More Than a Label
By Libby Farren, MA, TLLP
Last week, I came across a post on social media that said something like, “Framing and insisting that sexuality is fluid invalidates my lesbianism.” As a lesbian, as someone who experiences gender and sexuality as fluid, dynamic, and ever-evolving, and as someone who aims to build a life, community, relationships, and personal praxis that are queer and binary-breaking, my immediate reaction was hurt and astonishment. Reflecting on my own identity, on my experiences and interactions as a queer person within the LGBTQIA+ community, and on a world bent on fear-mongering and shoring up the modern colonial gender binary, my mind kept coming back to one question: what are the limitations of labels, and when do labels get in the way of building liberatory coalitions that embrace the journey and power of self-discovery and self-definition?
I acknowledge that we live in a society where labels are neither escapable nor avoidable; everything from our snacks to our shoes carries one. On a personal, human level, labels give us ways to understand our experiences and ground our identities in relation to others. In the therapy room, receiving a diagnosis may bring relief and hope, but it may also raise fears of stigma. For multiply marginalized folks, proudly claiming an identity related to race, gender, sexuality, disability, or occupation fills us with purpose and empowerment, and brings us into connection and community with others who share similar and divergent identities.
Yet when labels are treated as concrete, immovable, and all-encompassing, they can be detrimental to our physical, social, psychological, and spiritual health, with impacts that reach far beyond the individual into the broader community. This is where the power of labeling warps into a tool of the oppressor: identity comes to exist along a fixed boundary that requires certain performances or scripts in order to be obtained and claimed in the eyes of others, an oppressive standard that is carefully guarded and used as an evaluative tool in the service of hierarchies. In other words, labels become markers of status or achievement in the service, and the re-creation, of systems of policing, marginalization, oppression, and domination.
Coming to understand the limitlessness and fluidity of my own sexuality and gender emerged out of my own struggle with labels and the pressure I felt to “conform to the script.” I knew I didn’t fit the mold of the colonial gender binary, and yet the labels available to me, or thrust upon me, failed to capture the whole picture. It felt like trying to fit a round peg into a square hole, or, more accurately, like trying to mold slime into a concrete, impermeable shape. Was I bisexual? Pansexual? I had only ever been in relationships with men, so how could I be sure I was a lesbian? I soon found that denying the inherent, limitless beauty of sexuality undermined my capacity to explore my identity for myself, outside the constraints of white supremacist, patriarchal, capitalist systems that oppose fluidity while passing off mere flexibility, and a slightly larger table, as the politics of revolution.
Insisting that LGBTQIA+ people adhere to strict categorization under seemingly immovable, inflexible, determinate labels negates the existence of those who do not seek recognition from the colonial gender binary but aim to defy, resist, challenge, and push its confines in a radical act of love and compassion for self and community. Queer existence and embodiment ask all of us not only to question the narratives and labels we are handed, but to break free from them entirely. I’m reminded of a quote from Patrick Califia, a bisexual, kinky, ex-Mormon trans man who has written about his struggle to embrace self-definition in a world that demands strict categorization: “The vessel is less important than what it contains. People are not commodities. Unlike canned goods, they should not be labeled before they can be tasted.” For me, the label is just the starting point, a stepping stone on the journey toward collective liberation from white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, a journey that brings me a deeper sense of psychological and spiritual purpose that expands beyond the label itself. Being queer, a lesbian, and part of the LGBTQIA+ community extends far beyond the label, and knowing this allows all of us to embrace a life and a love so beautifully strange, fluid, and joyous that it strives to escape any definition at all.
I often think of labels as paints. There are many palettes, brushes, and mediums to explore. If we are handed only a palette of primary colors and a set of brushes, and told we may paint in just one of a few mediums for our work to count as “art,” and if we accept that critique, we limit our imaginative, and therefore liberatory, capacity to paint anything but a replica of the cisheteropatriarchy. But if we lean into the urge to blend, to re-create, to bend across and even break mediums, barriers, and binaries, we take hold of our agency to transform the colors of gender, sexuality, and human life into a breathtaking mosaic of queer existence, one made more colorful, bright, and beautiful with every brushstroke. The possibilities for creation, discovery, and liberation are never-ending and ever-evolving, so why limit ourselves from the start?
Clinically reviewed by Mel Whalen, PhD, LP — Licensed Psychologist, Michigan #6301015759.
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