As I said in this post, I'm also aromantic. But back when I thought I was straight, I thought I just didn't like our culture's current romance aesthetic -- I saw "romance" as just a rote script that people were expected to follow, and it was a script that explicitly excluded people with "imperfect" bodies, like mine.
It was only recently, after someone asked some "What if" questions, that I realized I'm actually romance repulsed -- that regardless of the aesthetic, being the primary focus of someone else's emotional desire feels kind of icky, to me. And this probably ties into my (almost) life long questioning of the supremacy of monogamous marriages.
English has the word "platonic" for affection that is neither sexual nor romantic, but it covers such a broad spectrum of intensity, from "This is my work colleague" to "I would die for this person," that it's not quite satisfactory when talking to someone who doesn't already know what you mean.
So, yeah... "queer" covers a lot of gaps in our language.
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As I said in this post, I'm also aromantic. But back when I thought I was straight, I thought I just didn't like our culture's current romance aesthetic -- I saw "romance" as just a rote script that people were expected to follow, and it was a script that explicitly excluded people with "imperfect" bodies, like mine.
It was only recently, after someone asked some "What if" questions, that I realized I'm actually romance repulsed -- that regardless of the aesthetic, being the primary focus of someone else's emotional desire feels kind of icky, to me. And this probably ties into my (almost) life long questioning of the supremacy of monogamous marriages.
English has the word "platonic" for affection that is neither sexual nor romantic, but it covers such a broad spectrum of intensity, from "This is my work colleague" to "I would die for this person," that it's not quite satisfactory when talking to someone who doesn't already know what you mean.
So, yeah... "queer" covers a lot of gaps in our language.