#less impulse purchases more impulse essay writing. as long as we're not being mean i'll let the adhd have this as an outlet

[serialreblogger]

technically (nothing good starts with “technically” so i apologize in advance but) what “platonic” typically means in modern parlance isn’t “not sexual,” it’s “not romantic” - like, an ace person who’s married isn’t in a “platonic” relationship with their spouse, and would probably be offended if anyone tried to describe it that way, whereas two people who are having sex with each other but genuinely don’t harbor any romantic feelings will probably fall back on “platonic” as the fastest & easiest way to describe their relationship

the problem is really just that we don’t have enough words in the English language for all the different forms relationships can take. “platonic” means multiple things - there’s the original “pertaining to the philosophy of Plato” definition, which morphed and divided into “pertaining to Ideals” and “pertaining to non-sexual iterations of relationships that would typically be sexualized” (because of how Plato defined the ideal relationship between a teacher and his student; don’t get me started on pederasty right now), and finally has come to mean “pertaining to the specific kind of relationship that is otherwise known as ‘friendship’.” 

when people use “platonic” to mean “non-romantic [but not necessarily non-sexual],” they aren’t using it wrong, per se. They’re just using a more recent definition than “non-sexual relationship that would typically be strictly or primarily sexual.” In modern history, “platonic” has typically been used to refer to non-sexual, non-romantic male/female relationships because non-sexually-motivated interactions are considered unusual enough to merit labelling (the exception, chiefly since the mid-1900s when it became more common to acknowledge same-sex attraction, is when “platonic” is used to assert that same-gender individuals - typically men, because “male deviance” is generally seen as more threatening to social order and thus more strictly controlled - are or were in a relationship that was Not Sexual, and, it is implied, therefore more pure).

The reason “platonic” is beginning to be used specifically for non-romantic relationships, whether or not those relationships are sexual, is because many people find that sex does not do much to define their relationships, whereas the difference between romance and friendship is significant enough to need a name.

it’s easy to see how this can result in confusion, though, and it’s frustrating! outside of the aspec community, there aren’t really any words that in themselves differentiate between romantic feelings and sexual attraction or activity. and it’s not because there’s not a difference: if our society didn’t already recognize the difference between sex and romance, children either would not be allowed to watch Tangled, or they would get to watch 50 Shades of Grey.

the problem is that until very recently, we have been prevented from talking about our non-normative experiences around sexuality, relationships, and gender. it has been actively unsafe for us to acknowledge our non-normative identities, sometimes literally (we all know the manifold risks of physical abuse and even death) and almost always socially (exclusion is an agony unto itself. if it weren’t, we wouldn’t have the Trevor Project).

as a result, we don’t yet have any well-established language with which to discuss those identities and experiences. we have to make do by repurposing the words we already know, or else inventing ones, often made up of combined fragments we can recognize (“demi-” “bi-” “a-” “pan-” “poly-” “-gender,” a scattered inheritance of latin and greek). there are impediments to understanding each other either way, and the need to define and redefine each word over and over to ensure it retains any meaning is constant, and exhausting. (it’s frustrating, how hard it is to communicate; when you’ve been denied the right to your own words.)

there’s also not really a word for the overarching normative dialogue that’s shaped what words we’ve been allowed up to this point; “heteronormativity,” “amatonormativity,” the “sex/gender binary” and “patriarchy” and “slut-shaming” and the expectations around “‘starting a family’ (having children),” and the intersectional bigotry against “miscegenation” - they’re all tied into the same fundamental phenomenon, the same rigid socio-sexual mores that are the inheritance of eurocolonial Christianity; but sometimes i call it “nucleofamilialism,” the enforcement of a nuclear family model with a father and a mother who have All The Correct Parts to biologically produce the Right Amount of children; the model focused on maintaining “the most basic form of social organization,” as Wikipedia puts it: the nuclear family, the nucleus of Western civilization. such as it is.

nucleofamilialism, if you like, is the antithesis of queerness, and the reason Anglo-colonial cultures lack the most basic words to describe relationships, and gender, and social and sexual experiences. we don’t have the words yet to talk about ways of being that fall outside the narrow “one man, one woman, in holy matrimony, destined for parenthood” that has delimited gender and sex and sexuality by force and by violence for centuries.

we’re all just trying to talk to each other. there’ll be misunderstandings, that’s inevitable, but it’s not the fault of the people who are Deviant that we don’t have the language to describe ourselves. we’re making our words up as we go because we don’t have a choice.

all we can do is try to hear what each other’s saying, underneath our halting, imperfect words. all we can do is talk to each other, and hope some of our words stick - hope the kids coming after us will inherit our language, or any language. just so long as they aren’t forced to live in silence.

fellas i dont know how to tell you this but if you're having sex with someone your relationship is not platonic even if you're just friends with benefits it's still sexual and therefore not platonic because platonic literally means not sexual i cant believe some of the things you people make me read