poll: how do you identify? me: 1. dyke 2. butch 3. south american (don't like hispanic or latina) 4. artist 5. outlaw

I've heard that a lot lately this reference to being fluid and how confining labels are, and it puzzles me a bit. I find labels useful: they characterize the most obvious features of a person, and I think by now everyone knows you can fit into more than one label, you can change labels, and everyone, hopefully, is more than what they first appear to be.

People aren't products. And there are actually many people who DON'T fit into convenient categories, even sometimes. If you feel you can be described in general, easily-understood terms, then more power to you.

i agree to some extent I mean in the larger picture, all WORDS are lables and that's how we communicate... to want to use a word to describe a characteristic such as Butch or Femme is not wrong. To use it to pigeonhole people and not accept their OWN words on how they define themselves, IS wrong. So it's just a matter of being careful... which, as we've seen, larger society is not so much. So I understand both sides. me- artist lesbian: femme-ish student pagan friend

exactly i once opposed labels, buying into the post-feminist idea that labels are confining, limiting. but i felt lost within that fluidity. that freedom -- as backwards as it is to most (i assume) -- wasn't working for me. i've always felt like an outsider, and labels/categories have helped me understand where i stand in this world. they've helped me to feel at ease with being so invisible. in fact, they've helped me to become MORE visible.

Interesting. I see what you are saying. It just doesn't work that way for me. (Today anyways :) Limits and schedules and boundaries give me hives.

yeah but don't you think that other people define you in those terms. btw I am not trying to get you to use lables just asking questions. I think that it is hard to not define yourself with words. Even if you say you do not lable yourself I think you do. I mean that you do use woman, lesbian and you do say "I am..." we all do. Again I am feeling ornery today no water due to pipe bursting before coffee.

Thats the thing about rules they are meant to be broken.

that's funny... i work best under pressure. so even when given a schedule that i don't follow for the most part..."i get with the game" right as deadline approaches. i guess what i'm trying to say is that some of us actually need to establish boundaries in order to function.

hmmm true I do the same. I pull it together as a deadline approaches, but only because I tend to be so undisciplined in general. Even the "not giving myself labels" rule is bendable. :) See ya!

That makes me feel sorry for you somehow.

don't feel sorry for me it's just how i'm able to function. it's what works for me. and that's what matters