LittleLychee said 10 years ago:

Labels help to define us easily, help us to feel like we fit in somewhere in this crazy world. Labels are an easy way to get across who we are, what we’re about.

Personally, I haven’t given myself a label regarding sexuality. I know what I like, but it can’t be so easily defined as “straight”, “gay”, “bisexual” or whatever.

Whatflowersareatmyfeet said 10 years ago:

Labels are perfectly freeing and empowering when they’re used properly. Labels make it possible for us to understand ourselves sometimes, but more importantly, they make it possible for us to make ourselves understood to others. Sure—referring to ourselves as ‘demisexuals’, ‘asexuals’, or ‘heterosexuals’ is labeling ourselves. But it isn’t any different—or shouldn’t be—than referring to ourselves as a ‘writer,’ a ‘Canadian,’ a ‘cat person,’ or a ‘student.’ Imagine the potential for communication and intimacy that would be lost if saying ‘I am a(n) ____’ became taboo. In the field of sexuality, communication and intimacy are doubly important, so labels become all the more appropriate there.

The problem is not with labels. It’s with how labels are understood by others. There’s a few different senses of ‘label’ that become problematic. One is when we label others without their consent —a way of shutting down the communication that labels are meant to help us achieve. Another is when we understand labels as being loaded with associations and stereotypes that don’t necessarily fit with it, and that’s a mistaken understanding of a label for much the same reason. Finally, and a bit more complexly, it’s a mistake to understand a label as permanent with respect to a given person. We have to recognize that people are capable of change and that sexuality may be fluid. Much like a ‘student’ may become a ‘writer’ or a ‘Canadian’ may become an ‘American’—an ‘asexual’ may become a ‘demisexual’ if their preferences and desires change. When someone says they don’t want to be labeled, they really just mean that they don’t wish to have their label misused or misunderstood.

If we keep labels free of stereotypes, use them to open communication, and think of people as complex, changing entities, labels become a freeing and necessary tool to understand ourselves and to explain ourselves to others. Humans are verbal creatures, and there’s really just no way we can conceivably avoid them.

Deleted User said 10 years ago:

What is a mental illness and what is not is arbitrary as it is defined in the DSM, which is subject to lobbying, manipulations, errors, and so on. What is absurd is stating that it is an immutable property of a person, sometimes even that it’s “genetic”. This, of course, equals claiming that free will does not exist.

20 years ago there were no pansexual genderqueer otherkin multiple systems. The fact that it became somewhat ‘acceptable’ (although only in particularly bizarre social circles) is not a welcome development by any means. It is an invention of the modern era that produced a generation of attention-starved teenagers that will do absolutely anything to appear unique to their peers if their personality lacks any interesting and/or extraordinary qualities, so they have to resort to invented ones.