This is to praise the Rev. David Hegg for what I consider one of his best, if not one of The Signal’s best, columns I have read since I started reading The Signal. Hegg’s column, “Labels Are for the Lazy” (March 22) hit so many nails on so many heads, my own head was spinning with sheer delight. I felt like adding that labels are also for cowards or anyone who is so lost they need someone else to tell them who they are, but it reminded me of a brief conversation I had with the young woman who was bagging my groceries at a local grocery store. She was wearing a little badge with her name on it, and under her name were the words “They/Them.” It immediately caught my attention and I couldn’t help myself, so I asked her, “What does that mean, ‘They/Them’”?
She replied that it meant that she did not “identify” with the traditional binary gender roles that society had designated for men and women. I countered with, “Fair enough, neither do I, but the last time I checked words like ‘they’ and ‘them’ imply the plural form of the person and most people are singular (unless they suffer from multiple personality disorder). I then asked her, “Have you ever thought of identifying simply as “Me”?
She looked stunned for a moment and then she smiled. “Hey, I like that,” she said. You’re welcome!
And “Me” can be anything on any given day depending on how you feel about anything, which is how I see myself (and how I wish everyone could/would see themselves). For example, I value life (any form of life), but I won’t forbid abortions, etc. “Real” life is not “black and white.” Anyway, the sense of freedom, the feeling of independence, is phenomenal. Why confine yourself to a “cage” when you can roam “free-range”? What’s so scary about simply identifying as “Yourself” — liberal on Monday, conservative on Tuesday, a capitalist on Wednesday, a communist on Thursday, a fascist on Friday, and a wild-eyed anarchist on Saturday, saving Sunday for much-needed R&R? Would it simply be too much … too much “chaos” for those needing some form of “order,” which is why labels were invented in the first place, for all of those lazy cowards?
So thank you, Rev. Hegg, and bless you for submitting this column.
Arthur Saginian
Santa Clarita
