#apologies if this is out of left field or tangential to what your post is about#with all due respect op your post about the precision of language is incredibly vague i cannot see exactly what you are trying to get at#so i am just going for it basically
this post is a bit vague, but mostly it is out of context. when i say "a word whose definition is whatever suits the speakers preference and makes them the most comfortable" that's not a nebulous, hyperbolic description of language use i disagree with, that's a good few people's genuine self-admitted opinion on how identity labels should function linguistically, and it's one i vehemently disagree with. this was made directly following me discussing a screenshot of someone arguing that if men who are attracted to women feel that their attraction to women is queer, they should be considered lesbians if that's the label they prefer. this is a way of understanding both queerness and lesbianism that i think is pretty much entirely nonfunctional and ultimately detrimental.
i understand that words' definitions are not divinely handed down units of fact devoid from any social/moral context, and their use needs to be subject to scrutiny and open to debate. which to me falls under the umbrella of "flexible to the same degree that the rest of a given language is." however, i think the idea that a specific individual's preferences and comfort take precedent over a collective agreement on what shared traits define a specific marginalized goes beyond that flexibility, and is almost an anti-language stance. like you said, we need to reckon with the mechanics of how that agreement is established, but if someone's stance is that reaching any sort of agreement on the subject is inherently exclusionary and restrictive "gatekeeping", is it possible to meet them in the middle? i have a hard time seeing how.
as mortalityplays said, anyone is free to attempt to push language in the direction they want it to go, but you can't force other people to understand you. imo nobody who has advocated for these hyper-individualistic and vibes-based constructions of romantic and sexual identity has made a case for their perspective that manages to go beyond "why should you care how anyone else identifies! what gives you the right to tell anyone how to describe themselves!" i personally believe we have a lot of reasons to care about how other people use language, for many reasons that overlap with the points you've brought up above. and although i don't have either the "right" or the ability to actually control how anyone else refers to themselves or others, what i can do is continue make a case for my own perspective. does that clear things up?
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