Quoiromantic

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

Quoiromantic (also called WTFromantic or Whatromantic) is an alternative to a romantic orientation label. It can also be considered a catchall term or umbrella for similar identities.

Quoiromantic experiences may include:

• Being unsure what romantic attraction is.
• Finding the concept of romance to be inaccessible, inapplicable, or nonsensical.
• Disidentifying with the concept of romantic attraction- either as a social construct or as something potentially applicable to oneself.
• Questioning romanticism for such a long time that the questioning itself becomes the identity, rather than a path toward any other more stable identity.

Origin

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 zer, asking "so what's your romantic orientation?" is "the wrong question." In 2011, in order to express frustration with the system, Sciatrix (at Writing From Factor X) 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.

As a more pronounceable alternative to wtfromantic, the term quoiromantic was first coined by Tumblr user Epochryphal (Cor) in 2012, based on quoi, the French word for "what." Cor defines quoiromantic as "actively disidentifying" with romance, romantic attraction, or romantic orientation as "sensible/applicable categories" for oneself.

Symbolism

Cor's flag design

A number of flag designs and symbols have been proposed for quoiromanticism.

In 2015, Cor proposed cos own flag design for quoi identities, including quoigender, quoisexual, and quoiromantic: four lavender question marks, rotated in a ring to share a single dot, as if spinning in a circle. This design was overlaid on a cool grey background in a house-shape, instead of the traditional rectangular flag. The choice of question marks as a symbol references the questioning basis of quoi as an identity term.

Old version of the black-green-blue design

Prior to that, other flag design proposals for a quoiromantic and quoisexual flag have combined blue, green, black, and white or gray, in varying configurations.

Later version of the black-green-blue design

The earliest of these appears to have been first proposed in 2014, with stripes in black, white, lime green, and light blue, but was later redesigned in approximately 2015, to black, a more muted green, a more muted blue, and pale gray. The original posts for both of these proposals appear to have since been lost and can only be accessed in their archived form via the Wayback Machine.

Lavender version of the triangular flag design

More recently, some simplified designs have been proposed inspired by the nontraditional flag shape idea, using a triangular flag shape instead, with the intent of being easier to physically reproduce. Like Cor's design, these designs exhibit a ring of question mark symbols sharing a single dot, except that the number of question marks is three instead of four. These designs have been proposed in both a green and a lavender version, in reference to previous designs. The green version is intended for quoi orientation identities, specifically. The lavender version is intended for quoi identities as a whole, as with Cor's design, "to honor its intentional vagueness." This leaves it open to use for other types of quoi identities, such as quoigender or quoigenic.

Spiral Q symbol

Other proposed quoi symbols include the Spiral Q symbol, which combines a gray spiral with the letter "Q," styled with a gap and dot underneath to resemble a question mark. The spiral and question mark symbolism are intended to represent dizziness, ambiguity, and questioning. The blue, green, and turquoise color gradient, as well, is intended to represent ambiguity, both via the gradient and due to the breadth of colors that can be considered "turquoise." In the same way that turquoise can be both and neither blue or green, this symbol represents a disidentification with the romantic/nonromantic distinction.