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My mom is neurotically concerned with whether or not I love her, and I don’t really know what to do with that. “Love” is treated categorically, and without gradation or context. Constantly be called to account for my love (or lack) disinclines me to answer favorably.
I don’t exactly enjoy your company if that’s what you’re asking. I appreciate the favors you do for me, but I don’t think you respect me very much and haven’t reflected much (or expressed interest in reflecting) about your performance as a parent and the hurt you caused.
We don’t have a great relationship, I’m not sure why you think me flatly and dryly acquiescing to saying “I love you” will fix anything.
Of course, this is partly me taking pleasure in the fact that I have something you can’t have and can’t control. Given my past of problematic applications of this desire for control, it’s fair to be a bit skeptical. But I don’t think that means I automatically have to do the opposite either.
To be more clear about “gradation and context”: the love in a casual reciprocal “love you too” is contextually (qualitatively?) different than the love expressed during a feeling of deep admiration, an appreciative response to laughter, or an intimate embrace.
This by no means implies one can give an exhaustive taxonomical account of all the various ways in which love can be deployed and affirmed.
As for gradation: I’m not sure if I can say I love anyone in the abstract. I love certain features of people, I proclaim love for people in certain contexts provided the right conditions, but it’s not at all clear that I could produce a list of those I love, even if capturing a temporal instant.
Point being: There is no categorical love to be in or outside of, there are a series of expressions with differential force and significance whose conditions are contextual all the way down.
TL;DR: Love is a lovely metaphor, a delightful language game, and mummifying the word is bad enough philosophically. Politically, in this case, it is being used to demand approval and appeasement in the service of easing the psychological unrest of the guilty conscience of an oppressor.
I mostly talked about categoricity here. Gradation is one of the ways it is undermined, but is distinct and not the opposite pole.