The Labels and Keywords of our Identities
What is the difference between a label and a keyword?
Recently, I spoke with some other trans women about the pros and cons of labels. I was saying that labels can be a very powerful force for personal identification: by labeling myself, and choosing what labels to apply and how, I can forge my own identity out of its many disparate parts. I choose the labels ‘woman,’ ‘trans,’ ‘Chicagoan,’ ‘Jewish,’ ‘geek,’ and so on, and I get to decide what those labels mean for me.
Another woman in the group countered, “But what about when someone else places a label on you?” She said part of her problem identifying as ‘trans’ is all of the negative baggage associated with the word. Her feelings of discomfort were exacerbated by a generational gap: I was probably half her age, and the labels ‘trans’ and ‘queer’ meant very different things to her than they do for me.
Our different ideas of the emotional weight of those labels got me thinking about the semantics of the word label, and what other words might better describe how we create our identities.
How is label defined? Well…
a short word or phrase descriptive of a person, group, intellectual movement, etc.
But that doesn’t leave much room for flexibility, as this other woman noted. I felt freed by being able to pick and choose my labels, whereas she felt confined by their imposed-by-others meanings. What other words could we use to get to that feeling of freedom?
I sort of love the idea of co-opting the Internet search concept of ‘keywords‘:
a word that serves as a key, as to the meaning of another word, a sentence, passage, or the like: Search the database for the keyword “Ireland.”
That definition makes it really clear that a keyword is part of the explanation or meaning of the whole concept, but certainly not the entirety of the concept. Applying it to people, my ‘keywords’ – trans, woman, Jewish, etc – serve as ‘keys’ to understanding my larger identity. They become “something that affords a means of access” to understanding me as a whole, integrated individual who is made up of a complicated history and a wide variety of interests and passions.
I particularly like this because, as I was forming my understanding of myself as a trans person, the words ‘trans,’ ‘transgender,’ and ‘transsexual’ were keywords that I used to discover websites about other people like myself. They literally figuratively became keys that opened the horizons of my nascent queer identity.
I don’t see ‘keyword’ catching on as a replacement for ‘label’ when it comes to individual identification. Unless you’re a computer geek, ‘keyword’ probably isn’t associated with positive connotations, and may have no connotations at all. (Unless you’re a library geek, in which case you may find yourself with the same warm fuzzies the word gives me, as a computer geek.) Nevertheless, I think it’s really important to consider how we define our identities, and to use every tool and trick in the book – including re-purposing other words as needed – to be able to label or keyword or define or whatever-the-word-is ourselves, and not let other people do it for us.
Themocracy
keywords: i like it!
I’m glad. Thanks for stopping by
no worries – i linked this post the other day, sorry i forgot to let you know!
[...] not idenities Posted in Uncategorized by genderqueer2genderqueer on April 26, 2010 Keywords, not labels was linked to by nix’s and all I could think was hell [...]
Cool, do you mind if I link to this from the Shakesville Blogaround? I don’t know if you have any bandwithlimts or whatnot.
I’d love a link. I don’t have any bandwidth limits to worry about, but I’ll keep my fingers crossed that the site will stay up under heavy load.
It’s posted. I don’t know how many readers it will bring. Shakesvilles a mid sized blog and the readers links don’t get quite as many clicks as the offical links.
I guess it didn’t bring in as many people as I hoped sorry.
No need to be sorry! Thanks for the link.
I’ve actually told people I had keywords for a long time — meaning any word that guaranteed to start a conversation or connection.
I think that blended really well with self-identification because a keyword is something you use when searching for more information, whereas a label is something to put on an item when you file it or put it on a shelf. Anyway, I’ve been in the habit of telling peeps my keywords (queer, trans, bi, sustainable, cybertheory, vegetarian, etc) and folks seem to roll with it. I find it freeing because it implies I like to talk about and explore thise topics/issues/identities, not necessarily that I’m entrenched in a position.
“Tags” are becoming more popular though. But they seems more label-y.
Yes! And I agree about ‘tags,’ too – they just don’t have the same associations as keywords.