Have been listening to 『なんか IWAKAN!』, which is a Japanese gender studies/queer podcast recently, both with an eye on a course I'm designing for next semester and as some chill listening practice for me, so this morning at 8:30 am I was jumpscared by them suddenly starting to talk about クワロマンティック (quoiromantic).
It's interesting listening, for anyone who happens to speak Japanese. One of the really striking things about it for me was how little they seemed to associate quoiromantic with ace or aro communities. Part of that is probably demographic--of the four people on this episode, one said they were probably ace and the other three are not--but it does mean that the conversation goes in different directions than a lot of the wtfromantic/quoiromantic conversations I have seen in Anglophone communities. For example, they spend a lot of time talking about how quoiromantic is helpful because many of them never thought about the difference between romantic and sexual orientation--but quoiromantic in Anglophone communities is often a pushback against romantic orientation. (Also, a lot of the examples that the regular presenters bring up would, in Anglophone ace communities, often tend to be classed as mismatched romantic and sexual orientations, e.g. a gay man having strong non-sexual attraction to a female friend or a straight woman having strong non-sexual attraction to a female friend.) There's also discussion of polyamory and alternative family/relationship structures, romantic friendship, the assumption that two people who have the possibility of being attracted to each other will always wind up dating, and S関係 (S relationships). It is really interesting to see a lot of conversations that I've seen primarily in ace communities being picked up and lauded as useful by larger queer spaces...but (at least in this case) being sort of divorced from a lot of their history and context. But, then again, it's a 40-minute podcast that's a supplement to a special issue of their magazine and an in-person event they were running, so they probably couldn't cover all possible topics. (Also I personally know most of the coiners and popularizers of wtfromantic/quoiromantic, so I may have...more knowledge...than is normal...)
(Also very charming when the guest speaker is like, "oh, can I swear on this show, do you have to bleep it out" and then upon getting confirmation that swearing is okay, going, "WHAT THE FUCK ロマンティック.")
