Labels can be useful. Labels ARE useful. We put them on jars and tins and clothes. They list ingredients and sizes; contents. Labels tell us what is on the inside of something when we can’t see or judge for ourselves.
Labels are for lazy people.
I go by a few labels. Vegan. Anarchist. Feminist. These I’ve appropriated for myself. Other people have picked other ones I go by. Female. Middle Class. White. (I’m not sure what to do about those yet. This post isn’t about my struggles with privilege though. Not directly, anyway. Maybe later, when I’m more sure of what I’m trying to say.)
Vegan. Veegun. It’s just a sound, a signifier, and it means someone who does not use any animal products in their life (as far as knowledge and possibility go, at least). People go vegan for as many reasons as there are vegans, but when I get asked why I don’t eat meat I say ‘because I’m vegan’. Being vegan isn’t why I don’t use animal products. I didn’t decide to become vegan. That is to say, I didn’t give up animal products in order to be able to call myself a vegan. I am a vegan because the definition is somebody who has given up animal products and I have chosen to do that for a multitude of reasons and I have come to that decision via a plethora of reasons. I say ‘vegan’ as shorthand for all the mental gymnastics I went through to get to this point.
Our words become other people’s property as soon as they leave our mouths and fingers. We believe we speak the same language, but language is learnt through context and we have all lived through different contexts. Step-mother to me is a fairly neutral phrase, but in Cinderella it might produce cold sweats and attic flashbacks. Vegan to me is every day, but to the people I meet it is an other-thing, usually, something they are not and the contexts they throw ‘vegan’ into may be different to the context I hold it in.
Anarchist. Anarchy. Without rule. A simple, two word, definition. Two words people understand quickly. Without. Rule. No rulers. Nobody telling you what to do. Nobody telling your neighbour what to do…nobody telling anybody how to act, nobody under rule. Hedonism?
We slap a label on something and we think we know what lies behind the word. Baked beans are beans in tomato sauce, right? (But what kind of beans? And what percentage tomato is the sauce really?) When we see a label – liberal, democracy, left, Stalinist – we believe we understand what it means. We believe we understand where it comes from.
I didn’t read about being vegan and decide to become vegan. I didn’t read about anarchy and decide I wanted to be an anarchist. I’m not sure if anyone does.
My vegan story; Friends of the Earth rang me up and told me that agribusiness contributes more towards greenhouses gases and climate change than transport. I was seeing a vegetarian boy at the time. I knew I needed to eat more healthily. These factors all came together, bubbled away in my consciousness and became a thought, an idea, an action. I cared about the environment. I didn’t drive a car. Eating meat, the raising of animals…that was worse for the world than cars? So, maybe, perhaps, I should cut down on that. So I did. Here I am, using the term vegan to describe something which is by no means as simple as ‘this one word sums up my moral and ethical viewpoints’.
Here I am using the term ‘anarchist’ to sum up my political leanings. Yet, I haven’t read every anarchist writing. I probably don’t agree fully with Goldman or Guerin. I could equally call myself ‘Green’ (if I’d
voted I would have voted Green) but I’m not even fully aware of their policies. My personal viewpoint – that people are inherently good, that a communal way of living is the most beneficial to everybody (EVERYBODY), that we can share and bring the world to a level of equal treatment – ties in best with current and already existing anarchical writings. When I read anarchist politics I go ‘YES! YES!’. It’s easy to say I’m an anarchist.
When we speak, when we use quick labels – boyfriend, wife, rapist – it matters that we don’t start with the label and apply our own beliefs, prejudices and contexts to the word. It’s like bringing your own cutlery to a meal. You might bring a carving knife, but what if they serve soup?
Rapists and paedophiles. Monsters, the lot. Twisted people. Born wrong. Psychopaths.
Always? Really? Never just normal people, frustrated in their lives, jobs, relationships? Finding a situation where they can finally exploit their power? Never?
When we use lazy language and never think to analyse beneath the labels, we create a false world around us, a world of good & bad, wrong & right; a world of rigid rules. Liberal, democrat, Conservative…
Why do people gravitate towards these definitions? Why do we prefer to believe that political parties are one homogenous group who all believe the same doctrine for the same reasons? Why are we so quick to label, and so lazy to look beyond and beneath the language we use?
This is by no means a finished idea. In fact, nothing I post here is ever a finished thought. I’m not sure there is such thing as a finished thought. Please help me to pull this together a bit by exploring your own ideas in the comments.
Tags: labels
[...] every day to define both ourselves and others. But what do they really mean? Amelia Wells at Throwaway Literature discusses how we use labels to navigate social waters and shares the meaning of the ones attached to [...]