Queer Memes

[Queer Memes]

[greyspec]

From this post, which I didn’t want to add more discussion to since it didn’t quite seem like the post to have it on, but pinging @just-aro and @raavenb2619 if y’all want to see this:

honestly i hope “loveless” as a label/adjective never gets an official definition because it already exists as a word that aros may resonate with for many different reasons. i want to say it’s open to any person (aro or not) who want to call themselves loveless. it’s a word we borrowed from the english language! it’s free to use!

i don’t consider myself a loveless aro in the sense that it’s not part of the orientation terminology that i’d use for myself, but i do consider myself a proponent of lovelessness as an ideology (‘you don’t need love to be good’) & i’m ‘loveless’ in the sense that i don’t consider feeling affective love personally important often (it can fluctuate i think?). tbh i feel weirdly about loveless as a label when it’s used to mean ‘someone who believes you don’t need love to be good’ because like. i want everyone to believe that.

First, clarification: “official definition” to me means something like “one true definition everyone should use” and I just consider that bad practice in principle for identity labels.

I have two more suggestions about talking about lovelessness. I don’t consider it terribly important that people take me up on them, because ‘loveless’ is a word that is free to use, labels shouldn’t have official definitions, etc.—but sometimes I do get confused about its usage & think there are easy ways for individuals to mitigate that confusion if that’s something people are interested in:

1. Not using ‘loveless’ to mean ‘supporting the idea that love is separate from goodness’; instead saying something like ‘supporter of lovelessness,’ ‘pro-lovelessness,’ the entire ‘supporting the idea that love is separate from goodness,’ etc.
2. Providing alternate definition suggestions to ‘loveless’ as a label such as:

• ‘sometimes/often/always feeling personally and/or deeply connected to the idea that love is separate from goodness’
• ‘sometimes/often/always feeling like the idea that love is separate from goodness is personally important’
• ‘sometimes/often/always not considering any/some feelings of love to be personally important’ (if you wanna borrow how I feel about love)
• ‘sometimes/often/always not feeling much or any affective love, whatever much means to you’

I want to know if this is in any way asking a lot of someone from people who use loveless as a label and if there is interest putting this usage into practice? Or if other people also get kneejerk confusion when loveless is used to mean supporting lovelessness like I do.

[raavenb2619]

Excellent food for thought.

I also think that a rigid definition of "loveless" probably isn’t a great idea. If someone finds "loveless" as a label helpful (especially if they fall into the vilified zone of "I don't feel love"), I don't think they should have to jump through hoops or consult a checklist before using it.

That said, I'm also a bit wary (maybe too proactively, or maybe not) of the meaning of "loveless" shifting a great deal. I'll admit that I'm personally biased by K.A. Cook's essay being my introduction to lovelessness, but I think there (still) is a need for a term that communicates "I don't feel love, and/or please don't (automatically) apply the word 'love' to me or my experiences" (and community spaces to talk about it). At the very least, I have a need for a word that communicates that message, and I use "loveless" to fulfill that need. The "love isn't a prerequisite for goodness" is more of a consequence of not wanting to be vilified or dehumanized than an inherent part of the label, for me.

(Additionally, voidpunk and lovelessness are both reactions to dehumanization and (as far as I know) were first talked about by alloaros, and I think it's important to remember their origins. I don't want to see the roots of lovelessness ignored in such a way that necessitates a post like this one about voidpunk.)

I also don't want to prescribe language or say that people are using words wrong, but someone calling themselves loveless to communicate "I agree with the idea that you don't need love to be good" without feeling connected to other parts of lovelessness feels a little odd to me. (It's not a perfect analogy, but I see it kind of like if cis people started saying they were trans because they thought that was the best way to show support for trans people.) I absolutely think it's possible to support loveless people while feeling very connected to love and labeling some of your experiences as love and finding love to be personally very important to you, just like how it's possible to support aros while being alloromantic and finding romance to be personally very important to you.

I guess another way to look at it is "lovelessness" as a descriptor of one's personal experiences, versus "lovelessness" as the name of an ideology rejecting the notion that love is a prerequisite of goodness and/or humanity. Using the same word for both the descriptor and the ideology can be confusing, and the ideology isn't intuitively and immediately understood just by the word "lovelessness" itself, so I think (especially when introducing people to the ideology) it's a good idea to avoid calling the ideology "lovelessness". (After all, loveless aros aren’t the only people impacted by "love is what makes us human/good", just like how aros aren’t the only people impacted by amatonormativity or trans people aren’t the only people impacted by cisnormativity.) A less confusing name for the ideology might be something like "rejecting the notion that love is what makes us human/good".

[greyspec]

I don’t worry too much about “loveless” drifting too far out from its original meaning because its original meaning is already widely used as an English word. (Google defines it as “having no feelings of love.”) Then again, “platonic” in the aro community has undergone some not insignificant semantic drift, so your higher level of wariness may be more rational.

I agree that “loveless” meaning “I don’t feel love” is a necessary and useful usage. I guess I just don’t want to make it something that is exclusive to only that meaning, because “loveless” as “I personally feel alienated from love/do not consider love personally important” sounds like a resonant experience that doesn’t necessarily require someone to not feel love at all. I think blocking people such as those from the potential loveless community would needlessly fracture discussions/spaces.

(As for asking people not to automatically apply the word ‘love’ to one or one’s appearances—I would be wary about relying on a singular word to communicate a boundary/tying an identity to a specific boundary. I think interactions go much better when people are clear about their boundaries, like saying the whole “please don’t (automatically) apply the word ‘love’ to me or my experiences.”

I also think that “loveless” meaning “personal alienation from love” communicates that boundary as well as “loveless” meaning only “not feeling love.”)

How hypothetical is my discussion? I feel like I have seen some people who feel love asking about the loveless label, but I can’t recall any specific examples, so that may just be a false impression. I’m iffy on calling myself a loveless aro because I do feel love in some cases, but I feel like narratives about lovelessness are personally resonant because I don’t consider my feelings of love significant most of the time. Like…I disidentify with affective love as a significant part of my life. In that sense I feel called toward ‘loveless.’

Or, in your example of someone who feels very connected to love, labeling some experiences as love, and finding love to be very important personally—I fit one of those criteria (I label some of my experiences as love) but not the others. I would like to talk about lovelessness as a personal experience. I don’t want to be seen as co-opting the experiences of loveless aros. I don’t want there to be boundaries around the experience of lovelessness; I disagree with the idea that one must never feel any amount of love to be personally connected to loveless experiences.

In any case, I created the above post because “loveless” as “I agree love is separate from goodness,” i.e. the ideology, is a confusing usage. Or, I entirely agree with your last paragraph (not even sure if/how we disagree with anything else). Although I was trying to think of shorter names for the ideology than spelling it all out, haha. I suppose we can make do with the entire “rejecting the notion that love is what makes us human/good.” I think it’s better than any of my suggested phrases.

(P.S.: K.A. Cook doesn’t seem to mention the word “loveless(ness)” at all in the linked essay; although I see that ze has a tag called “lovelessness” of which the linked essay is the earliest chronological entry & uses “loveless” in other posts. I am taking this to mean that the linked post was the catalyst for lovelessness as an idea. I was just a bit confused for a second; this is just a note for other people. Also, neat. I read the essay before but didn’t know/remember it was the thing that started the lovelessness conversation.)

[raavenb2619]

Re: “I think interactions go much better when people are clear about their boundaries, like saying the whole “please don’t (automatically) apply the word ‘love’ to me or my experiences.””

That’s fair. Part of it for me is that there has been (and still is, sometimes) this assumed culture of “of course aros still love”, “of course you must love something”, and so “loveless” is for me partially a way of bringing awareness and attention to the fact that actually, no, not everyone feels or is comfortable being associated with love. But if things are slowly changing and awareness is growing, “loveless” might not need to be as much of an attention grabber anymore.

Re: “How hypothetical is my discussion? I feel like I have seen some people who feel love asking about the loveless label, but I can’t recall any specific examples, so that may just be a false impression.”

My #loveless tag and just-aro’s #loveless-aro tag have asks from people wondering if they can call themselves loveless, so you might find some examples there.

Re: “I would like to talk about lovelessness as a personal experience. I don’t want to be seen as co-opting the experiences of loveless aros.”

If you want to talk about lovelessness and find yourself drawn to the label or narratives, I encourage you to call yourself loveless and talk about what that means to you. (I wouldn’t see that as co-opting other loveless aros’ experiences at all; I still feel like we’re in the proto-community stage and not yet a full fledged community. And my wariness about linguistic drift is more “we should periodically make sure 'loveless’ can still be used to describe the original experiences that led to its coining since that need is unlikely to be filled by other words” than “we can’t broaden the narratives and understanding of what lovelessness can be”.)

Re: “I don’t want there to be boundaries around the experience of lovelessness; I disagree with the idea that one must never feel any amount of love to be personally connected to loveless experiences.”

Absolutely. Of any of the rigid definitions someone might come up with for “loveless”, I think “not feeling any amount of love, at all, ever” would probably be the worst, in no small part because I can only see it being used for endless policing that shrinks and weakens the community and makes people afraid to talk about their actual, nuanced experiences. That’s part of why this excerpt from K.A. Cook’s essay is something I come back to time and time again, because it embraces the fuzziness and wiggle room of how one can feel or not feel connected to love, and that lovelessness doesn’t have to be an absolute disconnect from every single possible form and representation of love.

I don’t know if I will ever wish “love” applied to me. I write about it, yes! Most of my stories are about connection and affection, and many of those stories name this, purposefully and specifically, as love. I think it’s part of my healing to depict relationships where love supports and natures. Maybe, if I write enough, I’ll come to trust love, to feel some connection to it that doesn’t remind me of all the ways it has scarred me.

Or maybe I won’t! It’s safe to express and explore love in a story where those characters aren’t me. The affection and connection that I sometimes name “love” is free of pain, manipulation and domination. It’s free of other people’s assumptions and misunderstandings. In my writing, love can be what I need it to be.

Re: ideology and confusing usage, yes, I think we’re in long-winded agreement that the ideology should have a different name than “lovelessness”. 

Re: History of the term “loveless”, that seems right. I did some searching almost exactly a year ago that I should probably neaten up into a legible post at some point about the history of the term. 

[Queer Memes]

[greyspec]

From this post, which I didn’t want to add more discussion to since it didn’t quite seem like the post to have it on, but pinging @just-aro and @raavenb2619 if y’all want to see this:

honestly i hope “loveless” as a label/adjective never gets an official definition because it already exists as a word that aros may resonate with for many different reasons. i want to say it’s open to any person (aro or not) who want to call themselves loveless. it’s a word we borrowed from the english language! it’s free to use!

i don’t consider myself a loveless aro in the sense that it’s not part of the orientation terminology that i’d use for myself, but i do consider myself a proponent of lovelessness as an ideology (‘you don’t need love to be good’) & i’m ‘loveless’ in the sense that i don’t consider feeling affective love personally important often (it can fluctuate i think?). tbh i feel weirdly about loveless as a label when it’s used to mean ‘someone who believes you don’t need love to be good’ because like. i want everyone to believe that.

First, clarification: “official definition” to me means something like “one true definition everyone should use” and I just consider that bad practice in principle for identity labels.

I have two more suggestions about talking about lovelessness. I don’t consider it terribly important that people take me up on them, because ‘loveless’ is a word that is free to use, labels shouldn’t have official definitions, etc.—but sometimes I do get confused about its usage & think there are easy ways for individuals to mitigate that confusion if that’s something people are interested in:

1. Not using ‘loveless’ to mean ‘supporting the idea that love is separate from goodness’; instead saying something like ‘supporter of lovelessness,’ ‘pro-lovelessness,’ the entire ‘supporting the idea that love is separate from goodness,’ etc.
2. Providing alternate definition suggestions to ‘loveless’ as a label such as:

• ‘sometimes/often/always feeling personally and/or deeply connected to the idea that love is separate from goodness’
• ‘sometimes/often/always feeling like the idea that love is separate from goodness is personally important’
• ‘sometimes/often/always not considering any/some feelings of love to be personally important’ (if you wanna borrow how I feel about love)
• ‘sometimes/often/always not feeling much or any affective love, whatever much means to you’

I want to know if this is in any way asking a lot of someone from people who use loveless as a label and if there is interest putting this usage into practice? Or if other people also get kneejerk confusion when loveless is used to mean supporting lovelessness like I do.

[raavenb2619]

Excellent food for thought.

I also think that a rigid definition of “loveless” probably isn’t a great idea. If someone finds “loveless” as a label helpful (especially if they fall into the vilified zone of “I don’t feel love”), I don’t think they should have to jump through hoops or consult a checklist before using it.

That said, I’m also a bit wary (maybe too proactively, or maybe not) of the meaning of “loveless” shifting a great deal. I’ll admit that I’m personally biased by K.A. Cook’s essay being my introduction to lovelessness, but I think there (still) is a need for a term that communicates “I don’t feel love, and/or please don’t (automatically) apply the word ‘love’ to me or my experiences” (and community spaces to talk about it). At the very least, I have a need for a word that communicates that message, and I use “loveless” to fulfill that need. The “love isn’t a prerequisite for goodness” is more of a consequence of not wanting to be vilified or dehumanized than an inherent part of the label, for me.

(Additionally, voidpunk and lovelessness are both reactions to dehumanization and (as far as I know) were first talked about by alloaros, and I think it’s important to remember their origins. I don’t want to see the roots of lovelessness ignored in such a way that necessitates a post like this one about voidpunk.)

I also don’t want to prescribe language or say that people are using words wrong, but someone calling themselves loveless to communicate “I agree with the idea that you don’t need love to be good” without feeling connected to other parts of lovelessness feels a little odd to me. (It’s not a perfect analogy, but I see it kind of like if cis people started saying they were trans because they thought that was the best way to show support for trans people.) I absolutely think it’s possible to support loveless people while feeling very connected to love and labeling some of your experiences as love and finding love to be personally very important to you, just like how it’s possible to support aros while being alloromantic and finding romance to be personally very important to you.

I guess another way to look at it is “lovelessness” as a descriptor of one’s personal experiences, versus “lovelessness” as the name of an ideology rejecting the notion that love is a prerequisite of goodness and/or humanity. Using the same word for both the descriptor and the ideology can be confusing, and the ideology isn’t intuitively and immediately understood just by the word “lovelessness” itself, so I think (especially when introducing people to the ideology) it’s a good idea to avoid calling the ideology “lovelessness”. (After all, loveless aros aren’t the only people impacted by "love is what makes us human/good", just like how aros aren’t the only people impacted by amatonormativity or trans people aren’t the only people impacted by cisnormativity.) A less confusing name for the ideology might be something like “rejecting the notion that love is what makes us human/good”.

[Queer Memes]

Anonymous asked:

okay so im aro and i say i love you/much love/generally use love all the time. to me it just kind of has a different meaning.

anyway ik no one loveless aro can answer this, but if there is even just one person out there who is uncomfortable with this then it is worth talking about—but does any loveless/love-repulsed/etc individual feel uncomfortable with people saying ily or “sending” love as a general thing (without expecting anything in return)? two different examples being:

messaging them specifically, and ending the message with “much love”/“sending love”/whatever or responding to some sort of iconic statement or something with “ily”

a general post/message to multiple people, same as above

thanks!

arospectips answered:

hey loveless people, thoughts?

[raavenb2619]

I definitely recommend reading the notes, because there are already some great perspectives there. 

For me, I think a lot of it depends on context. Putting aside the “wait do you mean that romantically, please don’t mean that romantically” aspect of it, a big part of it is whether there’s an expectation of reciprocity (especially if the display of love is what creates the expectation of reciprocity). One of the reasons I like calling myself loveless is because it anchors me and gives me room to accept and be at peace with “there’s an expectation of emotional action and behavior that I can’t or won’t fulfill”. 

I feel like the times when someone says “I love you” and the response isn’t “I love you too” stands out so much, at least to me, because saying “I love you” creates an expectation of reciprocity, of “I feel this way emotionally and want to know that you feel something similar”. I don’t think that desire for reciprocity is necessarily bad, but I think that’s why, to quote from @just-aro​, “I love you” and “you bring me peace and contentment and I greatly appreciate you” feel so different to me; the former is an implicit or unfinished request, but the latter is a complete statement. 

Most of the time I’m not a huge fan of writing “ily” or saying “ily” (I pronounce it rhyming with “Will he…[go to the store?]”), but I do sometimes like seeing my friends say it to each other because it feels like a…devaluing of love, almost? That’s definitely not the best name for it, but when it’s casual, low meaning, low commitment, low significance, not trying to be or imitate a strong romantic, queerplatonic, or platonic love, it feels kind of like saying “love is kinda meaningless so here, have some”, and I actually kinda like that. And if I occasionally respond with “ily”, it’s usually with people that have a good grasp on my aromanticism, so it feels more like an inside joke than a declaration of love. 

Statements like “I love all aromantic folks” are definitely context dependent for me. My reception definitely varies based on my mood, but I’m also consciously and unconsciously wondering “why did you feel like saying that? are you performing allyship or actually trying to support us?” and “well what if I don’t feel or want your love? is your support contingent on my performing love ‘correctly’?” and “what do you actually know about aromanticism? are you an aro trying to lift up other aros, or are you an outsider trying to show your support?” and “why did you choose that specific wording? did you use the word ‘love’ with great intention or out of habit?” and so on and so on. My judgements can definitely be quick and unconscious and wrong, but nonetheless, a poor judgement is definitely likely to make me dislike the statement and wish for different wording. 

[Queer Memes]

Anonymous asked:

I have been reading about loveless aros and also read the KA Cook essay you have linked in a couple of your asks, and it increasingly feels really good to identify as loveless.

But I still really like the idea of a QPR?

Is it possible to want both? It feels hypocritical, but I am quite new to the aro community so I'm not sure how people think if it.

Thank you for your time and I hope you have a good day :)

I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and I don’t have an answer, for a few reasons. 

First, I wouldn’t really say that there’s been much discussion on loveless aromanticism at all, let alone how it relates to QPRs. “Loveless aro” as a phrase is starting to pop up more, and there are definitely anons that have told me they’ve found the concept helpful, but I wouldn’t say there’s a loveless aro community, or even a proto-community right now. (At least, none that I know of.) That means that getting a balanced, nuanced opinion on a particular topic is hard, because it ends up being just a few voices. 

It’s also complicated because the way we think and talk about QRPs are complicated. QPRs are vague and nebulous and diverse and can be (or is it must be?) distinct from both friendship and romance, and yet we often talk about them as being a blend to the two, somewhere in between friendship and romance. I’ve tried describing and explaining QPRs on this blog many times, and I feel that despite my efforts, it boils down to “QPRs are like romantic relationships without the romance”. Does the concept simplify down to “basically romance” because that’s easy to explain, because that’s what’s commonly explained, or because that’s true? When do the former questions start to influence the latter? I feel like you’re probably asking this in part because of that simplification; if the question was “can I be loveless and still have friends?” or “can I be loveless and also be affectionate with my friends?”, maybe you would have assumed the answer was yes. What does that say about the community (assuming I’m not massively projecting my own thought process on QPRs onto the entire community)? 

Part of why it feels hypocritical to you, I think, is wrapped up in the question of closeness and partnership. The aro community feels better about this now, I feel, but there used to be a very intense focus on QPRs (likely from shifting the amatonormative “everyone needs romance” to “everyone needs a QPR”). That definitely alienated some aros, some of whom found words “nonpartnering” or “nonamorous”, some of whom never really found a way of expressing themselves. So on one hand, to take a word that’s in many ways a rejection of conventional expectations about interpersonal behavior and dictate that it’s compatible with partnering, it might take away some of its power. But at the same time, closeness and partnership needn’t be the same as love, so opening it up and saying that it’s compatible with partnering strengthens that valuable distinction. 

It’s clear that there’s huge potential for discussions about love and aromanticism, acknowledging the wide variety of relationships we can have with love, from simple to complex, to very connected to incredibly disconnected. But whether you can be loveless and still be in or want a QPR isn’t something I think I can answer. I leave you with the following quotation from the essay you mentioned by K. A. Cook:

I don’t know if I will ever wish “love” applied to me. I write about it, yes! Most of my stories are about connection and affection, and many of those stories name this, purposefully and specifically, as love. I think it’s part of my healing to depict relationships where love supports and natures. Maybe, if I write enough, I’ll come to trust love, to feel some connection to it that doesn’t remind me of all the ways it has scarred me.

Or maybe I won’t! It’s safe to express and explore love in a story where those characters aren’t me. The affection and connection that I sometimes name “love” is free of pain, manipulation and domination. It’s free of other people’s assumptions and misunderstandings. In my writing, love can be what I need it to be.

[Queer Memes]

Anonymous asked:

I think I might be loveless? I identify as aroace but the split attraction model doesn't work for me. And every single relationship I have is crafted. It's all logic. I like someone because of things like: character traits, shared interests/experiences. I never felt truly connected with anyone (except one person but they are not in my life anymore). Sure, I love my friends but there are no feelings per say. It's logic. And apparently this is not the norm?? Or maybe it's because I'm neurodiverse

You don’t explicitly ask, but I think you’re wondering if this means you are/can call yourself loveless. I don’t consider myself to be in a position where I can assign people labels, so I can’t really answer that. What I can say is, if the general idea of lovelessness (which is still fairly malleable in my opinion, since there isn’t really any discussion about it) appeals to you, and you find it to be a helpful label, I think that’s a great reason to call yourself loveless. 

There’s an idea that’s been floating around in my head for a bit that I haven’t seen discussed, and this ask is a reasonable place to mention it. You might find it helpful, but if you don’t, that’s okay too. I don’t think the options necessarily have to be restricted to “say that you absolutely never feel love in any form ever” and “say that you feel love and treat it as more important than anything other experience could possibly be”. There should be room for nuance; alloros can feel romantic attraction but still reject amatonormative thinking and not see romance as super important, so I think it’s reasonable to say that people who feel love can still reject the idea that “love is what makes us human” and not see love as super important. (In fact, I’d posit that that nuance and gray area is actually really important and helpful for loveless aros, since it helps to introduce and normalize the idea that maybe love isn’t the best, most important thing of all time.) 

Hope that helps, as always feel free to ask for clarification/any follow up questions. 

[Queer Memes]

Anonymous asked:

Is it possible to both support loveless aros and also support the idea of queerplatonic relationships? I'm not sure what's happened on tumblr since I'm demiaro at best, but I'm interested in the sudden explosion of loveless aromanticism posts. Is the aro community deciding to do away with queerplatonic attraction and relationships? Was it decided to be problematic? I'm extremely interested and hoping to learn everything I can about all this.

Great question! The tl;dr is that you can support both, and QPRs aren’t problematic. 

For an in depth explanation or further reading, this essay is where I first learned about lovelessness, I’ve written about it in my #loveless tag, and just-aro has written about it in xyr #loveless-aro tag. 

I would summarize lovelessness as being a rejection of the idea that aros need to love in non-romantic ways to be considered human and/or deserving of respect. That is, saying “love is what makes us human, but love doesn’t have to be romantic” is problematic because it repurposes arophobic rhetoric (namely, “(romantic) love is what makes us human”); furthermore, by trying to rectify the situation by adding “love doesn’t have to be romantic”, it implies that aros have to “prove” our humanity by publicly connecting our experiences (which can be deeply personal or private) to “love”, a concept that can be complicated and alienating for many aros to try to approach. 

None of that really has to do with queerplatonic relationships, though. (In theory it could, if the aro community became really insistent on “every aro needs/is supposed to have a QPR”, but that isn’t happening right now, at least as far as I’m aware.) QPRs are still important to many aros, and it’s entirely possible to view QPRs positively and/or be in a QPR while simultaneously supporting loveless aros. 

Hope that helps, as always feel free to ask for clarification/any follow up questions. 

[Queer Memes]

Anonymous asked:

Do u think the “love saves the day” trope is disempowering to loveless aros? Not romantic love but like just people caring about each other and the “power of love” or whatever that’s in a lot of kids media. As a non-loveless aro I really like the trope and find it empowering, but I can see how loveless ppl might find it disempowering.

Great question! 

I can’t speak for all loveless aros, but for me, it’s…complicated. It’s really nice to see movies like Frozen that subvert the conventional trope of “(romantic) love saves the day”, and it’s nice to see stories that emphasize and value forms of love that amatonormativity devalues. At the same time, it can still feel a little…othering, depending on how it’s done. 

It’s not exactly the same, but I’m reminded of the ending of “She-Ra and the Princesses of Power”. (Spoiler warning for this paragraph, but I’ll do my best to talk vaguely if you haven’t seen it.) I’ve seen the crucial moment described as “lesbians save the day”, which I think is really fitting, since it closely mirrors (by design, I believe) the overused trope of “straight romance saves the day”. This moment is groundbreaking exactly because of how rare queer representation like this is, and I think every lesbian who wants to should get the opportunity to see themselves reflected on-screen in a moment like this. But at the same time, my gut reaction was a combination of “aw, that’s sweet, I’m really glad they were able to show that and I’m glad I got to watch it” and “still kinda amatonormative maybe?”. Even now, I’m still conflicted in whether I want to call that climactic moment amatonormative, because the rarity of what happened on-screen makes it clearly not a trope, so it can’t be said to be emphasizing societal norms, and yet it’s so clearly related to a deeply amatonormative trope. 

That sort of conflictedness, of “you’re clearly subverting a societal norm or trope”, but also “you’re not subverting it enough”, is kind of how I feel when it comes to “nonromantic love saves the day”. Those messages are important and I (usually) do enjoy seeing them, but I’m also a little wary that they’ll eventually become a new societal norm. That’s kind of why, while I really enjoyed Frozen 2, I wasn’t a fan of Anna’s line at the end, when she says “our lands and people, now connected by love”. It felt like its only purpose was to reiterate the first movie’s message of “(nonromantic) love saves the day”, which feels weirdly out of place to me since love didn’t save the day this time. Maybe it’s just a one-off accident, or maybe it’s the slow beginning of a new trope and message that still leaves loveless aros behind. I’d like to believe it’s the former, but I think it’s more likely the latter. 

(I will say it’s very interesting that Anna delivers that line, and that she says it under her breath to herself, which leaves room for it to be lampshaded/retconned/reframed in the future, especially if Disney were to ever make Elsa be canonically aroace. There’s so much potential for interesting but approachable discussions on romance and love because of how different their perspectives on those are topics, especially considering how their parents’ questionable decision to lock Elsa away from the outside world is framed as being for her own good and implied to be a difficult decision made out of love. Of course, this all requires Disney to make Elsa canonically aroace, and while I have lots of thoughts on how the soundtrack and music in Frozen 2 code Elsa as aroace that I should write down at some point, I doubt Disney would ever choose explicit, canonical queer representation over money.)

[Queer Memes]

Anonymous asked:

I don't mean to defend the "x is what makes us human"/"love is what makes us human" rhetoric & I think what you wrote in response to the list of symptoms ask is a v good & important thing to say. That said I interpreted that ask as saying there's a long list of things that can make us human, and love is only one item on that list so love isnt necessary to be human but it's one indicator that you are. I dont necessarily agree but that was my interpretation which seems different from yours?

[Follow up to this ask]

You’re definitely right in saying that anon was thinking of the list as a broad thing, and that I narrowed it to focus specifically on love. The reason I narrowed specifically to love/aromanticism is because (at least to me) it doesn’t seem like a fundamentally different framing. Whether your list is “romantic love” or “all forms of love” or “lots of things, some of which are love, some of which aren’t”, you’ll still have a list that can end up missing some people. Put another way, the unhelpful broadening of love is unhelpful because it targets the symptoms (“this specific person is being dehumanized in this specific way”) instead of the underlying problem (“this system dehumanizes people, which is wrong”). 

[Queer Memes]

Anonymous asked:

I'm ace, but not aro, so I don't want to be ignorant. I know aros don't like the phrase 'love is what makes us human' but I thought aros just don't experience romantic love, wouldn't that phrase still apply to them for familial, platonic, etc love?

[Follow up to this meme]

Thanks for asking! 

Aros definitely have a habit of complaining about the phrase “love is what makes us human”, and occasionally people will modify the phrase slightly, saying something like “love is what makes us human, but that can include love for family members, love for friends, love for pets, love for hobbies, etc”. This new phrase is marginally better, because it doesn’t automatically dehumanize every aro, but it means that aros have to “prove” that they’re human by demonstrating that they do feel love in some way, whereas alloromantic people are still seen as human by default. 

Additionally, some aros (myself included) have complicated relationships to the idea of “love”, and/or don’t consider ourselves to feel/experience love, so even a super broad definition of “love” ends up alienating and dehumanizing us. You can find more of my writing on this in my #loveless tag, if you’re interested. 

Hope that helps, as always feel free to ask for clarification/any follow up questions. 

[Queer Memes]

Anonymous asked:

I think "what makes us human", if it's even that important in the first place, can be compared to a list of symptoms. Sicknesses have a list of symptoms, but most people who have that sickness don't have all the symptoms, and everyone's combination is different. That doesn't make one person more or less sick for what symptoms they have, because they're both sick. If people are so desperate to decide makes us human, I think this is a good analogy

[Follow up to this meme]

What do you do if you come across someone who doesn’t have any of the symptoms? Do you say, “you’re not human”? Do you say, “maybe I need to revise my list of symptoms”? Do you say “maybe I shouldn’t be verifying someone’s humanity if it comes at the cost of dehumanizing someone else”? That’s a choice that’s up to each of us to make, but before you decide, here’s how that analogy translates over to aromanticism and lovelessness. 

Lots of people say “(romantic) love is what makes us human”, which hurts, because they’re saying I can’t be human because I don’t feel romantic attraction. It doesn’t feel right that my aromanticism should make me forfeit all claim to my humanity in the eyes of society. 

Some people notice that “love is what makes us human” dehumanizes aros, and revise their criteria of humanity by saying something like “love is what makes us human, but love doesn’t have to be romantic”, or “love is what makes us human, but platonic love can be just as meaningful as romantic love”. That hurts too, because although they’re ostensibly trying to help me, they’re doubling down on love being the defining characteristic of humanity. It doesn’t feel right that my lovelessness should make me forfeit all claim to my humanity in the eyes of society. 

Occasionally, someone listens to loveless aros and realizes that “love is what makes us human” is fundamentally unfixable, because it’ll always dehumanize us. And, if we’re lucky, that person will start to question why the template of “X is what makes us human” is even a good idea in the first place, since it is so overtly about judging a person’s humanity and so readily dehumanizes those it judges poorly. 

If love is what makes us human, then I’m lacking all of the symptoms. Do you tell me “you’re not human”? Do you tell me “maybe I need to revise my list of symptoms”? Do you tell me “maybe I shouldn’t be verifying someone’s humanity if it comes at the cost of dehumanizing you”? 

The choice is yours.