I think it’s fair to say that I hate labelling people. I’ve often been told that labels are important to understand your identity – like finally settling for gay or queer, or female or male, black, brown, Irish, Chinese, African, middle class – or, from a more intersectional approach, any combination of any label we have or will come up with.
However, these labels deprive people of being who they truly are and often hammer into place the grounds for the discrimination we’re trying to fight. This is not the way. Let me try to convince you that I’m right.
TL;DR
You are not a race, a sex, a gender, a sexuality, a passport, a class, a lineage, whatever. You are a person – round, messy, beautiful, and most of all, just you – being forced to label yourself, pushing you, around object, through a bunch of societal square boxes. Fuck the labels, fuck the stereotypes, fuck the opportunistic segregation that turns human beings into categories.
What if we stopped? What if we judged each other (and ourselves) on how we act, how we treat people, what we contribute, what we’re capable of – not on the thing between our legs, the colour of our skin, where we were born, or who our ancestors were from? What if we built a world with universal basics, of equal opportunity, so that where you start in life doesn’t decide where you can go?
What remains? Everything else. A society where people aren’t black, white, Asian, man, woman, trans, immigrant, native, gay, straight, working class, middle class, or whatever else we have and will come up with. Just people. People, you, me, whoever, who get to define themselves on their own terms. People who are assessed on their merit, not their label. People who can live, love, work and aspire without the weight of inherited labels. True equality by not giving a fuck in the first place.
Our labelling fetish
You could argue that a label is just a label and not evil per se. In a way, that’s true. In fact, I see labels more as an expression of the underlying disease. What I’m fundamentally against is our necessity – our urge – for these labels, and our belief – our fetish – that the labels we assign to, for example, biological characteristics have value in predicting behaviour or defining who you are.
In other words, the labels are thought to be synonymous with the way we act or will act – or, sometimes even, who we are or who others think we are. And more often than not, the label comes with a whole set of rules, obligations, dos and don’ts, and a bunch of stereotypes. Let me give you some examples.
Sexuality labels
You’re labelled a woman and you hook up with another woman. It is now required that you fiddle this into your sexuality label. Perhaps it was the first time, so you need to come out. You need to explain yourself to others. It can also be that you’re labelled a man and you have feelings for another man, but you’re afraid to act on it, because this would require you to fiddle that behaviour into your sexuality label. Your comfortable straight life is about to end and a new queer life awaits you.
Social status labels
Let’s say you’re from a so‑called working‑class family from a small rural village. Your dad worked as a carpenter, your mom took care of the family. Now you want to go to the big city and study sociology. Why would you want to do that? Didn’t your parents give you a good life? Why are you so arrogant? And what’s the point of studying sociology? Can’t you just find a good man and be with him? And if you insist on going to learn something, why don’t you learn a useful skill like your father?
National identity labels
Let’s say your parents were born in Colombia and are now living in the USA, where you were born. Are you American‑Colombian? Colombian‑American? Which lines on the map are you adhering to? Which one do you choose? Or perhaps, which one is chosen for you? If you’re Colombian, you’re not American, and if you’re American, you’re not Colombian? Or can you just be both, and what is the difference? What if you want to move to Colombia later in life? Are you a native or a Gringo?
We like to segregate and compartmentalise basically everybody, including ourselves. We think this makes sense and it helps us to identify ourselves and others. We have an urge to segregate ourselves and others based on all sorts of characteristics, leading to discrimination in various forms with various levels of severity. Is this truly necessary? Or can we change it for the better?
Labels that make sense
Let’s start with a plea that may feel like I’m contradicting myself. A plea for labels. Some forms of segregation actually have merit – meaning some labels have merit – but only those that are undeniably true, in the sense that they describe facts and not fictions, and that they don’t try to fit round people into square boxes.
A heavily debated one at this moment is your sex, often confused with your gender. Medical science recognises two primary sexes: male and female. It can happen that someone is labelled as intersex, which means the person has, from a biological point of view, characteristics that are normally found in just female or male individuals. Is this a label that makes sense? Yes. There are fundamental biological differences based on sex that can play an important role in healthcare. The simplest example: if you’re looking for someone to get pregnant. It’s also rather impossible to inspect someone’s balls for testicular cancer when said person doesn’t have balls. There are more biologically related differences that can be important to someone’s health, but I think you get my point.
Where this labelling effort goes wrong is where we assume that the person’s sex is a starting point for predicting the person’s behaviour and capabilities, leading to it being a starting point to decide what can and cannot be the person’s behaviour. Pretty much where we confuse someone’s sex as synonymous with what a person can or cannot do, or is or isn’t entitled to – where we start to attribute non‑factual values to factual labels.
We apply this same principle to anything we can get our hands on: race, sex, gender, sexuality, country of origin, social status, and much more, including new sub‑labels for any combination of anything we already came up with. We arbitrage the fuck out of this labelling effort as well. Men are different from women, unless we take a group of men—then men are different from men. People from City A are vastly different from the people from City B, unless we isolate City A. In that case, people from Part 1 of City A are vastly different from Part 2 of City A. Migrants are criminals and take up housing – unless they can do cheap labour; then they are hard‑working, new neighbours (who preferably don’t actually live right next to you, but in the shitty part of town).
In my not‑so‑humble opinion, we do this mostly for two reasons. First, to form groups with others, so we have a group of people we belong to – for comfort, for protection, for belonging, really – not to feel alone. Second, we do this to others: sometimes to make sense of the world and the people around us, but also so we can keep them out of our group and potentially even suppress them and consider them second or third rate.
Laying the groundwork for justifying discrimination
In many regards – but also with regard to labelling yourself and others – the USA especially boggles my mind. Americans are often associated with having one of the strongest national identities. Being from the US of A, paying homage to the US flag, thanking military personnel for their service to your great country. Then again, people from the US are so eager to explain how they are Asian‑American, Colombian‑American, Irish‑American, African‑American, Jewish‑American from New York, Mixed‑Race American from the South. Pretty much anything to categorise themselves as being some sub‑variant of American, often related to some distant relatives that once migrated to the US (which is especially ironic when you consider the current stance against immigration).
Where this becomes detrimental is when the person identifying as American Sub‑Category A2 starts expressing and behaving in a way that they link to being Sub‑Category A2, because it becomes, in a way, justifiable to discriminate against a group of people when they say that because of their label they behave in a certain way.
Let’s say Sub‑Category A2 identifies as very outgoing. I personally don’t like it when people I don’t know come up to me and start talking. Now the person from Sub‑Category A2 insists on it. It’s just the way of the Sub‑Category A2 people. I get a bit annoyed, because I want to be left alone. The Sub‑Category A2 person now tells me that I’m wrong, because being outgoing, talking to strangers is not a choice. It’s just the way it is. It’s the way of Sub‑Category A2 people. It’s inherent.
What this does is make sure that when I recognise another person who identifies (or simply looks like others from Sub‑Category A2), I’m going to assume this person is going to invade my personal space as well. This is pretty much how all sorts of discrimination work and, in reverse, this is how all sorts of discrimination are often justified.
We take a person → Put person in a group based on [characteristic] → Assess person’s individual behaviour → Associate individual person’s behaviour with person’s group → Assume (i.e. are convinced) that behaviour of persons of the same group can be predicted based on the behaviour of the other group members.
Opportunistic arbitration
And when you think of it, are these labels we give to ourselves and others actually fitting for who the person is?
We arbitrage ourselves through this process. What I mean is that we usually label to make our own lives easier. At least we think we do. A very outright example of this is, for example, slavery. We take a group of people based on having a different (read: black) skin colour. We dehumanise them so we can use them as commodities – i.e. cheap labour to work them to death on plantations. Forced cheap labour you don’t have to feel bad about, because it’s a second‑, perhaps third‑rate class of people that is being forced.
That said, Black slavery is only a relatively recent example. More ancient societies had slaves as well. The Romans (Latin for slave is “servus”). The ancient Greeks (ancient Greek for slave is “δοῦλος”). In fact we can find slaves in pretty much every ancient society. Slaves were used for doing labour that nobody else wanted to do and, thanks to slaves, the ones that owned slaves didn’t have to do this labour anymore.
What decided if someone was a slave was not based on someone’s race in ancient Rome per se. Being born to a slave‑mother was a good way to become a slave. Having a debt you couldn’t pay off was another. Or being captured during war was another solid way to become a slave. Other ways existed as well, but what they all boil down to is opportunity. You take a characteristic, being born to a slave‑mother (social status), you can use this social status to your advantage (cheap labour) and you tell yourself this is justified based on the social status (moral).
So, how did this escalate from identifying as [something]‑American to slavery in ancient Rome? Because there are two common denominators: segregation and opportunism. We segregate ourselves and others based on arbitrary characteristics in arbitrary situations to seize the opportunity to make our own lives better. We do this in ways to support ourselves by, for example, forming groups, to bond and make friends with others who have the same characteristics (“Hey! You’re also queer, let’s find others who are also queer like us!” or “Hey! We both have ancestors from Ireland. Let’s find a pub together”). We also do this to make our own lives better at the expense of others by using others for our own benefit (“Hey! You’re black. I can use you as a slave because I can dehumanise you based on your different skin colour”).
What labels in fact do is assign an identity to someone – but not based on their abilities, not based on their merit, nor on how they treat themselves and others. These labels are always too simplistic to actually define someone, but for some magical reason we keep thinking they can. We keep labelling and with that assigning (read: assuming) how a person is, if the person is worth your time, if he can be your friend or partner. Based on what?
Labels that protect(ed)
What is true in today’s society is that, due to the fact that we continue to segregate and discriminate based on the labels we assign, we also need these labels as tools to define things like wrongdoing. This raises an interesting paradox about necessity. Am I wrong in saying that we need to get rid of them, because we need these tools? Or am I right, and do we only believe that we need them, but we haven’t solved the actual problem?
Then again, given current societal shit, dismissing labels completely without discussing their current protective merits would be stupidity. This paradox has become reality. Today’s truths are shaped by current actions but also by the effects of what happened in the past. Labels like ‘black’, ‘woman’, ‘trans’ arose not just from self‑identification or only negative segregation. They were also, and often still are, tools to fight inequality and gain visibility for those who are suppressed.
The key question. What was first: the discrimination against which some need protection, or did we start labelling certain groups that looked similar and the discrimination followed? What was first, the discrimination or the label? The chicken or the egg? But more importantly, do these labels really provide protection against discrimination? Or are they just a bandage that doesn’t actually heal the underlying wound, nor cure the disease that caused the wound to begin with? Perhaps they even make it worse.
So, why do we insist on non-merit-based segregations and labelling the fuck out of it to begin with? Why do we insist on judging people, others and ourselves, not based on what we’re capable of but on things we’re born with that say nothing about who we are nor will be in life?
Apologies to Indonesia(ns)
I once had a discussion with a friend of mine. He was also born in the Netherlands. His grandparents moved to the Netherlands from Indonesia, a former Dutch colony. The Dutch government apologized not so long ago for the atrocities that happened during this time. My friend felt that this apology was directed at him as well. I disagree.
My friend never lived in Indonesia during his life. And even if he did, the atrocities committed there happened well before his lifetime. Similar to me – given that we were about the same age and both born in the Netherlands – neither of us is entitled to this apology. Neither of us should be extending it either, since neither of us did or was able to do anything about these atrocities.
When you think about it, claiming otherwise is only possible when you label him “Indonesian” or “Dutch-Indonesian” or something similar and me “Dutch” and then continue to argue that what was done by the Dutch to the Indonesians is not merely attributable to the individuals who did the murdering, raping and plundering, but also to the people we can put in the same “Dutch” and “Indonesian” boxes as well. This is only possible when you segregate me and my friend not on who we are and how we behave, but on characteristics that we’re born with.
So, do I think the current prime minister apologizing for what the Dutch state sanctioned back then and the atrocities that happened under the colonial rule of Indonesia is wrong? Fuck, no! I strongly believe it’s of the utmost importance because it helps to make sure that we move away from the “power to the strongest” colonial murdering and plundering mindset (which is actually resurfacing at the moment of writing). It acknowledges that what happened should never happen again. It teaches us that simply labelling people as different and taking advantage of that doesn’t make it right.
But I also strongly believe that we should not see it in any other way and that what my friend did was another example of opportunistic segregation. He and I were both equally Dutch until it became more beneficial for him to be Indonesian.
The labels “Indonesian” and “Dutch” are important for the fact that the Dutch once saw an opportunity to use these labels to segregate the people living in Indonesia and colonize them. Hence, where I think these labels deserve a place in today’s society is not to label people who are of Indonesian or Dutch descent, but to understand how these labels were used to abuse others in the past. We can still get rid of these labels today without forgetting that this was once different. Even without forgetting that there is still injustice alive today thanks to what was done in the past. If we don’t, my friend and I can never be equal in the sense that only our own actions matter.
So, do I think that he was wrong? Yes and no. We adhere to these labels of ancestral history so strongly and insist on their being part of our identities that his way of thinking is unfortunately normalized. For some descendants, even, these labels are not just opportunistic but tied to real intergenerational trauma and discrimination. But that doesn’t make it the right path towards equality. As a matter of fact, what I think he did was the opposite of achieving equality.
Being Black in the United States
Can you think of a country so racist that when you were black you were by law not allowed to go to university? A country where you weren’t allowed up to 1954 because you belonged to the “negro race”? Of course you can! The United States of America.
When someone hasn’t suffered through something, it’s difficult to argue that the person is a direct victim of it. When it comes to Black slavery and the racism that followed, this argument becomes very difficult. Due to the fact that systemic racism has persisted and still persists to this day, there are very fundamental issues that started with Black slavery and are persistent to some degree to date.
An example is that when you don’t allow a certain group of people based on their race to study – up to very recently, in the case of Black people in the US – people belonging to this group will have lesser chances to get a good job. In the US’ case of systemic racism and societal segregation, in pretty much any way or form, based on the label “black”, you hammer into place that people of the same race will group together and probably marry and have children together as well, making sure that the status quo only becomes harder and harder to change.
Now combine this with the fact that going to university in the US can easily cost north of $50,000 per year. For a kid from black parents, it’s already decided in part what this person’s chances are going to be in society as well. How do you solve this? With labels?
Reparations for those descended from slaves
The state of California proposed a while back a number of measures that should account for reparations of those descended from people from Africa once enslaved in the USA. Without going into the details of the measures, the key here for me is how they determine who the measures are for: which label entitles someone to reparations. The task force voted to recommend “only those individuals who are able to demonstrate that they are the descendants of either an enslaved African American in the United States, or a free African American living in the United States prior to 1900, be eligible for monetary reparations.”
So, the label is “lineage traced to either enslaved African Americans or African Americans before 1900”. It excludes African Americans whose families arrived post‑1900 yet faced the same racism. So, you were labelled black, you weren’t allowed to go to university because of it (among other things), your position in society was therefore partly set in stone before you were even born, but you’re not a victim. Not enough, at least, since you’re not entitled to reparations. Does that sound fair? What if we give reparations to all people who have suffered from racism against Black people?
That said, the USA has a long history of marginalising people based on the demographics they could label. Others known to have suffered from outright discrimination are Irish‑Americans, Asian‑Americans, German‑Americans and Latino‑Americans. So let’s give whoever had a label that was discriminated against reparations. Problem solved?
Well, what about those who descended from people we now consider white but not from Irish or German or other groups once looked down upon that are in a shit position in life and can’t get out of it? Perhaps because they were born to parents in great debt, born to parents with addiction, or simply born into a situation that decided their fate in part from the get‑go?
We can’t keep going like this forever. We need to draw a line somewhere. So, screw those last people. Screw them twice, actually, because any monetary or other reparations will need to be funded with public funds. So, they can just help pay the bill for others.
The no-label approach
When you approach these historical injustices from both a “label” and a “label‑less” point of view, you can actually make sure everyone gets what they deserve. Looking again at Black slavery, you will in fact see two separate problems that intertwine. Firstly, there are the historical atrocities, where people were worked to death. Secondly, there are injustices still present today, at least in part based on – but not limited to (others suffer from inequality as well) nor exclusive to (not all African Americans are worse off) – people’s blacker skin colour.
For the historical atrocities we need the label, so that we can explain the damage that was done and make sure we never forget that people were once labelled – in this case, it’s better to say branded “negros” and “niggers” – and worked to death, raped and murdered. For the current problems, however, we need to get rid of any labels.
For the current injustices still present today we need something else. A true general and inclusive solution that strive to counter injustices of individuals regardless of their label seem to be the only viable solution to come close to equality. Simply because these solutions don’t discriminate and make sure that all get equal opportunities in life. Universal basics like affordable health care and education for all deliver real justice by making sure that all are as close to equal as they can be at birth.
A label‑based approach to fighting a label‑based injustice can never solve the core issues of discrimination. Even more so, it requires further discrimination. The labels only make things worse and, most important and also very harshly true, they cannot undo the past. However unjust things may have been, and however right it may feel to try to reverse everything, the past can never be undone. Perhaps the only true solution, the only reparation, is to strive to make sure that new generations never have to suffer the same.
Going from a man to a woman and vice versa
The label “transgender”, or “trans” – another heavily debated one. In today’s society, this is a label that can have merit, but it is often, and again, misused, out of proportion, and, also again, mostly utterly useless.
Firstly, the label has merit where it’s medically relevant. When people undergo surgery to change their sex, it doesn’t change the person’s entire biology. That is, at least by today’s medical standards, impossible. So, it remains vital information when this person needs further medical care. If only so that the doctor knows that this person has undergone invasive surgery that may be the cause of the medical issues at hand. Therefore, I think it’s important, similar to the labels of men and women as discussed earlier, to keep this label. But only for medical purposes.
However, and secondly, the label “transgender” is not just used for medical purposes. Similar to how the labels “men” and “women” are not just used for medical purposes. Pretty much what we do when someone is already struggling tremendously with the body they were born with is make sure this person’s life is just a little fucking harder. This is, again, one of those situations where I think the labelling is vastly detrimental and utterly useless.
We created the holy institutes of the men and the women, and a lot of people still think nobody is allowed to fuck with them. Because who are you if not for your penis or vagina that was bestowed upon you at birth? What’s left of society when there is no consistent affirmation of your masculinity or femininity?
In a manifesto on sex and gender that I’m still working on, I’ll go into more detail. Simply put, what is the point of differentiation between men and women in everyday life? We like to think it’s one of the most fundamental aspects of life. When you think about it, is it really? Yes, there are differences between men and women. Similar to the fact that there are differences between men and men, and women and women. People are not the same.
But we often think society would fall apart when we deconstruct these constructed gender roles. The world will perish when we tell ourselves that it’s, quite frankly, a fairy tale. The fairy tales of the manly men and the womanly women. There are only so many absolutes, and they are pretty much only, in an absolute sense, relevant to health care and things such as getting pregnant. Even when you argue that on average there are differences between men and women, you may also want to ask yourself: how often is an average relevant? How logical does it sound when you say it out loud? “Yes, this woman is stronger than most men and perfectly able to do construction work, but on average she isn’t, so she is not able to do this job even though she is perfectly able to do it.”
Perhaps during times when you had to fight for your food and 8 to 12 children was the minimum to keep societies growing, there was some merit in strict gender roles. That said, even that is debatable, since it mostly ignores individual ability. Today, it’s pretty much a persistent fairy tale that we feel the need to adhere to.
With that, what does it matter when someone wants, or even better said, needs to change their biological sex? What is the societal point of seeing this as different? Why is this, other than for medical reasons, even relevant to label? In my opinion, for now, until we have abolished all gender labels, why don’t we start naming trans men “men” and trans women “women”?
More discrimination
What I believe is that in modern society these protective labels form an ill‑constructed paradox. Protective labels are often aimed at reversing the negative effects of the discrimination that was done. Or they are aimed at naming a group in the context of naming discrimination and violence against this group.
The paradox that follows is that we are discriminating in order not to discriminate. Even more so, it creates more division. These labels continue to segregate and strengthen the discrimination the label was trying to fight, because they acknowledge that there is a difference to care about. In turn, they hammer into place the grounds for discrimination instead of solving them. Skin colour, lineage, country of origin, sex, gender or pretty much anything we say we shouldn’t discriminate on.
Pretty much, it’s a continuation of discrimination and segregation based on things people are born with and not on who they are and what they can and cannot do. This is what I strived to illustrate with the examples above. The result of the paradox of protective labels is that fucks are still given about non‑merit‑based aspects that people are simply born with and are deemed relevant in the context of their behaviour or their rights and obligations.
Using these protective labels as tools to indicate marginalised groups will probably remain necessary until we cure the disease, but it doesn’t cure the disease itself. It doesn’t cure the disease of discrimination that created the wound that requires the protective labels to begin with, which poses a difficult conundrum: how do you get rid of something that you need to protect yourself against the very thing you’re using to protect yourself?
Who are you?
Without labels, who are you? Let’s simplify things by taking a topic that is related to almost all: national identity, a label that is both merit-based and often discriminatory at the same time.
Two Germans and a second bottle of Gewürztraminer near Stuttgart
If you’re born in Germany, you’re German. Is this true? Often you can say yes. The main reason that this is true is that all the other people, especially the other Germans, believe this to be true. You often have proof as well. For example, a passport. So, what is the truth that makes you German? Your passport or the beliefs of others? Legally speaking, the first, but more often than not it’s the latter.
Someone’s “Germanness” is given to the person at birth since this person was, for example, born in Germany. As a society, we accept this label to be true. Two people who are also German have a bottle of wine or two near Stuttgart, do some loving and, +/- 9 months later, we have a new German.
Several years ago I met what I thought was a German when travelling in Colombia. He was born in Germany, was white, spoke fluent German, had a funny German accent when speaking English and some other “German” characteristics. This German had been living in Medellín for about 6 years. When he was 18 he travelled around Colombia and liked Medellín so much that he decided to stay. For a lack of being able to not use labels, I asked him what it was like for a German to live in Colombia. His answer was: “I wouldn’t know. I’m not German. I’m Colombian.”
What the actual fuck? How can this be? He was still the product of two Germans and a second bottle of Gewürztraminer near Stuttgart. He was still born in Germany. He still spoke German. He must have loved Bockwurst. But now this German is telling me he’s Colombian.
Let’s look at this a bit closer. What if I describe someone who lives in Colombia, speaks Spanish, works as a teacher in Medellín and pays taxes to the Colombian government? What is the nationality of this person? This “German” was in fact more Colombian than a lot of “Colombians” who do not live and work in Colombia.
What this question really boils down to is what makes you “Colombian”. Is it being born in Colombia, is it being born to Colombian parent(s) who may or may not live in Colombia (which poses a bit of a paradox), or is it living, loving and working in Colombia and contributing to the country?
Why this is worth discussing in the first place is because we don’t so much define our own and someone else’s nationality based on the country the person is living in. If it simply was, for example, the country in your passport, where you live and work, where you pay taxes, or other practical, often legal aspects, it would be rather simple. However, what we perceive as someone’s national identity is not merely the legal aspects of being registered in a country and having a passport. The country‑label is a whole set of behavioural and often racial traits that someone has.
We allow people born in other countries to become a “local”, but more often than not this requires decades. Someone needs to speak the native tongue without an accent, needs to have deeply appropriated the cultural beliefs and habits, and has to look like a local as well, which is quite difficult when the stereotype requires certain racial features that you don’t have.
How we in fact go about someone’s national identity is a lot more discriminatory. We treat it as a birthright (in a positive and negative sense). Not just in the sense that you were born in a country. It’s also about the country your parents were born in, your grandparents, and further down the ancestral line. And it is also about the colour of your skin, the one that’s associated with the racial characteristics of a country.
Colonizing Medellín
To give an example, I had a conversation with someone born to Colombian parents (for the sake of not having a better way of saying it) who migrated to the USA. He was born in the USA, grew up there, studied there and was still living there. Now, similar to myself, he was visiting Medellín. He was complaining about the “colonizers” changing his beloved city. What I sort of understood was that by “colonizers” he was referring to Europeans and Americans – i.e. Gringos – who were, in his view, taking over the city with their Gringo money. This made me wonder. If you forgo the racism and just look at one person being born, living and working in the USA and another born, living and working in the EU, both visiting Medellín, both equally flushed with Gringo money: why is one more entitled to the city than the other? Why is one a colonizer and the other a patriot?
And what if we compare this “Colombian‑American” to the “German‑Colombian” who actually lives in Colombia? Who is more “Colombian”?
Labels para todos
Coming back to segregation and opportunism. What I strive to illustrate with these examples is the fact that we apply the same principle constantly. Not just when it concerns national identity, but with pretty much anything. We take a seemingly innocent label and than we take the label and use it for own opportunistic, segregations-based benefits.
What is the actual difference between me and this Colombian‑American from the perspective of the city of Medellín? What is the difference between me, him and the “German” living in Colombia? If you ask me, there is only one Colombian amongst us three. Since, from a factual, non‑racially motivated point of view, only one person is actually living, loving, working or, more simply, part of Colombian society. It’s the “German”.
And this is my issue. Why can’t a German be a Colombian and why is an American a Colombian? Why is someone Irish‑American and why am I Dutch? What is it that has decided this for us? Again, when it involves paying taxes, knowing which embassy to go to, and other practical aspects, the practical, merit-based stuff, it makes sense to use an nationality-label. But when we deviate from direct practical effects, the denomination of nationality becomes rather hazy and often outright discriminatory.
If we now take this principle and apply it to other forms of segregation, we pretty much end up with the same, but often worse since nationality is rather straight forward compared to other aspects of people. Yes, there are biological differences between men and women which play a role in health care, but why does this decide which clothing I’m allowed to wear? Why does this decide what women or men can and cannot do? What the actual fuck does it even mean to be “black” or “white” or “brown”? What if I want to be “purple” are you going to tell me I’m not in the same sense that we tell a person born from black and white parents that the kid is black as well, even thought from a biological point of view the answer could have been white as well?
Going in the right meritocratic way
But are we incapable of getting rid of non-merit-based labels? What I mean is: are we incapable of not giving a fuck about someone’s race, gender, sex, origin, etc. other than, for example, medical or sunscreen reasons? Better said, are we able to fully, and truly start labelling only those things that are facts and threat these fact-based labels as nothing more than just that? I think we can, but it’ll be a bumpy ride.
I gave an example in the manifesto on sexuality about women wearing pants and how this took several hundred years and now it’s so unimportant that it’s not worth mentioning in most societies. The same can be said about immigrants who need several decades, sometimes generations, to become part of the country they live, love and work in until people stop caring about it (it does help if they have the same colour, though). And the same can be said about those who are attracted to the same sex and how it is utterly useless to torture yourself and others with these useless labels.
For each example in this article there are thousands more and all of them can be boiled down to the same. Only where there is true merit, such as for medical reasons, does a label find a purpose in today’s society. The other labels matter because we made them matter.
We decided that people needed to be labelled black not because this would be useful in the event of an expected national sunscreen shortage. No, because they made good slaves. We decided that women couldn’t wear pants. We decided that “homosexuals” are sinners in the eyes of god. These are all fairy tales we once told and often still tell ourselves so we make our own lives better, often making the lives of other worse. Fairy tales that we come up with for a purpose that (we think) is beneficial to us. But in the end, fairy tales about how people are, based on things they are born with, that say jack shit about who the person truly is.
I will survive not being able to wear a skirt without judgement. Others may not. To date, immigrants in court have to prove their sexuality or gender identity to be granted asylum, if they can’t they will be sent back to the country that will prosecute them for it. To date, people are detained, deported and sometimes even killed without due process based on race and ethnicity. To date, people who are forced to adhere to gender roles that are not well for them and chewed out by others for simply wanting something different solely for themselves have insanely high suicide rates.
The simple solution
What if – and bear with me here! – what if we forgo the sex, race, gender, sexuality, country of origin labels and allow people to become part of society the way they are? What if, and again, bear with me, we stop believing in the fairy tales and start assessing people on their actual merits? What if we judge people on how they behave, how they contribute, how they treat themselves and others?
What if we stop being short‑term opportunistic twats that segregate based on what we want today? What if we start thinking long term by creating equal opportunity for everyone and allowing all to contribute to the best of their abilities? Where everyone can aspire to what they can because not the thing that is between their legs, their colour, their origin, their lineage, but their merit? Wouldn’t that just be better for everyone?
In a way, we already do this – but we abandon it when it suits us, still way too often.
For example, a person labelled “woman” wants to do a job labelled “construction work”. We automatically presume that this woman is not able due to the heavy work that is construction work, without even assessing any physical abilities, simply because women are just not as physically strong (on average and in general terms, not specific to construction work, of course). Often resulting in women not being allowed to do this kind of work in the first place. Or, in more progressive societies, women being allowed to do construction work, but expected to fail.
Now we take a situation where someone’s label says that they are fit to do something. For example, a person labelled “man” wants to do a job labelled “construction work”. Do we automatically presume that the man is able and therefore allowed? No, but we know that men in on average and in general are awesome at construction work (but it would be folly to hire someone based on an average and general assumption, of course). So, we continue to assess this man’s individual abilities to do construction work and allow or not allow him based on his merit.
So, if we can assess a person’s ability to do construction work, why can’t we assess a person’s ability to do construction work? Doesn’t really make sense, does it? As a matter of fact, we kind of already decided that there is no point.
When you think about it, when do we ever assess a person on the average of the group we put them in? In the media we do. In politics we do. In general situations and discussions we do. But in real life? We decide who we want to be friends with on an individual level. We decide who we hire for jobs on an individual level. We decide who we trust on an individual level. We decide who we want to have sex with and spend the rest of our lives with on an individual level. So, what is the point of labelling someone on anything other than their individual merits and absolutes? Shall we just change it?
The not so simple reality
As a society, as people, each single individual needs to be part of this solution. Each needs to practise the art of individual merit‑based assessment over labelling, not just when it benefits them, but always. Consistently. Without even thinking about it.
Each person can make this change, without erasing history, by allowing people to be who they are. Simply put, where we take away grounds for discrimination – the shit we label with labels – we can move past the nonsense. We can start moving past segregation and opportunism and move towards a society where people, everybody, including yourself, can be themselves and aspire to whatever they can reach. But we can only do so when we all stop. We can only do it when we truly judge ourselves and others, not on how we assume the person will be, but who the person truly is. In any way or form.
We can start accepting that your national identity is not defined by the country you were born in, but by the country you’re willing to be part of. The country you’re willing to live, love and work in. If both the locals and the newcomers embrace this idea, societies truly become one. We can start accepting that your race is only a factor when deciding how much sunscreen you need and doesn’t define what you want or what you can do, nor what you’re entitled to. We can start accepting that the fact your sex mostly means that you either have a penis or a vagina, but that it doesn’t define what you’re allowed to wear, what work you can do, or which bathroom you should go to. We can start accepting that sexuality is just your own personal, indefinable, unlabellable, but above all beautiful spot on a globe that requires no label and only unencumbered feeling.
We can start accepting that how you act, how you treat others, how you treat yourself, how you’re willing to contribute to the people around you, what you are in fact capable of, what you’re willing to do and what you stand for, defines who you are. Not the label others or yourself have put on you, trying to push your round shape through a bunch of societal square boxes. When we combine this with universal basics for everyone, we’ll have a pretty fucking awesome society.
So, let’s get rid of those fucking labels, shall we?