mrph | Have I mentioned how much I hate labels? (rant)

The problem is, labels make it so easy to treat people as homogeneous groups who have no existence outside of their label.

People can all-too-easily say "I don't get on with feminists", "I don't like cybergoths", "Americans are just... too much trouble...", "Spookykids are a waste of space", "It's not worth trying to get on with Christians" or "I just don't like Muslims".

I've heard all of these things over the last few weeks, from otherwise sensible people. And it really, really irritates me, because IMHO it implies that you can bundle up everything that's important about someone in one word. And I don't think you can. Most people are covered by a venn diagram of umpteen different labels, aren't they? So why should just one of them blot out all the others?

In pretty much every case, too, the generalisation breaks down at close range. The friend of mine who really doesn't like Muslims has two or three close Muslim friends. When this was pointed out, his response was "well, yeah, but they're ok...". Various people I know dislike cybergoths but have several as friends, and seem to see no contradiction there. I'm as guilty of this as anyone, I'm sure, but at the moment it really is annoying me...

See. Told you it was a rant. This rant was brought to you by various things seen and heard on LJ, upg, /goth and in Meeting Room #2.