Hey, Chicago readers: If you can make it up to Evanston this Monday, I’ll be giving a talk titled “Escape from the Planet of the Friend Zone,” exploring some of the mythology of this dreaded place. The talk, like my talk two years ago, will be part of Northwestern’s Annual Sex Week, sponsored by the College Feminists. (The talk itself is cosponsored by NU’s Men Against Rape and Sexual Assault.)
It’s at 7 PM in Kresge Hall 4365, which is on the Southern end of campus, near “the rock.” (Here’s a map.) If you’re taking the el, get off at the Foster stop and head east; then a little ways south when you hit campus. I’ll check about parking for non-students and provide details later.
The last time I gave a talk during Northwestern’s Sex Week, some MRAs got a little overexcited and started making up things about what they assumed my talk was about. (They were wrong.) So, just to make clear: I will not be teaching impressionable college students “how to have good sex,” except insofar as I will be talking about how sexist and self-defeating the concept of the Friend Zone is, which means it’s possible that some dude could attend the lecture and decide to stop whining about getting stuck in the Friend Zone, and thus improve his romantic and sexual prospects with that one simple step.
I haven’t finished writing the talk yet, so if any of you have any thoughts on the Friend Zone — or the closely related topic of the “nice guy” — let me know in the comments below.
I’m also curious about what role the concept of the Friend Zone plays in your everyday lives, so I’m going to spit out a bunch of questions that I may address in the talk and may ask the students as well. I’d be interested in your answers.
Have you ever been put in a situation that you or other people might describe as the Friend Zone? Whose fault do you think it was? Have you ever been accused of putting someone else in the Friend Zone? Did you find this insulting? Has someone else, through their own obsequiousness, put themselves in the Friend Zone with you?
Is the Friend Zone a male thing or are there a significant number of women and girls who find themselves friendzoned as well?
Does the notion of the Friend Zone grow out of male entitlement? Is it a fundamentally manipulative to try to pressure a woman into romance and sex? Or does it grow out of male awkwardness — the inherently difficult situation of shy or perhaps socially awkward guys who are still nonetheless expected to be the ones who pursue women rather than the other way around, as MRA types might argue?
When did the term start getting used? The concept is certainly not new, but I don’t think the term is that old. When did you all first start hearing it?
How can guys (or gals) get out of the Friend Zone?
Can a Friend Zone situation — by which I mean one in which one person is romantically interested and the other isn’t — be transformed into a real friendship, or will the different feelings/expectations of the two people make this impossible?
Alternately, can a Friend Zone situation turn into a real romance?
Is the Friend Zone really a useful concept at all? There are very few relationships — platonic, romantic or purely sexual — in which each partner feels the exact same way about the other. There are mismatches all the time. Shouldn’t we just learn to roll with it? Maybe the answer to the old When Harry Met Sally question — can a man be friends with a woman he’s attracted to? — is, “why the hell not?”
I tend to think of the boundary between friendship and romantic or sexual relationships as very permeable and often based more on circumstances than anything else, so it’s weird to have people act like they’re mutually opposed concepts. Most of the people I’ve dated or slept with I was friendly with first, and I honestly can’t imagine wanting to date someone who I wouldn’t want as a friend. Sometimes you meet someone and get to know them and for whatever reason a relationship isn’t in the cards, but in different circumstances it might have been, and sometimes circumstances change and then it is a possibility, or it goes the other way and a relationship turns into just a friendship because circumstances changed. It’s always felt very fluid to me, so the idea of a friendzone that someone is put in for no good reason and can never escape from just doesn’t make any sense.
The friend zone seems to be one of those “urban legend” type stories MRAs tell each other on the internet to reinforce their already formed notions of misogyny. Usually, a “nice guy” who is probably socially awkward and maybe not classically good looking, falls for a woman based solely on her looks. When this hot chick fails to return his love, despite his doing nice things for her like not raping her when she is passed out, or being her “emotional tampon” after she breaks up with “bad boys,” he laments that he has been put in the friend zone, and women are such superficial whores, etc. etc. Meanwhile, the said man will never find a partner because 1) he is a bitter, entitled misogynist, and 2) even if he was a truly nice person, he only sees hot women and all of the less hot women who could be interested in dating him are invisible to him.
It would be hilarious if this were protested, or a fire alarm pulled.
I’d say being friendzoned is part of a universal experience of being human. Happened to me some 30+ years ago, in a galaxy far, far away now, when THE love of my life decided, very much against my deepest wishes, that we should be just friends. Broke my heart, of course.
But I’ve noticed that it is very difficult (read: impossible) to convince Nice GuysTM that women get friendzoned. They do not believe that ever happens.
@Fibinachi
That’s the difference right there, it’s thinking that this person owes you and how DARE they hang out with you with no intention of dating! I bought them a Slurpee once, a large one too! They totally used me for sugary snacks!
And oh man, do those friends of the Friend-Zoned make everything worse…
I have been friend-zoned (more than once) and have been accused of being in the friend-zone.
The couple of times I was friend-zoned, I can honestly say it hurt…a LOT. Like having a knife stuck into my heart and twisted several times a day, and for several months, type of hurt. It really, REALLY sucks to be rejected, especially when you had your heart set on the guy.
But, ultimately, I remained friends with them because I recognized that, just as I had very little control over whom I become attracted to, they have very little control over who they are NOT attracted to. I wanted to blame them. That’s what hurt does, is it makes you want to throw the blame on someone. But there really isn’t any blame in a situation like this.
So I kinda understand why some men go a bit crazy when they are rejected. But no one is obligated to fall in love with you, or have sex with you, no matter how much you want it.
On the other hand, I’ve also been accused of friend-zoning, and those relationships didn’t go as well. Usually I only friend-zone a guy that has personality flaws that are just incompatible with mine (which is a nice way of saying he’s a jerk and doesn’t realize it.) And there’s just no explaining that to him.
I was once in kind of a friend-zone-ey situation, though I never called it that (wasn’t familiar with the term, can’t really see myself using it at the time). It was when I was like 13-15, and I just couldn’t admit to myself that it really wasn’t a girl’s fault that I had feelings for her, became a friend of hers just to get into a relationship with her because I was too shy to straight up ask her out, and then didn’t get what I wanted. I eventually told her how I felt, she was touched by it but didn’t want to go anywhere with things. I got progressively more creepy (never full blown stalker, but overbearing and sort of passive-aggressively shaming her for what I perceived as mistreatment), and she ended up getting a boyfriend. I decided I needed to get some space, and I didn’t talk to her for a few years. Then one day after I had gotten a girlfriend who was really emotionally dependent on me and I learned how to be more responsible I realized I had been a total prick and sent her an apology. I didn’t really expect any response, but she was really nice about it and we were pretty good friends for a while until we graduated.
Honestly, that’s a pretty big part of why I became a feminist in the first place. I should have known better. It wouldn’t have been hard to sit me down and explain to me how relationships work, and how to deal with it when you have feelings for someone, and what the difference is between liking someone and just wanting to have sex with them. Even though nobody really got hurt, it would have saved us both a lot of trouble and me a lot of guilt. I’ve had to help women deal with the repercussions of some seriously fucked up shit men have done to them since, but this is the only time I had really felt responsible. And a lot of people never grow out of that line of thought. It’s pretty scary to me that there are lots of people in their 30s and 40s who think a woman owes them sex for being their friend. And how that’s largely a socially acceptable idea.
I mean, fuck, the idiot who’s writing Superman right now had Clark tell Jimmy he had been friend-zoned. Superman! Arguably the best role model in American fiction. What the hell, man?
In my (admittedly limited) experience, it seems like women and men both get ‘friendzoned’ but women seem to deal with it better. I have a friend who got to know a guy in the hopes of starting a relationship. She started out trying to make friends with him because she didn’t want to seem pushy or desperate. (A lot of people at my university have been raised pretty traditionally, so a girl asking a guy out would just seem weird.) Long story short, he wasn’t really interested in her, but they still have to spend a lot of time together because they lead a group together. He’s dating someone else, but she can’t help but feel that maybe someday they’ll be able to get together. The thing is, she didn’t get all offended about it, she just sort of tried to accept that he wasn’t into her and move on.
I’m pretty sure that the only difference between ‘an unrequited crush’ and ‘friendzoned’ is gender.
I thought the When Harry Met Sally thing was, “Can a man and a woman just be friends?” Or something to that effect. …I actually have no idea how it was said, now that I think about it. o_o
It wouldn’t work with everyone, obviously, but it really would help if most cultures were to come to a consensus that when boys/young men are being selfish little shitheads about relationships we should actually tell them to knock it off. Right now most cultures either egg them on or make excuses for their behavior.
I have absolutely no romantic experience, good or bad, but I do think it’s ridiculous how guys have turned the simple experience of someone thinking of you as too much of a friend to think of you as a love interest (aka being in the “friend-zone”) into some kind of big evil thing that is done specifically by women to men. I’m pretty sure it’s something that’s happened to almost EVERYBODY, women included. But women don’t go online and write big gender-oriented rants about it (or I haven’t seen any, at least).
Prior to what I’ll call the “internet” definition getting widespread feminist attention, I used to use “friend zone” to describe something slightly different. Sometimes you meet someone and either there is legitimate mutual attraction or you misread things. Either way, it becomes clear one of the people isn’t interested in something romantic/sexual and they have to let the other person down. I’ve heard and have used “putting them in the friend zone” to describe that. While the details may vary, there is nothing necessarily problematic about all this.
Now, imagine my surprise when I found out there were whole communities on the web using it to mean, “I can’t believe that woman didn’t sleep with me ’cause I was nice to her!”
IIRC the term Friend Zone was coined on Friends. Joey used it to warn Ross that he needed to make a move on Rachel before she permanently stuck him in the FZ.
To me the FZ is not just somebody having unrequited romantic or sexual feelings for a friend. I see it as something the Nice Guy says when he needs an excuse to lash out at the object of his affection or women in general. It almost sounds hostile, as though somebody puts a guy in the Friend Zone out of spite. When I hear the term, I just think of someone who performs niceness and fakes a friendship to lay pants getting into groundwork.
Yes, I’ve been put in the friendzone. I didn’t consider it anyone’s fault. He just wasn’t attracted to me like I was to him. Yes, I have put many others in the ‘friendzone.’
If someone was in my space all the time then it wouldn’t be the friendzone I’d put them in, at least not long term. I’d stop hanging out with them if they couldn’t respect my space requirements.
I don’t think it’s a male thing as in it happens to males more. It is a male thing in the sense that many males feel entitled to you and don’t respect your boundaries because they think no means maybe later. Most guys I only wanted friendship with couldn’t handle it and stopped talking to me.
It has nothing to do with the characteristics of a guy or gal. If they’re shy or bold. It has everything to do with whether you click or not. There’s nothing a guy can do to get out of the friendzone with me.
I think people can remain in the friendzone and have a good rapport. I just found that guys usually can’t handle it. IF they can’t have you the way they want they get frustrated and bail. All my personal exp.
I HATE the term “Friend Zone”, possibly because I never hear it except in the context of misogyny. I much prefer “unrequited crush on a friend”, which knows no bounds of gender or orientation.
When I was in middle school, half the girls in my group of friends had a crush on one of the boys because he was fucking hilarious (he was a theater geek who looked like a young Bob Dylan, in case you were wondering). The other half liked him as a friend, but couldn’t imagine going out with him.
He had a crush on a girl who was in the other half. I couldn’t resent him, because she was a really nice, smart, attractive girl, but I did feel it was ironic.
*Sigh* Middle school. What you gonna do?
I’d never heard the term Friend Zone before reading manboobz.
Spot on. Notice the film or book or whatever it was aimed at women was “He’s just not that into you” – we’re told to shrug it off, accept that he’s not interested (with the heavy implication that we’re not attractive enough, I bet). Is there anything resembling that for men? I doubt it. It’s all about entitlement.
I’ve never been friendzoned because I’ve never had the slightest romantic interest in any earthly human being, let alone had it and said nothing. If anyone had such interest in me, I never noticed it. What’s the bet one can friendzone some pooooor man when he’s never given the slightest hint he’s interested? We really are supposed to be telepathic.
Yay! Will it be recorded? if so, would you PULEEZE put it up on youtube? If not, would you consider posting the transcript?
Oh, if only I could be back in Chicago again, just to attend. I lived there, on the South Side – on Hyde Park Blvd. – back in the mid-’60’s.
Of course, one year of that was in a place called Audy Home – a not very nice place – during the reign of Mayor Daley Senior…blech…(shaking the stinky water memories of…hairy-armed ape-like matrons…lousy food…) Nothing like a gay old trip down memory lane, eh?
Ahem…I am much better now.
It most definitely is not a male thing. I, and most of my female friends, have all been “friendzoned” by men – often “nice guys” who would complain to us about how they were being friendzoned by all the attractive girls (what were we? Chop suey?).
I think it’s a totally normal sort of relationship – where one person wants something different than the other. I think that the fact that it’s almost always seen as a thing that men experience and that women do to them is most definitely an example of male privilege – since male stories get so much more airtime than women’s stories, we know about their feelings while women’s feelings are largely invisible.
I think that it *can* become a relationship, it just never did for me. After almost a year of crushing, my guy finally agreed to try out dating me and it was a complete flop. But I could see a situation where the object of affection changes their feelings. I just don’t think it’s likely enough for the subject to keep out hope for.
I don’t think it’s anyone’s fault. We’re people, we have feelings, sometimes our feelings aren’t reciprocated. What irks me is the “I was friendzoned” language, like it’s something that the objects of our affected inflicted on us
Friend Zone is based on assumptions about how people behave which have nothing to do with my own life or relationships. It assumes that a guy will always say yes to sex, and that a woman is always looking for something other than sex. And, yeah, kinda not. I have had people get unhappy with me for not being my sexual cup of tea. I have had to regretfully inform people that they weren’t my personal sexual cuppa. In all cases, if there was a good friendship, this was a brief bobble, a bit of discomfort that we both worked to overcome, and if there wasn’t a functional friendship, it became a Huge Deal and ultimately a Deal Breaker. Although, I think that the Ur-Friend Zone situation is one where no one is very clear about what they’re doing or what they want. They guy who ends up “zoned” is busy not making it clear that this is what he wants because he’s can’t deal with the rejection, and the girl is either genuinely not understanding that sex is the ultimate goal here, or is ignoring that. The reasons to ignore are many, but one of the strong ones is not wanting to hurt the poor guy’s feelings in the first place.
My relationships have started all sorts of places, and ended up all sorts of other places. I’ve had long term friends turn into lovers, I’ve had people I fell in lust with at first sight who turned out to be long term lovers, I’ve had psychotic break-ups, I’ve had friendly break-ups, I’ve broken up with someone for 17 years, and then gotten back together again. Since I’m poly, my relationships are a bit more fluid than most. I feel like I have more leisure to let relationships find their normal levels, and that asymmetry in a relationship is less of a deal for me because I’m not trying to get it all from one person. So in some senses, my understanding of much of this is variant, since the majority of people are, in fact, monogamous, and their relationships have a bigger aspect of do or die to them.
As far as “Nice Guy” goes, this construct appears to be a way to blame women for the guy not being able to get laid. He’s doing it all correctly, and she’s doing it wrong, and that’s why he’s not successful. It treats women both as sluts and prizes, in odd ways I’m not able to articulate. It treats sex as if it were a competition rather than a collaborative sport.
In both Friend Zone and Nice Guy, there seems to be a huge lack of being interested in negotiation, there seems to be a template that people are supposed to follow, rather than a give and take between real people with real and variant needs. There’s a lack of both commitment and compromise which are the hallmarks of real relationships. They seem to revolve around trying to date a barbie doll rather than a real girl.
Especially since David is on the record as opposing pulling fire alarms to stop offensive speech. As I recall, his position is that the best response to hateful speech is more/better speech.
I don’t know, I think it’s hilarious that anti-women events have been going on for years. At two of them, people (it’s not known who) pulled the fire alarm. In spite of the fact that literally thousands of anti-women speakers have spoken unmolested for the last century, MRAs think this tiny minority of talks that were disrupted proves that feminists hate FREEZE PEACH.
Seems like MRAs aren’t as STEM logical as they like to think.
Seconding the plea for film-age, made by baileyrenee!
As for the friend zone thing… I’ve never been friend zoned, because I’ve never had a crush. Plus, the entire concept reeks of awful. Friendship with someone isn’t and shouldn’t be a consolation prize.
But, I’m not really in a position to make any calls, so maybe you should ignore me…
Also! Sometimes people end up in a friendship that they wish could be a relationship and never say anything about wanting more to the other person because they know it’s just not going to happen (eg. because of incompatible sexual orientation, or because the other person is clearly head over heels for someone else already). I really don’t think not saying anything is a bad thing in that situation, or that someone who stays in that friendship and never says anything is being deceptive/whatever. It’s when someone puts themselves in that situation and then quietly resents the other person for not being able to read their mind that there’s a problem.
Here is a quote from Johnny Mangoes on RoK that epitomizes how warped these MRAs’ perception of dating is. I really can’t believe people actually believe this drivel.
Go take a walk outside? Follow your own advice dude!
What is up with that guy’s pants?
But in all seriousness, I have had something that some guys would describe as friendzoning happen to me. I was (and still am) close with a woman in my college. I eventually decided to tell her how I feel, but she turned me down, saying that she’s far too busy and school comes first for her. I don’t know if she actually meant that or if she was just trying to soften the blow, but really, does it matter?
Oh, I probably should mention: I’m still good friends with her, pretty much nothing about our friendship changed after that. So yeah, getting angry at that is just stupid.