A/N: Labels.  And extreme labels.  And me complaining.

The Curse of the In-Betweener

I think I’ve located the source of much of my angst.  It’s quite a simple explanation, as of course all the best explanations are.  Let’s look at a few sets of extremes: religionist.  Atheist.  Gay.  Straight.  If you were to walk up to someone on the street and tell him that you’re gay, or that you’re an atheist, depending upon the person they might be a bit put off.  But they’ll probably not question the matter further.  “Gay,” “atheist,” “straight,” and “religionist” pretty much speak for themselves.

That’s my problem – many of my attributes don’t speak for themselves.  I am cursed by the curse of the in-betweener.  I don’t believe in God(s), but I’m not an atheist.  I’m agnostic.  I like women.  But I’m pretty attached to men, too.  I’m bisexual, neither gay nor straight (or as I prefer to look at it, both gay and straight).

If I were to walk up to someone on the street and announce my agnosticism, their likely response would be: “say what?”  Then I’d bring out the spiel – ‘agnostic’ means that I don’t think we can ever know if God truly exists.  There isn’t enough evidence to go either way on the issue, and in any event God’s existence can never be disproven.  I personally am agnostic because I don’t think the existence of God can be disproven, yet I find no compelling reason to believe in Him.

Then, there’s coming out of the closet: “I’m gay.  Bisexual, actually.  That means I like both sexes.”  I think that actually is a commonly misunderstood concept – that you can like both sexes, that that’s what “bisexual” means.  Personal experience there.

It’s somewhat anti-climactic to be cursed by the curse of the in-betweener.  “Mom – Dad – I’m bi.”  “Pastor – I’m an agnostic.”  It’s almost as if you’re not legitimate if you’re not an extreme.  Not worth the outrage.  Or maybe the language is so confusing that the outrage is muffled, or it never comes.

That’s why, on some level, it was relieving to read an article a few days ago that labeled me an atheist because I think God probably doesn’t exist.  Being an atheist would put me into a definite class that is known outside the secular community.  I’m an extreme.  My label stands without explanation. There’s nothing to be done on the “bisexual” front, since that’s a statement of fact rather than belief.  I could call myself gay, but I’d still be attracted to men.  I could call myself straight, but my eyes would still follow other girls.

I could call myself “atheist” and it would gel with as many – or nearly as many – of my beliefs as calling myself “agnostic” does.  It would require less explanation, both to others and to myself.  I guess my discomfort is due to the fact that neither label exactly corresponds to my beliefs.  Either way I go, there will be misconceptions (or “say what?”s) over what I believe based on my label.

Two solutions: I could invent the new religion of g21lto-ism to describe what I believe and hold to it.  Or I could reject the fallacy of labeling outright and give people a full, point-by-point explanation of my beliefs whenever they ask what my religion is.  Neither extreme is quite worth it, but they serve to illustrate the hackneyed point that the world is not black and white, that labels most of the time don’t work that well in describing reality.  We need words to symbolize concepts, but words are of limited value when there is a whole continuum of possible configurations of different beliefs.  Not even a continuum – bits and pieces of doctrines here and there. 

This realization doesn’t yield simple explanations.  But it does yield the best answers.  Too often we do fall into the idea that the simplest explanations are the best.  Simplicity is certainly easier to deal with.  But, even without mentioning the human agony the black-and-white-all-or-nothing labeling mindset has caused throughout the centuries, the fact remains that it does not even describe reality, and it should be abandoned.

It’s unlikely to happen in the near future.  But the very least you can do, in order to hasten the day of glory when humanity is set free from the bonds of prejudice and preconceived notions, is to stop the annoying habit of slapping labels on people as soon as you’ve heard a few cursory facts about them.  Let them label themselves.  And listen to their explanations before judging based off of their self-label.  If the person in question is anything like me, they’re probably balancing in the unlabel-able land between two extremes.