Loving without labels

Illustration | Amy Jiao and Yilin Zhu

My unofficial coming out involved me telling my friends in eighth grade that I had a crush on a girl. With complete sincerity, they asked if this made me bi or gay, although their prior knowledge of the boys I was dumbly starry-eyed for throughout elementary school made them lean more towards the former. I said I wasn’t sure, because I wasn’t. I was too occupied with the crush itself to consider the implications it had on my sexuality. My discovery of my queer identity was neither sudden nor gradual. When I realized I had developed feelings for a girl for the first time, I accepted it and allowed it to be a starting point for continuous exploration.

In my first few years of navigating my queer identity—my “baby gay” years as I like to describe them—I was initially fixated on labelling myself. I wondered what to call myself, what I should say when other people asked, what label best suited how I experienced attraction. I used “pansexual” the most at first, as I attributed the prefix pan to be a rejection of the gender binary. (Although now I also understand that bisexuality can have similar interpretations, some considering “bi” to mean attraction to different genders, instead of attraction to just men and women.) Then there was also the umbrella term of “queer” which, while I often use it now, seemed to me at the time too foreign to consider as something that I could use to describe myself.

I was concerned with how I should articulate how I felt, a task that was hard enough in general, but exacerbated in relation to feelings I didn’t fully understand. It worried me whether labelling myself as one sexuality now, would compromise me later if it turned out I wasn’t who I thought I was.

Sometime in high school, whilst scrolling through Tumblr as my baby gay self did, I read a poster that declared we should “experience attraction freely and worry about labels later.” After reading it I had the realization that this struggle I was having with my sexuality—the biggest struggle I had ever had with it—was one I was having for the sake of others. Instead of being concerned with who I was, I was fixating on how to describe it.

There were times when I would develop small crushes on a boy in my grade, and I was confronted with the dilemma of whether I was no longer queer, whether my earlier experiences of having feelings for a girl would be my last. This conflict also had to do with how my insecurities regarding queer identity were still rooted in heteronormativity. I worried about problems I had yet to have. If I were to date a boy, would my friends think my queerness was a passing phase? If I were to marry a man, would my parents eventually forget that I came out to them? I use gender-neutral labels when I refer to my potential spouse, but my mother doesn’t, although I don’t think she does so on purpose.

I joke with friends about playing rock-paper-scissors with my future wife to decide who would carry our first child; make snide comments about never dating a boy because “boys are gross,” but exhale exaggerated, resigned sighs when I inevitably develop feelings for one again; have a long-standing joke about how my friend and I made up the “queer women of colour” brigade in our high school yearbook committee. If so much of my identity revolved around a label, would it be dismantled if I were to stop using it? Although it took me years to come to terms with the answer, I now know it to be a definite “no.”

Labels are important because they help to articulate your specific experience of attraction to other people, but your identity is so much more complex than can be summed up in one word. I think the problem with labels is how their connotations are so often considered to be their definitions. Experiencing rare attraction to the same sex doesn’t mean you have to identify as bisexual, nor does rarely experiencing attraction mean that you have to identify as asexual. It’s not a matter of conforming to the idea that many may hold about how you identify, it’s finding the label that best suits you.

At this point in my life, I understand my identity as it is specific to me. I don’t feel the need to use a label when thinking about my sexuality, but I understand it isn’t this way for everyone.

I’ve never been at a complete consensus with myself about my identity, and perhaps I never will be, but I’m comforted by the notion that I don’t have to adhere to any idea of what label I use to identify myself. Nowadays I’m most comfortable with the umbrella term “queer,” and if someone asks for specifics on that, I will divulge so long as it matters enough to them that I can explain more thoroughly. My identity as it relates to other people isn’t as important as I once thought. It matters more when I engage in the queer community and show solidarity with my LGBTQ+ peers, but beyond that, it remains imperative to myself only.

I realize the exploration of sexuality is unending and continuously important, but that’s why I prioritize its significance in relation to me the most. If I can help it, I don’t want to put any restrictions on myself. Why should we make the navigation of identity about anyone but ourselves? Labels can be empowering, so long as we ensure that we define them, instead of allowing them to define us. We decide what labels mean to us or whether they mean anything at all. Now, when I find myself at odds with my identity again, I recite the same sentiments: I am queer without the need for explanation; I am queer because I say I am.