Most political/personal/philosophical labels are better applied DESCRIPTIVELY not PRESCRIPTIVELY

[jack]

This is a point I've seen talked around a lot, but not quite made explicit. And it ought to be obvious, but I still find it helpful. Whenever you describe yourself, or someone else, as "X", it's much, much more relaxing and helpful to think of X as a descriptive label, not a prescriptive one. It massively reduces the extent to which you feel obliged to fit into that (or another) category.

Comments

[simont]

I've often said things like this, yes. A typical label of the type is a shorthand for a collection of other views / properties / whatever and indicates that the labelled thing has most or all of those properties; this means that if something has an unusual subset of the properties so that it can't be usefully described as either "X" or "not-X" without losing important information, the thing to do is to say so – e.g. using words like "ish" or "sort of" or "in some ways but not others" or "I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that" – and not to try to change or reinterpret the facts to find a way to classify the disputed thing solidly on one side or the other of the boundary.