I find it so funny how “platonic” means “as described by Plato,” so it refers to a bunch of things in philosophy including Platonic ideals and Platonic solids

And the least accurate way we use it is in talking about “platonic love,” because it refers to some philosophy Plato did about love where he was using the word for sexual love (Eros) but he was talking about how it can be either more spiritual or more lustful and physical

and because he talked about it between two guys, homophobic modern philosophers were like “haha obviously he’s talking about dudes being bros, nothing sexual or romantic here” and that interpretation… just stuck

And this has been known a long time. I had people in queer spaces calling me out for using the word without knowing its origin in like… 1999

But I’ve personally never scolded anyone else for using it in the currently most commonly used sense, because like…. that’s how language works. things change meaning, and changes are often caused by shitty biases. And if we had to use all words the way they were originally coined and cut out all influence from bigotry and prejudice, we’d basically be assigning ourselves to make up a whole new language

And yet Tumblr, with all its history of hunting down unsavory origins of words, feels to me like exactly the type of place that WOULD know this and WOULD decide the term is problematic and should never be used

So whenever it gets used here I WANT to just breeze on past it without thinking and accept it as part of language…. and yet a cynical part of me keeps wanting to think either “lol the hypocrisy” or “hey nice work! good job picking your battles for once”