So, this guild is awful quiet. I thought I'd whip out a bit of a discussion starter, and see if I get any bites. It'd be appreciated if you refrained from biting my head off, however. (Or any other limbs, really.)

(Warning for pointless ranting that is thinly veiled as relevant interspaced with bad jokes? No offenses are meant if any are taken -- this is all just my personal opinion. I would love to hear yours, though! biggrin )

I have a personal vendetta against labels. Not the ones you see on cans at Wal-Mart (Though some of those kinda irk me too.), I mean the ones we use to describe ourselves. Not even necessarily the hurtful ones. Prep, Jock, Nerd, Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Red, Black, Blue-Green, heck, even Dog- or Cat-Lover. I don't know of a good alternative to them, short of making us all sound like politically correct lawyers (Which is another label!) writing out some legal paper or another, and I'll admit that I've used more than a few labels on myself and others.
Oh, right, you probably want to know why.
OK, so I don't hate the labels so much as I hate that no label has just one, easy definition. I mean it. Pick a label and start polling people on what it means. You might get a few similar meanings, but if you write them all down, word for word, and pick them apart, they don't really mean the same exact thing. Would you like to know why? Because people are very rarely exactly alike. We're terrible to categorize, scattered about like malformed bits of hay in the wind. That's probably why scientists haven't given us fancy individual Latin names yet. There'd be too many to keep track of! And they'd probably be helluv long, too. So instead we get names from our parents, and those names aren't always guaranteed to be 100% unique either. Ah, but I'm digressing into nonsense.

You want an example? Let's take an easy one that we're all maybe a bit familiar with. Bisexuality.
(For clarity, in case you were unaware: I am currently a 20-year-old female in a relationship with another female, I'm a virgin, and this current relationship is the only one I've been in that I feel counts. [I dated a guy once for maybe two days -- long story, ask if you really want])
I label myself as Bisexual. I define bisexuality as "having either romantic, sexual, or both interest in both males and females, with bi-curious being a subgenre -- those with only romantic interest in one gender or the other."
(Go on, compare that definition to your own personal one. I'll wait.)
But that's not the whole story. I have had crushes on both men and women, I would date either a man or a woman, and I would have sex with either a man or woman. HOWEVER. Due to previous trauma which I am still recovering from, I would not date or have sex with any man. But I do still have the occasional crush on men.
So if you were to take the current summation: I only hold interest in women outside of the occasional fantasy. If you took that statement at face value, without any further reading into, I would to some (even myself) be a lesbian.
(If that didn't make a lick of sense, just say so. I don't bite. Much.)

The only solution I can think of is to standardize a definition for all words that can possibly be applied. However, even that solution is flawed. For one, there's the issue of getting everyone to agree on a definition and apply it properly. Hotly debated issues -- bisexuality, animal cruelty, even discipline when applied to a child -- have widely varying definitions depending upon which side you subscribe to. Or sides. You're human, and deciding upon your beliefs is like making a cheeseburger. You get to pick and choose what you want on your burger, just like you pick and choose from the different camps to sum up your beliefs on a single subject. Or you can ignore the cheeseburger completely and go for a salad. Whatever trips your trigger.

So say we get everyone to agree to a definition -- chances are, that definition is a mile long and three miles deep, riddled with legal talk and politically correct statements that just muddle up the original word's meaning. Can you imagine the dictionaries? We'd have to wipe out one rainforest per copy to print out those suckers! Not to mention the grade-schooler's vocabulary tests.
Lets pick an example for that, shall we? Sure, everyone loves examples (except the people who don't, and maybe not the people who aren't sure if they love examples, and the people who just sorta like examples but aren't all that impressed.).
We'll go off-base here and go into video game violence this time. Because I love video games.
Take the debate at face value, and you get this summary of the sides:
Camp 1: Violent video games cause kids to become violent and shoot up their schools/etc.
Camp 2: Violent video games don't have any effect; the violent kids are violent because of something else (bullying, abuse, mental issues, etc.)
So what do you think? Which camp do you pitch your tent in? Does Janie have a gun because Grand Theft Auto taught her to release her aggressions on the world by stealing cars and shooting hoes? Or because her dad abused her? Show your work. Extra credit if you got the reference.
Bing, time's up. Chances are, if you have an opinion on the subject at all, you're opinion falls somewhere between said viewpoints. And while it is true that neither viewpoint is set in stone and both are fairly flexible to begin with, if someone without an opinion were to look in on the debate and define the sides, that would be the conclusion they come to: Either the kid is violent because of video games or they are not, with a possible middle ground thrown in for fairness. (But good luck finding someone without an opinion -- as soon as they hear the issue, the issue is weighed against their personal beliefs and experiences, and an arbitrary opinion is thusly formed.)
Take notes, people, this'll be on the test!

All right, so say we manage to whittle a standardized definition down to a more manageable size. Now what? Now to convince everyone to only use a label when the person it is used on fits that exact definition -- no flexibility, no "well, they might be a little of this and a little of that." You, my friend, are either an apple or a cucumber. None of this half-a*sed stuff.
Wait, what? So now we have to conform to neat little categories. You have to have either primary red hair, or platinum blonde, so we can call you a red-head or a blonde. No strawberry blondes allowed. You have to either love cats for all your worth and hates dogs, or vice versa, you can't like both, because then you're an animal-lover, and then you have to love all animals, not just cats and dogs. And on the subject of animal-loving: If you're an animal-lover, you have to also love all of human kind, since humans are animals too. And depending upon the agreed upon definition of 'love', that could toe the line of beastiality and incest, people. See where I'm going with this?

I suppose having one set definition for all of these labels is an unrealistic goal. I suppose, unless someone has a better idea, we'll just have to stick with our flexible definitions that are based upon opinion.
So since our definitions are based in opinion, and no two opinions are alike, doesn't it just make more sense to accept people for who they are, be respectful of their opinions, and express your own opinion in a respectful way? Say "I understand where you are coming from. I see it this way. It's insightful to hear another viewpoint, I might take that into consideration."
But maybe you have a different opinion?