I saw a tweetstorm (that I'm not going to QT because it would read as dumping on them & undermining their point) that was naming a dozen subtly different sexual identities and saying each is valid. I actually want to amplify the part of their point that's: "your exp is valid!"
Why validity shouldn't depend on having a category
6 tweets · October 2019 · 116 likes · 1 retweets · read on Twitter
What I want to push back against is the implied ontology of the tweet, that is "we have a list of the valid categories and you know you're valid because you have a category and it's in this list (or we would add it to the list if you gave it a name)"
To be clear, it makes sense to me that marginalized groups do this, as mainstream cultures require legibility for validity. And in that context, the tweetstorm I just read makes strategic sense! My aim is to highlight to that *the fact that this is necessary* is symptomatic...
...of a larger situation that forces categories on everything.
@ssica3003 has a great post explicitly talking about this in the context of sexuality, and describing how something as seemingly-simple as bisexuality actually busts categorical ontologies much harder than you'd expect: theoryengine.org/bisexuality/th…
In short: nobody's experience is invalid, and you don't need a category to justify that. However, categories can still be very helpful, for meeting like-minded people and learning about yourself from their experiences, or for grokking differences: