Why there are more identity labels?
A Hypothesis about the empowering rule of search engines and internet based communities.
When I was younger I rarely heard about LGBT identities. I heard about the idea of trans women thanks to Dana International, the winner of the Eurovision Song Contest 1998 in Birmingham with the song “Diva”. I was a kid in the late 90’s who’s family rarely watched TV in Hebrew, yet I somehow heard about her. I started *actually* using the internet only around 2002, and even then, I wasn’t very good at it (I sort of grew up in a cult).
Lots of things changed since these days, one of them beng the availability of the internet. At 2002 I became a forum member about Digimon, which was one of my obsessions. Digimon opened me to Anime in general, and the people in the communities I was in, including Digimon, opened me to new ideas about gender, sexuality and life. I was 14, and Digimon was never really popular in Israel, and was considered a “Pokemon knockoff”. Also, it was considered a thing for little kids. I found there fan fiction and fan art dealing with issues like love, sexuality (including not hetero sexuality), astrology and abuse. It was the first time in my life I found a community of people who liked the thing I liked, and were ready to talk about it seriously.
Later in life (2010) I became an admin of a similar forum about bisexuality and other multi-attractions. Before that I never had a place to talk about my attractions and to learn about all the the different identities under the multi-attraction umbrella.
The forum opened me to the queer community and activism, and since then I learned a lot about myself, including gender, disability and attractions.
The number of identity lables I use for myself now is longer then it was 15 years ago. Back then, I only had uncertain feelings and emotions, without any words. Finding words helped me to learn about who I am. And those words could be used in search engines. And once you have a group of people with search engines, they can find each other. They can search using not specific descriptions, but this is usually not very helpful. But once you find the right words — they are keys. Keys for people finding each other, communities building, new words and consepts emerging, new ideas florish.
All the weirdos, special snowflakes and people who couldn’t find people like them around them found each other. They invented words to talk about similar issues they faced. In groups, humans are stronger and can achieve a lot. Groups of people who never had power before, because they were alone, found it.
I am Bisexual, autistic, trans* and chronically ill. Without the internet, I couldn’t talk to most people in a way they understood me. I couldn’t find people who were similar to me in their experience, so I could learn from them. Before I learned to use the Internet (it took me a long time, even as a teen), my knowledge was confined to what I could find in the library, see on TV on the rare occasions I could decide what to watch, the radio (which I never controlled) and newspapers I found.
I sort of grew up in a demi-cult, and being autistic ment even harder times to find other points of view, and additional words I didn’t knew about, because there were no communities who talked about those things.
We are living in a times of great change. People can whine about how special snowflakes like me are ruining everything. It is because, for the first time, we found friends.
Not all aspects of the change Internet brought to our lives is good, but I welcome this one.
☆☆☆
In memory of Vered Fireberger, a poet, chosen sister and an activist, who died because of untreated post trauma and institutional transphobia.
