The Third Intimacy: From 19th Century Romantic Friendships to Modern-Day Homoerotic Friendships
By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a distinctive form of intimacy between women—now called European romantic friendship—had developed into a widely recognized and socially understood pattern: emotionally intense bonds, domestic arrangements, intellectual collaboration, and sometimes freaky (I’m sorry) undertones, yet generally framed as socially acceptable friendship rather than romantic partnership.
These relationships operated within a third category of intimacy: simultaneously deeply passionate yet distinct from normative hetero-alloromance. While some erotic or sensual elements were present, these women generally described their attachment in the language of friendship.
In contemporary society, echoes of this phenomenon can be observed in what may be termed modern homoerotic friendships. These are queer friendships in which ppl share erotic, sensual, or flirtatious connections without translating them into romantic partnerships.
I know people often see homoerotic friendships as two same gendered friends who like each other—romantically or sexually—but don’t act on it to avoid ruining the friendship; in this essay, I challenge you to reimagine them as a third kind of intimacy: two same genders friends who do like each other, both fully aware and completely fine with it—no yearning, no deprivation, just a mutual, acknowledged closeness and practice. A third space, much like queerplatonic relationships.
Unlike the historical context, modern sapphic women possess the linguistic and conceptual tools to name sexual attraction independently from romantic attachment, but they may intentionally maintain eroticized friendship rather than pursue traditional romance.
For example, sapphic women or achillean men may engage in physical intimacy—kissing, playful touching, or flirtation—without defining themselves as a couple, or two may explore erotic tension within a friendship framework that prioritizes loyalty, emotional reciprocity, and companionship over romance.
The parallels between historical romantic friendships and modern homoerotic friendships are significant. Both involve rituals of devotion, shared time and space, and emotional exclusivity. Historically, sapphic women such as Elizabeth Blackwell and Emily Cushier created households and professional collaborations that structured their lives around each other. Today, queer individuals may create sensual arrangements—shared apartments, collaborative life long projects, or routine social patterns—that reflect eroticized intimacy without requiring romantic emotions. In both contexts, desire and attachment are recognized internally, celebrated within the relationship, and often deliberately kept separate from societal prescriptions regarding romantic coupling.
However, the contemporary environment differs in notable ways. Historical romantic friendships existed under social pressures that necessitated subtle coding or restraint, particularly because erotic physicality between women could provoke censure or legal consequences. This makes a lot of people argue that romantic friendships or homoerotic friendships—as a third party—don’t exist, saying if two women were intensely devoted, kissed, flirted, or shared a bed, it had to be about hidden sapphic desire.
Historians and critics would insist that these women were “taking what they could get” in a society that didn’t allow same-sex love, and of course, I do recognize that logic, but that’s a very allonormative stream of thought—implying that they were lesbians who settled for romantic friendships because full romantic or sexual relationships between women weren’t socially possible.
On the surface, it might seem plausible: society certainly didn’t legitimize same-sex coupling. But this perspective is deeply misleading. While some women may have experienced frustration with societal restrictions, the vast majority of these relationships were not second-best or substitutes—they were their own distinct category of intimacy. Romantic friendship was not a compromise or a stopgap; it was a deliberate, socially recognized form of emotional and often erotic connection.
The thinking was that there was no space for a third category of intimacy—everything had to be either friendship or romantic/sexual desire—so anything that looked passionate but didn’t fit the hetero-allocentric mold must secretly be lesbianism. It’s a reductive view, treating devotion, erotic play, and emotional intimacy as mere stand-ins for something else, rather than recognizing them as a legitimate, culturally acknowledged form of connection.
Modern homoerotic friendships support my argument as well. These are friendships where queer people—often sapphic or achillean—engage in flirtation, sexualized touch, and erotic tension without ever framing the relationship as romantic in the alloromantic sense. There’s no hiding, no societal camouflage, no desperate “taking what you can get” scenario. Both people acknowledge each other’s queerness, both love the eroticized closeness, and both maintain the friendship without it needing to become a couple. These connections prove that intense erotic intimacy between friends doesn’t need to be a substitute for forbidden love; it can be a deliberate, sustainable, and fulfilling form of human connection all on its own.
The historical misreading of romantic friendships as “just lesbians in hiding” flattens a whole category of intimacy. Romantic friendships were neither platonic nor coded lesbianism—they were their own form of devotion, and the evidence is in letters, diaries, and the ways women structured their lives around each other. While some women in the relationships may have experienced sexual or romantic attraction to other women, the term ‘lesbian’ does not accurately describe their experiences—it refers to a modern social identity, culture, and community, not the historical forms of intimacy they practiced.
And you can see this in modern day homoerotic friendships, where there is both labels, choices, and acceptance within a community—usually within contexts of Social media, dating platforms, and queer community spaces which facilitate interactions that openly acknowledge erotic tension, yet still allow participants to avoid compulsory romantic labeling.
Despite this greater freedom, modern homoerotic friendships retain the delicate balance of emotional, erotic, and playful engagement, reflecting the ongoing relevance of historical relational models. Both parties know they could have more, but they choose to lay in that middle ground because it’s not friendship or dating, but a kind of third relationship they enjoy. It reminds me of queerplatonic relationships within the a-spec community.
Both historically and presently, these forms of attachment illustrate the limits of conventional categories such as friendship, romance, and sexual orientation. Romantic friendships of the 18th and 19th centuries, and their contemporary analogues, demonstrate that human intimacy can exist along a spectrum that includes emotional devotion, erotic engagement, and mutual support without being subsumed under allo-heteronormative frameworks. Bisexual and lesbian people historically, and sapphic individuals today, challenge assumptions that erotic desire must culminate in couplehood or monogamous commitment.
Both historically and presently, these relationships expand our understanding of intimacy, desire, and relational diversity, challenging narrow definitions of friendship and romance and revealing the human need for connection that transcends conventional social frameworks. intimacy is multidimensional: emotional, erotic, intellectual, and relational, and not everything needs to fit into the rigid boxes of romantic or sexual categories. That’s the entire point of queerness.
I hate the discourse surrounding the “male loneliness epidemic” because men’s loneliness is real. statistically, men DO NOT have deep or emotionally fulfilling relationships. BECAUSE OF PATRIARCHY. because patriarchal manhood is emotionally abusive. it’s literally astounding that we’ve ceded this territory to fascists when we need it. we need to be able to say yes. you are lonely. because of your values. because of the emotional expectations of your gender. you can have different values and stop being lonely. you can give up patriarchy and stop feeling so awfully alone.
online right now, it’s really difficult to say this without getting harassed. but I want you to remember this for real life when you’re talking to real people. any man talking about male loneliness is an opportunity for feminist revision. say yes, say you are lonely. and then say that’s how boys are taught to interact with each other and you will stay lonely until boys are allowed and expected to have feelings and be emotional and emotionally present with those they love
Censorship, Pro-shipping, and the Limits of Dark Fiction
A looong post about my stances
I think there’s this weird debate about censorship of dark topics, and as someone who fiercely hates some of the things I read online (because I find them immoral and awful/encouraging bad behavior), these are my thoughts (please read it all before commenting):
Content Warning: Discussions of written SA/rap3, p3dophilia, abus3, violenc3 (all in reference to dark fiction and if it should be allowed)
Yes, fiction affects reality, but you can choose whether to engage with it—and while you can’t always control your initial reactions, you can control whether you keep reading and how you process it afterward—this is evident in how different people interpret the same story in completely different ways. (This makes me sound like a TikTok proshipper but just wait i swear)
A book, film, or comic doesn’t land the same for everyone; someone might find it harmful while someone else might find it healing slash empowering. That’s the power of art—It’s a mirror reflecting what you bring to it, you are reading more of yourself than the text. To pretend there’s one single way to read a text is not how human beings work.
A story about abus3 might retraumatize one survivor and give another survivor the words they never had. A violent/s3xual scene might disgust one person but feel cathartic to someone who’s been powerless or abused all their life. This subjectivity is exactly why censorship doesn’t make sense: you can’t flatten all readers into one reaction. When people try, what they’re really saying is, “I don’t trust anyone else to make their own choices, so I’ll choose for them.” That’s not protection that’s control.
And this gets especially complicated when you’re talking about writing that involves murd3r, rap3, abus3, or other fucked up material. You can’t really draw a clean line between fet1sh, coping, or just fictional storytelling, because those categories often overlap. Some people process trauma through dark fiction; others use the same kinds of stories as pure horror entertainment; others still might engage with them in a s3xual way.
Like for example, even a book like Lolita, which clearly depicts the horrors of p3dophilia, has been praised online by some as a “great love story” :/
BUT.
Even when you accept that fiction is subjective and people can process difficult topics differently, there’s still a clear ethical boundary. Content like an overs3xualized story depicting ch1ld rap3 or p3dophilia isn’t just “dark fiction” or a space for coping—it’s exploitative. It carries a real potential for harm because it normalizes, s3xualizes, or f3tishizes something that is illegal and deeply damaging in real life.
BUT.
Even when a story is gross or deeply problematic—something like p3dophilia—it’s still fiction. It doesn’t leave the page unless someone takes it with them. It doesn’t hurt anyone unless someone chooses to turn it into action—and if they’re going to, censoring a fic won’t stop them.
Fiction isn’t a weapon until someone makes it one, and most people who engage with dark fiction do so precisely because it’s safer than reality. Treating all fiction as dangerous by default only makes the real world more dangerous, because it removes the safety net.
And here’s where the normalization issue fits: yes, it’s bad that some of these things get normalized—like how people barely flinch at murd3r, w4r, or extreme violenc3 anymore because they’ve seen it repeated in movies, games, and superhero films.
That desensitization is real, and it’s shit. But the reason it exists is exactly because fiction gives people a space to engage with violenc3 safely, without anyone being directly harmed. And the alternative isn’t safer: we don’t have a society that can safely support people who struggle with dark thoughts, or make them feel secure enough to seek help without judgment, shame, or punishment.
So the choice is brutal: either remove their coping mechanisms and risk them hurting others, or let them process those impulses in fiction, where it can’t directly harm anyone. As ugly as it is, fiction becomes a pressure valve. Taking it away isn’t protection—it’s cruelty disguised as morality.
As someone who’s been hurt before by things these people will write about, I can tell the difference between experiencing something in real life and reading about it on a page. It’s not even close. Fiction is words and pixels; reality is bruises, flashbacks, and a ruined life.
One can shake you, disturb you, even disgust you—but the other DESTROYS you. That difference matters. When people act like the two are the same, it feels like they’re minimizing what real abus3 actually is. I refuse to let anyone flatten lived trauma into the same category as a story on AO3.
And here’s the other thing: taking this kind of fiction away in the name of “protection” doesn’t stop abus3. It only pushes those thoughts or desires into the real world, where they can become dangerous.
Anti-censorship isn’t about defending stories for the sake of stories. It’s about preventing real-world harm by keeping harmful impulses contained in imagination instead of action. Erasing fiction under the guise of morality risks more than it prevents—it removes a safe outlet, punishes curiosity, and forces people to process complex feelings in unsafe ways.
If you actually care about protecting people, you have to accept the messy truth: letting even the grossest fiction exist is safer than pretending you can erase it. Banning it doesn’t stop the harm. It just stops people from surviving it in their own ways.
BUT.
Even with all of this, creating communities around this kind of material shouldn’t be something we encourage. I get that anti-censorship mainly means what this essay has argued: leave people to engage with fiction safely, and don’t criminalize their coping.
But in today’s context, especially on platforms like TikTok using anti-censorship terms like “pro-ship,” you see people posting abusiv3/rap3 stories, romanticizing harmful behaviors, and forming communities that s3xualize or normalize them. That crosses a line. Coping through dark fiction is one thing—but sharing it or building spaces that encourage it is another.
There’s a difference between using fiction as a pressure valve and making a culture that treats trauma or exploitation as entertainment. Respecting safe, personal engagement with fiction doesn’t mean we have to endorse its social celebration.
Acknowledging all of this, people still do reserve the rights to feel uncomfortable with people who write or consume this stuff on their own, even if it doesn’t hurt anyone like communities do—like sometimes I personally feel uncomfortable with even knowing that a person likes certain stuff, so I don’t interact with them and ask them not to interact back.
ALL IN ALL
P3doph1lia/Rap3/Violence arousal are mental health issues; they won’t stop, society doesn’t provide help that works (as seen in the world), so harm reduction is necessary.
Fiction affects reality, but far less directly; people choose to engage with it, doesn’t actually harm someone, etc
The same story can retraumatize one person and help another process trauma. Subjectivity makes censorship ineffective
Overs3xualized depictions of taboo stuff are exploitative and can normalize harmful ideas
Fiction isn’t a weapon until someone makes it one; most people engage with dark fiction because it’s safer than reality.
Normalization of violence or dark topics is a side effect of repeated exposure, but removing fiction doesn’t make people safer—it removes a pressure valve for processing impulses.
Anti-censorship is about harm reduction and safety, not endorsement
Communities that glorify abus3 (TikTok darkshippers) cross a line; safe, personal engagement is okay, but social celebration of harmful content should not be encouraged.
Individuals have the right to not want to interact with people who consume or create media they deem immoral or inexcusable
Got the RED DAUGHTER OF KRYPTON Kara arc!!! That’s my fav out of it all like dude I’m so lucky. I also got some Batman comics (specifically Superman/batman for Kara’s story, but also the new Batman: hush, and the old Batman: year one)
