Labels

Wit and insight from NTGBR

My favourite label at the moment is Kinsey 6. It’s obscure, pseudo-scientific and sounds like a pop group or superhero alliance.

“Hello, I’m a Kinsey 6. We defeated the Fantastic 4 and upstaged the Jackson 5 in 1973.”

Seriously, I’m fed up with labels as well.

I was there when Gay was just starting to eclipse Homosexual as the most popular term for pooftas. Then came the two great heresies – LGBT which humourless lesbians inflicted on the gay world and the originally provocative term Queer which a minority of equally humourless gay men appropriated for their own dreary purposes.

Post-gay was originally coined by those idealistic young souls who thought they could get through life without using labels altogether (or hanging out in the gay ghetto). I gave up on the great post-gay project several years ago (before I became a Christian) when I asked someone, “Have you met my boyfriend Tom?” and they replied, “Are you gay then?”

Post-gay can also mean “no longer gay” rather than “no longer interested in calling myself gay”. Ex-gay causes too many arguments and nobody in the UK uses it anyway.

Struggler seems to get bandied about a lot in what would be the UK ex-gay community if they were actually ex-gay. I prefer Wobbler (which is also the name of a Norwegian progressive rock band… cool).

Side B is only understood by the elect over at the Gay Christian Network. And there too many sides at GCN now. They’ve done a LGBTXYZ and included everyone and her pansexual dog. Somebody recently petitioned for a Side Y but so far nobody has invented a Side Y-Not?

Chaste makes me giggle. Although it accurately describes the situation.

SSA is fine. But I do get annoyed when some people think this label has the magical power to un-gay the person using it.

Our Diversity audit at work now includes checkboxes for faith and sexual orientation. Atheism/agnosticism, the most popular faith/belief identity in the UK, is not an option. Neither is homosexual. You can declare you are a transgendered gay Rastafarian though. I don’t have a problem ticking Gay on the forms at work but the last time I updated my HR record I simply opted for Christian.