I dislike labels. Let me restate that. I like labels, a lot, but only on certain things. My office at work, for example, looks like a label factory exploded. There are labels on my books, labels on my folders, labels on my drawers, and even labels on my food in the refrigerator. There is a reason for all of this compulsive labeling, and I came to clearly see that reason when I arrived at my desk this morning only to discover the absence of my stapler – incidentally the ONLY item on my desk that was not labeled. However, let me reiterate my original point. I dislike labels, but only when they are applied to people.

What are labels? In the physical sense of the word, they are little pieces of paper with writing on them that indicates what lies beneath. They tell us what is inside a file, they distinguish something that is mine from something that is not mine, and they dictate and define. But they also set limits and codify expectations, especially when they are applied to people.

Take gendered identity, for example. I was married, which means I was in a relationship with a man. This fact labels me as a heterosexual. I have also dated women since my divorce. To be perfectly honest, women are my preference. This labels me as a lesbian. Or does it make me bisexual? Or would that label only apply should I make the decision to date a man again.  Does this ambiguity make homosexuality a choice? It has been my philosophy for some time now that loving someone has more to do with the person that the gender, but that belief system makes it difficult for society to fit me with the right label.

I don’t look like a lesbian. Not in the traditional sense at least. While at dinner the other night, some friends pointed out a matched pair of lesbians wearing typical “butch” attire, short hair, no makeup, basically the masculine identifying image that society has given to lesbians. While I freely admit to rarely being seen in a dress, I prefer tailored suits with my four inch heels. And I wouldn’t be caught dead without my liberally applied cosmetics. I tried a short hair cut once. It was a disaster. I love my hair, and it has taken me the better part of three years to grow it back to the length that it was when I first made the idiotic decision to chop it all off.  I don’t fit the image. But, then again, how many women can say that they were taught how to be a girl by a drag queen?

I don’t act like a lesbian either. I drive a truck, but that was what was available to me at the time and I needed a vehicle. I like my truck. It’s useful for hauling things and people, and it actually gets good gas mileage. It also has a Tinker Bell steering wheel cover. I like Tinker Bell. I don’t drink Coors. Apparently, this is the beer of choice for lesbians. I think it tastes like water. Really bad water, if you want me to be a bit more specific. I do, however, drink Stella. Some people have said that is the beer of choice for lesbians with money, which, as a writer and an educator, I don’t have a lot of. I just like the taste. That, and the fact that when you order it they scream “Stella” at you at the top of their lungs and it reminds me of Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. Once again, the label doesn’t really seem to fit.

Let’s talk about power tools, then, for just a moment. I am pretty good with those. I can use a drill, a power saw, a pneumatic stapler. I can also climb up into a lighting rig in the theatre and repair lighting instruments, rewire the electric, and do it all in high heels. Incidentally, so can the aforementioned drag queen. Only I’ve seen him do it in a crown, hair and heels. I am pretty sure that makes me a Border collie, actually. An ADHD Border collie.

Speaking of ADHD, this brings me to my next point, the labeling of children. It isn’t hard enough these days, apparently, just to be a kid. You have to be gifted, mainstream or ESE. You have to get tested, know your IQ, find your label. It’s like the Holy Grail of education – find your label, find your Grail. There’s the Stanford Binet Test, the Wechsler Intelligence Scale, the Kaufman Assessment Battery, just to name a few. When I was teaching in New York City, Chinatown to be exact, parents would bring their three and four year olds in for intensive study and prep courses just to get them ready for the GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) program testing cycles. Instead of being outside playing in the summer sun at the park somewhere, these kids were hovering over workbooks, pencils in hand, identifying shapes and solving analogies and using baby syllogistic logic. All of this effort just to earn the right to wear a label. And if you don’t get to wear the label, then you are just average, ordinary. This means that you are not special. Can you imagine if Einstein had been told that he wasn’t special? Perhaps he was, at some point. I know he was labeled crazy. But where would we be without the theory of relativity? Seriously. Could someone please answer that question for me, because I, for one, have no clue. I’m not even sure what it is. I guess that makes me not gifted. That, or I just didn’t pay all that much attention in my science classes, probably because no one knew to have me tested and treated for my ADHD.

Speaking of Einstein and ADHD, I am pretty sure that man is a classic case of it. I can picture him as a child always running about shifting from idea to idea at rapid speed. Adults used to call that sort of behavior in children precocious. And when it got to be too much for the adults in the room to take, they issued warnings and sentenced the offending children to their rooms with instructions to calm down. Or they sent them outside to run around and do something with all of that energy. Today, when a child can’t sit still, it is time for the parents in question to send said child off to the doctor. That child then comes back with a label and a pill bottle and instructions as to how to conform. Better living through chemistry trumps enhanced living through education.

When we label a child, or an adult for that matter, we set forth certain expectations. Children who are labeled as “special needs” are given IEP’s (individualized education plans) and placed in the mainstream classroom with the expectation that, because they are different, they will only be able to perform to a certain level. However, the teacher must then lower the level of the class as a whole in order to meet the minimum needs of the so-called “lower level” students so as to be certain that no child is left behind. The bar has been set and that is as far as they are expected to go.  When a child that has been diagnosed with ADHD acts out, he or she is not disciplined. Instead, a return trip to the doctor is scheduled to reevaluate the level of pharmaceutical intervention.  The child is returned, duly medicated, and normalcy in the labeled environment is once again achieved. This is not fair at all.

To be fair, handicaps do exist, and it is important that we, as a society, are aware of them and work continuously to develop skills to enhance the lives of those born with different abilities. But this does not mean that we need to put a label on them. We don’t feel the need to label people based on hair color, eye color, or any other factor that makes one individual different from another. I have worked with children who have more severe mental handicaps than ADHD, and they have excelled. Two girls, to whom I have had the pleasure of teaching to ride horses, have been diagnosed with Autism. Both are competent, capable, pleasant and, for the most part, well behaved.  I only add the qualifier because I have yet to meet any six or ten year old child who was well behaved all the time. However, in their specific cases, this is not because society has expected them to be that way. It is because their parents have refused to accept the labels put on them.

Labels are limiters. They tell what something is, but not entirely. They confine a thing to a certain class, category, or group. They define, but they also prescribe a certain set of characteristics, beliefs, attitudes and norms. If you are fat, then you are not pretty because overweight people do not grace the covers of magazines or fit the image that is shown on the screen.  If you are old, then you are not youthful and you shouldn’t act or do things that young people do. We are expected to fit neatly into labels and conform to them willingly, find our grail, not create one.

I look around me, as a college professor teaching nontraditional students, and I see a sea of bright minds who have never been asked to reach the limits of their potential. Many of them feel that the work is too difficult, that they are not smart enough, and that they can only reach certain very limited goals. Society has told them this, placed limits on them and sent them on their way to conform to a prescribed notion of normalcy. Because of ethnicity or socio-economic status, they have been labeled and placed into finite packages, set out on careers in customer service or menial labor. It is my job to remove the labels, to set the bar higher, and to undo what society has so clearly done. It is a difficult and often painful task, but I do it with a smile, and often a sigh because I really shouldn’t have to do it in the first place. But I will, as soon as I find my stapler and put a label on it.