Happy Aro Week! This is a week dedicated to celebrating the aromantic community and aromantic identities. You can learn more about aromanticism over at AUREA, an organization dedicated to promoting and supporting aros.
An aromantic person is someone who experiences little to no romantic attraction. There really isn't a good way to define romantic attraction, and honestly you shouldn't be asking an aromantic individual to describe something they do not experience haha. But know that aromantics can still participate in romantic relationships, and may experience sexual attraction as well. Many aromantics don't want to be in romantic relationships and some prefer queer platonic relationships, or QPRs. These are platonic relationships where the members make a strong, lifelong commitment to each other.
To celebrate Aro Week, I want to encourage everyone to stop belittling platonic relationships. This can come in many forms, from describing people as "just friends" to insisting that unhappy individuals get a romantic partner to cheer themselves up. This can be toxic, not just to aromantic people but to everyone. Friendship is a wonderful thing and it deserves to be cherishes as such.
I especially want to encourage my queer friends to stop making jokes about queer people in romantic relationships being mistaken for close friends, "just gals being pals," things of that nature. Essentially you're telling a joke where the punch line is "wow, a platonic relationship could never look like that, anyone thinking that this relationship is platonic must be an idiot." First of all, only the people within the relationship get to decide whether it is romantic or platonic. There's nothing inherently romantic about things like getting gifts, holding hands, hugging, kissing, et cetera. If you don't know how these people describe their relationship, just don't make a judgement on it. It's a lot less messy that way.
Not to mention that plenty of people want these strong platonic relationships and making jokes about them implicitly makes fun of this. If you're saying "wow look at these gal pals" it is likely that someone is thinking that they want a relationship like that, but unironically. It alienates aromantic individuals who are more likely to want a platonic relationship.
I don't want to diminish the fact that many homophobes mistake queer romantic relationships for friendship all the time, and I think that these are often funny comments. But I also think that there's a place for people to want all kinds of different relationships in queer spaces, and these comments aren't working towards that. Many aromantics don't feel welcome and supported within queer spaces, for a multitiude of reasons other than just this one. We need to work on making sure that we're open to aros, and make sure that they know that. By being more aware of aromantic individuals in queer spaces and being more welcoming of platonic relationships, hopefully we can make our communities more inclusive.
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