Keep Your Subculture Labels, I Don't Want Them

Keep Your Subculture Labels, I Don’t Want Them Are labels for clothes and fruits at the store, or are they suitable for people? The author writes about his discomfort with the labels he has been assigned by society and proposes an alternative viewpoint. BY LUKE MILES

he first subculture, counterculture, whatever-you-want -to-call-it-culture label that I got slapped on me was in the 10 th

grade.

People saw my dyed black hair and raccoon-like black eyeliner, heard that my favourite band was My Chemical Romance, and they instantly called me “emo.”

Since the end of my “emo” days, I’ve shuffled through many fresh labels, and I’ve still got some floating above my head; if I show you my MBTI test results, you might only ever see me as an “INTJ.” If I showed you my mother’s DNA test and you hear about my grandmother’s family history, you might call me a “Jew.” If you see my pharmacy receipts, you’ll know I’m a “transman.” If you see my grocery bills, you’ll know I’m a “vegan.” These are my labels, and they come with a host of expectations and assumptions, and I can guarantee that I meet very few of them. While it might be fair to call me transgender on account of my medical transition and my gender dysphoria, and while it might be fair to call me vegan because I don’t consume any animal products, it wouldn’t be fair to assume that I might be some beacon of counter-culture revolution just because I have a handful of qualities that some people with a lot of power happen to hate. I am not a jumble of stereotypes, I am just me. I am not interested in going to the frontlines for you just because we’re part of the same demographic group; I just happen to have been born in certain ways and believe in certain thing. Defining parts of the world may be important. In that sense, I can get behind labels. It’s smart to have a word that encapsulates an idea, for efficiency purposes. What’s irritating is the obsession with trying to cram a universal experience under the umbrella of a single label; it’s the obsessive belief that I should agree with every single point a member of my communities makes or I’m a bad example of the community. For example, I’ve lost count of the amount of times other trans people have expected me to whine about how much of a victim I am. And granted, being trans isn’t always fun, and maybe I’m privileged, but from my own personal perspective I don’t feel as if every day of my life is some kind of walking nightmare, and if I am having one of those kinds of days, it’s usually entirely about something other than my gender identity.

Creating the narrative that any one person’s life is that simple should not be encouraged, even though it might make sense to do that. For certain subcultural identities, some activists might want to pump out the victim narrative to win people’s sympathy. The problem is, stories where these people overcome adversity or take the world by storm don’t fit that narrative, meaning they end up ignored and overlooked. The experiences of a whole group gets simplified. The individuality of the singular people within the group gets stripped away. All other people begin to see is the narrative.

If someone less than openminded got wind of one or two of my labels, they might never be able to shake this feeling that I’m some sort of one-dimensional counter-culture stand-in for a living sentient being. They might think I have an agenda before they even talk to me—and well, yeah, plenty of times I do have an agenda, but sometimes I just want to watch Netflix and be left in peace.

My entire existence isn’t defined by the parts of me you might think are revolutionary. We’ve probably all heard the phrase, “the personal is the political,” and sometimes that’s true, but many times the personal is just the personal. It’s not connected to the subcultural groups I belong in, it’s just me being a human. So I ask you to ditch the labels and trade them for the assumption that when you talk to me, you’re talking to a human being first and foremost. MM

LUKE MILES is a fourth-year professional writing major and a member of MacMedia Magazine. Find him on Instagram at @l_0909_ke