Are We More than Labels?
by Dr. David Fawcett on The Bilerico Project - Florida
Too often we are complicit in oversimplifying the identity we express to the world which reinforces the stereotypes about our community such as hypersexuality and superficiality.
Gay men have perfected the art of labeling themselves in ways that are creative, yet at times, constraining to our identity. After fighting to move beyond stereotypes imposed by straight culture, there is something slightly disquieting about self-imposed categories typically based only on external characteristics and sexual behavior. This is a logical outgrowth of life online, especially social (well, sexual) networking sites where we package ourselves as commodities for quick review by the outside world.
The list of gay labels is long and ever-changing, but provides us with a common lexicon by which to classify ourselves and each other: bears, daddies, boys, twinks, tops, bottoms, barebackers, clubkids...even labels related to drug culture such as PNPers and slammers. Some categories are broad and general, and some are more obsessively developed such as the bear codes, which cleverly quantify characteristics such as furriness, the grope factor, and even the slut factor.
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