Labels

I have heard over and over again by people who do not wish to be apart of any subculture ("to be themselves," as Neji says) that they "don't like labels."

Okay, I can understand how a person wouldn't like something stamped on their foreheads. It creates unwanted attention in many cases, and in certain ways takes apart an individual's, well, individuality. With that being said, I agree that labels can be horrible--and potentially dangerous, even--a lot of times. Human beings have a horrible knack for jumping to conclusions about people before they make time to give those people a chance to prove that they are different from the others (e.g., a blonde proving that she is smarter than the brunette).

However, calling a subculture a label is going a bit far, I think.

If a person lives in Australia and they call themselves British, do you say that's a label? I'm American. Is American a label? I have a friend on TinierMe who's Japanese. Is Japanese a label? All of these are cultures (or something similar), people, so how is a subculture any different (besides it being a "sub-", obviously . . . .)? It's not. Not in my eyes, at any rate. And I really don't think that it should be to anyone else's, either.

Since I'm Goth, I don't considerate that to be a label; rather, I consider it to be a name of a subculture, just as I consider Japanese to be a nationality of a culture. Understand where I'm getting at? So if you are afraid of "labels," then maybe you should take a different view of things. I mean to say, is it really that hard to consider something as MAJOR as Goth a culture?

Keep in mind that this is merely my personal opinion (*cough*fact*cough*), and if I offended anyone then it was completely unintentional.