Quoiromantic

Quoiromantic (also called WTFromantic or Whatromantic) is an alternative to a romantic orientation label.

Quoiromantic experiences may include:

• Being unsure if you experience romantic attraction or not
• Finding the concept of romance to be inaccessible, inapplicable, or nonsensical
• 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 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 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 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 propsed inspired by the nontraditional flag shape idea, using a triangular flag shape instead.