anarchomoop:

gunsandfireandshit:

Even funnier thing to imagine: resurrecting Diogenes too and telling him that “Platonic” relationships means not fucking, he’d probably laugh himself back to death.

So I actually know the origin of this term because it came up when I studied Plato in my classes.  Basically, in ancient Greece it was a super common practice for teachers to fuck their students.  Like all the time.  It was considered a way for the student to “pay” the teacher.  Plato thought this was bullshit.  He felt that a student could not properly learn from someone who was truly only interested in having sex with them.  He didn’t fuck his students and derided those who did.  Other teachers who refused to fuck their students were said to have “platonic” teaching relationships with them – so named because they were following Plato’s example.  So the reason it’s called a Platonic relationship is because Plato was heavily anti-teachers-fucking-their-students and it’s one of the few things he was ever even remotely correct about.