Latest Posts by notinuse-sponk - Page 5

An activate charcoal AND grapefruit smoothie called "what will your meds do ;)"

Words I use as gender neutral terms

Dude

Bro

My guy

Lads

Words I will absolutely stop using if you feel uncomfortable with them

Dude

Bro

My guy

Lads

A Better Explination for Queer Platonic Relationships

This post is gonna be very 101, so if you’re already pretty familiar with aro terms and don’t want to sit through all the definitions and explanations I have another post here that’s basically a very condensed version of this one.  

Anyways, I think the reason that a lot of non-aromantic people don’t understand queerplatonic relationships is that qpps as a concept are not just a type of relationship, but also a response to amatonormativity.

For those who are unfamiliar with the term, amatonormativity is the societal view of romantic monogamous relationships as both the most important relationships you can have and as the end goal for happiness. While this norm disproportionately affects aromantic and non-monogamous people, it also has some very negative effects on people outside of these groups. If you’ve ever experienced peer or familial pressure to get a romantic partner when you didn’t want one, lost touch with a friend because they got a partner and stopped putting as much time into maintaining your friendship, or been told by a romantic partner that you needed to stop interacting with a close friend because they felt threatened by your friendship then you’ve experienced the negative effects of amatonormativity. This is not an aromantic specific issue, however, in this post, I will be discussing it within the context of aromantic terms and experiences.

For many aromantic people, there is a fundamental fear that all of their close friends will pair off into romantic relationships and they will be left alone. This fear comes from amatonormativity. If there was no expectation that people would prioritize romantic relationships over friendships then there would be no real need for people who don’t want/can’t have romantic relationships for whatever reason to fear being left alone and isolated from the support of other people.

I think this fear is one of the main reasons queerplatonic relationships exist in the first place. Sure, there are different types of platonic relationships with varying degrees of intimacy and commitment that aro people could participate in, but I think that if you look at how queerplatonic relationships are talked about you’ll find that aromantic people lean towards qpps because they are more then just another type of platonic relationship.

Qpps come in all shapes and sizes. They can be monogamous or polyamorous, involve lots of physical intimacy or very little, include lots of romantically coded things like dates, marriage, and living together, or be closer to the traditional view of friendship. The spectrum of what counts as a qpp is in fact so big that the term becomes almost impossible to define. The one unifying thread that I can see among all these different types of qpps is that they’re platonic relationships that still involve a high level of commitment. 

Essentially the only agreed upon factor here is that the relationship is platonic, but a commitment has been made somewhere along the lines to not abandon one another for a romantic partner, everything beyond that is pretty up in the air. This isn’t the definition you’re likely to get from those “what is a qpp” posts, but spend 5 minutes scrolling threw some popular aro blogs and it becomes incredibly apparent. I’ve seen people joke that “queerplatonic partners are like friends that don’t abandon me for their boyfriends” or that “all my friends got dates so I had to find a qpp”. These statements, while kind of morbidly funny on some level, do point to a larger trend. While most relationship categories are defined by level of intimacy, qpps are more of a commitment to break amatonormative social norms with someone you’re close to.

And if we’re going to agree that that’s what a queerplatonic relationship is, and for the purposes of this post we are, then it suddenly becomes very clear that the aromantic community is doing ourselves a huge disservice when we try to define qpps without talking about amatonormativity, or in some cases, even mentioning the aromantic community at all.  

There is a reason that queerplatonic originated in the aromantic community. There is a reason that qpp is an aro term. Non-aro people simply don’t have the same experience with relationships that aro people do, so they don’t have the context necessary to understand why we would need qpps in the first place. 

I think this is where a lot of the “aren’t qpp’s just friendships?” questions come from. Sure, there are people out there who just want to make fun of every aro/ace term and identity, and that is part of why the ‘don’t you mean friends’ response has become so popular, but in this case I really think a lot of it’s due to the fact that we’ve explained qpps so poorly. Someone who isn’t aro, and who hasn’t felt the devastating effects of your friends drifting away into romantic relationships while you can’t have one/ don’t want one, isn’t going to understand why aro people would need a whole new type of close, emotional, platonic relationship when just plain old friendship has worked fine for them. Without the context of amatonormativity and the experience of being aro, qpp’s becomes almost nonsensical, and when we leave those things out of our definitions of qpps people aren’t going to understand what we’re talking about. 

We need to do a better job of explaining queerplatonic relationships because otherwise, people are going to continue misunderstanding what they are. 

“Nope, I will not let go“ 

(via)

i have this writing style i like to call “uncertain.” it’s where the narrator isn’t really sure what they’re talking about either

What people think hyper focusing is

What hyper focusing actually is

People are starting to put out hummingbird feeders, y’all know what that means

has this been done yet

Stuck.

(it’s 2am, and according to your therapist, you have “a whopping case of ADHD”

Actually life is beautiful because the sound I make while trying to breathe around hot food sounds like my dog trying to eat an apple. When I yawn my cat tries to put his face in my mouth like a little dentist man and when he yawns I put my finger in his obligate-carnivore trapzone and we both know he will not hurt me. When I do not fold my clothes, they do not hold it against me.

I am demonstrably sad, and lonely, and full of fear. But there are other people who will hold my hand, who will point out the hawk overhead, who will give you That Look in a public place. The other day at a coffee shop a child said "look! It's snowing!" so all of us strangers went to go look out the windows. It wasn't the first snow and it won't be the last but wasn't it lovely, like that?

How wonderful to live in a world where birds and frogs both say beep! How wonderful to have an ocean of beautiful sharks with their dinosaur teeth! How wonderful the moon and her changing face, how wonderful the bees and their dancing to communicate, how wonderful shrimp and their forbidden layers of vision! How wonderful, you, and what you will give the world! The way we love things enough to spend entire blogs devoted to them? How people will let me explain my Pokemon team to them? How we will both jump at the scare in the movie, how we laugh so loudly, how it feels to give someone your baking? How wonderful to be alive. I am sorry for forgetting.

This is the process of getting better. With wonderful people and wonderful strangers and wonderful friends: I am getting better, slowly. Thank you, whoever you are. In some way, you've been wonderful, and left a wonderful place in the world to ripple out to me. In some small way - isn't it beautiful - I promise, you've been helping.

not to be political or anything but

WHAT THE FUCK

is a romantic relationship

Chase go the fuck to sleep please

people who think its impossible to have more than one gay person in a friend group would love my lunch table

I think kids with ADHD and ASD have a special relationship to swingsets as compared to other playground activities, just because of the leg motions. I went to an old park today and just swung for twenty minutes because the pumping you have to do to actually swing is a very, very nice stim.

that ADHD feel when ur trying to get back into a productive mindset after taking a break from work like

gays in quarantine be like 

*fine* *kinda lonely* *yearning tenfold* *recovered* * y e a r n * *dnd probably* *maybe do some baking idk* *yearning* *yearning* *yearni

some fucking resources for all ur writing fuckin needs

* body language masterlist

* a translator that doesn’t eat ass like google translate does

* a reverse dictionary for when ur brain freezes

* 550 words to say instead of fuckin said

* 638 character traits for when ur brain freezes again

* some more body language help

(hope this helps some ppl)

We rollin

I have finally found a perfect way to describe my gender and it is “the situation.”

What's your guilty pleasure ?

Sleep

NOT gonna say this again!! A CYBORG is something PARTIALLY ROBOTIC. An ANDROID is something that is FULLY ROBOTIC, MADE TO LOOK HUMAN. A ROBOT is FULLY ROBOTIC and NOT DESIGNED TO LOOK HUMAN!!

BE GAY DO CRIMES BLAST UR MUSIC LOUD DYE YOUR HAIR WEIRD COLORS WEAR FUN CLOTHES GET THAT TATTOO EAT A WHOLE CAKE LIVE UR LIFE HOWEVER YOU WANT BECAUSE ONLY YOU CAN DECIDE WHO YOU ARE

Every DnD game that starts out with a serious “Lord of the Rings” type of tone turns into a Monty Python sketch and every DnD game that starts out like a Monty Python sketch turns into Lord of the Rings

he does nt even know