A long time ago, when I was a young boy in elementary school and highschool, there was a phrase that was passed around a lot. It went something along the lines of "Don't label me!". The context that this was usually brought up in was in a situation like the following. Sophie is a girl who goes to highschool. She has a tattoo of some greek letters on her back, she dresses like a punk-rocker and listens to punk rock music, smokes, does reasonably well in school and secretly likes America's Top Model. Bill (a class mate of Sophie's), one day is talking with Sophie about some of their teachers. During the conversation Sophie mentions that she hates a certain teacher because he is an authoritarian. In response Bill tells Sophie that she is such a rebel, such a typical punk rocker. Sophie gets a little bit flustered and says "Hey don't label me!"
I think that this kind of response is silly and anti-intellectual. Labelling things, or explaining phenomena is exactly what all intellectual endeavors are about. Sophie's insistence of not having Bill label her personality is basically saying "I don't want to pursue an intellectual endeavor into the phenomena of my personality."
Of course, Sophie might have very good reasons for not wanting to discuss the phenomena of her personality with Bill, perhaps because she is shy or doesn't like Bill very much. But if there is absolutism in the idea that one's personality should not be labelled, it points to a scary kind of lack of self-understanding. Being able to label one's personality is the essence of self-understanding.
Now one more interpretation of the "Don't label me!" that Sophie says to Bill might just mean something different. If might mean "You have labelled me incorrectly" Perhaps even though Sophie is currently into punk-rock, smokes and has a tattoo, she really doesn't like all of those things and feels that she as a person on the inside is very different than what she is doing on the outside. But by saying "Don't label me!" she has really not gotten at what she means and here there is need for her to say instead, "You have labelled me incorrectly" And if this is what she means, then I have no quiblbe with her. She is in fact engaging the the intellectual pursuit of self-knowledge. She is saying, no your label is correct, and then can offer Bill (if she so desires) an account of what she thinks is the correct labels or properties that she possesses.
So the moral of story is, if someone tells you not to label them, tell them either: "You are being anti-intellectual", or "do you mean I have labelled you incorrectly?"or "I guess you don't like me enough to talk about the phenomena of your personality"
Haha, cheers
