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How Labeling Queer Identity Often Does More Harm Than Good 
For Global Queer Communities 

Lora Vachovska, Stanford University ’25  
 
Abstract: Many people often believe that queerness is a Western phenomenon and that the people 
living in the Western world are more accepting of queer identity. The historical and ideological 
processes of colonialism and neoliberalism have supported the idea of queerness as Western, and 
language and labels around queer identity support the same notion. In reading about multilingual 
queer people’s experience, there are two general trends that emerge: 1) people claim that English 
labels are most useful for articulating queer identity, or that 2) English labels for queer identity are 
too tied to Western culture. I conclude that, although labeling separate queer identities very often 
helps individuals feel recognized and accepted, abolishing narrow labeling practices altogether may 
be necessary to prevent queer identity from being continuously framed as a Western phenomenon. 
Indeed, since most queer identity labels are coined in English, it is primarily people who speak 
English who have the ability to articulate who they are. This relegates non-English speakers to the 
imagined non-queer realm in modern, Western conceptions of thought and makes such people 
invisible. This paper suggests, also, that moving beyond hegemonic Western narratives of 
queerness to talk about how people all over the world love, act, and exist rather than identify may 
be key for queer acceptance and liberation.



 

Introduction 
When I came out to my parents, I had to send them Urban Dictionary definitions of the 

labels I use to describe my sexuality. Growing up in California as a child of Bulgarian 
immigrants, I was raised to speak both English and Bulgarian. Eventually, I grew to speak 
English better, and it was within that language that I found the terminology to describe my 
identity. However, since there are no Bulgarian terms to describe my queerness, the unspoken 
implication of my coming out was that I had become “too American” as a result of my parents 
moving to the U.S. 

Many people often hold the belief that queerness is Western and that the people living in 
that part of the world are more accepting of queer identity. While this is true in some cases, 
making broad generalizations about which parts of the world are homophobic or not is a 
mistaken claim. In light of this, this essay will seek to answer the question: how does the idea 
that queerness is a Western phenomenon emerge, and in what ways might it be subverted? 

So far, there have been texts written about separate aspects that contribute to the idea that 
queerness is Western. For example, scholars have shown how colonial practices created an 
entirely new system of gender as we understand it and necessitated the erasure of non-normative 
expressions of gender and sexuality (Lugones, 2007; Ahuja, 2016), and how the later rise of 
neoliberalism has made it so that the West now positions itself as accepting of queerness while 
asserting that the rest of the world needs to change (Puar 2017; Seckingelgin 2018; Rodriguez 
2019). While these socio-historical processes set up the stage for how queerness is viewed as 
“Western,” language and labeling practices have propped up the same idea. Researchers have 
posited that some multilingual queer individuals often resort to English to describe their 
identities because of the queer terminology made available by that language (Raza-Sheikh 2020). 
Alternatively, some view English queer labels as intertwined with American culture, and have 
thus tried to reclaim or create new terminology in their native languages (Manalansan 2007; 
Gandhi 2020). All in all, this reflects a complicated discourse of transcultural queer identity 
labels and calls into question whether any identity labeling is useful when trying to subvert 
narratives of Western dominance. 

This essay synthesizes all these viewpoints into one coherent piece that explores how 
histories and labeling practices fit together. I argue that, although labeling separate queer 
identities very often helps individuals feel recognized and accepted, abolishing narrow labeling 
practices altogether may be necessary to prevent queer identity from being continuously framed 
as a Western phenomenon. 

First – to situate my argument within a sociohistorical context – I trace histories of 
colonialism and neoliberalism to uncover how queer identity has been commodified and 
positioned either as something to be exterminated or as a sign of progress and modernity. I then 
transition to speaking about the intersection of queerness, multilingualism, and identity labels. 
This will reveal two patterns that emerge when looking at queer labeling practices, and the essay 
will conclude with the interrogation of the value of identity labels themselves. 



 

I: Socio-Historical Phenomena & Effect on Queer Discourses 
Different sexualities and genders have always existed; it was only that particular 

identities became normalized and privileged through specific socio-historical processes that 
served certain, dominant interests. In fact, it might be accurate to say that gender and sexuality as 
categories that we understand today did not even exist until more modern times, when confining 
people to such fabricated social realms became a means of controlling populations. That is, 
‘heterosexuals’ and ‘homosexuals’ did not exist, there were simply people who engaged in 
certain acts that might be labeled as heterosexual or homosexual. Along these lines, the label of 
‘queer’ is also one that is highly tied up with Western historical and cultural constructions of 
sexuality, but in the absence of a more inclusive term, I will use the words ‘queer’ and 
‘queerness’ to broadly describe any non-normative sexual orientation, sexuality, and gender, 
regardless of whether the people in question identify with the term.1 

A. Colonialism 
Queer people have always existed. It was not until Western European countries colonized 

territories in the Global South and the Americas that certain bodies were deemed deviant. 
Colonialism is often defined as a “political and economic system that allows one geopolitical 
entity [...] to establish controls beyond its traditional geographic borders” to increase profit and 
power (Ahuja, 2016, p. 237). Moreover, Ahuja (2016) writes that colonial projects of domination 
are “always accompanied by forms of violence and coercion that attempt to reshape the material 
worlds of the Indigenous peoples or exterminate them altogether” (p. 242). As a result, 
colonialism was never purely about land and resources – it involved the fundamental 
reimagining and restructuring of human societies to be in line with a model of society that was 
easier to divide and dominate. Clearly-defined categories of people are easier to control, so 
colonizers imposed measures of identity (race, gender, ability, etc.) to mark who is in power and 
who is subjugated across various contexts. One way this took shape was in the creation of the 
gender binary. 

María Lugones speaks of the “light” and “dark” sides to the colonial gender system, 
where the “light side constructs gender and gender relations hegemonically, ordering only the 
lives of white bourgeois men and women and constituting the modern/colonial meaning of men 
and women” while the “dark side [...] was and is thoroughly violent” for subjugated populations 
(2007, p. 206). That is, gender included both the neat, orderly binary that white Europeans 
imposed upon themselves with values of sexual dimorphism and patriarchy (the light side) as 
well as the violence inflicted upon the people they colonized in an attempt to mold those other 

 
1 This reveals the limitations of language and identity in and of itself to the extent that it can be argued that any term 
is always connected to the histories and experiences of people who predominantly speak that language. ‘Queer’ was 
historically considered a slur for gay people and has since been reclaimed, but this does not absolve it from an 
inherently Western conception of sexuality and gender. People in other parts of the world have non-normative sexual 
and gender identities imbued with deep cultural meaning, and labeling them as ‘queer’ in English does not do them 
justice. This will be touched upon in section 2 of this essay, but for now, I digress. ‘Queer’ is the most inclusive word 
available in English, and I will proceed to use it in this essay, despite recognizing how it, too, is limiting in certain 
ways. 



 

societies to the European model (the dark side). Of importance to note is that “colonialism did 
not impose precolonial, European gender arrangements on the colonized [societies],” rather, an 
entirely new system was engendered that created multitudes of different positionalities and 
reshaped all human and earthly relations (Lugones, 2007, p. 186). As such, different identities 
held different values across settings. 

As a result, gender manifested in different ways depending on the society and role that an 
individual was expected to fulfill. For example, the gender binary allowed for the division and 
organization of labor in a way that promoted the economic endeavors of men while 
simultaneously encouraging the childrearing capacities of women to create more children who 
could be made into the same type of workers and citizens. This notion of productivity under 
colonialism made it so that sexuality was narrowed to serve a reproductive purpose, which in 
turn propped up heterosexuality as an ideal. In line with sexual dimorphism, people with the 
capability to bear children were more often than not categorized as ‘women’ while ‘men’ were 
the people who controlled the “organization of sex, its resources, and products” (Lugones, 2007, 
p. 194).2 This erased nonbinary and queer identities while placing women in a passive, oppressed 
role and men in an active, powerful role. Returning to the point that clear categorization of 
people makes populations easier to control: it is no accident that the binary gender distinction 
(passive vs. active) mirrors what the binary between colonized and colonizer looked like. All this 
is to say that the extermination of queerness to fit a binary was a colonial tactic for controlling 
populations. 

Yet, binaries are never this simple, which is why looking at lives across intersections of 
identity is necessary to understand coloniality. For instance, women in colonizer nations versus 
colonized societies were not imagined in the same way. White women were the “reproducers of 
‘the (white) race’” while other women were equated to “animals” who were “sexually marked as 
female, but without the characteristics of femininity” (Lugones, 2007, p. 201, 203). It is not 
difficult, then, to imagine the sort of violence that was inflicted upon colonized women and how 
it differed from that enacted on European women. This “dark side” of the colonial gender system 
therefore necessitated the erasure of non-normative bodies and sexualities (i.e. those that did not 
fit into the “light side” conceptualization of gender) since they were viewed as threatening to the 
social order. 

Through these mechanisms, colonialism effectively created a system that policed and 
erased queer, nonbinary expressions of gender and sexuality for settler-colonial nation-state 
building. In these ways, Western European nations established a new social order to rule the rest 
of the world, erasing queerness to fit people into simple binaries. 

B. Homonationalism & Neoliberalism 
Now, the narrative has seemingly flipped. After centuries of exterminating queerness 

globally via colonization, the Western world now claims to be protective of queer people. This 

 
2 Lugones goes on to note that it is not enough to speak of reproductive biology when speaking of how gender was 
organized and goes on to point out how intersex people were similarly forced into the gender binary despite having 
bodies that fundamentally challenged the biological binaristic gender model. 



 

saviorism manifests in a cycle that is ultimately harmful to international queer populations. For 
example, the most powerful countries use the cover of “rescuing” queer populations abroad to 
interfere with second and third-world countries' politics (Seckinelgin, 2018, p. 287-288). 
Seckinelgin’s analysis focuses in particular on British foreign aid to various African countries 
(Uganda, Ghana, and Kenya, among others). He writes of how, in 2011, the British Prime 
Minister brought the topic of LGBT rights into negotiation discussions of foreign aid to African 
nations as a sort of “moral evaluation” of whether a country was worthy of their financial aid 
(2018, p. 287). However, the power imbalance in these discussions was reminiscent of past 
colonial relations, leading the African leaders to view the mention of LGBTQ rights as 
“neocolonial interventions” (Seckinelgin, 2018, p. 286). Consequently, to protect the national 
identities of their respective countries from what they view as foreign influence, African 
governments adopt anti-LGBTQ stances and deny the existence of queer Africans altogether 
(Seckinelgin, 2018, p. 293).3 The process can be described as follows: since the United Kingdom 
purports to be accepting of queerness and brings LGBTQ+ rights into international discussions, 
queerness is politicized. Then, when it comes to political negotiations, other governments come 
to see queer identity as solely political and Western-influenced. As such, in attempting to reject 
Western influence in their countries, they often take anti-LGBTQ+ positions in their domestic 
policy, further suppressing the rights and visibility of domestic queer populations, making it even 
easier for the government to persecute queer people in their country for being a traitor to their 
national identity (Seckinelgin, 2018, 294). To Western countries, all of this reaffirms the notion 
that the rest of the world is homophobic and transphobic, and the West can continue pretending 
to be a haven for LGBTQ populations by offering the bare minimum of rights. This harmful 
cycle just erases the voices of actual queer people across the globe.4 As a result, one can see how 
drastically the narrative has flipped from the time when Western nations exterminated native 
populations to fit their ideas of civilization, to now, when the same nations are now weaponizing 
queer identity to once again place themselves as superior. 

Puar (2017) coins this “sexual exceptionalism” and writes about it specifically in relation 
to the U.S. (p. 2). That is, she claims that the U.S. positions itself as exceptional in that it 
pretends to be transcendent of all other “modernization” processes abroad and therefore 
facilitative of international progress from some “superior” standpoint when it comes to LGBTQ 
rights (Puar, 2017, p. 8). For Puar, this process is inherently tied to what she calls 
“homonationalism” – homonormative nationalism (p.2). Homonationalism allows queer people 
in the U.S. to be assimilated into the nation-state (often via capitalism) in a way that supports 
normative, “nationalist formations,” which then allows the U.S. nation-state to define itself in 
opposition to – and as better than – other states where queer people are not as visible or 

 
3 In 2015 at the UN General Assembly, the President of Zimbabwe stated “We reject attempts to prescribe new rights 
that are contrary to our values, norms, traditions, and beliefs. We are not gays.” (Seckinelgin, 2018, p. 293). 
4 In 2011, a group of queer African people from over 50 civil society groups released a pan-African statement titled 
“Statement on British ‘aid cut’ threats to African countries that violate LGBTI rights” – I believe it’s worth reading 
if you wish to understand this point better: 
https://www.pambazuka.org/activism/statement-british-aid-cut-threats-african-countries-violate-lbgti-rights#:~:text= 
While%20the%20intention%20may%20well,serious%20backlash%20against%20LGBTI%20people. 

https://www.pambazuka.org/activism/statement-british-aid-cut-threats-african-countries-violate-lbgti-rights#%3A~%3Atext%3DWhile%20the%20intention%20may%20well%2Cserious%20backlash%20against%20LGBTI%20people
https://www.pambazuka.org/activism/statement-british-aid-cut-threats-african-countries-violate-lbgti-rights#%3A~%3Atext%3DWhile%20the%20intention%20may%20well%2Cserious%20backlash%20against%20LGBTI%20people


 

integrated into the state (Puar, 2017, pp. 4-10). Puar talks about how queer people outside of U.S. 
borders are racialized and “un-nationaliz[ed],” because the U.S. is imagined to be the only state 
where queer people are accepted (Puar, 2017, p. 10). This then brings up the idea that – from a 
U.S. perspective – “the homosexual other is white, [while] the racial other is straight” (Paur, 
2017, p. 32), which all feeds into the narrative that queerness is an inherently white, Western 
identity. That is, from the view of the U.S. nation-state, queerness is an acceptable identity as 
long as it fits a respectable white, American model, whereas people of other races from 
non-Western countries are imagined to be heterosexual. This is the exact phenomenon that 
Seckinelgin (2018) pointed to in his discussion of UK foreign aid to African countries, and he 
has shown that this homonationalist rhetoric only serves to silence and erase queer populations 
that live outside of the Western world (p. 295). Ultimately, this exemplifies that the West cares 
more about utilizing queerness as a way to position themselves as superior to it does about 
actually ‘saving’ queer people. 

For both Seckinelgin and Puar, this process is tied to neoliberalism. While neoliberalism 
is essentially an economic and political theory, it necessitates a rethinking of social organization 
in which “the individual is central” (Rodriguez, 2019, p. 115). To this extent, “identities have 
been wielded in contemporary discourse to enter systems of power” (Rodriguez, 2019, p. 111). 
The way that the neoliberal structure in the West has been utilized, individual queer people are 
homogenized and assimilated in a way that projects that illusion of progress. From this, Western 
countries can take the most ‘respectable’ appearing queer people (i.e., white, able-bodied, middle 
class, etc.) to be the poster child for their projection of acceptance.5 This makes it so that only 
certain people are imagined to embody queerness. At the same time, on a global scale, the 
assimilation of queer individuals allows the West to be viewed as a queer sanctuary, all while 
propping up the idea that queerness is predominantly found in Western cultures. 

The above section has shown how the historical and ideological processes of colonialism 
and neoliberalism have supported the notion of western queerness. Yet, history alone cannot fully 
explain this phenomenon on an interpersonal, everyday level. As such, the following section 
investigates how language and labels around queer identity support the same misguided idea that 
queerness is Western. 

 
II: (In)Translatability of Queerness 

Language norms can often reveal how broader societal phenomena influence individuals’ 
thinking. At the same time, language practices can further bolster the same entrenched ideas and 
stereotypes – to this extent, queer language in English reproduces the idea of homonationalism 
(that queer people only belong to certain countries or are most accepted in certain countries). In 
reading about multilingual queer people’s experiences, there are two general trends that emerge: 
1) people claim that English labels are most useful for articulating queer identity, and 2) people 

 
5 This gives rise to homonormativity, which can be seen in discourse around public figures such as Pete Buttigieg, an 
American politician, who is often critiqued as not being “gay enough.” https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-
colum nists/the-queer-opposition-to-pete-buttigieg-explained. 

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-queer-opposition-to-pete-buttigieg-explained
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-queer-opposition-to-pete-buttigieg-explained
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-queer-opposition-to-pete-buttigieg-explained


 

feel that English labels for queer identity are too tied to Western culture. Of course, not every 
attitude falls neatly into one category or the other, but these are the two overarching themes 
which I will use to explain the tension around using English for queer identity labels. 

A. English Labels as “Most Useful” 
The first trend shows that, oftentimes, English queer identity labels can give people a 

place to discover and define their identity. That is, many people often believe that English gives 
them the language to describe themselves. 

To some degree, this can be explained by the nature of the English language. Floyd’s 
2020 study examined grammatical gender across a few romance languages (French, Spanish, 
Portuguese) in comparison to English, concluding that English “affords [the most] flexibility to 
express gender neutrality” (p. 5). Floyd points to the fact that the use of pronouns in English “is 
interchangeable because it does not greatly affect adjectives, verbs, and other structures of the 
sentence” (2020, p. 9). Even though this is likely one factor contributing to the Anglocentrism of 
queerness, it cannot be the only reason. Many other languages do not have gendered pronouns, 
such as Chinese, Hindi, Zopau, and Igbo (given, Hindi does have masculine and feminine cases 
in verbs and adjectives). Furthermore, although English has seemingly more flexibility in 
expressing nonbinary identities, grammar alone cannot explain why English dominance in queer 
discourse persists. 

Indeed, the idea that English is best-suited to expressing queer identity is not relegated to 
the realm of gender-neutral expression in grammar. Raza-Sheikh’s article includes stories from 
various multilingual, queer-identifying people, all who express the same overall sentiment: as 
much as they would like to articulate their identities in their native languages, “‘it [is] just more 
natural in English,’” and “‘the terms we can use in English don’t really translate into other 
languages,’” (2020, para. 16, 15). Oftentimes, the labels that people use to describe their 
sexuality are hyper-specific categorical terms coined in English using Greek, Latin, or other 
Germanic-Italic prefixes: demisexual, aegosexual, lithosexual, pansexual, etc. Translating such 
labels into other languages becomes difficult, positioning English as most useful for expressing 
queerness. Indeed, in my own experience, I am almost certain that – if I only spoke Bulgarian – I 
would never have even realized I was queer. That is, English was a medium for discovering my 
own queerness, without which I likely never would have noticed that I experience attraction 
differently from the norm. In a slightly different sense, one Catalan-, Spanish-, and 
English-speaker in Raza-Sheikh’s article reported that English was simply the language she 
discovered her sexuality in, but it was “not [her] real language” (2020, para. 13). Consequently, I 
do believe that English is incredibly useful for uncovering and defining queerness, but this does 
not erase the cultural and linguistic queer hegemony that causes people to believe that 
non-Western and non-English-speaking people are heterosexual by default. In fact, the above 
point about one’s “real” language begins to reveal the sentiment that English is not true to some 
people’s linguo-cultural identities. In the face of this English dominance, some people have 
begun reclaiming formerly-derogatory terms in their language or creating new terms, which 
brings up the second trend. 



 

B. English Labels as “Too Tied to Western Culture” 
Some queer people feel that using English to label their sexual and/or gender identity 

ignores some of their other identities – nation, race, culture, etc. That is, they believe that English 
queer identity labels signify a particular Western, white, middle-class embodiment of queerness 
that does not apply to them. Manalansan’s 2007 article examined the challenges that many 
Filipino immigrants in the U.S. face when navigating their queer identities. Notably, he writes 
that, although the Tagalog term “bakla” may be considered derogatory, many Filipino men have 
favored the term over the English term “gay” (p. 24). This reclamation of terms signifies a 
resistance against stereotyped queerness in one’s native culture, while simultaneously rejecting 
modern, semeingly-Western terms for identity. Indeed, the Filipino queer men felt that “bakla 
symbolized Filipino queerness while gay symbolized white queerness” (Manalansan, 2007, p. 
24). In this sense, “gay is perceived as ‘a distinct cultural category’” that is exclusionary of the 
countless diverse, international forms of queernesses that exist (Manalnsan, 2007, p. 23). As a 
result, the reclamation of derogatory queer terms in non-English languages is a way to make 
clear that queerness is not a new, trendy, Western concept, but is rather a ubiquitous identity that 
is found across cultural lines. It is a way to say “we’ve always been here, and it’s time that you 
recognized that this identity is not a bad thing.” 

Yet, recycling pejorative terms can often carry the same hurt and stigma. As such, many 
queer people have preferred to create new labels for their sexual and gender identities in their 
native languages. That way, they can reject Anglocentrism while still avoiding derogatory terms. 
For example, “transpinoy/transpinay” was created by transgender individuals in the Filipino 
diaspora as a play on “filipino/filipina” to describe their identities (Gandhi, 2020, para. 7). 
Likewise, the terms “mithliyi/mithliyah”6 (meaning “sameness”) are used by some to denote 
gay/lesbian identity in Arabic (Gandhi, 2020, para. 25). This act of language-creation allows 
queer people to label themselves in a way that they feel is more true to their cultural identities. 
At the same time, creating these new words gives queer people the agency to move past histories 
where labels with negative connotations were imposed upon queerness. 

These examples have shown how people have been attempting to reject the 
Western-centric narratives of queerness and carve out their own queer spaces in their own 
languages. However, is merely translating and creating new queer labels in various languages 
really the answer to rejecting Western dominance? 

 
III: Questioning the Use of Labels 

In many ways, even the act of labeling one’s queer identity can be seen as a Western 
practice. I have many friends who feel that labeling their queer identity in any capacity is more 
correlated to Western culture, and they do not even feel the need to label themselves at all in their 
native languages. Following this thread, the following section will show how labels themselves 
can still uphold Western dominance in queer spaces. 

 



 

A. Complexity of Labeling 
Perhaps the most important thing to remember in this section is that labels have provided 

a space for people to feel accepted, and when it comes to discussions of abolishing labels, many 
people are hesitant because they can have a deeply personal connection to their chosen label and 
the expression7 and social utility8 it has given them. Therefore, we must continuously grapple 
with the fact that abolishing labels may not be for everyone. 

Dr. Abigail Oakley illustrates this complexity; she conducted a study in 2016 looking into 
labeling practices on Tumblr, finding that “Tumblr is a space where [nonbinary genders and 
sexual orientations] are more widely accepted and even encouraged by the LGBTQIA 
community that exists there,” giving rise to the superfluous labeling discourse that takes place on 
the platform (p. 8). People on Tumblr have often created microlabels for queer identity, giving 
people new language to describe highly-specific experiences and feelings that fall under broader, 
umbrella terms. Oakley acknowledges this as a valuable “form of identity construction” and 
writes that it is important to the extent that it gives queer individuals a way to describe their 
“feelings, gender, and desires” and makes their queernesses “recognizable” (2016, p. 9, 11). 

At the same time, Oakley writes that labeling queerness is a practice “born of hegemonic, 
binary discourse” (2016, p. 11). Drawing on Foucault’s post-structuralist theory of power, she 
says that “discourse that attempts to subvert power also reinforces it by first recognizing its 
power and second by giving it credence through acknowledgment that it needs to be challenged 
in the first place” (Oakely, 2016, p. 9). In other words, attempts to subvert dominant structures of 
power can often reinforce that dominance by recognizing that the structure has power to subvert 
(i.e. the structure would not need to be challenged if it did not have power in the first place). This 
can be applied to labeling practices: whereas queer people on Tumblr are attempting to subvert 
dominant narratives of sexuality and gender by creating new, highly-specific terms, this only 
reinforces the centrality and power that heterosexuality already holds in current society. In this 
sense, Oakley accepts that “labeling processes through appropriation of hegemonic discourse are 
not radical enough to elicit true change” (2016, p. 11). Labels are complex, because, as Oakley 
concludes, they are deeply personal and valuable to individuals at the same time as they uphold 
oppressive structures of sexuality and gender. So what would it look like to elicit true change? 

B. Moving Beyond Labels 
Diving further into post-structuralist theory may provide the answer, and will show how 

labels can be harmful to the extent that they erase certain queer people and reinforce 
Western-dominance. Namaste (1994) writes that the “articulation of nonheterosexuality bolsters 
the centrality of heterosexuality itself” (p. 225). What this means is that the creation of new 
labels for non-heterosexual identities is predicated on the idea that heterosexuality is already the 

 
7 Many people I know often feel the need to label because they have struggled coming to terms with their sexuality, 
and having a concrete label has made them feel more secure and confident. Others prefer to label their identity as an 
act of resistance against heteronormative beliefs that erase queerness. 
8 Some people (such as myself) like using labels so they have a way to describe their experiences to people, like 
their partner or their other friends. I also know of one person who uses labels as a defensive tactic in social situations 
where she doesn’t want men to flirt with her. 



 

norm. In order to normalize queer identity, then, one must stop diluting power and reject 
language that is created with the underlying assumption of a heterosexual frame. For example, 
existing labels such as “asexual,” “omnisexual,” etc. are mere “variations of terminology” that 
already exists to describe identities within a heterosexist structure (Oakley, 2016, p. 9). This 
reveals how existing labels reinforce heterosexism, and how oftentimes labeling itself is harmful 
for queerness: if the point of queerness is to reject heterosexism, why does queer terminology 
rely on heterosexist language? Perhaps the mere act of labeling is the problem. Along these lines, 
Namaste writes that “the emergence of homosexuality was accompanied by its disappearance” 
(1994, p. 224). In other words – by openly labeling queer identity – queerness that is not labeled 
or articulated is erased. In order for some people to be “out” as queer, there have to be queer 
people who are not “out.” This props up the notion that the only “real” queer people are those 
who are visible and vocal about their identity. But not everyone can be vocal about their identity. 

In tying this back to cross-linguistic labeling practices, we can see that, since most queer 
identity labels are coined in English, it is primarily queer people who speak English who have 
the ability to articulate who they are. This relegates non-English speakers to the imagined 
non-queer realm in modern, Western conceptions of thought (i.e. makes non-English-speaking 
queer people essentially invisible). In this way, applying post-structuralist thought to queer 
labeling practices shows us how the very act of articulating queerness erases queer people who 
are not “out,” which is further complicated by a multilingual lens that posits that most queer 
identity labeling occurs in English. As long as the goal is to avoid positioning queerness as 
Western, labeling practices may always work against transcultural queer populations. 

Nevertheless, there are ways to move beyond labels. Kulick (2000) conducts an 
investigation on gay and lesbian language use, and ultimately concludes that labels are limiting. 
He writes that deciding what to label non-normative sexual and gender identities is an 
“ultimately unresolvable problem” in that it does not necessarily provide any useful meaning to 
identity categories (Kulick, 2000, p. 243). Instead, Kulick asserts that “reformulating questions 
about gay and lesbian language in terms of ‘language and desire’” would allow us to shift the 
conversation to engage desire and connection rather than superficial identity markers (Kulick, 
2000, p. 273). It is still possible for the constructions of sexuality and gender to exist without 
labels, but it requires shifting the conversation towards expressions of relationality and 
connection rather than identity categories. What I mean to say is that calling myself asexual 
gives people very limited information about who I am, my sexuality, how I experience attraction, 
and what sorts of relationships and connections I want. In fact, it just relegates me to the position 
of “other” while heterosexuality remains central. Expressing myself as part of an identity 
category (such as “pansexual”) just boxes me into another structure where normative sexual and 
gender conventions are otherwise assumed. Who we are extends far beyond a single label, and 
simply finding more and more specific labels is not going to give more meaning to our identities. 
Furthermore, this paper has shown how these specific labels further entrench Anglocentrism and 
homonationalism that hurts the vast majority of the queer global population. Admittedly, much 
will need to change before we can live in a world where labels have no use. Yet, if we can find a 



 

way to speak to one another openly about who we are and what we want, there may come a point 
when identifying with labels can be seen as repressive. Then, perhaps, we will be able to move 
beyond hegemonic Western narratives of queerness to talk about how people all over the world 
love, act, and exist rather than identify. 

 
Conclusion 

What all of the above has laid out is how queer identity has come to be perceived as 
Western. What is now termed ‘queerness’ was initially sought to be eradicated by Western 
colonial structures for its inherently nonbinary, ambiguous nature that was a threat to the 
clearly-demarcated categories of bodies needed for state-building projects. However, with the 
powerful force of neoliberalism in the 20th century that sought to assimilate as many individuals 
into the dominant order as possible, queer identity was suddenly co-opted by the Western world 
to produce the illusion of progress and power. 

While this illustrates the larger societal forces at play, language also plays a role in 
narratives of Western dominance and queerness. The use of the English language to create new 
terms for sexuality beyond ‘homosexual’ and ‘heterosexual’ has only propped up the same 
notion of queerness as emerging and existing in Western contexts only. I have touched on the 
complex attitudes that many people have towards labeling their queer identities: some have 
found it comforting to express themselves and find community around a label, while others find 
labeling unnecessary, and many attitudes show that both things are often true simultaneously. 

In the future, I recommend that studies and surveys be conducted that interview queer 
people and communities from across the world about their attitudes towards labels and labeling 
practices. In this realm of study going forward, I would hope that people in non-Western 
countries and cultures would be prioritized as knowledge-creators. Although my paper argues 
against Western dominance, my analysis inevitably still centers the Western world, and I would 
be interested to see the kind of knowledge that would emerge when we de-center the West 
entirely. What might emerge when we look at queer labeling practices at a deeply local, 
non-Western level? Do the same patterns that I have uncovered in this paper still hold true? 

In a world that is systematically violent and/or dismissive towards queer people, 
discovering language and labels for queerness undoubtedly makes some individuals feel seen. I 
initially used hyper-specific labels because I wanted to emphasize that I – a Bulgarian-American 
person – wasn’t straight. I wanted to show that there was something different in how I related to 
others. I wanted to find community and media and language that made me realize it was okay to 
be who I am; there is power in that, I think. But ultimately it just gives power to the 
already-existing ways we conceive of sexuality and gender. Given how suffocating dominant 
narratives of sexuality and gender are, everything I have outlined in this essay points to the fact 
that the eventual refusal of labels is perhaps the best method to normalize queer and non-queer 
identity alike. 

Indeed, labels themselves ultimately do very little to describe who a person is. Two 
people who identify themselves with the same label are bound to have vastly different 



 

experiences, beliefs, and desires. Consequently, labels may even be more constricting than 
liberating. We are not labels; we are people who feel, live, desire, and love. 

Activist, writer, and revolutionary James Baldwin – in a 1984 interview conducted by 
Richard Goldstein – avoided the term “gay,” and touched instead on “the question of human 
affection,” how homophobia is weaponized by the state, and the intersections of race and 
sexuality. When asked about his idea of gay people in his “New Jerusalem,” Baldwin replies: 

No one will have to call themselves gay. Maybe that's at the bottom of my 
impatience with the term. It answers a false argument, a false accusation. [...] 
Which is that you have no right to be here, that you have to prove your right to be 
here. I'm saying I have nothing to prove. The world also belongs to me. (Baldwin 
& Goldstein, 1994, p. 73). 

His words are the best way I can think to conclude this essay. He implies that, through labeling, 
we are trying to prove something, trying to claim some space within the view that 
heterosexuality is dominant and central. Baldwin encourages us to let it all go, and “go the way 
your blood beats” (Baldwin & Goldstein, 1994, p. 74). Instead of getting caught up in labels and 
boxing ourselves into divided categories, we could (and perhaps should) transcend divided 
categories and talk about desire, affection, and connection. Human relationships are so much 
more than sex, romance, and gender. Slowly moving away from labels will allow us to find 
deeper means of interpersonal connection that ultimately will just let queer people exist, and 
allow queerness to exist across and throughout all nations, races, cultures, and languages. 

Having spent my entire life between Bulgarian and American cultures, I have come to 
despise how certain parts of who I am are assumed to be either Bulgarian or American, but never 
both. But I am both; I am all my identities at once; I am whole. My queerness does not belong to 
a nationality or a label, it belongs to me. 



 

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