There are so many labels these days.
I could tell you I’m a Black, queer, masculine-presenting, neurodivergent, disabled person, or I could tell you my name and keep it pushing.
I don’t know many people who just walk up to you and introduce themselves with their labels off-rip so maybe that’s a bad example but I hope you get what I mean. Many people these days subscribe to many different labels for themselves in order to find community. Labels have historically been used to help people from marginalized communities find each other and relate to one another. But these once helpful labels have become harmful.
Looking at the LGBTQ+ community now, what we see is gatekeeping that has risen to an unhealthy level, where people have to meet every single strict standard to fit into a group. This to me feels like doing heteronormitivity with extra steps. Why are we as a community not just going with the flow. This strict binary often alienates queer people who don’t fit into a box. At what point do we say having a million labels is counterproductive and we should just get rid of them and be people?
Unruly Bodies 
The obsession that various minority communities have with gatekeeping and labeling everything is a paradox that I have yet to fully understand the reasoning behind, though I do have a suspicion. Within the Black community, there are so many labels. Lightskin, Brownskin, Darkskin, Mixed, etc. In this context, Lightskin Black people are often deemed “better”. I think this stems back to the overarching ideology and desire to be as close to “normal” as possible. You can’t change your race, but you can minimize it by associating yourself closer to whiteness.
I can feel for both sides in the labelling debate.
When it comes to researching people of a specific demographic, and finding similar people, having detailed labelling helps us get specific. Labelling within a community is often done by people labelling themselves. By labelling yourself, it creates a name for the unnamed feeling one may be experiencing.
The idea that labelling creates gatekeeping is one I can understand, but challenge. It’s not necessarily that the label itself is gatekeeping, it’s the way that people respond to the label. Whether or not you give something a label, usually people will notice you’re different before you recognize it yourself.
In my opinion, if someone wants a specific label, go for it, and if not, right on. It’s then the community’s job to be accepting of everyone and not choose which labels are in-groups and who’s not welcome.
yasss! Labels suck and they are always applied to everything I try to imagine a world without labels and how things could be much better if we didn’t have them, but then I also think that if the time we’re in now were to suddenly go to having no labels, it will cause chaos cause look how they are about the labels we have now and then I try to understand why it would affect them so much when in reality people should just mind their business and live their own lives. I feel like people pay too much attention to what other people have going on in their life, but then again they will never stop paying attention to other people’s lives so all around everything sucks
I always think about this. Would we have as many issues today as we do in a universe without labels? In reality our brains would have to be completely wired differently to not automatically categorize one another. If labels didn’t exist people would still organize themselves with others who have something in common with them whether that be appearance or desires. But since labels do exist and we aren’t in that hypothetical universe, labels make us feel safer and seen in spaces that are for us when we are against “other spaces” that may be trying to erase us. There are so many layers to identity because it shapes our lives and hardships that we face in the world.
This could be a reason why so many people have a hard time with labeling themselves. I really resonate with thinking of myself as just a person. A lot of the “requirements” for labels make them unnecessary sometimes. There will always be someone in every community who isn’t accepting and finds a way to break down someone, although we have communities to build people up. I’m not sure if it is because of some sort of insecurities, but it always made me hesitant to even label myself.