proposed update to qpr.

[cute kitty Meow! Mewo!]

I've always been hesitant to talk about QPR's - because there are two very different categories of qpr - the friendship QPR, like JD and Turk, and the partnership QPR like the one shown in (a)sexuality where they lived together and cuddled a ton and shared a life basically.

 

but I realized yesterday there is actually a easy and natural way to adjust the language to reflect this very well. instead of calling both forms of close relationships a Queerplatonic Relationship - we can use "QPF" or querplatonic friendship, and then "QPP" or queerplatonic partnership. 

 

(oh or, wait, are we trying to adjust "queer" to "quasi" now is that kicking off?)

[Cassiopeia]

I have always used the word  QPR as term for  a committed partnership...but typing QPF is a lot easier than writing down intimate friendship, so I like the idea

[omitef]

I also like the idea of QPF, and QPP. I feel like "relationship" is too loaded with romantic connotation.

[cute kitty Meow! Mewo!]

that is actually a good point I hadn't thought of I use relationship naturally to refer to anything so it was weird when it became romantically loaded in college and I kept confusing people

[Mark]

12 hours ago, Cassiopeia said:

I have always used the word  QPR as term for  a committed partnership...but typing QPF is a lot easier than writing down intimate friendship, so I like the idea

Then you have the issue of what "committed" means. Especially when it often gets treated as a synonym of "exclusive".
Ditto for the adjective "serious" in this kind of context.

[cute kitty Meow! Mewo!]

yeah I am always unsure how to specify a, um, partnership because all the words are either only sometimes true of the relationship, or are usable in other contexts. like partnership. it means two people who are working together. or something like that. 

 

and then do you call it commited? exclusive? romantic? long-term? none of those talk about all kinds of these things. 

[Cassiopeia]

5 hours ago, Mark said:

Then you have the issue of what "committed" means. Especially when it often gets treated as a synonym of "exclusive".
Ditto for the adjective "serious" in this kind of context.

The difference between commitment and any other obligations that been imposed on someone is that one would willingly choose to commit to a relationship in this case. Obviously you should not choose to commit to things that aren't for you, or to people who do not understand and respect your boundaries. Aro people tend to have quite special limits, so that conversation has to go into those details anyway. People who don't get all that stuff, probably won't even make it past the casual acquaintanceship level...

[techno]

I like the idea of distinguishing between a QPP and a QPF. Especially since the word "relationship" is so vague; not every relationship is an exclusive/committed/what-have-you partnership. The distinction between partnership and friendship is always going to be blurry, and we're never going to be able to perfectly and succinctly define everything. It's all going to go right over the heads of many romantic people anyway, so at this point it's whatever works for us. As @Cassiopeia suggested, people who won't get it won't really find themselves in a situation beyond casual acquaintanceship, and it won't really matter to them what the distinction is.

[aussiekirkland]

I like that you used JD and Turk as an example of a QPF and I think the distinction would be useful in a community context. For example I'm already thinking about how these relationships form differently. QPF's tend to be naturally occurring over time whereas QPR's tend to be intentionally initiated by those involved. Also I think I'm in a QPF and it's awesome!

 

I hope quasi becomes more common soon cause of the whole queer thing. It doesn't necessarily work since you don't have to be queer to be in a QPR.

[Blue Phoenix Ace]

I like the distinction as well. There's a big difference between "life partners" and "close friends" and they shouldn't necessarily be lumped together.

[Dodecahedron314]

On 8/19/2016 at 2:00 AM, aussiekirkland said:

I like that you used JD and Turk as an example of a QPF and I think the distinction would be useful in a community context. For example I'm already thinking about how these relationships form differently. QPF's tend to be naturally occurring over time whereas QPR's tend to be intentionally initiated by those involved. Also I think I'm in a QPF and it's awesome!

 

I hope quasi becomes more common soon cause of the whole queer thing. It doesn't necessarily work since you don't have to be queer to be in a QPR.

I dunno, I feel like sometimes the line can be very blurry and often one can morph into another (that's what happened in my case anyway--it started out as a QPF and then just kind of evolved into a QPR over time, so subtly that neither of us really realized it until I moved away for college, because of course that's how these things have to work out), and having the distinction could be useful in some cases but not others. Some people feel the need to have that level of specificity, some don't, and being prescriptivist one way or the other kind of seems (at least in my opinion) to go against the whole spirit of QPRs/QPFs--that is, the very idea of a relationship itself being queered such that only the people involved in it can truly define it (which, incidentally, is the entire reasoning for the inclusion of "queer" in the term in the first place--it has nothing to do with the orientations of the people involved, but rather the nature of their relationship). I'm not sure which option would be better in terms of getting people to actually respect the concept and understand the fact that it's way more than being "just friends"--is it better to celebrate the fact that a friendship doesn't have to be of the life partner sort in order to be incredibly significant to someone by placing it on equal linguistic footing with its more committed counterpart, or by giving it its own term that on the one hand acknowledges the distinction but on the other hand might lead some people to dismiss it as being "just friends"?

 

I saw something on AVEN where some people were talking about using quasiplatonic as distinct from queerplatonic in reference to relationships that would otherwise be considered queerplatonic but also include sexual/romantic elements, because such a relationship is not entirely platonic by definition and so therefore the connotation of "not exactly platonic" carried by quasiplatonic would be more applicable in that situation, as opposed to the alternative of either using quasiplatonic in reference to all QPRs and therefore implying that all such relationships are inherently not entirely platonic, which would be simply not true, or using queerplatonic in the broad context that might be seen as including such not-entirely-platonic relationships and therefore implying that a platonic relationship can have sexual or otherwise non-platonic components, which is a contradiction in terms. Unfortunately, IIRC, that thread wound up getting derailed by a bunch of people invalidating the entire concept of a QPR in the first place, and so I don't know that it actually ever went anywhere productive or if a broader consensus was ever reached because I stayed out of it after that for the sake of my mental health.

[Tal Shi'ar]

I have heard quasiplatonic before, but only to replace queer, as some people got upset over people using it.

[Mark]

On 21/08/2016 at 6:41 AM, Tal Shi'ar said:

I have heard quasiplatonic before, but only to replace queer, as some people got upset over people using it.

Personally I'm more concerned about the "platonic" bit. Especially living in a society where platonic seems to be a default assumption for friendships anyway.

[cute kitty Meow! Mewo!]

i just wanna have fun why's it gotta be all complicated T_T hheehe

[Tal Shi'ar]

9 hours ago, Mark said:

Personally I'm more concerned about the "platonic" bit. Especially living in a society where platonic seems to be a default assumption for friendships anyway.

That's not much of a problem, especially considering people wanted to avoid other people getting upset since they consider queer as a slur, hence the alternative name.