Readers may be familiar with the idea of stacking queer labels, especially words related to asexual and nonbinary people. For example, somebody might call themselves a nebulagender panromantic aegosexual fraysexual, and what does any of that mean? Perhaps you’ve seen these label stacks applied to a hypothetical person, a caricature meant to be mocked. Perhaps you’ve seen label stacks provided as a rhetorical example of someone worthy of respect, as if to say, “yes, we even tolerate those people”. Or perhaps you’ve seen the real thing in the wild: a person who unironically chains four or more identities together.

I’m assuming that the reader is interested in respecting others, and is not just coming here to mock labels they don’t understand. I offer some basic tips.

1. It’s okay not to understand every label.

I do not think the correct approach is to look up each and every label. If you see the same label over and over, sure, go look it up. Or if you’re just curious, go look it up. But if you’ve never seen a word before, it might be fairly obscure, and online resources for obscure labels tend to be low quality. Online resources may contain misleading information, or may simply lack practical advice on how to treat a label.

People also come up with new words all the time, and even people who adopt these labels for themselves can’t keep up with all of them.

Ultimately, respect is more important than vocabulary. You do not need to keep up with every new word to respect people.

2. “Microlabel” is mildly derogatory.

“Microlabel” is a term that has primarily been used by critics. Critics believe the labels are hair-splitting, superfluous, trying to be special, or just generally cringy. And so if you call them “microlabels”, some people may anticipate that you’re going to mock words that you are unfamiliar with.

It’s not so derogatory that you can’t say it at all. And I’ve seen people use “microlabel” in a non-derogatory manner. I put “microlabel” in the title, because I want people who use the term to be able to find this post.

Instead of calling them microlabels, you can just call them labels, or identities, or identity labels. The thing to understand, is there’s no clear place to draw the line between microlabels and labels. I describe myself as “gray-asexual”, which many people would consider an obscure microlabel. But to me, it’s not obscure at all, it’s a common term that most everybody in asexual communities is familiar with. “Aegosexual” is less common, but still shows up in community surveys; “fraysexual” is less common than that.

Yes, some words are more obscure than others, we can acknowledge it. But if you’re not familiar with a word, then you don’t really know how common or obscure it is. You only know that the word is obscure to you. It’s not really fair to differentiate between “labels” and “microlabels” based only on what you personally are familiar with.

3. Labels are not necessarily speaking to you.

When you see a label you’re unfamiliar with, or perhaps a whole stack of labels you’re unfamiliar with, you might be wondering, what are they trying to say? Why did they bother telling you these labels when you got no useful information out of it?

Pay attention to the context. Did they say the labels to a group of people? Or did they list the labels in an online profile? Then they’re probably not trying to communicate anything to you at all. They may be speaking to a community where those words are commonly understood. Or, they may be fishing for somebody who does understand, in hopes of making a connection. If you’re not that person, that’s okay. Nobody expects you to be that person.

Hypothetically, if you’re talking to someone, and they mention some labels you’re unfamiliar with, it’s okay to say you’re unfamiliar. They may try to give you a simpler set of labels in hopes that you understand. Or they may try to explain what the words mean. If you still don’t get it, it’s okay to admit it! If you’re both struggling to communicate, one possible move is to say you’ll look it up later.

4. You don’t need to use the labels for yourself.

Some people, when encountering labels they consider obscure, feel attacked. They say “I don’t like putting myself in so many little boxes.” That’s fine! You don’t need to put yourself in little boxes. When someone uses a word that says something very specific about themselves, they are in no way demanding that you also come up with labels to describe yourself.

If you don’t like using a long list of specialized identity labels, you’re hardly alone. Lots of queer people also prefer a lower label complexity. In most queer spaces I’m familiar with, it’s a minority of people who stack lots of labels together. It’s fine, we’re allowed to have different preferences. Some people like stacking labels, some people prefer to stick to one or two, some prefer no labels at all. We coexist and are aware of each other.

5. Rethink the mocking of microlabels.

Often when I see a stack of queer labels, it’s a fictional caricature. People take it as self-evident that someone who stacks four or more words together is cringe. Is it though? I don’t think that’s cringe. That’s just a thing that people do, in all sorts of contexts.

It’s not cringe, for instance, if I say I am a “former condensed matter experimentalist physicist”. Sure, it’s a lot of long words that not every reader understood. But every physicist understood, and it provides a great deal of useful specificity. It’s really not that strange for people to use a lot of specialized language.

For sure, a lot of people with long stacks of identity labels are young folks still finding their footing. They could be trying out new words they think are cool, and which they may ultimately drop later. Or maybe they’re older and/or know what they’re doing. Either way, it’s fine. Have a sense of proportion. Whatever labels people use, it’s fine. Bullying people, or creating fictionalized caricatures of people, that’s not fine.