#(dont personally consider myself loveless but i agree w ur general sentiment of smashing amatonormativity)

[yardsards]

it's not even february yet but this happens every year. so in advance:

i swear if i see a single "stop being so joyless, valentines day can be about platonic love too :)" in response to an aromantic person disliking the holiday, i am going to start biting people

yes, we can expand what the holiday includes if we want to but. that doesn't change that it was historically created to celebrate (heterosexual) romantic love

you know how some queer people wanna completely throw out heteronormative or cisnormative institutions instead of trying to expand those institutions to include more people? how they don't wanna play respectability politics to get included in those institutions? a lot of us arospecs feel the same way about amatonormativity.

and you might say "valentines is already celebrated by friends, even by cishets!" but. in the mainstream culture, it's almost always single people or children that celebrate it with friends. friendship, in these cases, is just treated like a pale substitution for romance. if a person in a romantic relationship decided to hang out with a group of friends instead of their partner, they'd be considered absolutely bonkers or, at the very least, have their relationship status questioned.

and that idea, that we have to use friendship as a second-place substitute for romance, pervades our whole culture. even in supposedly progressive/accepting spaces. don't want a romantic partner? okay, you can settle for a qpp. don't want a qpp? well, you can settle for normal friends. and so on.

of course valentines day isn't the CAUSE of this. it's just some silly hallmark holiday and i'm not gonna begrudge anyone (arospec or not) the chance to chow down of some heart shaped candy. but valentine's day is a SYMPTOM of society-wide amatonormativity. please don't dismiss us when we don't like it.

#eliot posts #aromantic #aroace #actually aromantic #amatonormativity #amatopunk #loveless aro #(dont personally consider myself loveless but i agree w ur general sentiment of smashing amatonormativity) #valentines day #aphobes and ppl who have no personality outside of romance are gettin BIG MAD over this one #got an angry comment AND an angry anon over it and it hasnt even broken 100 notes yet #i feel Powerful #anyway. i am now officially Going To Start Biting People #consider this a Warning