It's Not Your Place To Dictate Anyone's Sexuality. Labels Are Supposed To Make People Feel More Secure,

It's not your place to dictate anyone's sexuality. Labels are supposed to make people feel more secure, not make them feel unaccepted. This is why so many LGBTQIA members feel like they have no place in the community.

Lesbians and gay men are the main perpetrators of this. This is exclusionary, and the same kind of thinking that labels bi women sluts and erases bi men. Stop it and give people room to figure it out

I was originally going to ignore this bc it’s a pretty insane take, but it kept coming back up in my mind and led me to think about labeling in general and how my generation goes about it (and unfortunately for you anon, I stayed just as radical).

There’s two types of labels: static, or inherent, and active, or chosen, labels. Static/inherent labels are things that you are born with, and are obviously observable to everyone that looks at you. Race and sex, most notably. Those do not require you to do anything to make them true, they just are. These are the labels in which rules and stereotypes are pretty much pointless because the color of your skin or your genitals do not determine anything about you other than the fact you have them. It is medical information and nothing more, and does not influence your personality.

However active/chosen labels DO need rules and regulations or they are completely pointless. Even things such as sexual orientation (which you are born with) need you to actively engage with them, even if it is just thinking “I’m gay”, for them to be realized. You are not born, a naked infant, and the doctor looks at you and pronounces you gay, or anarchist punk, or goth, or feminist, etc etc. And since they require actions to fulfill, then having set requirements for a category is vital for us to accurately communicate information to others. And if you do not fit the criteria for a certain label, the only thing that makes any sense is to choose another label that does fit you.

This conflation of the two types of labels has lead to a lot of nightmare messes for the queer community especially, but also even with people claiming they can be conservative and goth and it’s actually more alternative to be conservative and all that mess. Have requirements to be part of a group is literally the foundation for forming a group outside of just the general public, otherwise there is no point in doing so at all.

Also, Anon honestly seems to have more biphobia than I do, which I feel like I come across a lot. As soon as I mention potential bisexuality in someone people immediately start telling me not to slut shame, that I’m erasing bisexual men (somehow?) etc, when never once did I ever say anything bad about bisexual women. I’m close friends with bi women and I love them dearly whether or not they choose to date men because that’s their prerogative. However when I say “bisexual”, you hear “bad”. I do not think it is bad for women to be attracted to men. My complaint is when you claim lesbianism, a female same-sex only orientation, while constantly expressing attraction to men, because that reinforces the “she hasn’t found the right dick yet” narrative that puts lesbians in danger. I was literally just given that line yesterday and then stalked for 45 minutes by a creepy man.

Lesbians are not attracted to men. If you are attracted to men and women you are bisexual/pansexual/whatever word you want to use to express a polysexual orientation. And if you are bisexual, I love you and thank you for your self-reflection and honesty with yourself. Labels exist to give a name to your lived reality, no label is better or worse or cooler than another, and trying to stretch labels to fit things they aren’t is really pointless when the other label that describes you perfectly is literally right there.