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LGBTQ+ Identification in U.S. Now at 7.6%
(news.gallup.com)
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this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2024
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I disagree with this position in this context. I do think that there are cases where labels are unimportant, but they have a primary purpose. For people who feel broken, labels can help them put a word to something they didn't understand otherwise. I didn't realize I was asexual because I hadn't heard the word, or didn't understand it properly, until late high school. For me, my journey of discovery of many queer identities has largely been led by learning about new labels. Underpinning these labels is the perspective of the community that coined a term for it, to put a name to their shared experience.
I think it is incredibly important to remember that labels are descriptive, not prescriptive - they should always be seen as approximations of a person's understanding of themselves, not strict categories, and I think that's the essence of what you're trying to say, but I disagree that we need to focus less on it overall.
8% of the population is a lot of people, and the self-report rate is much higher among younger generations. For queer people this is a show of strength. After all, we are a minority group whose rights and social status are being threatened. I find immense comfort in knowing just how many of us there are now, because unfortunately we do need sheer strength in numbers to achieve justice.
So I think it's very important for queer people to be loud about their labels, I think it is a social good and seeing the sheer size of the community helps me sleep at night. The more people that know how common it is, the more likely it is to be fully tolerated and the easier it gets for people to recognize it within themselves.
The only people sowing division with their use of labels are majority groups touting supremacist ideologies (or bigoted gatekeepers within the queer community); everybody knows what "white pride", "straight pride", and "cis pride" really mean. It is frustrating to see this argument get made in the context of queer labels which are loud by necessity, as if they have the same motives or serve the same purpose.
I don't agree with everything you said, although I do agree more than starting my response that way would normally imply, but I was pleasantly surprised by the way you expressed yourself. You gave a thoughtful and well reasoned reply but more than that you were attempting to see what I was getting at without assuming ill intent on my part. I've grown accustomed to conversations that turn sour very quickly because, despite what the say, I don't think most people actually like talking to people that hold different opinions than them.
This is the kind of discussion we should be having more of as a society. In fact, that was a large part of the point I was trying to make from the start. People often use labels to pre-judge how a conversation will turn out and end up ensuring it goes poorly as a result. Thank you very much for not doing that.
You have also given me some interesting ideas to consider related to labels and how people identify themselves so I thank you for that as well. I still think humans have a tendency to use labels in a negative fashion but the same could be said of a lot of behaviors that aren't inherently negative. There's certainly more angles I could approach this topic from and you've helped me see some of them a bit more clearly.
Thank you for being open-minded.