My precious label

Not being ironic here. My label is precious. It’s the security blanket I hold onto to convince myself that I’m not insane*.

I’ve read a few blog posts about labels lately, and I guess I could link to them, but I’m a coward. I prefer to sit in my own little corner of the Internet, muttering to myself about what the big players are discussing, so that’s what I’m going to do.

And my take is this: as humans, we label everything, otherwise we wouldn’t understand our world at all. Sometimes such labelling leads to prejudice and oppression, but we can’t do away with it completely. We can’t have a world where there’s no difference between a mountain and a valley, because we wouldn’t be able to give directions, for one.

That said, the area where the valley magically transforms into a mountain is vague and fluid, so no categories are completely fixed. The prototype mountain is pretty easy to point out, and so is the prototype valley, but the further down the mountainside we move, the more uncertain the categorization becomes.

In the same way, my self-chosen label, ‘INTP’, gradually segues into other types, and perhaps no one can tell exactly where the boundaries between them are. I’m not a prototypical INTP, but rather a peripheral/atypical one, but I still want the label.

Because it means I’m not alone. Because it means the way my brain works is valid. (Although my type is often viewed as a lazy, confused asshole who doesn’t try hard enough. Can’t win them all.) The label is a shoulder to cry on, a hand to hold when the world looks at you as though you come from another planet.

And I’m guessing many labels work that way. They transform a vague, confusing mess into a Thing, and with the help of that Thing you can find others who share your experiences, who can give you advice, and who understand. Good labels are good!

Others may find labels suffocating. They may view them as constraining boxes to be broken out of. They want to be larger than a category, to move between poles, to transcend. I too can feel this sometimes with my chosen label. I rebel against my self-imposed INTP-ness and say “Fuck that, I’m a person. I don’t need to be defined.” Bad labels are bad!

Conclusion? People are different. Sometimes a person is different from who they were yesterday. Is this news? I mean… When did “We need to understand that people are unique and celebrate that” become “We need everyone to be fluid and unlabelled”? People are different. Some want the labels. Some don’t want the labels. Fine. Why is this a discussion? Let people have their labels, and let people kick their labels to kingdom come if they want to. It’s all good.

 

* Here used in a negative way, since at this point in my life, I don’t want to be insane. Apologies to anyone who wants to embrace their insanity and finds my wish to conform to society’s norms for psychological health ableist.