What's the harm in having labels like demisexual or grey-a? Labels help us understand ourselves, and not everyone is trying to put down the rest of the LGBT movement for selfish reasons. Besides, those words have an important meaning to the people who use them.
No, they don’t. They tie you down. You latch onto one, and it hinders your growth. Tumblr is full of young people asking “I’m [label] but I feel [something that doesn’t fit with label], I’m so confused?” This isn’t understanding. This creates questioning that wouldn’t have happened without those labels, and it worsens the confusion. And whether the answer is “that means you aren’t [label]” or “no, that’s totally fine! [label] is flexible”, it’s still a totally useless label.
We could make up labels for everything surrounding our sexuality in that way. In fact, let’s try, shall we?
Now I’m sexually attracted to women. But more than that, I’m attracted to feminine women. I feel some physical attraction to other women, but romantically, I would only fall for a feminine one. In fact, that attraction to femininity is so strong, between a hyperfeminine boy and a hypermasculine girl, I wouldn’t be sure which to choose. I guess I could call myself a femmeromantic heterosexual, huh?Don’t forget I’m practically only attracted to short people. Or discount my desire for submissive partners only. Should I call myself subromantic? Should I google the Latin word for ‘short’ to include that as some lame new word in my sexual orientation?But with all that said, I would only feel comfortable sleeping with someone when I have a strong bond with them, so I fit the definiton for demisexual too, and because of that limited desire to sleep with someone, I can now push myself into the asexual community.
I could keep going, but at this point I am already a femme-oriented subromantic demisexual grey-a gynosexual.
Do these labels make me understand myself better? Not really. It was actually the thinking process leading to forming such stupid labels that was the part where I learned to understand my feelings. The labels themselves I stuck onto it do nothing but confuse, unnecessarily complicate and/or appropriate legitimate labels.
You are not part of the asexual community for not 24/7 experiencing sexual desire or attraction. You are not different from other sexual people for only feeling sexual attraction under particular circumstances. Every person has their own set of circumstances necessary for feeling sexual feelings. We are all different, but these are all normal and valid variations within one’s sexual orientation.
To overdefine all these small details of one’s sexuality is nothing but special snowflake syndrome, and in doing that, whether you intend to or not, you are appropriating LGBT people’s experiences.
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