I go back and forth whether I'm "traumatised enough" to call myself aplatonic but I definitely just don't like emotional intimacy that much. I'll engage in it as a favour to the other person, but for my part I'm perfectly comfortable not being "fully" understood as long as that's a conscious stance both of us are taking.
To be fair, the discourse around the identity of "aplatonic" included "aromantic people are also allowed to call themselves this, not just neurodivergent people" (I think this was said by the coiner?). But even aside from that, there are... plenty of reasons why it's really nonsensical to assume that aplotinicism/aplatonic experiences can be gatekept in ways that aromanticism/asexuality cannot--especially given the socially constructed boundaries between those types of attractions/experiences, not to mention the tenuousness of neurodivergence (as opposed to non-neurodivergence) and the spectrum nature of aspec identities (which partially includes the frequency/intensity sliding scale between "none at all" up to the boundary right before "the normatively expected amount").
I relate to the mutual "not fully understood" bit and I actually wish more people jived along those lines because like. Being friendly and being friends aren't the same and it's not a bad thing that they aren't, and it's truly not me spiting people when I don't want to be friends but can and do nonetheless jive with them in a comfortable way.
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Date: 22/4/19 06:17 (UTC)To be fair, the discourse around the identity of "aplatonic" included "aromantic people are also allowed to call themselves this, not just neurodivergent people" (I think this was said by the coiner?). But even aside from that, there are... plenty of reasons why it's really nonsensical to assume that aplotinicism/aplatonic experiences can be gatekept in ways that aromanticism/asexuality cannot--especially given the socially constructed boundaries between those types of attractions/experiences, not to mention the tenuousness of neurodivergence (as opposed to non-neurodivergence) and the spectrum nature of aspec identities (which partially includes the frequency/intensity sliding scale between "none at all" up to the boundary right before "the normatively expected amount").
I relate to the mutual "not fully understood" bit and I actually wish more people jived along those lines because like. Being friendly and being friends aren't the same and it's not a bad thing that they aren't, and it's truly not me spiting people when I don't want to be friends but can and do nonetheless jive with them in a comfortable way.