"Real Girls"

[smc]

Bionca is absolutely correct when she writes, "It is a mark of privilege to be able to say that labels don't matter." So, I want to clarify: it's not that I think they do not matter -- obviously, if we are to live in a society in which we are all labeled, it is something with which we must constantly deal -- but that I long for the time when the will not matter. Getting there is most likely a process that involves a combination of finding the "correct" or "best" label that frees us from the stigmas associated with ones previously used, and vigilantly speaking out against labeling.

It is abhorrent that anyone should "have basic choices and aspects of their identity and life routinely questioned, discounted, and invalidated," as Bionca writes. It is true that people "will be labeled and probably incorrectly at that." I am just suggesting some ways to deal with this by those of us who, as Bionca so correctly notes, are not as often victimized by such actions.

Vigilance demands that we never fail to notice when it is happening and take every opportunity to speak out against it.

Last night, I watched the film "Milk." I was struck by Harvey Milk's strategy for building opposition to the anti-gay Proposition 6 in California back in 1978. He encouraged every gay man and lesbian in the state to come out to their friends, families, neighbors, work colleagues, etc. His argument was that once everyone realized that they knew someone who would be victimized by the passage of the proposition, it would turn a lot of minds away from voting yes. That same concept informs my approach to dismissing labels.

So, while at the same time we must live with them, and their is value in finding "better" ones, I strongly encourage everyone to take the most simple approach -- whenever possible -- and simply refuse to be labeled, in whatever way one can. Both are part of the "self-determination" that Bionca so aptly identifies as "the first step to liberation for all of us."