It is interesting that I just finished my Ragtime paper examined gender roles and gender issues, and we are transitioning into Gay NY. Enich's blog Gay Labels http://enichamcon.blogspot.com/2011/10/gay-labels.html/ really helped me to think about gay culture and the problem of labeling: "Succeeding is linked to abandoning one's label or taking the most positive aspects of said label and using them for the best". His blog was lingering in the background of my head until I read a chapter about gay people in New York trying to create multiple  identities to participate in the gay world and the "normal" world as it called in the book. I think this is another way of labeling, except labels are not identities, although it has been used interchangeably. I think the difference between label and identity is that labels are being put on someone and we create our identities. We love to label one another into groups, sections and organizations, but creating our own identities is not as easy as assigning labels to others.Homosexuals in 1960s New York, were fighting against these labels and  trying to identify themselves. "There segregation from one another allowed men to assume a different identity in each of them, without having to reveal the full range of their identities in any one of them" (134). They couldn't be themselves, fearing that the revealing of one's self would cause seriously damage to their social status, yet at the same time they also want to reveal parts of the identity, making the process and resulting in complication.