’s important for someone such as yourself who has experienced that garbage to intelligently and articulately expose the vile practice which is a form of torturing inflicted upon Gay kids.
As to identifying and labelling, I feel a Gay person needs to proclaim in no uncertain terms they are in fact Gay. We are born this way and there is no way to erase the fact that we are Gay. To deny that gives creedance to those who deem our being as a “lifestyle choice”..
Donston
Your perspective is how things would be if people and sociology were collectively basic and straightforward.
I would argue that there’s three main components to orientation: sexual, romantic and philic. Sexual is your attractions, arousal, sexual desire, sexual comfort and sexual preferences. The romantic part is your romantic instincts, romantic passions, romantic longing and your emotional investment. The philic part is stuff like who you like getting persistent affirmation and attention from, who you like sleeping next to, living with and your day-to-(gay)-day comfort. While depending on the individual, any of those three main parts could contain dimensions, preferences, fluidity, curiosities and/or contradictions.
Beyond the three main parts of orientation there’s a lot of things that dictate people. Sense of gender or gender expressions can affect orientation or “lifestyle”. Some people are so emotionally fragile or insecure that they fear being with the type of person that they really want and feel most fulfillment and investment towards. They fear getting their heart broken. So, they stick with another type of person, at least for a while. There are people who contend with trauma, mental health struggles, drug addictions, paraphilias, megalomania instincts, self-destructive instincts. Those things might affect someone’s sense of self or behaviors. There are people who are inherently bi but choose to live exclusively homo or hetero lifestyles. There are people who are inherently homo or hetero but will indulge other things for whatever reasons or choose to live another type of way for whatever reasons. There are plenty of folks who are very motivated by things like homophobia, trans-phobia, internalized homophobia, misandry, self-misandry, misogyny, self-misogyny, family, religion, sociology and social validation, clout, ego, politics, finances. What if you do start to experience fluidity or curiosities? Does that automatically mean that you shift identities? And where does trans and “non-binary” people fit into the orientation identity equation?
All of this stuff is why identity is so convoluted and such a point of contention. Things have never been and will never be as clear cut as some would like. And that isn’t to flat-out dismiss identity or inherent orientation or “pride”. It’s to simply say that there’s so much different stuff going on, so many different types of people, different motivations and different journeys. I understand the practical, personal and political use of identity. My biggest problem is that we’ve given identity so much weight that we don’t put in effort to understand each other and understand one another’s struggles beyond identities. While obsessing over other people’s identities or about what celebs or folks on social media are truly about doesn’t ultimately serve much purpose.
Heywood Jablowme
Oh come on, who believes for a second that his father (!) asked such a ludicrously complex question as “Why not just date who you date,” he continued, “sleep with who you sleep with, and live a life undefined by the cardboard faces of a box you built for yourself?” Even a transgender non-binary professor of Queer Studies at Oberlin College would not ask such a ridiculous f*cking question.
Donston
Perhaps he didn’t word it exactly that way. But I’ve heard my fair share of “straight” people talk about not understanding the need to “come out” or identify as something. I’ve heard my fair share of “just do what you do”. Even if he used those exact words it wouldn’t be too extreme. People are more hyper aware than ever of identity politics.
Cam
It’s a tactic some parents use to try to keep open the possibility that their kid might still end up in a hetero relationship. “If they don’t call it gay, lesbian, bi, trans, etc…, then it isn’t real”.
I don’t know this situation, but the question doesn’t surprise me.
Vince
Haha. The first thing I thought of when this was posted was this is a donston’s dream post.
Donston
Yep, discussions on identity politics, sexuality, orientation are the main reason I come to this god-forsaken site. However, they post something like this every other week. It’s not anything revelatory.
msfrost
Only you can create a label for yourself. A label is where you start, not where you end.
Frank Treadway
HeyJacob, lots of philosophical meandering here….just come down to the simple label of you are Mr. Human and you are reacting to what your natural urges express. Let that be your way of living and you’ll be one great person. Keep it simple.
sdterp
As someone who came of age amid the HIV/AIDS epidemic, who fought to gain access, who served in the military pre-Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, who watched his friends die in droves (all in their early-20s to mid-30s), it seems somewhat offensive when people eschew such “labels.” We fought to have these labels accepted and while there’s always work to do, for the most part, we won. And while this topic is raked over the coals once more, even Jacob cannot complete this essay without labeling others (such as churches and non-binary people). I get it. Labels are a two-way sword but they offer more than the I-Don’t-Want-To-Be-Labeled generation seem to realize. While Jacob does acknowledge the sense of community that labels can offer, they also offer protection and unity.
What’s more, we will never be able to completely remove labels. It’s how our brains are hardwired. Millions of years of evolution are hard to elude. Friend or foe, food or poison. They all helped us survive. Today, labels aren’t always a matter of survival (though sometimes they are). I’m not sure where all of the animosity comes from. Yes, labels are fraught with problems, but they’re also loaded with benefits.
Joshooeerr
This is an astute piece. Yes, not defining yourself can be liberating in some instances, but just as often it’s an act of evasion, confusion or even cowardice.
Dick Mayhem
What a great question from your Dad. ?
edwardnvirginia
Quote
language is a living form that is fundamentally abstract. It is a progression that changes as time does also. The use of labels defining sexuality reflects living during a time in which those very labels still hold value. Liberation comes by using these words in conjunction with laughter at the inherently absurd nature of their very existence.
Unquote
Yes, but, the writer FAILS to continue as they/he/she/ze should do. For example the term – ‘liberation’ – is a abstract term in the English language – which the writer claims earlier is ‘fundamentally abstract’ and ‘changes as time does’. Therefore, just as the writer – correctly – claims that the term and concept of ‘labels’ are inherently unstable, it is obvious that the term and concept of ‘liberation’ is inherently unstable.
This conundrum raises many questions that the writer must explain, or, to label the writer’s writing: its all just BBS (‘beautiful bull shit’).
The write must explain, for example,
1. does he/they/she/ze claim that ‘liberation’ is something essential – stable over time and place and throughout history and cultures – and not subject of the transitions of meaning or time that the writer claims for other terms in language?
2.if ‘essential’, then how is it essential/stable? is it essential/stable because of some written law (e.g. in the Constitution)? but don’t Constitution’s change? is it essential/stable because we want it to be/wish it to be ( but isn’t that view merely immature, childish, privileged?).
3. if ‘liberation’ is not essential/stable then who decides what ‘liberation’ is? a Constitutional authority, e.g. a Congress or a Supreme Court? a Grand Inquisitor? the Chinese Communist Party? the grand Imam? or does the individual decide from their gut (the way we currently allow people to declare that they are not their birth gender identity – because they know it ‘in their gut’?
Dear writer please exercise you privilege and duty as a writer to write this out – more completely and clearly – because it is your DUTY and your PRIVILEGE. And you know what ‘wokety’ folks think of PRIVILEGE!
Aires the Ram
I think this is a made-up story by the writer, to get responses on this website. But whether made-up or not, it is a common story that young homosexual men often face in the early stages of discovering their sexuality and identity. I have the perspective of being older than probably most (not all) on here. I know what people who “identified” and “labeled” as ‘different’ were treated by society at large, in the 60’s & 70’s, and throughout most of the 80’s and into the plague years. The fact that homosexual men stood up and identified themselves beginning in the 60’s, fought for their equal rights as citizens, gave way to huge progress on that front. Things would be much worse today for homosexual men, if they had not. Labels, back then, were necessary for this to happen. Now, looking back, one thing I particularly don’t like about the label “gay”, “bi”, or any of the rest, is what damage has been done, overall, to homosexual men, as it relates to the entirety of the male population. In the very late 1800’s, the trial of Oscar Wilde in Britain, was one of the pivotal periods in our history that set an “identity” to men of the homosexual persuasion, separate from the identity of his straight comrades. Even though I believe this separate identity, and subsequent labels were necessary for us to fight for our equality some 70 years later, I believe a great dis-service was done to homosexual men, by separating them from the rest of the male population. It set us up as separate and un-equal, less than, straight men. It allowed straight men and most of the rest of society to look down upon us in many different and destructive ways, that are too numerous to mention here. FFWD>>> 2020. Young guys who are on the Kinsey Scale closer to the homosexual side than the heterosexual side, often reject the term “Gay”. It’s not because they have a sense of fear & nothing towards those guys who like guys, it’s because they hate what they see in the parts of the “gay community”, that is really no “community” at all, as it was 30-40 years ago. The necessity of homosexual men in the Western world to ghettoize themselves out of fear of the larger community, most specifically the larger male community, has all but disappeared in most places, not all, but most. Not all young homosexual men live in NYC or LA or large cities at all, the vast majority live elsewhere, and do not feel identified with what consists of the “gay” community in the large cities. What they see in those big city ‘communities’ is something that goes against who they really are. This is because they view the word “gay” as something that connotes so much more than same sex desire. The word gay describes a whole cultural and political movement that promotes anti-male feminism, victim mentality, and leftist politics. As a man, whey would they even think of treating men as oppressors and masculinity as a universal evil? The big city so-called “gay community” insists that they think of themselves as a struggling minority, when in fact they are doing just fine. The big city “gay” community wants to dictate how they must vote, so as to be a “member” of the “gay” community, as if they even want to, which they don’t. These young guys don’t think of themselves as “victims” of anything, and do not gravitate to leftist politics and identity politics to save themselves from the perceived Big Bad Wolf. They’re guys. They hang with their friends are “guys”, and when in their groups of friends, you’ll find them all over the Kinsey Scale, and accepting of each other. That’s why they don’t want to be associated with TODAY’S “gay community”. It simply doesn’t fit who they are, how think, or how they want to lives their lives. Yes, much of their ‘freedom’ (if you will), is due to all the fighting for equality that went on 40 years ago, but that doesn’t mean they should be forced to live, think, identify, vote, like 40 years ago. They have no need nowadays for the separate and inequality those of us of “a certain age” had back in the day. It doesn’t apply to them. That is the reality of their world.
Heywood Jablowme
That’s all great… until the first time they get GAY-BASHED by some guy and they end up in the hospital.
Then suddenly they learn to “identify” as gay.
(Also, Aires, is there something about your self-hating homophobia and Trump butt-kissing that prevents you from using paragraph breaks?)
Heywood Jablowme
This weird “no labels” obsession seems to be the exclusive obsession of a upper-middle-class twits who have been lucky enough to sail through middle school and high school without ever getting bullied or assaulted. Then they sail through college on mom’s & dad’s money – a fact that by itself tends to discourage rocking the familial boat with any annoying “identity” revelations, and can even discourage coming out at all – and in college they hear the soothing voices of authority (like Donston?) assuring them that “labels” are old-fashioned and are now unnecessary.
Then out in the real world, they get physically assaulted and called a fagg0t and they realize the cops in the big city (or worse, the suburb) couldn’t care less, or side with the criminals. Then they realize the real world has a label for them after all: fagg0t.
Cam
A lot of the anti-Label crowd, are just people who don’t want to make a declaration so they can float around in the sphere of the closet but without being accused of being in the closet.
Certain groups don’t have the luxury of not labeling themselves. To struggle to avoid the label of what you are is falling into the right wing’s trap.