The Ink-Pot and the Palette

Maybe a generational thing, maybe an age thing, or maybe just an individual thing. I remember expressing opposition to labels when I was young, and I think young people in general are struggling to define themselves and tend to resent being defined by adults around them. Certainly the hippie generation that paved the way for me in youth was famously anti-label. But then, so were the beatniks who paved the way for them.

But my youthful opposition to being labeled, such as it was, was ironically probably more conformity on my part than a strong rage against machine: it was the cool thing to do. In reality, it's in my nature to find limits and boundaries a source of meaning and strength.

From my reading on asexuality, and in my own experience, the lack of a name, a definition, a category, is a kind of erasure. Discovering that there is, after all, a column someone can put a previously unnamed part of themselves into gives it existence.