Labels and the trans umbrella

I was a punk kid. Not just because I felt a deep desire at a young age to beat my brain with liquor and drugs (as Iggy Pop put it), or because I didn’t like jazz or funk (as Mick Jones suggested). And, I wasn’t a punk because nofx or skateboarding were particularly cool (they weren’t).

I needed to be a punk because punks didn’t just bend the rules, they bashed them the-fuck-in against the sidewalk with the heels of their doc martens.

In an environment where I didn’t belong with the boys and wasn’t allowed with the girls, being a punk kid meant at least I could belong somewhere among the outcasts and freaks, and I really needed that.

Punk was only one, of the many, labels I would adopt in my lifetime.

As of this writing, the online gender wiki alone has 380 different gender entries, and the Oxford English Dictionary is adding nearly 1000 new words to the English language per year. Labels, particularly queer ones, are continually changing as we discover ourselves, find each other, and develop better ways to communicate our experiences through association.