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?”
Yes, people will string others along to get things out of them. That’s not ‘the Friend Zone’. That’s people being jerks.
Exactly, JJ. Because somebody stringing you along and playing on your emotions so they can make use of you? IS NOT YOUR FRIEND.
And yes, men do the thing where they “friendzone” women. Frankly, I think it’s endemic in geek culture. I’ve known so many nerdbros who whine about how Pretty McHottie in their local geek social circle won’t give them the time of day and how awful it is that she friendzoned him, meanwhile said nerdbros ignore other women who aren’t as conventionally superattractive, think of them as Honorary Guys, are happy to cry on their shoulders about how Ms. McHottie already has a boyfriend, etc., and are totally oblivious to how said female friends might feel about that.
mythago, I used to think like that. In particular I had (and still have) male friends who I fancied but were rejected by the women they fancied. However I think there are three flaws in how I though about the situation.
Firstly in this scenario the women are often behaving like nice guys TM and not doing anything to indicate interest or move on.
Secondly in that situation it is easy to think of yourself as a martyr and that just makes you unpleasant.
Finally if you feel sorry for the guy over his rejection, it is easy to deny his agency and feel he should be grateful for your attention.
I didn’t mean that to sound so critical but I was a deeply unpleasant person back then. It is hard to watch someone pine for someone else. However, nobody owes you anything and if you offer comfort you shouldn’t be resentful if people accept your offer.
The first time I ever heard of the Friend Zone was many years ago (around high school) when I stumbled upon some guy’s website. He was Asian, which he repeated many times. I would read his rants because I genuinely enjoyed some of them.
One part that bothered me was when he ranted about, yes, the Friend Zone. He openly, blatantly admitted that guys don’t want to be friends with girls. “We just want to get in your pants.” That “we guys” will, of course, leave you out on the street when we’ve had our fun and don’t need you anymore.
Since then, I would see more about what the Friend Zone is. Some described it as when a woman is not romantically interested in a man, but still likes him enough to want to keep him in her social circle. Some compared it to abuse, where a woman uses a man as her “emotional tampon,” she KNOWS he’s in love with her, but she selfishly USES him to vent out her feelings about her jerk boyfriend who she for some reason hasn’t dumped for him yet (isn’t venting what a lot of girls do with their best friends?)
(And it was always gendered that way when I read it.)
I can’t say I had much personal experience with it, be it on the ‘zoned or ‘zoner side. Only observed as an outsider. But hearing of these experiences, along with the various people’s answers to whether men and women can be friends, gives off a bad impression of men to me. It implies that men only see women as love interests first, and anything else second. That they can’t appreciate a woman for anything about her other than her sex appeal. That sex and romance are the only things about her that matter.
Thankfully, I know it’s not a universal truth. There are guys who genuinely are just friends with girls. Some find them attractive, but that’s not the reason they have anything to do with with each other.
I do think it makes sense to regard the concept of the friend zone as being rooted in male entitlement. Note that the concept is almost always brought up as a concern among heterosexual men. Moreover, such men are afraid of the friend zone because they are afraid of having platonic relationships with women who aren’t related to them. The proper relationship between a man and a woman, according to these men, is sexual, and even under the guise of “unrequited love” the male entitlement is still there: the man believes that he has to have a relationship in which he has some form of intimacy – sexual or otherwise – with a woman. Anything less than intimacy is worthless to these men. Therefore, men who whine about the friend zone are really just demonstrating their objectification of women. They are unable to accept the possibility of friendship because that would mean treating women as fully human.
Friendzoned Furrinati:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/kristinchirico/dogs-who-have-totally-been-friend-zoned
Speaking of the “Friend Zone”, I was reminded of this commentary on a video about the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-wq4USLs9I Cody Briscoe does a good job of pointing out the truth on the guy.
I completely agree with those who’ve said the ‘friend zone’ concept is rooted in entitlement; ‘I am/do all these wonderful things for X, but X won’t date me and that’s not fair.’
I also think men and women can be good friends whatever their orientation.
I had crushes on a few different guy friends in high school. It always hurt that they didn’t feel the same way, but they were great guys and I’m glad we were friends. I was upset about the situation sometimes, but never felt mad at them or that they owed me.
In college, I had a few friends who asked me out. I explained I wasn’t romantically interested and we remained friends. In fact two of them and I are still good friends with each other and our respective spouses.
Pear_tree, right, that’s why I put “friendzone” in quotes. Nothing was preventing these women from telling the dude they were interested in him, or cutting off the friendship; I didn’t mean to suggest that dude in question was being so unfair in failing to ask them out instead.
re guys wanting nothing more than casual sex all day every day, when I was younger and single, I used to respond to guys on the Internet spewing that line with “Oh, really? How about you and I get together and have sex, then. I’m reasonably attractive.” Nobody said yes. Not one. It was always some variation of “oh um haha I didn’t mean ME per se, I have a girlfriend or I don’t sleep around like that, but guys IN GENERAL….”
There was an FML some time ago in which a girl wrote something about how the school nerd (or similar, don’t recall exact description) told her one day that the two of them were meant to be together, in spite of having never spoken to each other before.
It was unbelievable how many responses she got calling her shallow, saying she should give him a chance and suggesting she would be fine with the situation if he had been cuter/more popular/whatever.
The “friendzone” is one of the more ridiculous concepts that’s come out of Nice Guyâ„¢ culture. Because yeah, like others have stated, it springs from male entitlement and anger that women are allowed to say no.
Also, who else here suspects that these same guys would tell a “friendzoned” woman that she wasn’t hot enough and to stop acting all hurt and jealous? Because I’m thinking that most of them would.
I’ve been friends since college with women I found attractive, including one I wanted to go out with and one I knew from the start was not a good match for me. I really don’t see where the problem is. I always though the “friend zone” was when you spent too long making up your mind whether or not you want to be “more than just friends” with a person, until your status as friends is so firmly established that taking it to the next level feels awkward and weird.
De-lurking to share a personal story about the “friend zone.” A close male friend in college was one of the few people who knew I was self-medicating my depression and anxiety with alcohol. He would invite himself over when I was at my worst, remain sober while I drank, and try to coerce me into sex. I would get angry and throw him out and of course mutual friends would shame me for “friend-zoning” the poor guy (because he told everyone his side of the story and that he had “feelings” for me).
I would feel bad and try to make it up to him by nicely explaining that I couldn’t handle a relationship and doing nice things like planning group hang-outs around his interests. And he would start getting pushy any moment we were alone and he would continue to show up when he knew I was drinking and was really pushy about me turning him away from my door.
I cut all ties with him and was wrote off as an awful “friend-zoning” person and lost a couple of male friends who rallied behind him. I feel like the whole concept of the “friend zone” gave him something to hide behind while engaging in some really uncomfortable and manipulative behavior.
Themumblesminute, wow what a creepy predator. Glad you’re rid of him
I actually agree with Weirdwood. What I highlighted was a particular instance of the friendzone that I have encountered. These other things all happen as well. I think that is why the whole friendzone concept is convoluted. People are talking past each other here referring to different things.
Cassandra, I have female friends who actually say that they sometimes do string guys along as friends when they know the guy wants to date them. And sometimes they do make sure they keep them just close enough, but do not have sex or move onto a relationship. They get the benefits of early traditional courtship and pusruit for a long time. These women feel guilty after a while, and usually do not continue to do it. Yes lots of things can be called “friendzone.” If there are cases where guys can justifiably feel misled it is these. These cases do happen.
That is all I said.
Oh yeah, gonna draw me a kissin’ couple, crank out another page, earn this week’s paycheck.
Okay, start with the girl. Fun bit first. Mod outfit, upturned face, of course she’s shorter. Lookin’ good!
Now the guy. Get his face in there, good, good, hand around her waist, now the legs so they look like they’re standing on the same surface.
Crap, gotta stretch the trunk. Okay, be cool. No one’s gonna notice. You got this, man.
I have a LOT to say on this topic but I don’t have the time right now . . . maybe a little later this weekend, but just one thing . . . for me personally, I definitely first heard the phrase “friend zone” on Friends . And when I started hearing people using it IRL and on the Net I automatically thought of that Friends episode. I usually still do.
Cyberia, hi, have a Welcome Package!
You win a gold-plated internetz.
historophilia – yay delurking! 🙂 I wrote a screed, then read your comment and deleted it ‘cos you said it so much better. Denying us sexual agency is exactly what Friend Zone whines are about.
neuroticbeagle – LOVE that friendzoned furrrinati page. 😀
themumblesminute – hi, a Welcome Package for you too! Seconding Skye, thank goodness you’re rid of that predator.
Falconer, LOL!
Since 1970’s Feminism, we seem to have a whole new bunch of words which are basically meaningless or redundant. Before Feminism people who weren’t going out with each as a romantically paired couple were just friends.
Now they are friendzoned. Go figure.
Dude, “friendzoning” is way not because of feminism.
NewJim, I think you are vastly overestimating the “benefits of early traditional courtship and pusruit” (sic). Most of the women I know would rather get through those early stages and on to a real relationship with full benefits.
Do some women “lead men on?” Sure. It’s a big wide world out there. Some men lead women on for those “benefits of early traditional courtship and pusruit” (by which I am guessing you mean attention, ego boosts, gifts, dinners and drinks). Some people just want easy sex. Some want to watch people sit on balloons until they pop. Lots of things happen, but we don’t have long discussions on people being balloon-zoned and the evilness of those who balloon-zone them.
Being led on, misreading cues, not having affections returned — these are just some of the risks of playing the dating game. Always have been. No one is making anyone play. No one is keeping anyone in the game when they don’t want to be. Anyone who fears they are being led on just so the other person can reap “benefits of early traditional courtship and pusruit” is free to walk away and play somewhere else.
Ew, troll is sliming in my direction. Anyone have some surface cleaner?
Because people have totally been using the word “friendzone” since the 1970s.
I wondered if people used the term “friend zone” in 1920s Russia.
*hopes katz gets it*