Word of the day: Queerplatonic

jhameia:

meloukhia:

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. I think it’s time to turn this one loose into the wild. Use it well, use it widely. (If you identify with it, at any rate.)

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 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).

ETA: 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!

Oooh, this is a term that could definitely come into use!

So, I think this definition’s interesting in its own right. Then, reading all the reblog commentaries as I do, I noticed this tumblr comment a lot of interesting stuff too. Ending with: “The fact that queer is so damn fluid as to encompass straight friendships now is beyond incredible”.

I’m not quite sure what to make of that. I’ve been called queer as a slur, both while I was in a relationship with someone of a gender nearer my own than otherwise and while in a relationship with a straight cis dude who thought of me as his straight cis girlfriend. And while completely single. I don’t think social perceptions of queer match this person’s. I don’t think it’s a slur so much contingent on the relationship you’re in actively engaging in so much as it is on the social rules you’re breaking, through how you look and how you act in public and how you talk about your friendships. Anddddd I’m pretty sure anyone who thinks the asexual community’s got enough words of its own and that ‘straight friendship’ is exactly all they could need to describe them’s doing a fair bit of unhelpful erasing and privilege-denial.

But that said, if it matters for them that queer stays specific and if it matters for a lot of other people, it could be worth me reconsidering. I think broadening queer to mean anything that says ‘fuck you and your implicit rules’ to society works nicely as a definition for me, and I say that as someone who’s not likely to ever experience straight privilege again in her life. I’d love to hear what anyone else thinks.

As I mentioned in the ask, you raise some very valid points and I’ll try to address those succinctly (and not have this turn into an essay).

I think that the main problem with using ‘queerplatonic’ to describe friendships is that it completely divorces and neuters the meaning of the word queer. It’s not an arbitrary definition; that word stems from a great deal of (negative) history. The fact that it’s a reclaimed slur is also especially troubling.
I used a particularly inflammatory word in my previous post to make a point: we know that the n-word is unacceptable (caveat: unless used by an African-American individual who is attempting to reclaim the word in some way). Consequently, if I went around describing my friendship with my best friend (which does fit, for all intents and purposes, the definition of a ‘queerplatonic’ friendship) as ‘niggerplatonic’, I would deserve every single punch I undoubtedly would receive.
A word like that cannot be divorced from it’s history.

I see queer as something very similar.
It’s all fine and good for the queer community to reclaim a word that has traditionally been used to harass and harm, but it’s another thing entirely for the word to become simply a catch-phrase for anything that doesn’t fit some hypothetical ‘norm’.
And even then, what then of the exclusively heterosexual couples who are into 1950s D/s reinactment kinks? Do they qualify as ‘queer’? Are they members of the ‘queer community’, despite their heterosexuality and adherence to ‘accepted societal norms’ simply because they’re self-aware? I hate to make a slippery-slope argument, but it is something that must be considered. If queer becomes so all-encompassing, where does it stop?

In addition, the slur is contingent primarily on the relationships you’re in, regardless of how many rules you break. But to use another example:
Would we say that the women of Sex In The City are engaged in a queerplatonic friendship? They’re certainly much closer than one would ‘expect’ of friends, and they discuss a wide range of topics—but they fit firmly into some sort of hypothetical heterosexual paradigm, and the only area of transgression is their willingness to discuss ‘taboo’ issues with their girlfriends.
Is that ‘queering’ the idea of friendship, or is it simply accepting that women in the modern day feel more uninhibited about discussing ‘taboo’ subjects with their girlfriends? Should these heterosexual women get the right to use the word queer because they have close bonds of friendship with their friends?

As for the privilege-erasing: I don’t feel as though being a lesbian woman in any culture affords me much privilege. You might disagree, and that is certainly your prerogative (which I respect, you do you). However, it is a fact that lesbians (butch, femme and otherwise inclined) are the recipients of a great deal of aggression, which frequently manifests itself in the form of physical attacks. Is this as common in the asexual community? I don’t agree that it’s necessary to form a heirarchy of privilege in regards to asexuality v. sexuality—especially when in some cases, an asexual hetero-romantic will receive more privilege than a gynesexual homo-romantic. Conversely, an asexual genderqueer may receive less privilege than a lesbian femme. So it’s all a bit of a mash, but the only thing that is for certain is that, regardless of who stands on who, we’re nowhere near the top of the totem pole.

(Source: se-smith)