LOVE at the Laundromat

Mark your calendars everyone! On December 15th, come to Newhouse III’s Herg Auditorium at 5 p.m for the student short film Love @ the Laundromat. Watch love based on our false conceptions of reality. It’s written and directed by Operation Love’s very own multi-talented Sarah Aument!

Diversity in a minority

Straight people aren’t all the same. Oh my gosh, and neither are LGBT people.

Questionable Love

Thanks so much to everyone that has been contributing! If you haven’t already done so please answer one if not all of the questions, or at the very least, think about . Hope you had a very happy Thanksgiving! And now, Shavon S. Greene, a Newhouse & CAS senior at Syracuse University:

What is the difference between friendship love and romantic love?

Honestly, the only difference is sexual attraction. I think if you are sexually attracted to someone then its romantic love. A romantic lover can be a friend, but pure friendship love cannot involve any sexual attraction. Your soulmate can be either. I believe that a soulmate is someone put on this earth and matches your soul. My soulmate is my sister.

Do you feel like you are allowed to love whoever you want to?
I do feel like I have the ability to love who I want, but I am hinder by other’s opinions, ideas, and belief of who you should love and how. I think social economic class, race, and other factors contribute to who you “can” or are “allowed” to love.

Does this change when you are on campus?
I’m in a relationship that I probably would not be in if I was home because of the negative pressure I would get from family members. Here alone and away from family, I feel like I can really be me and make my own mistakes and decisions. So, I would say I open my heart to more since I am at school.

Have you ever felt uncomfortable seeing LGBT people show love?

Honestly, no, but I would say I always notice it. They stand out especially when they kiss or hold hands. Now, I always make eye contact with one and smile.

What kind of love is normal?

Love isn’t normal. Nothing is “normal;” it’s just what the majority pretends to believe to not go against what has been believed or practiced by a dominant group for a certain period of time.

Is love a CHOICE?
Those who do not love, chose not to love. Those who do love, can’t help it. They made the choice to pursue it, but actually loving or falling in love is uncontrollable and unpredictable.

Diverse homogenity

Different love stories intertwined. Trouble is, are these love stories all the same?

Love Questions with a new perspective

Friendship love and romantic love arise from the same baseline, from the same attractions that happen between people universally. That linkage between people proves very difficult to describe, as it exists in a realm beyond even phenomena, somewhere between our hearts and the forms, or heaven, or the way… whatever you choose to call indescribable. The difference point between romantic and friendly love arises with convenience, sexual interaction, and a commitment to some degree of living life together. The catch is, all three of those criteria can happen with friends, too. Then only sex remains. Love is such a vague word though, and people use it with far too much looseness. We need to distinguish between love the experience, love the attitude, love the thought process, love the obsession, etc.– they’re all distinctly different phenomena in our brains.

I’m allowed to love whomever I want in a friendly way, but certainly not a romantic one. Many restraints act on our romantic enterprises– monogamy, living arrangements, geographical and temporal distance. I also think that if I were to start to have romantic feelings for someone of the same sex, I wouldn’t allow myself to have them, due to my own sense of identity. That’s completely outside of the social stigmatization that exists– my parents would probably die, for instance.

Does this change when I’m on campus– of course, but not in the way I think you’re looking for. Campus, college, restricts my freedom in where I can go, and currently geographic disparity presents the greatest obstacle to my love. Also, the nature of living arrangements, with floorcest chiefly, restricts romantic love. Finally, the attitudes of women in college and the defenses they build after having so many men approach them in this sexual stewpot greatly hinder the avenues for love.

I have, but mostly in my past as a conservative Evangelical. The last two years have greatly reworked the prejudices that I had, as a significant portion of my friends at SU identify as LGBT. That reworking is still in process– 10 years of social conditioning don’t go away easily.

What is normal? Love without passion, love without the fundamentals of love. Look at all the vacant stares between married couples, all the weak held hands on campus, maintained for a sexual fix.

Is love a choice? The preliminary connection, the revelatory moment when butterflies stir and hormones flow that make us fall in love, has nothing to do with choice. The next step, where two people actually fall in love, whatever that means, certainly is a choice, even a commitment.

-Scott Collison

Love Questions continued…

What is the difference between friendship love and romantic love?
__It’s hard for me to tell the difference sometimes. But mostly (not always) friendship love is platonic.

Do you feel like you are allowed to love whoever you want to?
__Yes.

Does this change when you are on campus?
__Not really.

Have you ever felt uncomfortable seeing LGBT people in love in your neighborhood or on the media?
__No it makes me happy as long as they feel comfortable.

What kind of love is normal?
__Whatever feels right.

Is love a choice?
__Everything is.

-Mackenzie Studebaker

Couple (of) Questions

To elicit conversation and discussion we have decided to ask questions. Maybe in doing so, we will discover the answers, once and for all, to our problems with love. To kick-off our exploration of the topic, we’d like to welcome Sammy Lifson, a junior at Syracuse University.

1. What is the difference between friendship love and romantic love? I’m not sure what the difference is, but you know when you feel it. You wanna touch that person and look at them all the time and you want them to notice you and like you too – but there’s a very fine line between a “cool-person crush” and a romantic one. I haven’t figured it out yet.

2. Do you feel like you are allowed to love whoever you want to? Allowed? By whom? Sometimes, I guess my family inadvertently puts strains on this – my grandparents want me to marry someone jewish, my parents would be happy if i got married at all…There is some underlying feeling that i’m not allowed to love someone of the same sex as me, but I like to think I don’t take it too serious…

3. Does this change when you are on campus? Yeah, I think this campus, and the friends I’ve made here, are much more open than my family might be, or even society at large.

4. Have you ever felt uncomfortable seeing LGBT people show love? I think it takes getting used to, but getting used to that is good and necessary – people only feel uncomfortable around it ebcause they don’t know how to respond. I don’t feel that discomfort anymore. Mostly comfort.

5. What kind of love is normal? No such thing. All love is different! I mean, there are types of love that are more “acceptable” to society – hetero, vanilla, not-interracial, etc...

6. Is love a choice? I don’t think love is a choice – maybe you choose whether or not to accept it or act on it.

What do you think?