It amazes me daily that people who are discriminated against for their sexual preference would discriminate against someone else for something as silly as a label. While discrimination is rampant within the entire gay community, I’m really surprised at how bad it actually is in the lesbian community specifically.
Labels. I LOVE LABELS. They help me to understand why some people do some of the things that they do. It gives me a general idea of what to expect from that person. Metrosexual, asexual, dyke, bulldagger, lipstick lesbian, man’s man, ladies' lady. Labels help me to have a general idea of who a person is. What fuels them. But labels can be bad when used to pigeonhole or generalize people.
A label should be just that: a brief description given for purposes of identification. They don’t define the person or people that they’re describing completely. They’re more of a clue. Don’t expect everyone to do everything that their label implies. Not all black people like watermelon. All Chinese people aren’t short. Every gay man is not flamboyant. I understand that not every Stud wears boxers, some of them wear panties all month because they like to, not just on their cycle but out of necessity. Some femmes are aggressive. People are fluid: their behaviors, likes and dislikes are determined by their environments, emotions, families, or by where they were born.
The sooner that people realize both the importance and the non-importance of labels, the more we can understand each other and begin to understand and accept each other.
Whether you identify as Dyke, Boi, Stud, Femme, Butch, Drag King, Lipstick, Corporate, Stem, FTM, Lesbian, Lesbian, Lesbian… You’re still a lesbian.
Who dictates what title you choose? There is no lesbian dictator dressed as Ellen who says, “You, my dear, dress like a boy, so I shall call you a Boi,” or “You, my dear, are very feminine — but you’re aggressive so I shall call you an AG." You either believe in labels and decide which you've decided you are because of your preference, comfort level and how the description fits you, or you don’t like labels and you don’t. If you choose to label yourself then you are the label that you've chosen.
Discrimination is pretty big in our community, more so for titles than any other reason, and there are mainstream sources being used everyday to separate instead of to bring together. There was the TT# on twitter that said #howyouastud where 98 % of the people who were contributing were lesbian. There are also a lot of videos on Youtube that talk about stud on stud, femme on femme and other such topics in a disgusted manner.
You are whatever title you want to be because you want to be. Because you say so and no person or people should judge or attempt to dictate that matter. If I decided that I wanted to be a stud, and in my mind embodied what a stud was, no one should tell me that I’m not because I don’t follow all of the rules of being a stud.
If a person identifies as a stud and chooses to wear thongs or to be pleased sexually in ways that other studs choose not to be, that doesn’t make that person any more or less of a stud. Identifying as Butch doesn’t mean you want to be a man — or maybe it does, but to each her own.
As a community we should be more focused on educating “mainstream people” on who we are and embracing our diversity. We should be more accepting and understanding of each other because of the discrimination we face on a daily basis. You can’t expect people to treat you as an equal when you’re not treating others equally.
Differences most people look at differently and laugh, I look at differently and smile. Embrace your differences, because as they say on Twitter: #WeAllWeGot.
This article appears in Jul 15-21, 2010.