Pigeon Holing

no not some new sex act (although actually it may be one - I'm just innocent enough not to know)

it was just that on twitter we talk a lot about sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, you name your 'group' and there is someone out there who hates you, so I wondered does all the pigeon holing of people into 'groups' help or hinder? we live in a vast Venn diagram it seems, with rings like white, black, christian, atheist, heterosexual, homosexual, trans, cis, disabled, able bodied, adult, child etc of course we fall into more than one ring, but really shouldn't we just throw away the rings and be human?

Or is that an impossible dream, are humans destined - maybe even programmed - to 'group' and 'pigeon hole' others. When you look at someone do you automatically assign them a group or groups, "oh" you say "she's a single mum" or "ah ha a gay guy" you may not mean it as a bad or a good thing, it just is, but can we help it? can we stop it? does it matter?

One of the reasons I love twitter (and the net in general) is that here no one needs to say who they are, you can if you like (I'm a white middle aged mum) but no one needs to know, and you can even lie and see if it changes reaction to you (I have a secret twitter account where I'm not a white middle aged mum ;))

so next time you look at someone try imagining you are meeting them online....now, does it matter which pigeon hole they seem to fit into?