We use labels to identify and organize our daily lives, something increasingly important in this ever-shifting and information gorged world. We need to use extreme caution, however, when applying labels to people. The impulse is rooted in the ‘friend or foe’ survival reflex hardwired into the reptilian brain but human beings are complex creatures comprised of countless moving parts. No solitary cog in the machine can ever truly define or sum up the entirety of a person and yet all too often we as a society fall into the habit doing exactly that. A label should never be a brand.
Bob is an ER nurse, a single father to an adopted son, asexual, an antique model car collector, a Pisces, and a diabetic. Each individual aspect has an importance of its own as well as being a part of the greater whole, the person Bob is. Some play a greater role, some much lesser, and they all have different contexts in which they are more or less relevant at any given time.
Letting any single contributing aspect become an over-arching qualifier, however, not only narrows the scope of identity we can have access to but it also forces that aspect to demand relevance in situations and spaces where it usually wouldn’t or shouldn’t at all. Bob’s asexuality…