labels – The Hermits' Rest

You Pay a Price for Being Yourself

This was written sort of without editing. I’m glad I have a place to mull over my thoughts, even ones I will find silly tomorrow after some sleep.
Suna the self absorbed (yet another put-down label; maybe that should be introspective)

I’ve been thinking and thinking about a meme I saw earlier this week. It’s one of those things that’s intended to empower and embolden women in the workplace and beyond. I used to take those things to heart and work hard to be my authentic self.

**I added: Negative: Keep pointing out problems.**

I grew up being told to be quiet, that children should be seen and not heard. I was labeled bossy, a lot, for being assertive. I asked way to many questions. When there was an elephant in a room, I pointed it out. These were not good. I was difficult.

Also, I was empathetic, tried to help others, and didn’t mind sharing credit. I asked things politely rather than barking out orders, and didn’t mind at all explaining why I wanted things done a certain way. I felt like that got buy-in and created cohesive teams. That was good, I think.

It can truly be exhausting to have to pretend you are someone you’re not in order to keep a job, keep the peace, keep your reputation, etc. And whoa, have I done a lot of all those things in the past few years. I’ve been constantly checking my Zoom camera to be sure I’m smiling and looking pleasant in meetings. I’ve deleted and rewritten so many emails, chat posts, Facebook statuses, and so on. I do pretty well most of the time.

But, damn, when you are suffering from anxiety and dealing with a lot of difficult family and work situations, you can let your real self leak out without meaning to. You can express an actual opinion, point out something that’s not right, ask if something is true or the best thing to do, use the wrong tone of voice (guilty as charged)…you know, all those things that get you labeled like the ones that are in that meme.

Can we, as women, who are expected to smooth things over, agree with what the leaders say, follow instructions rather than making rules, and all those frustrating unspoken expectations, ever, actually be ourselves? What if yourself is sarcastic? What if yourself gets tired of inefficiency? What if yourself gets irritated when told to just follow orders when you’re used to helping make decisions? (Or if you are my male spouse, your real self is tired of being told not to be so brusque. They have their own sets of expectations.)

Nope, we can’t be those selves. We have to spend years in therapy, reading self-help books, and getting sanctimonious “coaching” from our bosses, so we can meekly fit in, and only speak up when it’s time to do what we are asked to do.

So, no, I do not plan to act on the meme above. I give up. I think it’s just as stressful and unproductive to let my more prickly nature show as to try to smooth my nature out to meet expectations. I’ve thought about this a lot. I’m not going to make waves, express my opinions, or debate in work or public.

I’ll be me with my inner circle, and just do what I have to do to get by with others. I’ll make a bad impression to some and a good impression to others and it won’t matter at all, in the long run. The key is that I won’t be stressing myself out either trying to conform or trying to be my fierce self. No wonder both Lee and I are plumb tired. We’re tired of trying to matter.

I’m tired of being tired. The price of authenticity is just too high for me.

I’m Still Thinking about the Effects of Labels for Mental Illness and Disability

Every once in a while, a subject gets into my head and just stays there, gnawing away at my free time and causing me to think and think. The topic of how often we refer to negative things in terms once used to describe people living with disabilities or mental illnesses just won’t go away. Now that I am aware of how often these terms are used, I see (or hear) them everywhere, especially in casual conversation, but sometimes even in more serious speech and writing. This has led me to a loose collection of not-all-that-related thoughts.

So much negativity! Image by *@kelsen28 via Twenty20*

Where do we see these terms?

I do NOT see these pejorative terms used (often) in the news, magazines, or academic books. That’s a good sign I guess. The one exception seems to be the “crippled economy” and the like. I am wondering of that persists because circumstances actually can cripple concepts like economies, degrees of debt, etc., by causing metaphorical injuries to them. Perhaps that word can be seen as more neutral, then?

I can see how people can easily get confused until they practice using alternate ways of referring to people. The subtle nuances of finding neutral ways to refer to people dealing with various challenges can take some time to sink in. Luckily, there are plenty of resources to guide you (but don’t read too many, because they can start to conflict). I’m just glad to see there seems to be at least some effort made in new media and places like that.

I want my talking heads to leave the name calling to the people they interview. Image by *@amauritorezan via Twenty20*.

Who’s most likely to use these terms?

Another understanding I’ve reached is that it’s no wonder people use these disability kinds of terms to put others down; as a whole, people are still pretty ignorant about actual facts about disabilities of all kinds. I found an interesting article from the UK about the language of 14-year-olds for putting others down about disabilities.

The authors found five themes in the data.

Popular derogatory terms (nuts, psycho, crazy, loony)
Negative emotional states (disturbed, depressed)
Confusion between types of disability (disabled, spastic, dumb)
Actual psychiatric diagnoses (depression, schizophrenia)
Terms related to violence (scary) (I admit, I didn’t see this as violent)

There are lots of lists of words in the article, but the authors concluded that, for the most part, the young people didn’t really know what the words meant and were just using words for emphasis, especially the popular derogatory terms. They were surprised that actual diagnoses weren’t used much, and concerned that the violence words appeared as much as they did (though they were the least used).

We’re just kids, mimicking other kids. Cut us some slack. Or educate us! Image by *@lelia_milaya via Twenty20*.

The article cited above inspires me to cut folks some slack. How many people know where the words “loony” or “spaz” come from? I sure didn’t until I was a lot older than a teen. Many really hurtful utterances probably come from folks just picking a word they’ve heard others use that sounds sufficiently negative to emphasize a point.

I come to the conclusion, based on that emotional maturity stuff I talked about yesterday, that people who are still muddling along at the adolescent stage of emotional maturity, at least with respect to labeling others, are more likely to engage in using disability terms to insult or put people (and ideas) down.

Now I’m back to name calling

On the other hand, name calling, in general is one of my least-favorite human proclivities. It’s something I worked with my children to eliminate (fairly successfully, for the most part, though we did love the word doofus for gently chiding ourselves for making simple errors). People just LOVE labels. And so many people define themselves by the labels others (and they, themselves) assign to them. That’s why I don’t like name-calling and that type of put-downs. They can mess a person up.

Labeling Exercise

So, here’s something to think about. How many labels have people put on you, or you have put on yourself, throughout your life? I’m thinking both positive and negative, by the way. Here’s a list for me, with my internal labels in italics. (note that some of the items in the left column I don’t personally find negative, like sensitivity and agnostic, and some of my positives are negatives for others.)

Negative	Positive
Fat	Smart
Ugly	Talented
Talkative	Good listener
Stupid	Patient
Unlikeable	Hard worker
Unfriendly	Empathetic
Sensitive	Generous
Unpopular	Kind
Goody-two shoes	Brave
Heathen	Feminist
Agnostic	Spiritually open
Femi-Nazi	Liberal
Libtard	Well read
Intellectual snob	Altruistic
Hysterical	Centered
Nervous	Open minded
Self centered

Look, I made the columns kind of equal, though it was easier to think of the items on the left

As I look at my own list, I can see that some of the labels that have been applied to me sunk in and were very difficult to shake off. Others didn’t bother me at all. I’ll have to ponder why that’s so, but as a first stab (aha, a war metaphor), I’ll guess that labels that point to my insecurities (fat, unlikeable) stuck longer than put-downs that I’m actually proud of (feminist, agnostic).

So, I challenge you to see if you can come up with a list of the things people label you (or you label yourself with). Are they accurate? Have you glommed onto inaccurate ones and believed them at some point in your life? Have you broken away from some labels?

I’ll share more about this later, I guess.

Do You Have a Label You Just Don’t Like?

For the past few days, I’ve been noticing that I cringe when I hear certain words used to label people or things in conversation, on social media, or on television. Some of these are words I know bother other people (like “gypsy,” for personal and business names that the Romani/Romanichal folks would not be fond of because the people using the term aren’t referring to actual gypsies, or naming your pets “Dixie” or “Cracker” or other loaded Southern words in today’s climate).*

The Roma wagons are so cool, though. Image by *@Loreke76 via Twenty20*

Others are just me. I realize that, for some reason, I do not like the word “cheap” when applied to things you buy. I think my internal definition in my idiolect has more to do with poor quality than low cost. In my mind when people say they want a cheap thing, they are saying that they pay more attention to the price of a thing than to how well it will work or how long it will serve, a short-term viewpoint. So, I never refer to things I obtain as cheap. They are inexpensive, which doesn’t have the poor quality connotation that’s really a secondary definition of cheapness. To me.

Back to the first group of words I don’t like, most of them appear to be words that apply to cultural, racial, or national groups. I just recently began to cringe when I hear “Latinx,” after hearing someone say no actual Latino or Latina person would use that word, since it isn’t even Spanish. To them it sounds like white people went and made up a word to solve a problem that didn’t really exist. People who speak Spanish don’t take grammatical gender as literally as English speakers do. How about that? Should I use “Hispanic?” That one has its own issues. Maybe I’ll just call people by their names or refer to their country or origin if they aren’t from the US.

As for these Mexicans, in Mexico, let’s use that term. It was either these guys or some pan flute players. I like mariachi music better than those flutes, which aren’t Mexican anyway.

I guess I know how much people treasure their cultural identities, so I want to use the words members of a particular culture prefer to use, even if they change as time goes on. It would be a LOT easier if there was universal agreement, though. I actually knew someone who preferred “negro” to “Black” or “African American.” Plus, the AA term really doesn’t apply to actual Africans or people from the Caribbean who have moved here. ARGH.

One thing the current movement toward acknowledging the great variety of gender terminology and preferences has taught me is this: it never hurts to ASK someone how they want to be referred to. So, if you don’t know, ASK if a Cajun wants to be called that. ASK what your “indigenous” friend likes their cultural identity to be called.

Let’s call this woman “Quechua” and her alpaca beautiful.

Just don’t be cheap about it. Don’t gyp me. Don’t try to jew me down. When did you start to cringe in this extra cringeworthy paragraph? Do you see why I prefer to be careful with labels and their derivations? It’s not just me being a liberal snowflake (by the way, each snowflake is unique and beautiful, so thanks for calling me that, frenemies!).

Signed,

Suna, she/her, McLeod of the Clan McLeod**

*I have known many dogs named Dixie, and it didn’t use to be controversial. Times change.

**Way too fond of one branch of my Ancestry family tree, perhaps?