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MSA322's picture

Labels, should we keep them?

Labeling and categorizing are often perceived with negative connotations. We've discussed in class and most of us agreed on keeping the labels, acknowledging that they are flawed. I believe that language plays a huge role in defining things and in helping to explain and elaborate on the meaning of these "labels." Although labeling could be seen as stereotyping and can be disadvantageous to society, without labels we cannot communicate the existence of something such as sexuality. I do believe that labels exist for a reason, and they can be good in that they make something "known" to us. The labels that we have are too few to include all the variations of sexuality because of the spectrum that we have. This spectrum is where we think these labels are flawed because they don't include, for example, all the various meanings of homosexuality. I think that in order for us to eliminate or decrease the disadvantages that labels can contribute to our society, we should perhaps invest in new ways of sorting and labeling by elaborating on sexuality and better communicating with each other so we are not excluding one section of the spectrum and we get rid of the "everything else" category.

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