Our introduction - looking for knowledge

By the way; love your sig :) As I've said before, I don't like labels - they are for packaging, not humans.

Yep. Labels are useful for really quick references, but they should never be taken as definitions. If you need to spend an hour defining your label and the difference between your specific usage of it compared to someone else's, just skip the stupid label and go straight to the definition.

Take bisexual vs pansexual. I identify as pansexual, which means I don't give a fuck what's in your pants. But if someone tells me their bisexual, I'm just going to assume it means they're neither straight nor gay. I'm not going to assume that by using bi instead of pan, they mean they're attracted to men and women but not transgendered folks. Most likely, they either haven't heard of the word pan, or they choose to use the more common word so that they don't have to spend an hour explaining what pansexual means.

Similarly, polyamorous means something different to pretty much everyone. I can't even count the hours that have been wasted on discussions around what constitutes poly vs swinging vs generic nonmonogomy vs... and I'm even more ashamed to admit I've been sucked into them. Because as much as I hate labels, I love language and details and making simple things complicated :p
 
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