How Sexual Labels Cheapen Love
The Unpopular Truth of Loving Without Labels
While I know my views on this can be a bit unpopular, at times, I’ll just come out and say it, right off the bat, that labels without action are toxic for love and relationships. There are many reasons for this which I’ll get into in due time, but for now, I’ll say that labels are, in a very real way, antithetical to the actions of loving, and the key word in this sentence, no matter what our love may look like, is action.
One of the most important books on all types of loving, from familial love to sexual relationships, is The Art of Loving, by Erich Fromm. Published in 1956, it’s considered a classic expedition into the psychology of love. Throughout it, Fromm goes on to tear down the distinction between love and loving, explaining that the common misconception that love is something that happens to us or a conditional property of our existence is wrong, and that loving is a verb, an action, not a noun or an adjective. Love doesn’t describe who we are, love describes what we do, in the same way, that we wouldn’t say that someone was a musician who didn’t play music or a medical doctor who didn’t practice medicine. Contemporary discourse has blurred the distinction between activity and identity, and, thanks to our consumer culture, created such a world that our identities are things which…