The Friend Zone (or, why I’m more than a piece of ass)

Carlo Alcos, of Confronting Love, wrote an article in 2011 titled “The Friend Zone (or, How “Jerks” are Made),” which was recently republished by The Good Men Project. I’ll save you the trouble of reading it, in case you’ve missed it or if you just don’t want to read yet another faux-feminist essay articulating why it’s okay for men to be friends with women. Alcos basically says, “hey, you might think of women as sex objects but maybe you could be friends with them, and if you do, maybe they’ll have sex with you, but maybe they won’t and if they don’t, hey, cool, I guess because they’re like their own people too, maybe.”

Erm, I mean he says men should be friends with women without being manipulative about it and that being in the friend zone isn’t so bad except for the fact that men are socialized to make (male) friends who only talk about sex and if they’ve scored (with a woman), and that if a man is single (and attracted to women), he’s sizing up every woman as a potential sex partner and so it’s pretty darn disappointing when you land in the friend zone, except ooh, um, that’s not so PC to say.

Let’s begin with this open letter:

Dear Carlo:

Thank you, Carlo, for attempting to write about the friend zone in a way that recognizes that women are people too. Thank you for trying to point out that friendship with female-identified folks (you didn’t say this, but I am) should be honored. Thank you for mentioning that manipulation is a pretty awful thing to do to someone to try and change or control a situation. Thank you for mentioning self-care, which for the men your article addresses, could look like letting go of expectation about how things are supposed to be. 

But, Carlos, we’re not all cheerleaders (bear with me — I know the cheerleader is a stand-in for every woman you’ve wanted to bang who hasn’t wanted to bang you back, but this is a pretty tired comparison, designed to tap into the insecurities of women and that’s not cool). We’re maybe just friends with you because we’re not into you that way. We’re maybe just friends with you because we are actually concerned about ruining what feels like a strong male partnership / allyship / presence, because of well, the prevalence of the attitude you purport to be writing against, one that objectifies women and turns us into our ability to pleasure you. We’re maybe just friends with you because it kinda creeps us out that we can tell when you’re undressing us with your eyes (since you’re sizing us up as potentially “the one”) but you’re an otherwise nice guy (though this may make us suspicious that you’re a Nice Guy (TM). Maybe we just want to be friends because we’re not attracted to guys and if you got to know us better, you’d learn that. Maybe we just want to be friends because we’re healing from trauma. Maybe we just want to be friends for a lot of reasons.

Since I can’t speak for all women, I’m going to use “I” for the next part, but I’m confident other women relate: If it’s hard to be in the Friend Zone, then leave. I’ll live. If you’ve been faking it as my friend for a long time, hoping it would mean I’d sleep with you and I was pretty convinced that we were just solid friends, then I’ll be hurt (and faking it is a key term there). Because, I also have, you know, feelings. And I probably trusted you. And, if you leave the friendship for that reason (and you do have the right to keep yourself whole and so if not being with me sexually is keeping you from being whole, then by all means, please leave and don’t assault me physically or verbally on your way out because this has happened), I’ll probably recognize the manipulation you were engaging in and be angry / sad / betrayed. But, ultimately, I don’t want to be manipulated and by labeling you as a friend,  I was not trying to manipulate or exploit you.

I’m a bit concerned that you and your audience would mainly be concerned about having sex with a woman (phrased, casually at the end of the article as “a romance” — which I realize can encompass more than sex, but doesn’t seem to in your article) rather than establishing any sort of deeper bond. This presents you, and your audience, as incapable of the emotional commitment needed to sustain any sort of relationship, much less one that grows into mutual aid and love.

I’ve read some of your other articles, Carlo, and I know that you’re putting forward a pretty sweet attempt to shed some of your male privilege and stand up as a feminist. Either that, or you’re putting a lot of effort into Nice Guy (TM) facade-making. I’m an optimist, and inclined to lean toward the first option. I think you’re getting there, and that you’re allowed to stumble along the way. I know your intention in this article was to say to men that being “friend zoned” isn’t the inherent evil that hetero-male culture makes it out to be, because you’ve said as much in comments both on The Good Men Project and Confronting Love.

Your intention, though, doesn’t matter as long as you continue to normalize the objectification of women through things like:

“…he’s consciously afraid to become friends with females. Because becoming friends with the opposite sex is seen as failure.”

We went from being people to being females to being “the opposite sex.” Sweet deal. I love being only my gender.

Or this one:

“From a guy’s perspective, this is the all-pervading question we ask ourselves: ‘would I sleep with her?'”

We’re more than a piece of ass. But thanks for thinking of us!

And, within this article, you were given the opportunity to question the stereotypes of masculinity — you address them, through the expectations of (some) men that it’s a failure to not get laid by a lady-friend. But you don’t question, or propose that this type of masculinity is not the only type. You don’t propose that the man who can also be a genuine friend of a female-identified person is also demonstrating masculinity. My heart breaks a little for you, and you audience, if this isn’t part of the larger discussion about how to end violence and hostilities against female-identified people, how to end male perpetuated violence against other men, how to become connected to the community — which includes women.

This is what I mean, Carlo. It’s not that you, or your audience, is a “jerk.” It’s that men who act like this, who can’t accept being friends with a woman — with another person — instead of having a sex partner, and specifically the men who become outright angry at being “friend zoned,”  is probably not a nice person at all.