As we all grow up and develop our personalities, we research ourselves to find the definition or group that embodies all of us. This journey includes finding a label for our sexuality, gender, fashion, hobbies, et cetera. With getting older and expanding my taste and views on myself, I have been looking back on my journey with labels and tags and I have come to the current conclusion that identifiers can bring both freedom and limits. From opening our eyes to new perspectives, the search can lead to an identity as something to be bought, not something that is.  

I will detail my experiences with labels and definitions, which go back to 7th grade, 2014/2015 with my sexuality. All my life, I was labeled gay for my flamboyancy and overt femininity, but I never accepted these labels as my truth out of hatred of others telling me who I was or am. But when my friend who was a lesbian at the time, now a nonbinary masc trans man, explained the definition of bisexual, that moment felt like I was given brand new eyes. 

I delve into research, and by that, I mean going through queer YouTube, watching every single definition video. Through that, I found the word pansexual, and since then, that has been the label that I have stuck with. Over the years I have felt less of a need to speak the details of my sexuality for any reason. For one, as I accepted my queerness, I fully grasped the audacity deep within cishet people. Many of the straight people I have encountered in my life are so privy to knowing my orientation within the first few conversations of our meeting. Some even go as far as to ask me about my position in a bedroom setting. It became about trying to force me into a box of what they perceive my queerness as, as opposed to trying to comprehend my identity. So what I have concluded for myself is still identify with pansexual, but more important I feel better defined as queer politically which Britannica describes as a “description of sexuality that rejects normative definitions of appropriate feminine and masculine sexual behavior… a lens used to challenge and explore how power structures, media, artistic texts, and activists perpetuate gender and sex-based binaries.”  

In a dreary world that is constantly collapsing on itself, I now feel more importance in surrounding myself and pushing ideas that align with those politics. Queer theory is dismantling all predefined societal standards that limit and divide us. That is an ideology I have been striving for in my work, and I associate myself with it, et cetera. As well, I used queer in this context to note who exactly I am against. Those who believe and are determined to take away my rights and not see me as worthy of life. It is very extreme, but frankly, those are times we are in. Identifiers may be intangible, and the quest for ourselves is

tedious, confusing, and almost never-ending. Yet, they are necessary for how we move through the world and convey ourselves to others.