I hate labels.

I hate labels.

We all use them as a kind of shorthand but in the process we dehumanise people and do massive damage to our society and to the life of individuals.

I've touched on this before but I feel very strongly (and unfortunately whenever I go off on one of these serious rants, it seems everyone switches off and I get even less feedback than usual although that might be quite difficult right now).

I've seen a number of news stories over the last year or so where school children have been accused (and in some cases convicted) of sexually harassing or abusing fellow pupils - in some cases actually involving rape. It's very easy and natural to brand these as disgusting little perverts who need to be kept in a secure place where they can't harm anyone else. Except that, when I cast my mind back, I can think of times I was at school and did things which would put me in that same category. I used to travel home from school by train along with a lot of others from my (all boys) school and similar numbers from an adjacent (all-girls) school. The trains were always busy and in particular a lot got off at the same station that I used and there was always a big crush to get through the ticket barrier. There were many times I managed to arrange to be behind a schoolgirl of about the same age as myself with my hand pressing her bottom as we pushed through. If someone had suggested this was a criminal activity I'd have thought they were barking. Eventually I came to realise it perhaps wasn't a very good thing to do although I never got caught.

The press love to use labels - we've seen high profile case in the last year where people were labelled as hooker, prostitutes and so on even without evidence of them selling sex as such. But once the label is there everyone can treat them contemptuously without stopping to think about what's really going on. Adele Haze on her wonderful blog has written several times around this theme saying, for example, that as a spanking model she accepts the term "sex worker" to describe what she does. She's also written some interesting stuff about the sorts of jobs people perhaps can or can't have if they're into this sort of scene.

Of course, the number one case for labelling is paedophile. Before I go any further I have to say that I don't condone or approve people sexually exploiting or abusing under-age boys or girls and personally I can't imagine what they get out of it. But one event this week in the North East of England when a man and his pregnant wife had to be rescued from their own home by police after it was attacked by a mob who had heard (mistakenly as it happens) that he was a paedophile demonstrates how bad people's reaction to labels can be.

If society decided tomorrow that consensual spanking between adults and images and fantasy stories on the subject were to be illegal could I switch off my interest in order to comply with the law?

However the most damaging aspect of labels is perhaps the impact on the criminal justice system. I keep on the right side of the law (for now - unless they change it as I said in the previous paragraph) and part of the reason is that I couldn't live with being labelled as a criminal. I could pay the fine, even lose my freedom for a period of time if I had to, but it would be having other people know me as a criminal that would be unbearable. That might sound a good thing. The trouble is that it works the other way as well. Once someone has acquired the label then there's no way back and no real incentive not to keep on breaking the law since you're already stigmatised by the criminal label.