(This is, in part, written as response to a post below–since this went way too long to be a comment–and in part a beginning?‚? answer to the?‚? question from an older post of my own, ‘What makes you a witch?’ Not a very interesting answer, to be sure; but I’ll get there eventually.)

?‚? I’ve spent a good part of the last fifteen years of my life collecting labels the way some collect baseball cards. I gather it’s not the in thing to do.

I’ve wondered (and please don’t take offence) if people who react to labels are themselves so thoroughly part of the cultural mainstream that they have no need of them, and don’t realize how life-saving an appropriate label can be. For instance, I’m diabetic. I do eat cake and chocolate, if you’re wondering; I also poke myself with various shaped pins many times over the course of a day. This keeps me alive. Rather than explaining to each person who stares with fascinated horror as I plunge a two-inch pin into my abdomen that my pancreas doesn’t work due to an autoimmune disease and without these injections of insulin?‚? I’d die, I can say “I’m diabetic.” Much faster. The fascinated horror changes and the conversation turns to somthing more interesting.

Or “asthmatic.” Another label, but it sure beats describing the function (or lack thereof) of my lungs when I take the cigarette out of your hands and stamp it on the ground. (That was a joke. I’ve never stomped on anyone’s cigarette. They’re expensive, aren’t they?)

Several labels in my extensive collection never raise an eyebrow, and I have never heard, while using them, “Why do you want to label yourself?” Writer, for instance. Mother. Wife. Civil Servant. Baker. Reader. Blogger. No wrinkled noses, no pointed objections to the use of certain words to hem people in to a certain kind of existence. In fact I’ll bet that if I were to avoid calling myself a mother (though it is certainly a label that comes loaded with all kinds of baggage and associations) and insist on describing my relationship to my daughter in more personal terms, most people would find it bizarre.

It’s the other labels that make people uncomfortable: Feminist. Witch. Anarchist. Environmentalist.?‚?

I’ll bet at least one of those loaded words comes equipped in your mind with a pre-cast image, complete with age, sex, relationship status, wardrobe, hobbies and intelligence level. Perhaps one of those labels you consider incompatible with another, or perhaps not. Perhaps they seem incompatible with a label on a previous list: can a wife be a feminist? Can a civil servant be an anarchist? Can a witch be a mother?

That is why I embrace these troubled words and their difficult history: I want to confront people’s expectations. I want them to have to consider me in relationship to their stereotypes. I want them to have to bust that stereotype in their head wide open, so it can contain me.

There’s no photograph associated with my posts yet (sorry, Jessica; the only one I can find where I don’t look like a drooling idiot is two years old. Is that recent enough?), so let me describe myself. I am 31, 5′8″, 145 lbs. Today I am wearing a grey knee-length straight skirt, a leaf-green snug sweater with a v-neck, black tights, and a cute pair of kitten heels. My hair is mousy brown and about collarbone length. I never wear black, except for socks, tights and shoes–I prefer bright colours. I spend most of my spare time reading voraciously from almost every genre and category. I’m straight as an arrow, unfortunately. I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions about my intelligence.

Every noun in the English language is a label. Imagine living the rest of your life without the word ‘apple,’ or ‘cookie,’ or ‘bicycle,’ or ‘athlete.’ We use nouns–labels–to communicate efficiently and effectively with other people. We label ourselves to communicate who we are in the fewest words possible (though some, like ‘witch,’ tend to require a fair bit of backstory). As far as I can tell, we resist labels when we perceive them to be derogatory. “Why should I label myself?” we cry; when what we really mean is, “I don’t like the stereotype of that label.”

I believe people have the right to name themselves. I would never force a label on someone who rejected it; it would be disrespectful and rude. Not everyone has to spend their lives confronting the prejudices of other people in deeply personal and potentially hurtful ways. But I do think that rejecting a label because of its stereotype only strengthens the stereotype, which in most cases is unfounded. We’ve essentially lost feminism as a useful word because right-wing talk radio hosts associated it with fanaticism, hatred and intolerance. Calling myself a feminist is my small way of confronting those ugly prejudices with the truth.

Witch has been lost to a millenia-long propoganda project, tying it together with devil-worship, blood sacrifice, and immoral practices. Not to mention general physical hideousness. Before you give much credence to those stereotypes, you might want to know that christians in the early centuries were accused of the same acts.

Names are powerful. Words are powerful. I won’t cede that power to someone who hates me (as the creators of ‘feminazi’ or the infant-blood-drinking witch image certainly do). I won’t abandon an accurate label because someone has misdefined it as a deliberate act of social control. When I name myself accurately–when I?‚? use the right label–I sometimes see that someone has had to change their conceptions of what those names mean because it didn’t match who I am. There is a small crack in that stereotype where it used to be seemless; and that crack gives me immeasurable joy.

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