We as humans tend to always want to put things into a category and place, to check out all the boxes and make everything neat and tidy. From the perspective of a Dom, labels tend to help categorize and objectify, promoting ownership of "it".

Personally, I've always struggled to label myself as anything more than a Dominant, not for a lack of trying, I just could never identify with a label that includes the whole of me, my kinks and my personality, saying I'm just X or Y just feels like limiting myself. I also encourage my partners to not stick with a single label for the same reason.

I've recently started engaging in kink communities online and one thing I've noticed is that a vast majority of people tend to have a label that they identify with. Conversely my experiences, outside of online, I've noticed that people do not want to put as much stock into a label. I've also noticed that people asking for advice on this sub would say things like: "I was a "x" but then we tried a new thing, am I a "y" now?" To me personally that just feels like you found a new thing, it can be added on to you but it doesn't need to replace what you already had before. Then there's the fact that society as a whole tends to promote labels in almost everything we do nowadays, is what I'm noticing just a natural change due to that?

My question then is: Do you feel that a label is important to you? does it help you enter dom/sub space easier? Does identifying as a single label help you sink more into that identity?