The Power Of Naming

There is a lot of discussion about ‘labels’. People can be very afraid of them. Often this is rooted in discomfort at naming something or someone to diverge from the construct of normal. For example, when I describe myself as brown around white people, they can display visible and sometimes vocal discomfort and confusion. Fairly recently I actually had someone reply with ‘what do you mean?’, as if describing myself as brown was some kind of political stance or challenge. The same goes for Autistic, Queer, Trans. There is a real fear around the naming of ‘other’.

Then there is the idea that if we could achieve an equal, respectful state of community existence, labels wouldn’t be needed. Our needs-based labels would fall away due to our needs being met by design, and our identifier labels wouldn’t be needed because the hierarchy that created ‘normal’ and ‘other’ would no longer exist. There would be no need for these terms - we would just go about living without having to use labels to fight oppression.