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?”
There was a period of time where various coworkers kept trying to matchmake me with a good friend who was gay, and when I pointed out that it wasn’t going to happen because he was gay they just insisted that he couldn’t be because he played football in high school and hugged me a lot. Which would be ridiculous in any city, but is extra ridiculous when the people saying these things live in San Francisco.
Anyone seen my eyes? I think they rolled under the desk somewhere.
Those were some of the dumbest conversations I’ve ever had.
“But he had you sitting on his lap at that bar, so he must like you!”
“We’re friends, of course he likes me, but he’s gay.”
“But he reached out and pulled you right onto his lap!”
“…”
Geez. My gay friend in college used to grab my boobs and spank me a lot (and I spanked him too). I wonder what your idiot co-workers would’ve thought of that!
Strewth. Friend of mine used to pull me to sit on his lap when there weren’t enough chairs to go around. He was married and had NO interest in anyone but his wife. Sitting on lap =/= wanting sexytimes!
One thing I find very interesting is that the concept of unrequited love towards a platonic or best friend isn’t new at all. It’s a super common trope. *But* recently, about the same time as the term ‘friend zone’, it’s become gendered. It used to be about equal presentations of ‘guy in love with female friend’ and ‘girl in love with male friend’…these things were staples of the YA/high school genre of movies and books and there didn’t usually seem to be anything malicious about it. It was often bad/cliche, as typically the pined-after one would realize his or her love for their friend in contrived circumstances.
But now, it seems like people believe that it’s only ever guys pining after women, not the other way around. It’s as though people believe it’s unrealistic for a woman to be in love with a guy for years and him not be interested/be oblivious. But this totally happens! In my real life I’ve seen it both ways loads of times. The ‘entitlement’ and ‘Nice Guy’ factor isn’t always present, and seems to be a relatively modern add-on. I don’t know exactly when all this started.
I wonder if there’s an element there of ‘women pursuing a guy isn’t romantic’. I’ve also noticed that lately, all love triangles are two men/one woman. The woman who can’t choose between them, or is oblivious to love, is really common, but a woman going after a guy who’s not interested (and is sympathetic) happens way less often than it used to. Hmm…
twomoogles – yes, and it’s not that surprising, given that the whole notion of “friend zoning” as something one does deliberately is an MRA/NiceGuyTM whine. It’s all the evil woman not opening her legs for teh poor manz, even though she knows with her super wimminz telepathy* that he’s pining for her. It’s never about a woman not knowing; these douches always attribute it to malice. It’s about entitlement, not people genuinely not knowing when someone’s keen on them. That, I think, is where the whole myth part comes in.
*even though ladybrainz are such feeble things, they apparently have amazing psychic powers, which I guess is how we really run the world through the gummint.
Hey, everyone, quick question: Does anyone here mind if I quote you in my talk? I want to work in a few quotes from this discussion, haven’t quite decided which yet though.
Good luck with your talk!! You’re going to be awesome. Hope there’s a video..?
I am female and straight and have felt “friendzoned” several times in my life, sometimes also feeling “led on” in the process. But I think the difference between me and Nice Guys ™* is that I tend to see the disappointment of being rejected as bad luck, not an evil conspiracy against me by all men. True, sometimes sour feelings lead me to blame my culture a little bit for whatever unjust biases against my personal characteristics might have influenced the boy’s unconscious state of not being attracted to me, but it’s never his “fault.” He is not individually responsible for “rewarding” me for whatever good traits I have with attention, love, or sex.
Romance and sex are not a currency, and I have always felt it is sick to expect someone to take responsibility for giving you what you “deserve” rather than build relationships based on mutual interest and attraction. Nice Guy philosophy often seems to assume that women have total control over who they are attracted to – who they benevolently bestow their attraction upon – and treat affairs of the heart and sexuality like a business transaction. Friendship in, sexual or emotional reward out. Men can be attracted to whomever takes their fancy, and women alone are burdened with being the arbiters of appropriate matches. It is no wonder, therefore, that some MRAs have followed that line of “logic” to the conclusion that women do not actually fall in love or feel desire, and that when they do appear to love or desire someone who is not you, they are simply wielding feeling as a weapon for the sake of your personal humiliation and pain.
*I have seen women display symptoms of Nice Guy Syndrome as well (see self-pitying women protagonists in love stories, Taylor Swift, probably some of your friends), but in my experience they are far less common, and much less respected and sympathized with by the general public. A love story about an “unattractive” man capturing the heart of an “attractive” woman is just a love story. A love story about the reverse is emphatically niche. Usually falling under the category of “sappy feel-good Mary Sue shit for chicks” (or else just super indie). I think this is one of the main reasons so many gleefully mock and dismiss the Twilight series (which should be mocked and dismissed for a whole host of other creepy and horrible things instead), which disturbed me. When I do see women express frustration with friendzoning, they usually follow it up with a complaint about themselves rather than a complaint about the man who rejected them, men as a group, or the culture that may have contributed to their rejection. Unlike Nice Guys(tm), their self-pity is mixed with self-loathing and the desire to “improve” whatever it is about them that men as a group supposedly dislike. Both female and male Nice Guys(tm), then, make irrational generalizations about the opposite group, but one is overly obliging and the other overly entitled.
I also get the impression that, as a direct result of these expectations, women tend to feel much guiltier about rejections for any reason than men do. As with any pattern, there are exceptions, of course, but overall it is considered acceptable by both women and men for a man to reject a woman with or without an explicit reason (generally including looks), but a woman who rejects a man without an “excuse” is cruel – and, if she cites his looks, shallow.
I’m for abolishing the “league” system. Although physical appearance does and should influence attraction, the degree to which we fixate on it is absurd. This is partially true for men as well, and it is appallingly, destructively, mind-bogglingly true for women. Personally I find my interest in someone’s looks grows in response to how attracted I am to the way we interact, the way his brain is wired and the way it interacts with mine. That actually makes him more physically attractive to me as well. I feel like women are kind of expected to have this ability because we’re taught to see men as whole people. Whatever idiotic reductionist readings of biological determinism studies say, I’m certain men can have this ability too. Attraction is really complicated and no matter what your gender is or how desirable the other person is “supposed” to be, or how “good” of a person you think they are, you never, ever need a reason not to be attracted to someone.
Are you sexually attracted to every person you care about? No. Hell no. Nor should you be expected to be. Regardless of whether that person happens to be in your courting demographic.
No quoting from me, please.
What sort of stuff are you quoting, David?
Well, I’m not sure I added anything useful, but on this thread, I’m fair game. Other threads, no thanks!
Good luck tomorrow, and I’d love to watch if there ends up being a recording!
(P.S. Thanks for the support, kootiepatra, kittehserf, zippydoo, et al. It’s much appreciated!)
Glad to help! 🙂
You can quote me if you want.
I wouldn’t like to be quoted.
I’m okay with being quoted.
I don’t think I said anything useful, but I’m fine with being quoted since it’s anonymous.
In any case, best of luck tomorrow, and let us know how it went!
Boogerghost,
I love your user name and I love that WordPress assigned you a booger green geometric shape avatar!
Here’s just another thing I wanted to add: I’ve been told that declining a romantic relationship but inviting friendship was telling the guy he was “not good enough.”
And sheesh. My feeling that there’s a lack of sexual/romantic chemistry is not a value judgement on a dude’s worth as a human being.
And anyway, if you’re “not good enough” I wouldn’t want a friendship with you either. I am only interested in friendships with awesome people.
Ok, I’ve got something close to a final draft (pending permissions on quotes).
Thanks for your permission, Cloudiah; I’m just going to quote your comment on your possible mutual friendzoning in college. Turns out there’s a meme for that!
The other people I’m hoping to quote are Angela, mythago, and cohenafterworld. I’ve sent them all emails.
There’s so much good stuff in this thread I may want to raid it for a future post or two.
Yay, my cluelessness may be a tool to teach others! LOL.
Have fun with the talk!
Heeheehee, thanks weirwood.
I would also add that from my experience (but I don’t want to speak for ALL or MOST women) rejecting a man can be so difficult because it always made me feel so guilty and uncomfortable. I avoided doing it all costs when I was younger and resorted to horribly passive aggressive behaviors because I could not tell a man how I felt. I once dodged a man’s phone calls for three weeks because I didn’t have the courage to tell him that I wasn’t interested. Saying no when he asked for my number? Out of the question. And I have heard stories from my friends (and even my mother in her younger days) about sleeping with men they weren’t interested in (at overnight parties, camping trips, etc.) because it was the easiest way to get them to leave, and it was easier than saying no and dealing with the fall out.
I don’t think MRAs and PUAs understand the pressure women feel to be nice and accommodating to men at all time. I NEVER took pleasure in rejecting a man, and often went to great lengths not to, simply because I didn’t have the spine. It makes me very angry and sad now when I look back at my youth.
I always think of my experiences when I hear PUAs complain about the “epidemic of flaking.” Maybe these women are simply not interested but are too afraid to say it outright, so they flake by not returning calls.
I think they understand it enough to try to use it to their advantage, just not enough to have any empathy.