#it is also about amatonormativity

[aromantic-ghost-menace]

Yo, i just found this short conceptual animation there.

I think y'all fellow aros and aces might want to at least get a glance at it.

Contains amatonormativity.

I... like it. And I'd like to support that as well. What about you fellow aros?

[knifearo]

this year my challenge for everyone is to unlearn the association between love and morality. love is not something that is inherently morally good, and the absence of love is not something that is inherently bad. sex without love isn't morally bankrupt, it's just an action. people without love aren't less kind or less good, they're just people. when we can get past this false (and often unnoticed) dichotomy of good love/evil lovelessness then i think we are going to be able to take leaps and bounds in sex positivity, aro advocacy, certain discussions of mental health...

[lilmerh]

Any other aroallos annoyed by sex being viewed as shallow, loveless, not fuelled by "pure" emotions - just lustful, for your own pleasure - when that description is much more true for my romance?

Out of all of the attractions I feel (platonic, familial, sexual, etc) my romantic feelings are the most shallow and fleeting. It bothers me when romance is described as an inherently superior, deeper, and more pure form of attraction. That does not reign true to me at all!!

I love familially, I love platonically, and I love sexually. I love deeply and intensely. It bothers me when all that is overlooked because I happen to not love romantically enough.

No form of attraction is inherently purer or more valuable than another.

(I'm not shallow for experiencing sexual attraction nor heartless for not experiencing romantic attraction, thank you.)

[kooldewd123]

i want more mainstream aromantic stories. not aromantic characters. not stories about aromanticism. just stories where romance is a complete nonfactor. no love interests no angry exes not even any goddamn subtext just something i can consume without even the mere concept crossing my mind.

[r0semultiverse]

The whole Lila & Five season 4 situation can be summarized by this tumblr post

[cosmichorrorlesbians]

what's your dissertation about? you mentioned it in the siltcord and i'm really interested

oh my god hey I'm so happy you're interested! broad strokes because I've only been working on it for a few weeks but: the current theme is 'resistant landscapes' (both man-made and natural) in the later writing of Shirley Jackson!

Essentially, my main thread is that Jackson had two parallel strands to her work, which as far as I can tell began kind of interrelated but then diverged quite significantly? She's probably best known now for The Haunting of Hill House and to a lesser extent We Have Always Lived In The Castle, which are these. weird surreal psychological horror novels, engaging explicitly or implicitly with the supernatural, and centred around introspective, strange and sometimes deeply misanthropic female characters from isolated social units with dysfunctional, possessive relationships to each other.

Aaaaand then on the other hand she was known for being a 'happy housewife' who wrote these whimsical, quasi-autobiographical stories about all her children and how hopeless her husband was. These were popular too. Betty Friedan called her out in landmark 1963 feminist manifesto The Feminine Mystique for essentially spreading patriarchal propaganda.

The interrelation between the two is really jarring, because in one family is a source of horror and tragedy and in the other it's a source of, like... laundry. And Jackson's home life wasn't everything those stories made it out to be-- her marriage was unfaithful, her mother could probably be fairly called emotionally abusive, and as I talked about on the siltcord, she developed severe agoraphobia which often left her housebound.

So, yeah. My plan is to explore the depiction of families as constructed social units in dialogue with the environments they are constructed in in that work. Obviously a lot of that is relation of house to family, in the context of which Hill House is especially rewarding to consider, but I also want to look at relationships with nature and urban environments (especially in the context of settler colonialism and how that has had an enduring legacy in Jackson's particular part of New England), xenophobia (largely in regard to class, though racism and anti-Semitism are presences in her writing), domesticity and the idea of the housewife, and how horror relates to All Of This. The ideal of making a home within a hostile environment and of that environment turning on you, essentially.

I don't yet have particular areas of focus within that broad umbrella, but I might update with bits and pieces about it as I work? I don't really talk about academic stuff on here but I am very much Critical Literary Analysis Guy and I do also post relentlessly about haunted houses as a concept so if people would be interested in it maybe I will

anyway if you've read this far I recommend Horror in Architecture: The Reanimated Edition (2024) by Joshua Comaroff and Ong Ker-Shing which is a book about how horror movie tropes can be mirrored in built environments! I'm reading it right now and it's conceptually fascinating plus fairlyyy comprehensible by academic standards (if a little dense) if you, like me, are a Fool who knows nothing of architecture. very good also for getting to look at pictures of some of the most Fucked Up Buildings (affectionate) you've ever seen.

[spop-romanticizes-abuse]

so i see a lot of "adora and glimmer did x thing! there's no platonic explanation for this!" and maybe i have contributed to that too, so let me just set this straight.

adora and glimmer could just have been friends, at the end of the day. just because they were close doesn't mean their relationship had to be romantic.

amatonormativity has brainwashed us into thinking that any kind of intimate activity needed a romantic explanation, that two friends couldn't sleep with each other or bath with each other or look at each other lovingly without having romantic feelings for each other. all of these activities are perfectly normal in a platonic sense, in fact, it's something that a lot of girls do.

so while it's completely okay to ship adora and glimmer, here's your reminder that two people can be intimate and care about each other very deeply and value each other over everyone else, and still be just friends. it's okay to ship two characters but don't let amatonormativity get in the way of your logical thoughts. romantic relationships aren't more valuable than platonic ones. and there are very few things in life that are strictly romantic, and not platonic.

[altschmerzes]

omgggg shipping is not arophobic in the LEAST but keep making us look like whiners with no real problems by continuing to complain about it I guess

yeah that's definitely what i said in any post ever man great job

average person who has made shipping their entire identity will see a post where someone says 'hey please don't say these specific types of things that are degrading and cruel about nonromantic relationships while enjoying your ships and maybe examine the thought processes and beliefs and prejudices that led to saying them' and be like 'oh so you're a whiner with no real problems who thinks shipping is arophobic?'

telling on yourself there bud

[mathematical-cheese]

"Soulmates can't be an arophobic concept because they can be platonic" is not a take I thought I'd see but honestly I'm not surprised. Yes, a huge issue is that the way society views soulmates is a largely a romantic thing and the idea that "everyone has (a romantic) someone out there" is amatonormative bs and is arophobic. But extending it to "platonic soulmates exist too" doesn't fix or even address the actual problem. The fundamental assumption here is that there's someone for everyone regardless of whether it's romantic or platonic and that everyone must be connected to someone. How does making it platonic actually challenge amatonormativity? It honestly has the same feeling as "aro people aren't sad and lonely because they can have platonic partners!"

I'd like to be clear, people self-describing them and their partner(s) as soulmates isn't the issue here. That's on a personal level and that's fine. It's the assertion that everyone has a soulmate that is amatonormative.

That's the other major issue, there's usually the assertion that there is one soulmate per person which just completely throws polyam people under the bus. How is that challenging amatonormativity?

[warrioreowynofrohan]

It’s aro week, and even though I still don’t feel like I fully have a handle on what aromanticism is, I do get the impression that The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings fit well with it? because all the main character’s most important and most central relationships aren’t romantic ones.

Bilbo is considered odd (“queer��, even) in the Shire for being a lifelong bachelor; his close relationships are with dwarven and elven friends, and with his adopted son Frodo. Frodo shows no romantic interest in anyone; his close relationships are with Sam, Merry, Pippin, Gandalf, and later Aragorn. And the later relationship with Frodo, Sam, and Sam’s wife Rosie all living in Bag End - which is specifically proposed by Frodo - seems like it fits the definition of queerplatonic? Whether or not you see Legolas and Gimli as a couple, their closest relationship is clearly with each other. Merry and Pippin also seem pretty clearly the most important people in each others’ lives, and remain close with their friends in Rohan and Gondor even after returning to the Shire. Boromir’s almost canonically aroace, going by the appendices. The close friendships between Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli are prominent, while the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen is relegated to an appendix. Most members of the Fellowship (6/9) do not get married or ‘fall in love’ in any traditional sense (and of the remaining three, one - Pippin - is only noted briefly in an appendix). The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings both have the characters’ relationships with each other - and the importance of valuing and cherishing those, not possessions or power - at their heart, and almost all of those relationships are non-romantic ones.

[cosmicredcadet]

I keep seeing posts where people are saying "Valentines doesn't effect asexuals!" "romantic relationships have nothing to do with asexuality!" And while i understand the point they are making is to stop conflating Aromanticism with Asexuality, it is still extremely annoying to find people don't understand the nuance that comes with asexualities connection to romance - because it DOES have a connection to it. It DOES have problems in relation to romance. To say it doesn't is ignoring a huge set is experiences that ace people face.

One of the most common experiences for asexuals is the struggle to be in romantic relationships because they are asexual. a lot of romantic relationships expect you to have sex. if you're someone who doesn't have sex then unfortunately that causes a lot of people to lose interest in you romantically as well.

There's also non-sam aces, and let me tell you it's so very strange to hear someone bring up non-sam aros but then ignore the existence of non-sam aces in order to prove some point of it somehow being ace peoples fault that aro and ace are viewed as the same. Some non-sam aces do not date either. they are still ace and they can still face similar problems to aromantic people because of that. they are still effected my amatonormativity.

Aces DO have connection to romance. Asexual DID have a reason to trend on valentines day along with Aro and Aroace. Asexuality is effected my romance and amatonormativity. Sop acting like it isn't. stop acting like aros and aces have absolutely nothing in common. We can work together and have similar experiences and still be seen as separate identities. there is overlap. stop treating this as black and white where one identity can only be effected by one kind of problem. It's naive at best and down right hateful at worse.

[lgbtlunaverse]

Everytime I see discourse about kink or nudity at pride I get reminded of the time I went to pride a few years ago with my mother and my sibling- who was 17 at the time and is somewhere on the ace spectrum- and about halfway through, the march went under a gatehouse. Some inhabitants were sitting in their open windows watching the parade. Right before we crossed under them, one of them decided to just... take her shirt off. She wasn't wearing a bra. And you know what happened? People whooped and cheered, and then kept walking. That's it. And there were kids around!! They didn't care. My sibling didn't care. My mother, a cisgender heterosexual woman in her 50s, did not care.

This stuff stops being such a big deal when you go offline. It was basically the same amount of boob you'd see in any perfume ad. No one was like 'what about the children?' And if you didn't wanna see it and looked down, no one would've called you a puritanical prude for that. And it helps to remind myself of that everytime I see kink at pride discourse getting rehashed because at actual pride, people don't care.

[clarablightt]

i heart today is aromantic spectrum visibility day!

so i just wanna take this moment to say I LOVE BEING AROMANTIC ITS SO COOL AND FUUUNNNN

i hope all my fello aros enjoy being visible today!

[morallygay]

I KNOW I knowwwww ppl can ship whatever and obviously are gonna ship them and I love making (un)doomed yaoi jokes about them just as much as the next person but that’s a different matter— since my tolerance for amatonormativity has gotten lower all those posts that are essentially like “there is no platonic explanation for this” about jayce and viktor annoy me so much

My point is that it’s possible to ship them without denying or being reluctant to acknowledge the canon platonic love because you don’t know why but just feel that it’s ‘lesser’ than a romantic interpretation

[shroodying]

I'm so sick of being disappointed by tv shows that show the most wholesome true friendship and then reveal that there was romantic intent all along

[theinsomniacindian]

Look, I love family-coded relationships in fiction and all but not every platonic dynamic, especially those with significant age gaps need to be familial e.g. father-and-child, siblings etc.

Sometimes they can be stuff like chaotic coworkers, mentor and mentee, ride-or-die friends, forced to work together, roommates, frenemies etc.

Saying that every platonic or non-romantic relationship is basically 'sibling-coded' or 'parent-and-child' tend to dumb down complex dynamics into something simpler and easier to consume.

I'm not saying that familial dynamics can't be complex but most of the time, people just tend to go by popular depictions/stereotypes e.g. familial relationships don't always have to be sweet and healthy- they can be messy and even toxic at times- but most people tend to go for the former one. Sure, it's a personal choice what you want to depict but for some reason, I've only seen romantic relationships being depicted as messy and/or toxic.

Such assumptions also push forward the idea that any relationship that isn't romantic can only be familial, which reeks of amatonormativity. In a way, it's almost like affirming the idea that romantic relationships are superior to others due to the assumption that they are the most versatile.

Tl;dr platonic dynamics can be pretty interesting and varied without being family-coded in some way.

Disclaimer: I'm NOT saying that you can't enjoy familial relationships or have headcanons about them. The problem is when people start believing that every platonic relationship has to be familial in some way with no other alternative, which is what this post discusses.