Allosexuals telling asexuals what the real definition of asexuality is and how it doesn’t count as a real orientation because it doesn’t cover all forms of attraction
“asexuals don’t like sex”
the insistence that only “cishet” aces/aros are not allowed when the term is applied to any and everyone who disagrees
the implication that aces don’t deserve to be LGBTQ+ bc some aces have acted shitty
the simultanous sexualization of aces, all while insisting that ace headcannons desexaulize characters
The refusal to listen to aces and their expierences
The overall exclusion of aromantic people from the whole discourse
The utter confusion of people outside the discourse about this whole debacle
QP relationships are not “romance light”... and that discourse de-radicalises them
Recently, Elizabeth [ Prismatic Entanglemants blog ] wrote a post on Asexual Agenda about friendship [ text ]-- actually it’s the second part in a series ( which is also found on her blog ). I’m not going to get into that discussion-- although her thoughts are worth reading and I’m really glad to do see more reflections about friendship.
But one of the things that came up in the comments of that post was the idea of veneration / idealisation of ( a particular version of ) queerplatonic / quirkyplatonic relationships in ace spaces... and how that’s not a good thing.
Though never directly named, this idealisation of ( that version of ) QP relationships basically boils down to more of the familiar assimilationist “aces are just like everyone else!” chant. But this time, it’s a push to assimilate aroaces especially with a new addition: the “look even aroaces have and can do these ( “monogamous” ) QP relationships that look and function almost exactly like normative ( monogamous ) romantic partnerships so aroaces are just like everyone else too!”
( Yes, this kind of assimilationist politics throw some people under the proverbial bus to benefit others who are more privileged or normatively situated already... and that’s bad for the people who get thrown under the bus and the whole community [ my discussion of that ]. But this QP thing goes even beyond that-- it’s is about preservation of an oppressive social order that’s much bigger than just us aces. )
In the comments section [ here ], @ace-muslim mentioned ( bolding added ):
I feel like a lot of the discussion about queerplatonic relationships, regardless of viewpoint, seems to assume they’re basically “romance lite”. I haven’t seen a lot of discussion recently about commitment, dependability, trust, and why even someone like me who has an extremely high tolerance for the solitary life (and has lived it for nearly 22 years) might want to have such a relationship to fill a particular space in their life. Instead, we seem to get caught up in this never-ending debate about who is throwing which group of people under the bus by taking one position or the other on QPRs.
I've seen this assumption-- of people treating QP relationships like "romance lite" or “romance light”[1]-- and it really bothers me. But I’m glad to see it being named.
It's so disconnected from why we needed to label QP relationships in the first place and it effectively precludes or actively shuts down conversation about the vast diversity of QP romantic relationships. ( I mentioned a bit about this in my QP Primer [ text ], but I certainly didn’t go into any detail about this stuff I’m rambling about here. )
The rest of this post is about:
how “QP = romance-light” (mis)discourse has political consequence of assimilation and de-radicalisation
Amatonormativity in QP definitions and some consequences ( e.g., the missing discourse of casual and “non-partner” QP relationships )
TLDR:
For me, one of the really powerful things about the language of QP relationships used to be that it gave people a new starting point to approach and understand relationships... and it had the power to undermine the romance-friendship binary / hierarchy that exists in a lot of societies.
This "romance lite" version / (mis)discourse of QP relationships is both conservative ( i.e., working to keep the current amatonormative social structures intact ) and destructive ( i.e., destroying vast potential for diverse non-normative relationships and access to language to understand / frame / discuss / construct them ). There are already vast areas of QP relationships nobody talks about and that are often defined as impossible ( e.g., less significant / casual / non-partner-status QP relationships ). This has to stop.
I don’t want us to get to a point where “QP relationships” actually become “romance light” and we need to coin a whole other word / set of words to acknowledge and understand the non-romantic, non-normative relationships that “queerplatonic” was originally coined to name.
“QP = romance-light” (mis)discourse and its political consequence of assimilation and de-radicalisation
I think part of the confusion is that people used to talk a fair bit about "romantic friendships" and "passionate friendships" and “relationships that blur the lines between friendship and romance”, a lot of people seem to be treating QP relationships as an umbrella term for that... which it isn't.
I mean, sure, a romantic friendship *could* also be a QP relationship, but most QP relationships *are not* romantic friendships. ( And treating QP relationships like “romance light” or even “romance sideways” is erasing the majority of QP relationships that are *not* about romance. )
Deliberately or not, that “QP = romance light” discourse functions as political attack on QP relationships, moving to undermine their large-scale potential to change how people do and view relationships and relationships structures.
We needed the language of QP relationships to help us talk about / make sense of / build relationships outside of the romance-friendship binary-- and there’s a whole lot of territory out there... not just the space “in between”.
Note-- Just to be clear for some context here: individual QP relationships are not inherently or necessarily radical. But the framework of QP relationships and the ability to talk about ( non-normative ) relationships outside the romance-friendship binary are inherently radical in that the existence of those things inherently challenges the social structures which function by denying them and funnelling all intimacy into other specific-and-regulated categories ( e.g., friendship and romance both governed by specific expectations ).
[ “Radical” by definition means promoting change from the root. And the whole discussion about QP relationships has the potential to challenge the roots of the various social relationship structures-- most notably in societies organised around “nuclear families, based around marriage-or-reasonable-facsimiles-thereof-like-common-law, based on the idea of romantic love”. ]
So... that normative "romance-lite" discourse here is working to "de-radicalise" or appropriate / re-absorb QP language and relationships by wrangling them back into the very amatonormative relationship structure that they were named to talk about defying... and to again render invisible or impossible all the other ways of doing relationships that the QP language opened up space to talk about.
This "romance lite" version of QP relationships is both conservative ( i.e., to keep the current amatonormative structure ) and destructive ( i.e., destroying vast potential for diverse non-normative relationships and access to language to understand / frame / discuss / construct them ).
It takes power away from the QP language to talk about a wide range of diverse relationships, and instead limits it completely, re-casting “QP relationship” as about only the tiny subsection of QP relationships that most closely resemble the normative categories already in place.
And it takes the QP language away from all the other QP relationships-- the ones that break the system when they demand recognition because they really don’t fit in it-- and leaves those relationships without language... so people can’t talk about them, recognise they exist, figure them out, or promote them.
It relegates that diverse, heterogeneous, multi-faceted domain of QP relationships back to the realm of the ineffable-- literally unable to be expressed in words because the words have changed to exclude that stuff-- where large-scale systems of social organisation and the people navigating them don’t have to ( and often can’t ) recognise that they even exist.
The system has a clear agenda of self-preservation and a clear impact, regardless of individual people’s actions and intentions. Individuals can and do participate in this system without doing that on purpose or even recognising how their actions are being woven into a larger pattern: that’s how the system works. Nobody needs to be out to get us-- the system structures everything to make sure that the collection of seemingly innocuous individual actions overall form a powerful ( and not-so-innocuous ) pattern with a particular political impact.
And that means that if we want to resist that powerful system of amatonormative, heteropatriarchal relationship social structures and hierarchies ( that intersect with other systems like white supremacy / racism )-- and I very much do-- we need to be doing that very deliberately because it isn’t going to just happen. If we want to keep the discourse of QP relationships from disappearing into that oppressive-and-hierarchical social structure and morphing into a funny little flying buttress [ definition ] offshoot supporting that system... we need to do it deliberately.
We need to fight to keep QP relationships and the discourse we created to name / do / recognise / theories / build them. We need to resist the push even within our own communities to turn QP relationships into “romance light”. We need to keep the diversity of ( non-romantic ) QP relationships front and centre.
Amatonormativity in QP definitions and some consequences ( e.g., the missing discourse of casual and “non-partner” QP relationships )
Even the definition of queerplatonic relationships on the AVEN wiki is predicated on amatonormative assumptions. And while the part about emotional connection "beyond friendship" has changed to "beyond what most people consider friendship", it still compares the commitment level of QP relationships to romantic relationships.
That has some interesting and unfortunate consequences. For example, because “romantic relationships” are assumed to be important ( and occupy a space near the top of the amatonormative relationship hierarchy ), QP relationships are sort of defined as necessarily important ( and therefore less important QP relationships are defined as impossible-- as though relationships can’t be or become QP until they reach a particular threshold of significance ).
Now, don’t get me wrong, many QP relationships are significant. And the terminology was created initially to be able to better express particular kinds of significant relationships that couldn’t be expressed in the terms that existed at the time. It’s not surprising that people work hard to get recognition for the relationships that are important to them, and that people don’t put in a lot of work carving out space to have less significant relationships acknowledged.
But just because people created a meta-category (i.e., of QP relationships ) to name important relationships... doesn’t meant that the meta-category *only* contains important relationships. There can be QP relationships of varying degree of significance... just like there can be friendships or romantic relationships or for that matter community solidarity relationships or professional relationships. It’s just that people rarely talk about them.
For example, I’m someone who does intimacy in queerplatonic ways. I build significant, primary relationships that are QP and I don’t really built other kinds of primary relationships. But I do have other relationships too, of various kinds ( though not romantic ones )... and yes that includes other, less significant QP relationships.
As someone who does QP relationships and has for most of my life ( though the language didn’t exist yet for much of it ), those misconceptions around what QP relationships are... are actually making it harder not easier for people in ace spaces to understand my relationships. Because instead of starting from nothing, a lot of people are starting from misconceptions.
For instance, there’s a pattern I have of relating to some people that’s not exactly friendship-- it’s something else with more “distance” and less involvement in daily lives than “friendship” entails but also not “friendship light” or “acquaintanceship”. ( And there is definitely nothing romantic about these relationships. ) But at the same time, there’s also an unusual level of intimacy facilitated by that distance-- whether physical or emotional.
That dialectical co-existence of intimacy and distance is something central to a certain subset of my relationships. And to be clear, these are not people I meet or interact with online ( although sometimes e-mails might be part of our interactions ). In practice, these are relationships where I write physical letters to people and have conversations every once in a while-- and part of that is talking about stuff in each of our lives we that don’t have anyone else really we can share those things with or get a more “outsider” perspective on.
I don’t really talk about those relationships a lot even though they’ve collectively played a significant role in my entire life ( not just as an adult ). These aren’t especially significant relationships individually, and not relationships where we really spend time discussion the relationship. ( And since most of these relationships have been with non-ace people and / or before the language of QP relationships existed ), I haven’t really discussed QP stuff with any of them. But we also haven’t really discussed anything relationship-related other than the “not really friends” thing for some that are longer-term and where there is more intimacy.
( That’s not really necessary for someone just met-- several times I’ve had distinctly different-type of interaction feel with people I’ve just met or who occupy acquaintance level of relationship. )
Since these relationships are not romantic but also not really fitting the “friendship” box ( even if there is a level of intimacy and trust and sharing of certain things not typically shared ) I’m inclined to think of them as queerplatonic. It’s not the dominant narrative of QP relationships, and it doesn’t fit the definition that people are trying to push about QP relationships being necessarily important, but there isn’t any other way to express those relationships... and QP works.
I imagine there are more conversations to be had about QP relationships that aren’t necessarily “partner status” relationships. But we’re not going to get there with these overly simplified definitions based in amatonormative assumptions. Some parts of the conversations are already shut down before they start.
In Conclusion... let’s keep the power of QP discourse to do what we need it to do
For me, one of the really powerful things about the language of QP relationships used to be that it gave people a new starting point-- it proclaimed loudly that anyone trying to understand my relationships couldn’t get there easily from a “romance” starting point. But with this emerging “romance light” mis-discourse of QP relationships... the QP (mis)discourse itself is encouraging people to use romance as a starting point. The simple power of starting point free from romance has already been eroded. I don’t want tot see that continue. And I think it would be a shame if it did.
I don’t want us to get to a point where “QP relationships” actually become “romance light” and we need to coin a whole other word / set of words to acknowledge and understand the non-romantic, non-normative relationships that “queerplatonic” was originally coined to name. I don’t want to have to start again from scratch. I won’t concede the QP language territory to “romantic light”-- for now at least[2], I’m going to fight for it.
Footnotes:
[1] As I reflect on Canadian spellings of “light” vs “lite” I note that a lot of the “diet” products in grocery stores actually say “lite” and not “light” because “light” is legally regulated [ source1 , source2 , source3 ) but “lite” can get around a lot of those rules and mean pretty much anything. Is “lite” peanut butter lower in fat or sugar than regular peanut butter? Who knows?--you’ll have to read the fine print to find out!
I’m not really sure how this applies to “romance lite” vs “romance light” in a specifically Canadian context... but think the metaphor has potential for something.
[2] I’m actually not so keen about the “platonic” part of “queerplatonic” relationships. So I would be interested in another word for that reason.
I know people who object to the “queer” part of “queerplatonic” for many reasons, but one that doesn’t get acknowledged often is because of how the homonormative communities that have taken to using “queer” ( ironically or paradoxically enough ) continue to violently exclude some people for being too far outside the heteronormative system to be able to participate via homonormative assimilationism.
I don’t object to the “queer” part of “queerplatonic” for that myself [ explanation ] ( because I also feel that “queer” [ explanation ] is something I’m willing to fight for ) but there are alternatives like quirkyplatonic if “queer” is really the problem.
