AROdynamics

Content Note: Police violence, prone restraint

Contents: the origin of queerplatonic, the controversy of QPR as ace vs aro term, what do we take from this

The term queerplatonic relationship seems to have originated here, in comments on a journal entry titled “A/romanticism” (make of this what you will in terms of it being coined as a term relating to aromanticism or asexuality). Context: the OP, Kaz, is a well-known ace blogger posting on their dreamwidth journal. OP didn’t make up the word itself - that was Meloukhia in the comments, but Kaz gives the word some meaning too. Okay, let’s dive in:

Kaz in this “A/romanticism” post mentions experiences of feelings that “didn’t really fit in with most people’s perceptions of friendship, and [were] furthermore pretty damn different from the desires that I’d seen other aromantic people express (which tended to involve a lot of stuff like being independent and living on your own)”. Kaz goes on to say “And, well, what the hell was romantic attraction anyway? I’m still looking for an answer to this question, by the way.”, “recently I’ve met a lot of ace people iding as aromantic who have expressed desires similar to mine - they want a BFF who’s also their life partner, they might want to live together with this person, they might want to raise kids together. I think some of them even mentioned a gender preference. I’m starting to realise I may have let myself be driven away from aromantic based on the fact that the other aromantic people I was seeing seemed very different from me and I assumed that theirs was the “right” way to do aromanticism. But surely aromantic can entail different things.”, “Under this kind of thinking, I am definitely aromantic - I lack romantic attraction. (I sort of deduce this by the fact that it’s only really aromantic people who I’ve seen asking the “but what the hell IS it anyway?!” questions; romantic people seem to know.) I’ve got something else, but that’s not the question.”, “more and more I feel like the whole concept of a romantic orientation is asking me to define myself in terms of boxes that just don’t apply - hence my constant back-and-forth not feeling comfortable with any of the options ending with me making my very own - that asking me “so what’s your romantic orientation?” is simply the wrong question.”. The entry is not tagged and the word queerplatonic isn’t mentioned in its body.

In comments, someone mentions “romantic friendship” as a term Kaz may be looking for to describe their relationship, to which the reply is “b) the focus on the relationship being nonsexual instead of nonromantic makes me wonder if it couldn’t end up being used to refer to asexual romantic relationships which makes me kind of unhappy”. It’s Meloukhia that comments “Although I kind of like queerplatonic as a definer for the attraction I feel to my zucchini; it neatly avoids discussing the gender of either party involved, while emphasizing the idea that it is a deep (almost symbiotic in some ways) emotional connection that transcends what I think of as friendship.” to which Kaz replies “Oh my I liiiike queerplatonic. I think I’ve mentioned before that one of the options I play with is “having a queer romantic orientation” - I really *like* this because I think “queer” works really well for these sorts of “YOUR BOXES, THEY ARE INSUFFICIENT” relationships” and “I think “queerplatonic” sort of evades [reinforcing the idea that heteroromantic aces can’t be queer] because it’s clear it’s about queering platonic relationships”.

This whole conversation is taking place between asexual people, one of them definitely aromantic, the other either greyromantic/aromantic/not making sense of applying the terms to themself, in an ace-focused space, though the topic of the exchange is that of romantic orientation and non-romantic relationships.

Meloukhia later introduces the term queerplatonic on their website and the introduction is preceded by “Asexuality has its own language and terminology, which it would behoove you a bit to explore if you are interested in engaging with the asexual community and understanding what we say and what we are talking about.” It’s where the definition is as following:

Queerplatonic is a word for describing relationships where an intense emotional connection transcending what people usually think of as ‘friendship’ is present, but the relationship is not romantic in nature; people in a queerplatonic relationship may think of themselves as partners, may have sex, may plan on spending their lives together, etc. The ‘queer’ is a reference to the idea of queering relationships and ideas about relationships, not for describing the orientations or genders of anyone in a queerplatonic relationship. Anyone, sexual or asexual, romantic or aromantic, straight, gay, queer, bi, lesbian, poly, cis, trans, etc etc can be in a queerplatonic relationship, can have more than one such relationship, and there can be more than two people in a queerplatonic relationship; couples, triads, quads, whatever. The key feature is the idea of being deeply connected to someone, without a romantic element (though a queerplatonic relationship can be sexual).

I also want to note that there are many different kinds of queerplatonic relationships; we’ve been jokingly referring to them with different vegetables (‘she’s my zucchini,’ ‘I definitely think of ou as my eggplant’ etc.). The point is that this is an umbrella term that encompasses many different types of relationship, rather than being rigid; it’s fluid!

This definition is also used by Meloukhia as s.e. smith (if I correctly deduced they’re one person - I’m not 100% sure about it) on a tumblr blog, preceded by an introduction “An outgrowth of a conversation about aromantic orientations, and the desire to be able to define relationships that are not romantic, that are also not friendships, and that play an important role in your life.”

The post that I’m writing is a direct consequence of the ongoing controversy in whether the term “queerplatonic” originated in asexual or aromantic communities and therefore if it’s an asexual or aromantic term. (Spoiler: I’m not sure if the place where it was coined should translate 1:1 to which community’s term it is.)

The argument for the asexual side is such: Back in 2010 the ace community was most of what there was for aspec identities. Early aromantic communities were too weak to survive or unfriendly and those bloggers who coined the term didn’t participate in them. The bloggers mostly identified as asexual, so this is an asexual term.

The argument for the aromantic side is such: This is clearly a discussion about romantic identity, lack of romantic attraction and relationships that are non-romantic. Considering this, even if it was taking place as an extension of asexual discussions, the term is an aromantic one.

Anyway, make of this what you will, though I’m going to tell you my opinion if you’re interested in reading it.

I think that it’s important not to forget that the talk about it was between bloggers who were mostly participating in asexual spaces. We have to consider the situation at the time though. There were virtually no aromantic communities, but the conversation was (to me clearly) dealing with aromantic spectrum experiences. I think the important things to establish there are: a) how did the situation change between then and now with aro communities now existing,  b) is it the origin that makes QPR an “ace” or “aro” term, c) is it the meaning of QPR that makes the word an “aro” or “ace” term? ( There’s also d) what about people who don’t treat their romantic and sexual orientations as separate?, that honestly I have no idea what to do with…)

How did the situation change? Well, aromanticism is no longer only talked about in ace spaces or thought about as a subset of asexuality and there are aromantic communities now. At the time the term was coined, aromantic topics were brought up mostly in asexual spaces and it could have been thought of as a specific categorization within the asexual identity. Right now we’re seeing separation of aro and ace spaces, which are thought of as more distinct and independent identities.

The origin - a conversation between people who treated queerplatonic as an asexual word because they were asexual, and aromantic communities didn’t really exist outside of asexual ones - would point to it being an asexual word.

Taking into account how aromantic is treated as a separate identity now and the fact that queerplatonic relationships were meant to be specifically non-romantic, it could be considered an aro word. Say if a term related to being wsw/wlw originated in a conversation of two aromantic-identifying individuals, would it be a wsw/wlw term or aro term? This example is obviously not identical, because aromantic and wsw/wlw communities were never treated as one community, but I hope illustrates my point on how this debate changes when aromanticism is not an extension of asexuality.

Anyway, here are the things to consider when you’re arguing whether it’s an ace or aro term. Personally I believe it’s not as easy as saying it’s either of those things. I think it’s important to include the ace history of the word but also the fact it was discussed in relation to aromanticism, now a separate identity.

What do we take from this? Hopefully more willingness not to erase the historical context of the creation of the word (by people who meant it to be an ace term), hopefully more recognition that in the new reality, since it’s defining non-romantic relationships in context of discussion about aromanticism, it can be treated as an aro term. See, on one hand I understand - it wasn’t coined by people who meant for it to be an aromantic term (aromantic as a separate identity didn’t exist). On the other hand though I don’t understand the unwillingness to admit the word is (and always has been) thematically part of the aromantic spectrum side of the aspec discussions.

What it should translate to functionally? I think some phrases may be helpful to illustrate.

NO: Queerplatonic relationship is an ace term!

NO: Queerplatonic was coined by aros!

YES: Queerplatonic is an aspec term. Aspec means asexual and aromantic.

YES: Queerplatonic was coined back when aromanticism wasn’t a separate identity from asexuality by asexual aro-specs and was intended as an asexual term. However thematically it is related to aromantic experiences.

Friendly reminder that Queer is approved by 72.9% of the people, and the groups who don’t prefer it’s use as an umbrella term are straight people, exclusionists, transmeds, truscums, sex-negative people, and sex work critical people (x).

Friendly reminder that aros and aces are excluded only 9.2% / 8.1% of the time respectively while being included  78.9% / 81.2% of the time (x)

Motel manager, James “Jimmy” Brock, pouring acid into a swimming pool to drive black people away from a “Swim In” protest, in St. Augustine, Florida on June 18, 1964.

https://interactadvocates.org/sb201/

Senators want to hear feedback from those who live in their own districts. The Senators in the table below are the decision makers for our immediate next step. If they are your Senator, great! Use the table below to call and/or email them. Sample message ideas are below. If you do not live in the district of any of these decision makers, you can still use this link to find out who your California Senator is, and contact them in advance for next time!

Sample Phone Call Script:

(Usually staff members tally calls from those who are constituents in their district, to summarize to their Senator. If your representative supported SCR-110, this would also be a great time to thank them.)

Hi there,

I’m ________ a constituent in ________ calling to urge Senator ________’s support of SB 201, authored by Scott Wiener. SB 201 protects children from deeply harmful “normalizing” surgeries. These unnecessary medical procedures can create life altering consequences on their bodies, their minds, and their gender identities. “Normalizing” surgical treatments on this vulnerable population of children have roots in homophobia, and have been likened to a physical form of conversion therapy. It’s important to me that my Senator supports all letters in the LGBTQIA community, so I really hope that they will support SB 201. Thank you!

Sample Email Template:

(Personal notes go a long way! If you are an intersex person, LGBTQIA+ community member, or organizational ally, that’s a great thing to mention.)

Dear Senator,

I write to strongly urge you to vote in favor of SB 201 (Wiener), which would protect intersex children from deeply harmful “normalizing” surgeries and ensure that life-altering choices about their bodies and, in some cases, gender identities, are not forced upon them in infancy.

SB 201 is a critical step for California. These procedures are physical conversion therapy designed to erase intersex people’s healthy difference before they can even speak about what they do and do not want done to their bodies. California should be a leader in providing the highest standard of medical care, which is why SB 201 is desperately needed to bring our state in line with the human rights consensus that these surgeries must end.

Every major intersex group has opposed these surgeries. Despite condemnation from the San Francisco Human Rights Commission, the Amnesty International, the World Health Organization, Physicians for Human Rights, and the United Nations, among others, the practice of nonconsensual surgery on intersex infants continues to this day in California. California has proudly stood at the forefront of other human rights issues before, and with SB 201, it has the chance to do so again. It is time to put policies in place to ensure these children are cared for ethically, compassionately, and on the basis of evidence rather than assumptions.

I urge you to take the opportunity to support intersex children and their families.

Sincerely,

(Add your Name & Home Address)

“As we face a dangerous, ever-widening rollback of reproductive rights, I’m so proud to share this guide and community resource for self-managing abortion by @ArielleSchw, illustrated by @Lubchansky. Everyone deserves to control their own reproduction.”

- Arielle Angel 

How to Give Yourself an Abortion

“In 2020, however, the safest way to perform a self-managed abortion is with pills—usually some variation of the same ones administered at doctors’ offices. Unfortunately, safe and affordable medical care isn’t accessible everywhere or to everyone. Since the 2010 midterm elections, we’ve seen anti-choice legislation spread across the country at unprecedented speed. From mandatory waiting periods to laws regulating the width of hallways in abortion clinics, targeted restrictions on abortion providers (known as TRAP laws) have shut down hundreds of clinics. 

Now, conservative states are taking advantage of recent hard-right appointments to the Supreme Court by introducing laws that either ban abortion outright or restrict it to the first six to eight weeks of pregnancy—before many people even know they’re pregnant.   Everyone deserves to control their own reproduction. This guide to self-managing your abortion using misoprostol, a medication which causes uterine contractions, is intended as a community resource in the service of reproductive justice.

According to a 2018 statement from Physicians for Reproductive Health, “self-administered medication abortion is as safe, effective and acceptable to patients and providers as healthcare facility-based medication administration.” Numerous medical groups, including the World Health Organization, have endorsed self-managed abortion using misoprostol in situations where abortion care through a medical provider is unavailable. That said, self-managed abortion using misoprostol takes longer than a clinic abortion, which typically uses a combination of medications, and the side effects (including nausea, diarrhea, and abdominal pain) are usually more pronounced.

Additionally, self-managing an abortion could put a person at legal risk. Though advocates only know of 20 people in the United States who have been arrested for self-managing an abortion since 1973, and fewer than ten states explicitly ban the practice, there are laws on the books in many states that can be used to punish a person managing their own abortion, such as those criminalizing harm to a fetus, or governing the disposal of medical byproducts. And people who are disproportionately targeted by law enforcement (people of color, trans people, homeless people, and undocumented people, for example) are at greater risk of legal punishment. For a few legal resources, check out the “More Information” section  at the end of this article.”

I had to give a ten minute presentation on gender and a) how it’s different from sex, and b) whether or not there’s such thing as a “male” and “female” brain.

I found COUNTLESS studies supporting the idea that the brain itself is unisex- there is very little, if any, difference between “male” and “female” brains, with one exception. I’m by no means a neuroscientist but this is what I understood from this particular article: there’s this tiny part of the hypothalamus (a small part of the brain) that has neutrons in it, and the number of neutrons varies. HOWEVER, when the brains of cis men and women and trans men and women (who had not taken hormones for years prior to the time of death) were studied, it was found that the cis men and trans men had almost identical average neutron counts, and the cis women and trans women had almost identical average neutron counts. So if you’re DMAB but realize at some point that you’re a trans woman, as far as your brain is concerned, you ARE a woman! The same goes for DFAB trans men (intersex/nonbinary individuals weren’t studied, unfortunately).

“As of January 1st, 2020, the statute of limitations for reporting a sexual assault has been removed, but the new law is not retroactive.

That means, if the crime happened before the start of this year, the three year reporting period still applies.

While the effects of the legislation may not be seen for a few years, experts believe it still sends a message.

Carrie Ward, of the Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault, says, “There’s no magic that says for that person, if today is not the day that you make this report, then your chance is gone. What we know now is, at three years and one day, or four years and ten days, or ten years, that person is able to come forward and make this report. They can do it, and that’s just so healing for victims.”

Before the new law went into effect, a person charged with sexual assault had to be prosecuted within ten years of the reported assault.”

Read the full piece here

You know what bothers me the most about how little coverage the Australian fires are getting?

I could mention that 18 people are now dead, several are missing and over 1000 homes are lost. All at the start of a new year. +3 million hectares of land is gone. People feel a little bit of empathy, maybe they'll reblog this or give it a like, but they'll give it no second thought.

But if I were to make a post just solely about the fact that 500 million animals have been killed in these fires, including 30% of all koalas meaning they're close to being functionally extinct, people would share the fuck out of it. They would start GoFundMe pages, they would guilt people into reblogging shit with the classic, "if you don't reblog this you don't have a heart." You know that trope yeah?

You all fucking shoved posts about the Amazon fires down our throats. "Oh but they were deliberately lit on Native land." You don't think we understand that? Do you know that is exactly what's happened here? As a woman of Aboriginal descent, do you get how upsetting it is for me to watch my country burn? To watch my friends houses burn to the grown whilst they're left to flee to the beach in hope's of not being burnt? Do you know how upsetting it is to think that the house that I grew up in probably won't be standing in a couple days? All because the RFS are not allowed to backburn because of politics. Politics who don't understand a single fuck about anything that is happening.

Every night I have to try my hardest not to break down in front of my family because I am so upset and so angry about this whole situation. Men and women are out there fighting this fire, missing out on time with their family, time at work meaning they can't afford to feed their family either, they miss out on holidays too.

My brother was sent on a strike team up to Sydney for Christmas. He almost didn't make it back for New Years, even when he got home, he was so tired to go out so him and I stayed at home and played the PS4. And what makes me angry is that some families out there don't see their brothers come home, their sons, their fathers, their sisters, mothers, daughters.

Because people are dying.

And no one other than Australians give a single fuck!

Canberra currently ranks at number 8 for worst air quality in the world right now. The elderly in nursing homes are being evacuated and have nowhere to go. People were jumping in lakes, were swimming out into the ocean to get away from the fire as it started to burn the beach.

And what does our Prime Minister do?

He arrives at fire impacted towns, in a nice and expensive 100k BMW, to give his thoughts and prayers. Not aid, not water and food, not money. But thoughts and prayers.

"I'm sure he's just tired."

"No, no. He lost a house."

"Oh."

How more insensitive can the fucker get? This isn't a Prime Minister. This is a disgrace. May I also mention we are in our worst drought yet but "we" just sold 409 million dollars worth of drinking water overseas.

I am begging all of you by this point. Please, help out our victims of fire and drought. Donate to whatever causes you can, search the internet, I'm sure there are plenty out there. Donate packs of water, toiletries, food that doesn't spoil, socks, sleeping bags, anything.

So apparently I got wind (from an LGBTQ+ Amino, out of all places) that some aces on Twitter got invited into a group chat with acephobes, and were subject to harassment and name calling for their asexuality.

I don’t use Twitter, and I don’t know if aces on Twitter are saying anything about this, but to all my fellow aces out there who use Twitter: watch which group chats you’re invited to, and if you can, get out of these acephobic chats. If you want to stand your ground against acephobes in there, then that’s your choice. Otherwise, I suggest you leave before getting harassed and potentially harmed.

The group chat, as of this post, was renamed to “ace harassment group” by one of the aces that were invited to be in there.

I got screenshots of this group chat (censored most profile pictures), and yeah it’s definitely run by a bunch of clowns looking to harass aces for the sake of entertainment. The person with the blue text bubbles isn’t me (I don’t know who they are; I grabbed these screenshots from someone else who posted them). The screenshots are below the cut, for anyone who’s curious. I’ve partially censored the slurs in both the screenshots and image descriptions.

Content warning for ableism, racism, the n word, the r slur, self harm mention, suicide baiting, antisemitism, repetition of phrases

They were also adding aces to a list called genocide time.

Tw: death and rape threats, genocide mention, other terrible things that idk how to describe.

Links 2 to 9 are about the other “ace harassment groups” thing that I referenced in the original post. The 8th link is the most recent in terms of this whole “add aces to group chats and harass them” thing. Are acephobes *still* keeping up with this bs? 🙄 What foolishness.

How can anyone willingly stay associated with ppl who post shit like this

like, i don’t know if yall realize this if youre newer here but: this whole “asexuality exclusion” thing and this “queer is a slur” thing? this is new. this is only within the past two or so years that its gained any real momentum, the same with terfs and radfems. it wasn’t a concept. there were massive, massive rallies in support of our asexual community. it’s horrifying to me how simply and neatly we as a group have gone from “The A doesn’t stand for Ally” to “There is no A at all”.

and i need you all to know: this is not a coincidence that TERFS have risen up in roughly the same time period. i need you all to realize that when you talk about your exclusion of asexuals from our community, you are parroting well-known TERF and neo-nazi rhetoric.

“they are invading [LGBT/women’s/white] safe spaces to steal our resources and oppress us.”

“they’re only pretending to be [gay/a woman].”

“[asexual/trans women/POC] aren’t REALLY [LGBT/women/human].”

and it goes deeper, fundamentally flawed: when you try to reason that asexuality isn’t inherently LGBT, but if you are otherwise LGBT but asexual it’s somehow fine and different but otherwise youre cishet…all you’re saying is that “you’re only allowed in this club if you don’t support others who are like you. you’re only allowed in this club because i as an authority say you fit nicely under a label that i agree with.”

it’s terrifying, to me, and i’m not asexual. it’s terrifying that this manufactured divide using literal talking points created by and stolen from TERFs and neo-nazis has such an appeal to so many LGBT people. i’m worried for our future on so many levels; climate change, political upheaval, the list goes on. standing strong together is so important right now, perhaps more than ever, at least in my lifetime. and yet we are so destructively focused on ideas of ‘the model of social justice’ and ‘purity culture’ and ‘respectability politics’ and so on that we would rather turn on our own–not even our allies but our own community–because we don’t think they’re LGBT enough.

“New York City is attempting to stop misgendering of dead non-binary and trans people on their death certificates.

Under changes announced on Wednesday, the city is directing that gender identity should always be recorded on death certificates “consistent with the wishes” of the person who has died.

A release explains that a determination gender identity can be “based on knowledge of the person” or evidence from their documentation.

The new forms will include an ‘X’ gender option alongside ‘M’ and ‘F’, for New Yorkers who do not identify as male or female.

Free retrospective changes to death certificates will now also be possible, which will alleviate instances where people have been incorrectly gendered by officials.”