Reading Your Labels

I love words. I love them the way a painter loves brushes, like a chef loves a sharp knife. They are what let us express history, culture, philosophy, love, loss, invention, innovation. They are the building blocks of ideas. I love well chosen, well expressed, well paired words.

I also think that we have too many of them - or maybe just a need to utilize them excessively.

I wasn't always a words person. As a kid, if I'd had the relentless scrutiny and screening that many kids nowadays have, I would have been diagnosed as having a language disorder or delay. I didn't say anything until I was 3. It was hard for me to tie a sound to an image. I thought - I often still think - in images. I'm lousy at those word association games. You know, the ones where you're supposed to say the first word that comes into your head when someone says another word. If you say "dog," I don't think, I don't know, "bark" or "cat" or any other word. I see, in my head, an image of a dog like you'd find in a child's primer - a dog of indeterminate breed and size. I'd have to think pretty hard to come up with anything else. If you say "house," I see a cartoon drawing of a house. Isn't that the point of words, to bring to mind the object or idea that they describe?

That doesn't mean that I was inarticulate. My first words were a phrase: "Good girl." I'd gone potty, and my adored big sister told me that I was a good girl. I was delighted, so I repeated it. I never did the "dada" thing; I went straight to sentences from there.

I was around three when my dad took me with him to the Block S, his morning hangout for coffee with his friends, one day. My mom was at work, and the big kids were at school, so I was with my retired dad until they got home. I was a quiet, serious, standoffish child, and I was not responding to his friends' attempts to interact with me. My dad leaned down and said, "Aren't you going to say hello?"

My response: "I do not know these gentlemen. Perhaps if I knew them, I would speak to them."

The men roared with laughter. My dad was delighted. I was ticked off. Did they think that I was a baby? Did they expect baby talk? Why was it so funny that I was capable of communicating? I seethed. The man working the counter offered me an ice cream cone, and my dad said that I could have it, even though it was before lunch. That was very unusual, and calmed me down a little bit, but I was still offended that they apparently expected baby talk.

When I was a child, behaviors like this were just considered personality traits. People would describe their own, or someone else's, behavior with descriptive sentences: "She's chatty." "He's slow to warm up." "She has a temper." "He's a daydreamer." Now, everyone has to diagnose, catalog and label things: "He's on the autism spectrum." "She has ADHD."

Mind you, I do not think that there's any character judgement implicit in any medical diagnosis, whether it affects your body or your brain. I don't think there's anything "wrong" or embarrassing about any of it. I'm just a description person. It's more helpful to me if you drop your child off for a play date and say, "He dislikes loud noises" than it is to give me a medical diagnosis. It's the same thing if you're, say, an adult turning down an invitation. "I don't like crowds" is completely sufficient. I don't need the name of a condition.

I seem to be in the minority with this. People are forever giving me armchair diagnoses for me and my family members. These have included autism, delayed development syndrome, aphasia, sensory processing disorder, social anxiety disorder, oppositional defiance disorder, anger management disorder, attachment disorder, and I'm sure, many that I have forgotten. I know that these are very real things, and again, that there is no shame in any of them. Still, I'd rather leave my medical diagnosing to my doctors. I'd also much rather focus on behaviors, personalities and needs, and I don't need a label to do that.

Other people seem to function better when handed labels, and I don't understand this.

When my youngest daughter was very small, as part of trying to figure out her digestive issues, our doctor suggested temporarily eliminating dairy from her diet. When we went out to pizza, we'd ask for a personal pizza for her, with her favorite toppings and no cheese. You'd have thought that we asked them to make her food standing on their heads and singing opera. They acted like it was a huge imposition. We also were sure to get at least one nasty remark, usually, "Why even bother eating it?" or, "It's not pizza without cheese." SO annoying.

I kept wanting to say, "It's quicker and easier. It saves the restaurant money. You get paid the same, regardless. Why do you care what I order?" But I didn't.

Instead, I started saying something inaccurate. I started saying, "My daughter is allergic to dairy. She'd like..." and then ordering. It was amazing. Suddenly, everyone was friendly and helpful and cheerful, sometimes in the extreme. They'd shower the child with attention, or assure me that they used all clean pans and gloves for her food. Why couldn't they do that without my giving them a label? Why couldn't they just assume that we had a perfectly good reason for our order, or that it shouldn't make any difference what the reason was?

I spent years telling people that reclining seats caused me pain - a backache and a numb or tingling left leg. So many people assured me that I was wrong. (I cannot get over how many times in my life someone has told me that I don't think or feel something. What is that bizarre behavior?) If I had the audacity to repeat myself, I'd either be told to lose weight (far and away the favorite), or I'd hear things like, "That's not even physically possible. They make chairs like that because they're designed around human anatomy." People actually got quite angry, sometimes. If I was stubborn enough to say, "I don't know what to tell you. I just know that it hurts," I'd get lectures and/or be labeled a hysteric and attention seeker.

Then came a diagnosis of scoliosis. Suddenly, people were very solicitous and wanted to know how they could make me comfortable. When I reminded someone that they'd previously insisted that it "was not physically possible" that reclining chairs caused me pain, I heard, "Well, it's not, if you're normal."

So - once a doctor gave me an explanation, it was possible to imagine that there might be a physical cause for something I'd said for my whole life. Why was it not possible to imagine that there was something very real, but unknown or undiagnosed, that caused the problem before then? And why was it not OK to just let me choose chairs that were comfortable to me without having to justify why I liked them and disliked others?

I haven't ever gotten an answer that I find reasonable to that and similar questions. Usually, it's some variation of, "People just want to know that there's an actual reason." That makes no sense to me. The reason exists, whether you or I know or understand it or not. And the fact that we were eliminating dairy from my daughter's diet, and the fact that reclining chairs hurt, were indeed "actual" reasons; but people found those reasons unacceptable. They wanted a label, a box, a filing system. They wanted to agree with and approve of the reason.

I'm sorry, that's just pushy and controlling. Knock that crap off.

I don't understand the way others choose to label themselves, either.

Sometimes, I'll have conversations with people in which I think that we're on the same page. They'll say, "I never felt like I fit in with the other kids." Me either. I still don't feel like I fit in. "I wanted to play different things than the other girls (or boys, if they're male) did." Me too. I was catching snakes and lizards and getting muddy. "I made friends easier with kids of the opposite gender." Me too. I understood the boys; the girls often baffled me. I still understand my male friends quicker and easier than I do my girlfriends. "I dressed differently than the other girls (or boys)." I still do; I spend most of my time in athletic shoes. I don't even own heels. I was one of the only women in a pantsuit at a wedding I recently attended (and I wore loafers with it). "I always identified with the characters of the opposite gender in cartoons and movies." Me too. Ask me who I consider my alter ego from favorite childhood shows, and it's Mickey Mouse, Bambi and Kermit the Frog. "I was never interested in photos of guys (or girls) in skimpy clothes."  Me too. I hate scanty clothing on anyone, really, but I simply do not respond to Magic Mike, killer-6-pack-abs images of men. A girlfriend of mine recently posted a Facebook photo of naked male butts, with some kind of compliment on it. I don't find anybody's butt attractive. Butts are funny looking. "I wasn't interested in flirting with the opposite gender." Me either. I'm not entirely sure that I understand flirting, and I sure can't do it. "I'd see a really pretty girl, and daydream about getting to know her." Yeah, I was always awed by beautiful girls, too, because I am not one. If they were talented, too, they might as well be from another planet. It was dazzling.

Anyway, after several minutes of conversation like this, when I'm starting to think that the other person understands me, which is really cool because it's rare that I feel understood, they'll say, "That's how I always knew that I was gay." Um - what? That makes no sense to me. Because I'm not gay. That's like saying, "I always knew that I'd be an accountant because I wore these shoes and this hairstyle in elementary school." I mean, you can have whatever self identity you have for whatever reasons make sense to you, but to me, the logic doesn't track. It's like saying, "Bob is a boy. Bob has brown hair. Conclusion: boys have brown hair." It might be true sometimes, and people will point to those times to say, "See, I was right," but what about the times it isn't true? Those can't all be anomalies. I think that the human experience is much more wide and varied than we like to think it is. We try to subdivide and categorize and label, instead of just saying, "Human beings come in an astonishing amount of variety."

We're fairly obsessed with "normal." "Well, most people who (fill in the blank) are (fill in the label)," people tell me over and over. It's not even possible to ask most people, given the sheer number of humans on the planet! Plus, what's "normal" varies wildly with region, age and time frame. For instance, in general, having lived in rural communities and city environments, I can tell you that what's considered "normal" or desirable in a woman in rural areas - loves to hunt, fish and drink beer - is considered "butch" and probably lesbian in cities. A man who's slim, impeccably dressed (with buffed nails) and a knowledge of cooking is considered "normal" and desirable in urban environments, but extremely effeminate and suspect in rural ones. Neither one is right or wrong, I think - the problem is in our insistence on categorizing and making people fit into boxes. ("Normal" is next to irrelevant to me.)

For instance, when I was younger, the word "gay" was pretty much all encompassing. It meant someone who had sexual relations with a person of the same gender. Then, society felt the need to have a word for men who fit that description, and another for women who did. I found that kind of odd; there's no separate word for men who have relationships with the opposite gender and women who have relationships with the opposite gender, but OK. A few years went by, and there were new terms to describe people based on their sexual orientation. Now, there's much talk that the widely used term of LGBT, which encompasses several of those descriptions, is too limiting. We need more letters that stand for more orientations. Apparently, we need a Q; in the past, "queer" was a not very nice slang term for a homosexual person, but today it apparently means something else. I recently watched two lovely, well intentioned teens arguing over what the proposed A stood for. "It's for Asexual. Some people don't want to have sex at all." "No, it's not! It's for Ally! It's for straight people who are on the side of people who aren't straight! You can't take our letter from us!"

I'm in favor of stopping the usage of all the words that categorize people according to their sexual relationships. Isn't "human" enough? Do we need to know anything else? I'm not talking about shame. I don't think we need to be ashamed. I just think that private lives need to be private.

Recently, someone told me that they were "pansexual." Another friend referred to themselves as "cisgender." I had no idea what either of those terms meant. (I've since found out, but I have no idea why someone would announce it, especially to casual friends. I don't tell people that I'm heterosexual,  or monogamous, or religious, or a parent, or any other thing that I am, and of which I am decidedly not ashamed, when I meet them. I let them find that stuff out by context and conversation, when it's relevant or important, instead of saying, "You must know this when you meet me, so you'll understand me.") Someone else said that they were "gender queer." I think I know what that one means, but I don't know why we need it. I'm not sure why I need to know this, either, unless I'm your partner, doctor or clergy. I mean, I don't really want any term that means what I am, except "human." I don't want to discuss my sex life with anyone besides my husband, and, in rarer instances, my doctor or clergy. I don't even want to discuss whether I'm "gender conforming" or "non gender conforming." I do not want more labels and more little boxes, especially when they don't tell me what's important for me to know to converse with you. Do you like music? Art? Sports? Solitude? Adrenaline releasing activities? Quiet? Noise? Puppies? I want to know about you, not about your sex life. And really, although I'm aware that others disagree, that's all those orientation words mean to me, because they focus on one aspect of your life.

I said that to someone, and they said, "No, it's about so much more than that." (I'm not sure how, since it refers to a very narrow band of behavior.) I also heard, "But isn't your sexuality at the very core of how you define yourself?" Nope. My self identity was formed years before I knew that there was such a thing as sexuality. The core of who I am barely touches my sex life.

I know that, to some people, labels mean understanding and inclusion. It means that others will know something important about you, and hopefully that they will accept you, or at least know how to relate to you.

I disagree. I'm tired of titles, labels, diagnoses, little boxes that keep people confined. Trying to keep them straight exhausts me. When you want me to know about you, describe your perfect day, or your favorite memory, or your hopes or fears or plans. Ask me about what I like to do, what I dislike, what I hope and remember and dream. Then, maybe, we'll understand each other a little better.

And I won't be left wondering what, exactly, your label means. Or what you expect me to do about it.