The Power of Gender and Sexual Identity Labels

Before many of us were born, we were given gender labels that set our life course in motion. In this discussion and personally explorative class, we will dive into looking at a variety of questions:

• What labels have you been gifted, inherited, chosen, been forced into, or run away from?
• How does your internal identity for yourself affect your outside identity and your interpretation of gender and sexual roles you play or fill?
• What power do your labels grant you for flirting, community exposure, personal interactions, group dynamics, and more?

• What do you loose by stating a specific label or expressing it physically at first meeting another individual?
• How are these labels all formed, and why don’t we just scrap them all?

Labels can get us hot, labels can turn us off, labels drive us mad, and labels give us hope for claiming our own sense of self. Let’s challenge ourselves, look deep inside, then examine how it all affects the current communities we each play a part in.

Presenter: Lee Harrington