Quoiromantic

Quoiromantic, also known as WTFromantic, is an alternative to a romantic orientation label.

The originator of the quoi- prefix, Cor, defines being quoiromantic as 1) not understanding or actively disidentifying with romance/romantic attraction/romantic orientation as sensible/applicable categories, personally, or 2) feeling that these categories are personally inaccessible, inapplicable, or non-sensical. The premise of the quoi- identity challenges the idea that these concepts are universally applicable and relevant.

Quoiromantic experiences may include:

• Being unsure if you experience romantic attraction or not
• Being unable to understand attraction as a concept or feeling
• Finding the concept of attraction to be inaccessible, inapplicable, or nonsensical
• Being unable to pin down a clear understanding of romantic attraction, so being unable to say whether or not you experience it
• Having a difficulty distinguishing romantic attraction from other types of attraction, or being unable to distinguish them at all
• Questioning romanticism for such a long time that the questioning itself becomes the identity, rather than a path toward any other more stable identity
• Struggling with romanticism because it feels too complicated
• Simply not feeling that any other romantic orientation label is applicable

Other terms that are similar to quoiromantic include grayromantic, idemromantic, platoniromantic, and quasiromantic.

Surveys

It is unknown how many people identify with quoiromanticism outside the asexual community. However, the results of the 2016 asexual community census showed that 9.5% of ace respondents identify as quoiromantic or wtfromantic.

In 2019, an informal survey asked respondents to finish the sentence "For me, the distinction between romantic & nonromantic is..." according to a 5 point scale: 1 for Unclear, 5 for Clear. Out of those who checked off "quoiromantic" or "wtfromantic" as terms they would use to describe themselves (N=319), 45.8% answered 1 (Unclear), 37% answered 2, 10.7% answered 3 (Neutral), 5.6% answered 4, and 0.9% answered 5 (Clear).

History

As a consequence of the romantic orientation model becoming popular in the asexual community in the 2000s, some asexual people began to openly discuss why the model did not feel right for them. For example, Kaz wrote that for her, asking "so what's your romantic orientation?" is "the wrong question." In 2011, in order to express frustration with the system, Sciatrix began half-jokingly referring to herself as "wtfromantic" (as in "what-the-fuck-romantic"). In her words, "it started as a flippant, honestly fairly sarcastic frustrated comment, not an attempt as a serious identity designation," one she did not expect to resonate with other people and begin to proliferate. As a more pronounceable alternative, quoiromantic was proposed by Cor in 2012. Both terms are still in use today. The premise of the quoiromantic identity has also spread to other areas of identity, resulting in terms such as quoisexual, quoigender, and quoigenic.

Symbolism

Cor's original flag design, edited to add the intended transparency

In 2015, Cor proposed a flag design for the quoi identity: four lavender question marks rotated in a ring to share a single dot, overlaid on a cool grey background in a house-shape, instead of the traditional rectangular flag. Other flag design proposals have combined blue, green, black, and white or gray. More recently, some simplified designs have been proposed inspired by the nontraditional flag shape idea, using a triangular flag shape instead.