To preface, I’m a straight white cis male living in the west and I understand I’m speaking from both a position of privilege and from outside the community.
I absolutely see your point, but I offer an alternate perspective. I think a lot of people, especially in smaller communities, need labels to identify one another so that they can form networks of solidarity. There’s a yearning for a sense of belonging and labels make it easier to make connections with similarly ostracized or persecuted peoples.
There are some other critiques of labels, as well. Instead of a trans person being just a singular group, there are subgroups. There are trans-masc and trans-fem people. There are people within those groups who have their own sexual orientations, political ideologies, and other identities. I’m not critiquing the existence of these identities or labels. Rather, that can further sectionalize people into smaller and more insular communities where everyone is the same.
But the opposite is true, too. A portion of someone’s identity can connect them to a larger community just as much as other portions of their identity can isolate them.
The point is not to find those exactly like you in identity, but to connect with people with shared experiences, to compare and contrast oneself with others. When people choose to identify with only those people who share their exact niche, that’s when the problems of ideological echo chambers crop up.
I dream of a world where people can just be people regardless of who they are and how they came to be that person. But there are bad actors who seek to disenfranchise those who are different from them. You’re absolutely right: those bad actors wield the labels as a weapon, using them as slurs and epithets to dehumanize others.
Personally, I don’t think using the term “trans people” is the problem. It’s a tool of language, and it can be swung like a sword or used to plow a field.
So, again, I agree with you, but the use of labels is a lot more nuanced then urging people to stop using them. Continue to combat hateful people for violating the social contract. Keep ostracizing those who seek to only hurt people different from themselves. Make those who dehumanize “others” fear the people’s solidarity and strength. Shame them for being bad actors, make them confront their shittiness. Purge the hatefulness from society.
When everything is all said and done, maybe labels can be dissolved as a concept. Or, maybe labels can finally be used by everyone without any preconceived notions of oppression.
Trans rights are human rights.
Ah, I see. I thought the problem was a matter of labels and identity in the broader sense. Thanks for the clarification!