By now you’ve probably heard of the friendzone – a concept described by men, usually to great despair, as a woman seeing them as “just” a friend and never a possible sexual interest. If so, hopefully you’ve also heard the seemingly obvious rebuttals to this entire idea, such as, “Hey bro, a woman doesn’t owe you sex just because you’re friends with her,” and the more succinct, “If we wanted to have sex with you, we would.”
Throughout this entire conversation, we’ve been told what the woman’s thought process is. She just wants to enjoy the benefits of a platonic friend (the horror), she’s leading the man on, she’s a demon sent from hell to ruin the lives of men around her, etc., but have we ever stopped to think about the male perspective? Namely, the fact is that by focusing on women as purely sexual beings, and not complex people worth knowing and spending time with outside of sex, these men have been relegating women to “zones” of their own?
Gifer
The “f**k zone” is the direct opposite of the friend zone – a designation men who complain about the friendzone are, in turn, placing on their female friends. By complaining about the way the friendship is structured around NOT getting their dick sucked, they’re invalidating and devaluing its entire premise in the first place, and viewing their female friends as objects to be attained.
Boxing women in like this is, of course, hypocritical. It’s even worse than the friendzone in that it ignores the fact that men see women like this despite expressly consenting to be in a friendship with them. In short, they agree to the structure, and then get mad when the structure continues to exist. It’s the equivalent of becoming study buddies with someone, then getting mad that they’re not doing all your homework. That was not the agreed-upon arrangement, pal.
Giphy
Now, that’s not to say that you can’t or shouldn’t develop feelings for someone you’re friends with. However, the bottom line is, if you’re not going to be satisfied with just friendship, don’t be friends at all. You can’t place one-sided expectations on someone, then get mad when they refuse to meet them. Would I be upset if a friend of mine cut off the friendship because they developed unreciprocated feelings that made it too difficult to be platonic? Sure, no one would be happy they lost someone important in their life. But I would understand that a lot more than someone raging at me because I refuse to f**k them when I thought we were enjoying an awesome relationship already? Absolutely.