h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Oh... definately... and I guess, to an extent quite understnadly... all humans seem to like to catogrise things... On a basic level for survival 'edible', 'not edible', 'poisenious', etc... right though to now, where, in particular, the media wants 'a word', for a 'person' or event, a short phrase, to 'sum' something up... etc

I like the train analogy too

Someone used it in relation to identity at a talk I attended, but just said that it was a train between A and B, so if you got on at A, you had to get off at B, but of course there are stations in between, and different lines leading from them

The line between hetero and homo is quite a popular way of looking at it (I think that's the Kinsey Scale) but my mental picture of the "spectrum" is higher dimensional, with gender and attraction interlinked (so for example, people could be identifying as a feminine man who likes feminine men, or a masculine woman who likes feminine women, or someone who is neither a man nor a woman and likes feminine women and so on).

*searches and finds http://www.theknoxstudent.com/news/2008/03/06/workshop-talk-bend-gender-and-break-binaries/ * - yes, the line is the Kinsey Scale, and there are other academic tools that look in more dimensions

Fascinating

Reading this conversation on my desktop.

Watching Boy George singing Karma Chameleon on my laptop.

TRiG.

The reason I chose this title for the journal entry is probably because I have a theoretically complicated relationship with labels. Theoretically complicated. In practise, it's quite simple: I'm white, gay, male, cisgender, atheist. All those sorts of categories can be complicated for many people, but I fit quite neatly into the little boxes. And I think it's sort of silly to reject a label if it fits you perfectly. The only one that's at all tricky for me is nationality. I'm Irish, yes, but ... there's definitely a but there.

Reminds me of a conversation with a friend:
Me: Some people reject labels altogether.
Her: Yes. I have a word for people like that.



And I recall, back in the days when I used Facebook, getting into a very fractious conversation with someone who held that any act of labelling, even self-labelling, is an act of violence. He ended up by labelling me a troll.



On the other hand, I do acknowledge that labels *are* very difficult for some people. Take my nationality confusion and turn it up to eleven. So demanding labels from people when they don't have one they're comfortable with, or applying our own labels to them, is an act which is, in its own way, violent. But I still like categorising things.

I suppose two of my mantras are useful here:
* Words have different meanings in different contexts.
* All concepts, and all categories, have fuzzy edges.

TRiG.

If I read about that sort of stuff too much (like in teh article you linked too, above, about the seminar thing), my brain just starts hurting!
It still supprises me a bit, soemtimes, just how 'gender', and/or 'sex' blind I am, in some ways... I'll often find myself thinking 'oo, waht a sexy voice', or some such, thing, whilst listening to something on the wireless (OK< the radio), absolutely without having clocked if its a male or female voice or anything So, I guess, to some extent, sex/gender is j 'just another' 'aspect' of someone... they might be black, white, a scientist, a musition, ginger, tall, short, by just the same tolken, their being 'male' or 'female', or 'gay', or 'straight', or 'trans', or ... wahtever, is just 'another' aspect of THEM... and that's just it; they're the person. 'The person', as an whole, not just some particular aspect of that whole, all those individaual chracteristics, labels, etc., they're just the things, that go to makeing 'that whole'.... having said which I'd find it a bit confusing now, in some ways were I to fall with a woman... but... taht's only because as far as I recalled, I was 'off on a differnt branch line of the network', at the moment (to return to the train analagy)
Now my heads hurting again

The nationality aspect of "identity" isn't one I really wanted to bring up. I'm Irish, and see it as a simple statement of geography. But not everyone does. Some people say "no, my ancestors came from Scotland, so I'm British, not Irish".

All our ancestors came from somewhere else. The problem comes when you start thinking that "Irishness", "Englishness" and "Indian-ness" are mutually exclusive categories, and have national characteristics.

Um. I suppose part of it is that the same labels can mean completely different things to different people. I suppose I bring it up because it's the only insight I have into conflicting labels. All my other labels I can think of are pretty cut and dried.

TRiG.

Well my sexuality is too boring or too complicated to describe. Otherwise I would have gone with that.

"I'm Irish, yes, but ... there's definitely a but there."

I began writing an Entry called 'Forty shades of Anglo-Irish' but I gave up. Had I started a few years later it might have been fifty shades, I suppose; I was quoting the Johnny Cash song 'Forty Shades of Green'.

There is a logical fallacy named after 'the Real Scotsman'. It goes:

All Scotsmen wear kilts (or eat porridge or whatever)
-But so and so is Scottish and doesn't wear kilts.
-He's not a real Scotsman.

I have absolutely no national sense of identity at all, really 'British' is good enough a label to use, though I guess I should* use 'English' but...

It's the "either or" thing that I guess we're all talking about.

yeh... and then those that are both 'either' and* 'or', who really bugger up the otterwise nice binary simplicity and loverly symitry of it all

I'd like a T-shirt that reads "Both Either And Or"

Me too... well a blouse...

Actually, what would be really rather cool (IMO), would be a tee-shirt, 'covered in labels'..... printed on it, obviously, but kinda made to look like little paper labels/card labels on string, that one might attach to a bag... and each with a differnt 'label' printed on it... plenty of contradictory ones, or mututally esxclusive ones... but just lots of them... Differnt nationalities, races, genders, sexes, orientations, etc., etc., just all muddles up together...

I'd like a t-shirt of an otter buggering up the nice binary simplicity and loverly symitry of it all.

I've got a photo of just* that somewhere on my harddrive... I'm sure... I think... I'll E-mail it to you and you can get the tee shirt printed!

Khaos Komix sells a T-shirt covered in these terms. Each one has a blank white disc beside it. And, along with the shirt, you get some badges which you can pin beside the appropriate terms. So you can choose your labels.

TRiG.

Here's a good advert from Pantene on the subject of labels and sexism.

http://t.co/qaLz8oHLC0

totally love that ad (if it's the Pantene ad from the Philippines)