Thursday, Today Is Thursday

i keep seeing misinformation about this, so: queerplatonic relationships do not have a set definition. the name comes from the idea that it's "queering" the platonic relationship, tailoring it to the individual relationships' own desires. it isn't necessarily romance lite, but it also isn't necessarily whatever definition you want to impose on it. the point of queering the platonic relationship is to break away from strict allonormative views on friendship, romance, and sex, not to make a new categorical box to fit in.

the answer to "what is a qpr?" is "whatever you want it to be." sometimes that is romance lite. sometimes it's a deeply committed friendship. sometimes it's friends who have a sexual relationship. sometimes it's based on an entirely different mode of attraction. sometimes it's fluid and impossible to put into words. it's whatever you want it to be. it's queer.

yeah, but you do mean 'loveless' like 'romanceless' right? Just cause you're not interested in a romantic partnership, and you're never attracted to anyone romantically, that doesn't mean you can't love your family and your friends. Am I understanding wrong? I feel like it's a widely accepted concept that 'love' isn't just romantic, it's about caring about someone, no matter if they're your family or platonic friend or your pet.

No, "loveless" means love-less. Another anon also asked me to explain as well so:

"Lovelessness" in the aro context comes from the essay I Am Not Voldemort by K.A Cook. The essay confronts normative ideas on love, its inherent positivity and what it means to not love. From the introduction, which brings up the question of non-romantic love:

This June, I saw an increasing number of positivity and support posts for the aromantic and a-spec communities discussing the amatonormativity of “everyone falls in love”. I agree: the idea that romantic love is something everyone experiences, and is therefore a marker of human worth, needs deconstruction. Unfortunately, a majority of these posts are replacing the shackles of amatonormativity with restrictive lines like “everyone loves, just not always romantically”, referencing the importance of loving friends, QPPs, family members and pets. Sometimes it moves away from people to encompass love for hobbies, experiences, occupations and ourselves. The what and how tends to vary from post to post, but the idea that we do and must love someone or something, and this love redeems us as human and renders us undeserving of hatred, is being pushed to the point where I don’t feel safe or welcome in my own aromantic community. Even in the posts meant to be challenging the more obvious amatonormativity, it is presumed that aros must, in some way, love. I’ve spent weeks watching my a-spec and aro communities throw neurodiverse and survivor aros under the bus in order to do what the aromantic community oft accuses alloromantic aces of doing: using their ability to love as a defence of their humanity. Because I love, they say, I also don’t deserve to be a target of hatred, aggression and abuse. But what if I don’t love? What if love itself has been the mechanism of the hatred and violence I have endured? Why am I, an aro, neurodiverse survivor of abuse and bullying, still acceptable collateral damage?

The author criticizes the idea of "true love" that is incapable of harm. Ze questions why we construct love in that way, and how it ignores and simplifies the experiences of victims of abuse ("It’s comforting to think that a love that wounds isn’t real love, but it denies the complexity of experience and feeling had by survivors. It denies the complexity of experience and feeling that makes it harder for us to identify abuse and escape its claws. It denies the validity of survivors who look at love and feel an honest doubt about its worth, as a word or a concept, in our own interactions and experiences.") Ze talks about being forced to say "I love you" to transphobic, abusive parents whose feelings of love was the justification for their abuse.

The core of what "loveless" as an concept is about is summed up in this quote:

There is no substantial difference between saying “I’m human because I fall in love”, “I’m human because I love my friends” and “I’m human because I love calligraphy”. All three statements make human worth contingent on certain behaviours, feelings and experiences. Expanding the definition of what kinds of love make us human does nothing but save some aros from abuse and antagonism … while telling survivor and neurodiverse aros, who are more likely to have complex relationships to love as a concept or are unable to perform it in ways recognised by others, that we’re still not worthy.

Lovelessness is against any kind of statement which quantifies humanity (and implicitly, human worth) in the ability to feel or act or experience certain things. Humans are human by virtue of being human, and nothing else. And, it is socially constructed! "Love" has no natural definition! Some people are not comfortable using "love" to describe positive feelings and relationships, and some people do not feel those positive feelings in general. And those people deserve the right to define their own experiences and their own relationship to the social construct of love.

In essence, lovelessness is both a personal as well as (in my opinion) a political identity, born from aro and mad experiences that challenges not just amatonormativity but all ideas that associate personhood and worth with the ability to feel certain things.

& as a note, there is also the term "lovequeer" which describes using the term "love" in ways which contradict mainstream understandings of what it means to love, and which kinds of love are considered worthwhile.

drew this while listening to a song called pussy riot

Jarthur doodles

"we need more weird queers!!"

you start parroting TERF talking points the milisecond someone says they are a lesboy or gaygirl

you cry when mspec lesbians/gays exist

you refuse to use neopronouns or it/its, even when those are a persons only set of pronouns

you expect a-specs to experience attraction in some way (yes, that includes platonic attraction)

you exclude intersex people

you can't even accept furries.

we need to address issues within the aspec community

the aspec communities have some problems that really need to be addressed otherwise we’re going to tear ourselves apart. we’ve gotten enough from the “ace discourse” of 2017, and the effect that it’s had on our communities is devastating. we need to understand each other better and support each other. we need to stand in solidarity. below the cut i’ll be addressing these issues. these are problems that i’ve personally noticed in the community as well as suggestions from others. you’re free to comment your thoughts, of course, but please no discourse. that will detract from the message of this post. 

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