#compulsory romanticism

[snakebites-and-ink]

Hate how people treat friendship like it's nothing more than the training wheels version of romantic love.

[cardigans-and-bowties]

I feel like I’m being too cynical maybe but it just pisses me off. If you have an SO, you can treat them any day of the year. Companies pushing all sorts of products for this arbitrary day doesn’t help anything (except for their own capital gain). If anything, it contributes to compulsory romanticism (and often compulsory heterosexuality).

And with the way many couples are portrayed on the media (and the way some people talk about it in general) it’s like, today you have to treat them right because you HAVE to - not because you want to. And the rest of the time you can treat them like shit?

[missionlameturtle]

I haven’t said anything re: that post circulating about someone misinterpreting two women getting married as a joint wedding because I get it, I do, you guys are rightfully upset about denial of queer relationships and so on. But some of the comments I’ve seen in connection with/that refer to that post make fun of the idea that it could be a queerplatonic relationship, and. I don’t want to be That Person who takes an otherwise valid point and makes it about a tangent that just a few less than awesome people are bringing up anyways, but then that’s why I’m making my own post rather than commenting on one of the ones already circulating. Because I’m not really comfortable with the way some of the things I’ve been seeing are invalidating to aro spectrum people/people in queerplatonic relationships and could maybe even make them feel somewhat unsafe, and this narrative of “queerplatonic lolololol straight ppl am i rite?” isn’t an awesome one to be perpetuating. 

And I’m sure someone’s going to want to say “but ACTUAL queer relationships are more important and we should be more concerned about supporting them, right?”, and I’m going to invite any and all of you to stop and think about that for a second before it comes out of your mouth. I’m not--look, that’s maybe a little harsh, but my first reaction writing this is to lead with a disclaimer along the lines of “I know it’s not as important as...”, and that goes to show I’ve internalised all of this as well. So I’m not condemning you for having that reaction, but I am inviting you to think long and hard about whether you’re comfortable effectively claiming that aro folks are “less” queer and less deserving of support and respect and why that might be. 

So, yeah, I kind of ran off with myself there, but: I’m definitely not saying your reactions to people reinterpreting queer relationships in a het framework aren’t something you’re entirely entitled to. I’m just pointing out that by making fun of the notion of queerplatonic relationships people are kind of doing the same thing with a sex/romance-normative framework. And that still sounds more accusatory than I want it to be, and I’m really not saying anyone’s a bad person or anything like that, I just want you to be aware that you may be entirely unintentionally making people on your dash feel unsafe or further internalise some pretty damaging narratives about what is and isn’t an acceptable relationship. And I really can’t think of a better way to say this, so I guess I’ll just leave it there, but I promise I’m not accusing anyone of anything, except maybe the narratives that make this commentary necessary themselves.

[queerbauten]

Tbh, I kinda almost wish I could get behind Senshi x Shitennou, but the whole thing (aside from mayyybe Venus x Kunzite) just... doesn't seem to have any substance to it.

Like, I've tried finding reasons, but almost all of the time, it boils down to "he's made for her, and she's made for him!" without giving any reason why.

Idk, it all just seems to buy into these ideas of compulsory sexuality and romance.