Seeing the development of the whole “friend-zone” concept is, in fact, enlightening about the pervasive misogyny that’s still culturally foundational in America despite decades of progress.
It started as an observation that once someone had placed you in the “friend zone” of their mind, it was difficult for them to consider a romantic relationship with you.
It then picked up negative connotations when it was applied to women who flirtatiously imply the potential of a future relationship in order to have men perform favors for them that they would not do for normal friends. This sort of thing probably wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for the pervasive cultural assumption that it’s the man’s role in society to earn money and, therefore, the way to woo a female mate is to throw money at her in the form of gifts and so forth. But up to this point the term was at least describing an actual thing that actually happens.
But then the wheels come off the bus, because in the lightning-fast memetic chamber of the internet the term continued to expand: Now it was any woman who politely said “no” when you asked her out on a date. But, of course, the negative ethical connotations stuck to the term — so now the entire concept of “friend-zoning” implies that any woman who says “no” to a man’s sexual advances is doing something ethically wrong.
This also simultaneously expands the other side of the term: It now applies to any man who is friends with a woman. But here, too, the negative connotations stuck to the term. As a result, it implies that “just” being friends with a woman is somehow a punishment or a failure.
This rapid progression from useful concept to misogynist ideology is all built around the lingering cultural scaffolding in which women are objects of desire which are pursued like treasure. Although this scaffolding is slowly being demolished, it’s both interesting and depressing to note (from the sufficiently safe distance of being a white male) that, like any construction site, this transitional period can actually be more vile and misogynistic in some ways than what came before: Leave intact the “pursuit of the virgin” but strip away the idea of “no sex before marriage” and you replace Lord Wessex from Shakespeare in Love with pick-up artists who treat women like Super Mario Bros. power-ups and their sexual resumes like a Call of Duty leaderboard. Leave intact the idea of “no sex before marriage” as a moral imperative, on the other hand, and you end up with all women being “whores”. The jagged edges of these half-forgotten cultural memes can be dangerous. (Which doesn’t mean, of course, that we shouldn’t be getting rid of them. That would be like arguing that the slaves shouldn’t have been emancipated because they were more vulnerable to lynchings without the protection of their owners. It just means that you have to anticipate that it will be hard work and a tough slog before the light at the end of the tunnel completely banishes the darkness behind.)
Did you get friend-zoned? Bummer š
“Friend Zone” is a way for guys to shift the blame. It is too crushing to realize that they are an undatable looser, so they blame the woman… say “She put me in the friend zone”, is an easier lie to tell yourself than “I’m not relationship material.”
The way young men frantically pursue women seems to have less to do with the object than with their own insecurities. They think a lack of promiscuity is something to be ashamed about.
@ Theodor, I concur…
@ Olshanski, you couldn’t be wrong.
@ Agate, Women often try making men insecure so as to control them. Lack of promiscuity is natural, or at least I never met a woman who enjoyed sex, who wasn’t cool. Sexually repressed women on the other hand, are a part of the male burden.
@ Justin,
Friend zoning only exists in a relationship when one person is being useful to the other. What you need to realize, is that when a woman is not emotionally available to you, for whatever reason, she is not open to communication with you and therefore there is no friendship. Good communication and a deep satisfying conversation happens more often in fiction than among real people. A woman in a relationship, will not invest her affection/attention/communication with a stranger, because she will consider it cheating. That is why a man gets jealous when his woman gets intimate with another man, but a woman will get jealous, when a man will have feelings, including feeling sorry, for another woman.
Now, you CAN have a friendship with a woman, but that person will never bring up the issue of any friendship or a relationship to you, because she is clearly wit another person, there is clearly no interest with you, and you will get along fine until you ask her our or start getting too close for the woman’s comfort, at which point you will lose the rapport.
Here is the thing – you always have a chance at the woman, so long as she is still speaking with you. Speaking as in having an open and a meaningful conversation, not talking as in let’s get some lunch, work related, or other transaction-related talk. One last thing, there is no greater hell than unrequited love. If you are a man and you love a woman you will not let anything stop you except her NO. Which means, that if she tells you she is not available, she tells you she has a boyfriend, she tells you that you are just a friend (we can have a separate discussion on what constitutes friendship in different cultures), you will keep asking her out and for her to join you for lunch and other situations (not work related, of course), where it’s just the two of you. If she turns you down consistently, I mean two or three times, you stop talking to her and move on.
BTW, it is not just insecurity, as Agate kindly puts it. Loneliness KILLS. Bad relationships KILL. Men often die in recovery (more frequently than women), from things like heat attacks, strokes, bullet wounds, firefighters in burn centers. LONELY people fail to make their Saving Throw and die in recovery three times as often as people in GOOD relationship. People in BAD relationship die in recovery about twice as often as LONELY people. Difference between being in a good relationship versus being in a bad or an emotionally abusive one is that you are SIX time more likely to die in recovery if you get seriously injured, and those are very significant odds. If she just friends you… she don’t love you. You can tell the difference between sex and love (trust, communication, emotional availability), same spices that make for a genuine friendship. You don’t have that, she don’t love you, move on, cowboy!
@ Olshanski, you couldn’t be MORE wrong.
*”the lingering cultural scaffolding in which women are objects of desire which are pursued like treasure.”*
The school of hard knocks teaches that treating women as treasures that lead to hard won experience in the end, is always a painful process. Which buttresses my opinions as to why Gygaxian Treasure Seeking = Experience, sucks as a means of learning your trade. At least if you have a treasure brought back to town and spent in debauchery = experience, you might be a little ahead of the game.
*”Although this scaffolding is slowly being demolished, itās both interesting and depressing to note (from the sufficiently safe distance of being a white male) that, like any construction site, this transitional period can actually be more vile and misogynistic in some ways than what came before”*
As a man who’s previously worked on my share of construction sites, where everyone was respectful, but been subjected to being wolf-whistled at by women, (or been treated to other sexist-intrusive treatment on other jobs) those are grossly reverse-sexist generalizations that don’t address the modern reality for the last few decades. As a humanist, I think it’s a mistake to scape-goat one sex/persuasion/group as a means of “identifying” the sources of the problems of society. It doesn’t work, because it’s an inaccurate model of reality.
These issues between men and women aren’t merely cultural artifacts, there are biological bases for them. Chimps have males bringing offerings to females in exchange for sex. Look on YouTube. We have these tendencies for behavior hardwired into our genetics for 10s of millions of years of evolution, at a minimum. That said, most people are capable of being smarter than their apelike ancestors, if they are given to rejecting outdated social assumptions. But, none of these abuses are just one sided. As I and others I know have experienced, women given anonymity, or power, have very often quickly adopted many abusive, supposedly ‘male sexist prerogatives.’ Lesbians have been complaining about these messed up power-dynamics with other ‘butch’-seeming/ and even non-butch seeming women, for decades. I’ve been told this without asking, by several lesbian friends, who were surprised that other gay women still behaved this way, in this era.
People have tendencies towards certain behaviors, that as a baseline are hardwired to some extent, but they aren’t absolute walls we can’t get around with intelligence. With effort both sexes can overcome unexamined assumptions of what they demand from each other. However, both sexes, seem to be mostly pleased to pursue relating to each other the way they are, otherwise there would be much more androgyny as a norm. Nobody would be waiting for doors to be opened for them, or dressing provocatively, or sizing each other up as sex/money objects. Nor would that attitude be carried into same-sex relationships with a courtesan vs. buyer/protector assumption.
There is a lot of sexism and hypocrisy on every side, that should be acknowledged, and then things will change a lot faster for the better.
@ Brooser, Neal: Yikes.
Nice, well-articulated post, Justin.
“[If a woman] tells you she has a boyfriend, […] you will keep asking her out and for her to join you for lunch and other situations (not work related, of course), where itās just the two of you”
Er, no I don’t. That would be a pretty creepy thing to do.
@ Picador,
*”@ Brooser, Neal: Yikes.”*
If that was sympathetic towards me and other straight men being objectified, I appreciate the sympathy.
If it wasn’t stated as sympathetic, then look at the bigoted over-generalized assumption about male construction workers, that required me to address the statement in the first place. No self-respecting ‘educated’ person would dare make a generalized statement like that about “ghetto dwellers,” for example. Would they?
At Grey Knight,
Obviously you missed the first part, that said to follow your heart…
And besides, if a woman is in a relationship, don’t you think that it is her prerogative, whether on not she makes herself available to other men? You don’t ask someone out unless there is something going on there between you and the other person, do you?
@ Brooser Bear
“when a woman is not emotionally available to you, for whatever reason, she is not open to communication with you and therefore there is no friendship.”
“you CAN have a friendship with a woman, but that person will never bring up the issue of any friendship or a relationship to you, because she is clearly wit another person, there is clearly no interest with you”
“you always have a chance at the woman, so long as she is still speaking with you. Speaking as in having an open and a meaningful conversation”
“If she just friends youā¦ she donāt love you. You can tell the difference between sex and love (trust, communication, emotional availability), same spices that make for a genuine friendship.”
If I understand correctly, you are saying that any meaningful friendly relationship between a man and a women has the possibility of becoming a romantic/sexual relationship. I suppose that’s why you say that if she is with someone, she won’t assume that she has a relationship with you (as friends).
I understand where this comes from: love isn’t some sort of mad affliction for a person regardless of her personality and actions; the lines between respect, friendship and love are blurry; the notion of soul mates/lovers forever is, many times, a harmful fantasy; etc.
However, your ‘theory’ disregards many cases where people in an happy relationship have a long-term friendship with someone of the opposite sex (or of the sex they are attracted too).
I find hard to believe that friendship between people of opposite sexes is fundamentally different from friendship between people of the same sex. It may have differences inherent to the social notions of gender and expectations on male and female behavior, but I don’t think it has to be FUNDAMENTALLY different.
How do bisexual people fit into your model? Are they allowed to have friends if they are in a relationship?
Andre,
It’s not a theory, it’s more a successful survival strategy. You may find it hard to believe that friendship dynamics between the people of opposite sex is different, but it is. Just as friendship dynamics between people in different cultures is vastly different. A friend in the US would be a mere acquaintance in Europe, and what constitutes friendship 100 years ago I the US is quite different from what constitutes friendship in America today. I am talking about mores, norms, what is and what is not permissible.
People can be happy as long term friends, provided that certain conditions are met. Love and fear can not live in the same heart. True friendship can not form, if the two are separated by a barbed wire, and one had just eaten, while the other is starving. You need to change that status quo, before any kind of a friendship can develop. Finally, a jailer and a prisoner can not have a consensual sexual relationship, because an inmate is not in the position to give consent to a correction officer. And while you might think that these examples are too extreme for normal day to day life, same considerations also cover mail order brides and relation ships with the undocumented. If you doubt me, consider the astronomical divorce rates concerning those.
I agree, with you, there COULD be men and women in happy, long term Platonic friendships, but any kind of a real friendship is very hard to find, and if you count yourself among those beatific people, then you ain’t got to believe it. However, if you are that guy, running a girl’s errands and wiping her nose every time some guy she dated wipes his feet on her, and you are waiting for your friend to become available; if you are that girl, who is in love with a married man and is waiting for years for him to divorce his wife and marry you; if you are a middle aged housewife joining a work force after 15+ years home making, because your husband traded you for a younger model, then you definitely need a survival strategy.
With regards to bisexual people? I have yet to encounter true bisexuality, if that animal exists. I have known a bisexual girl, who was both trying to be cool and good looking. She was in a relationship with a rich guy same age as she. She was lusting after a working class girl, whom she separated from her boyfriend under pretext of introducing her to cooler and better people. Her claim of bisexuality allowed her to remain in a relationship with a rich dude, who was able to pick up strippers and it did not look like he was cheating on her. Another claim to bisexuality was a middle aged divorcee shacked with a working class street tough with both, a rap sheet and street friends. She was at the bottom of the pecking order as the guy’s old lady and she was looking for a girlfriend to treat her the same as she was treated. Finally, there was another woman, who claimed bisexuality to remain in a relationship with a husband of many years, who wanted threesomes with younger women.
Perhaps, my beautiful friend, you should take a walk down the valley and see what goes on there!
@ Brooser Bear,
Where do you know all these people in such disturbed, abusive, rap-sheet influenced relationships from?
From wanting to become a real world adventurer, when I discovered D&D (Moldway basic set) at 13.
@ Justin
“It started as an observation that once someone had placed you in the āfriend zoneā of their mind, it was difficult for them to consider a romantic relationship with you.”
This was what I always assumed it meant. With nothing else added, the concept seems completely obvious to any infatuated person (as I’ve occasionally been). And not even a judgement on the person doing the “friend-zoning”. It’s something that both men and women have done to potential partners. The fact that someone doesn’t want a relationship with you doesn’t make them a bad person, but acknowledging this won’t necessarily make your disappointment any easier to overcome.
It’s tough, but my general impulse is to try not dwell on it, accept being “just” a friend, and allow for the possibility of romance elsewhere.
Anyway . . . This is getting around to say: Thanks for the explanation.
I’ve seen rage against the concept of friend-zoning on the internet before and never quite grasped what it was all about. But your natural history of the concept within the popular consciousness (beyond it’s origins as a simple place-holder for amiable rejection) goes a long way to understanding the vitriol.