A Discusion About Labels

I am asexual

Because I don’t feel physical attraction
I am panromantic 

Or maybe I’m Polyromantic?

It’s hard to know 

In theory guys are okay 

But in practice the hyper sexuality 

That so often is hand in hand with masculinity…

Is off putting

Labels are difficult. 

They are confusing.

I use a lot of labels to define myself

And even I’m confused by them sometimes.

That’s why I understand why people ask

“Why do you need so many labels?

You’re a person and that’s all that matters!”

Yes

In a perfect world 

I wouldn’t need my labels

In a perfect world

Everybody would love freely

Without the judgment of others

But step back and understand 

This isn’t a perfect world

People are being killed

Children are left homeless

People are assaulted 

All because of their labels.

We live in a world where your label is assumed to be “straight” until further notice

We live in a world where

Anything that deviates from the norm is mislabeled

It is bad

It is confusion

It is broken

It is unnatural

Until we live in a perfect world 

We need our words, our labels

To talk about ourselves 

To make our problems known

To know we aren’t broken

That’s why labels are here

So nobody labels themselves broken 

Or bad

Or unnatural 

Or any number of other words 

That through some mistake 

Have been deemed as acceptable to refer to a living being

Until we live in a world

Where society as a whole

Stops assuming that you are heterosexual
Until proven otherwise

Until we don’t act differently around people based on a label

Until we accept that people feel varying degrees of attraction to varying types of people

Until we don’t need labels anymore

They will exist 

As long as we need to have these conversations 

The words shall continue to exist