There’s something strange about the rhetoric of “don’t limit yourself” in response to identity labels. The idea, or argument, rather, seems to be that you shouldn’t neglect the possibilities — i. e., if you feel a new kind of attraction toward a gender for which you didn’t previously have those feelings, or if you no longer experience a kind of attraction to a certain gender, you should be open to acknowledging what you feel.
This line of thinking seems to be predicated on the idea that labels are about looking forward and predicting the future.
Perhaps it’s meant to encourage acknowledgement of the fact that sexuality is fluid rather than static. Things could always change. I agree that orientation isn’t set in stone, and a reminder of such can be warranted — but what “don’t limit yourself” neglects to consider is that in order for “things” to change, there must be a “thing” in the first place. And perhaps we would like to give a name to the current state of that thing.
While acknowledging that, perhaps, there are people who use labels for a different purpose than I do, I’d say one of the (available) reasons for using orientation labels is not about looking forward, but looking back. If you’ve only experienced sexual attraction to people of the same gender as yourself your whole life, or if you’ve experienced it toward multiple genders regularly, or if you’ve never experienced it at all, and so on, you’re not “limiting” yourself by giving a name to that experience. That’s because describing a personal history is not the same as placing a “limit” on anything. Calling yourself what you are and have been makes no other statement than what you are and have been.
I can recognize some of the objectives and intended sentiments behind the rhetoric of openness (as applied to orientation labels), but I’d recommend they take a more effective route, because at present, this kind of warning only causes consternation by implying that an individual does not have the authority to describe their own experiences.
The Ace Theist 