How the Logic of "Friendzoning" Would Work If Applied in Other Instances:
Man: Alright, I've had enough. Why haven't you guys hired me?!
Employee: Uh...well sir, when did you put in your application?
Man: I never filled out an application.
Employee: Well sir, we can't consider you for employment if you've never filled out an application.
Man: No, that's bullshit, because I've been coming here for years now, and every single time I tell you all how much I love this store and how much I appreciate your customer service, unlike some of your other customers might I add!
Employee: Well, but that doesn't-
Man: AND I even told you that I didn't have a job!
Employee: But sir, that doesn't indicate to us that you would like a job at our store. And again, if you've never filled out an application, we can't consider you. Besides, we're not hiring.
Man: OH! Not hiring, HA! What a laugh. I see your store go through seasonal workers all the time. They come and go like nothing, but you won't consider me as a part-time employee even though I KNOW you've been looking for workers to fill positions? That's insane!
Employee: Sir, we've been looking to hire a few people for management positions. Do you have any management experience?
Man: Well no, but what does that matter?
Employee: ...Well sir, that's what we're looking for. You won't be suitable for the position without management experience.
Man: Oh that's such a load of crap. You know, you'll be waiting around a long time for a manager if you don't lower your standards a little. Who cares if someone knows how to manage a store? I LOVE this store and I'm willing to work here, that's all that should matter to you.
Employee: That...doesn't make any sense.
Man: NO! I'm done. This is over. From now on, no more Mr. Nice Guy.
Employee:
Man:
Employee:
Man: Fuck you, slut.
“Good morning New York. I’m sorry to bother you. I’m not hungry. I do not want food or money, I just need a little support. I got dumped last week and I’m trying to give her space but I can’t do nothing. If you have any words of advice for me, a quote that resonates with you or a story about second chances, please raise your hand and I’ll come to you. I have sharpie markers and I’ll stay as long as it takes.”
I normally do not reblog this kind of shit, but for any dude that has ever been dumped, still in love and desperately tried to win her heart back, no matter the circumstance…this is legit shit. And do not give me that bullshit “dude, if she dumped you she obviously doesnt want to be with you, just get over it, you pathetic asshole”…First of all, fuck you. Second of all, fuck you.
Your comments are the epitome of rape culture and everything that is wrong with concept of friend-zoning. Fuck you. Like actually fuck you, you entitled piece of shit. Women owe you NOTHING. Women do know what they want, and if they dump you it IS because they don’t want to be with you. Stop perpetuating the sexist assumption that women don’t know their own mind. No means no, and any other interpretation is rape culture at work. You and your commentary can actually fuck off.
As for the OP: I’m speechless. “I’m trying to give her space, but I’m walking around with her face on a sandwich board and I’m convincing everyone that she’s the horrible person here and I’m so unfairly victimised.” Cool story, bro. Tell me more about how you’re irresistible and why everyone should want to be with you.
Reblogging to add: behaviours like this become even more terrifying when you consider that the riskiest time in a woman’s life is when she breaks up with a male partner (in that she is significantly more likely to be murdered than at any other point in her life). Too often that partner perceives the break up as a challenge to their authority/masculinity and take drastic action to either a) get them back or b) stop anyone else from having them either. That - in addition to the rapey/entitled undertones - is what makes this dude’s actions so fucking terrifying.
Whoa. That awkward moment you unwittingly expose to the universe precisely why you’ve been dumped in the first place.
The most disconcerting part is that it’s teaming with unspoken manipulation.
Think about it: we dont know why she broke up with him, but a stunt like this makes people presume it wouldn’t have been for good reason. Strangers are suppose to presume he’s The Good Guy, when for all we know, she’s getting away from him because he was — hmm, let’s see — controlling and lacked boundaries. Perhaps even exhibited abusive behaviour toward her. We dont know, but this display? Doesnt exactly help dispel suspicions.
This is like, The Nice Guy Complex™ strung out on the purest cut of Peruvian cocaine.
people are not obligated to be with you because you want them and feel an ownership over then and their love. sorry.
and can we talk about the fact that if this was a woman she would get called the most derogatory of things? needy, desperate, stupid, foolish clingly, etc… but when its this guy its commendable. oh, alright
“and here are some strangers who think you should be with me despite whatever you want”
Reblogging because of commentary.
WOW WHAT THE FUCK
(Source: mendmyheart)
Everyone’s heard of friendzoning – even if they don’t know the word, they sure as hell know the concept. It’s what happens time and again to unfortunate Nice Guys who, despite being nothing but sugar and spice to the girls they love, are nonetheless denied the sexual relationships they so obviously deserve and are instead treated like platonic equals – a terrible, unfair fate spawned by the dark side of feminism.
And if you thought even part of that statement was correct, Imma stop you right there.
To borrow the succinct, nail-head-hitting phraseology of one hexjackal*:
Friendzoning is bullshit because girls are not machines that you put Kindness Coins into until sex falls out.
Dear Hypothetical Interlocutor whose hackles just bristled with the unfairness of that statement; who thinks that girls can be in the Friend Zone, too, and that therefore this point is both invalid and reverse-sexist into the bargain. For your edification, I would like to submit the following definitions of the term Friend Zone as supplied by Urban Dictionary:
1. “The ‘friend zone’ is like the penalty box of dating, only you can never get out. Once a girl decides you’re her ‘friend’, it’s game over. You’ve become a complete non-sexual entity in her eyes, like her brother, or a lamp.” – Ryan Reynolds in Just Friends.
‘I’ve been locked in the friend zone with her since high school!’
2. A state of being where a male inadvertently becomes a ‘platonic friend’ of an attractive female who he was trying to intiate a romantic relationship. Females have been rumored to arrive in the Friend Zone, but reports are unsubstantiated.
Girl: “I love you (Insert the poor bastard’s name here,) but I dont want to ruin a great friendship by dating you.”
Guy: “Well why the fuck did I waste two months on you?”and Wikipedia:
There are differing explanations about what causes the friend zone. One report suggests that some women don’t see their male friends as potential love interests because they fear that deepening their relationship might cause a loss of the romance and mystery or lead to rejection later…
Dating adviser Ali Binazir described the friend zone as Justfriendistan, and wrote that it’s a “territory only to be rivaled in inhospitability by the western Sahara, the Atacama desert, and Dante’s Ninth Circle of Hell.”
I therefore submit to you, Hypothetical Interlocutor, that the Friend Zone is not an equal opportunities habitat. It is where men go – or more accurately, where men perceive themselves to go – when women fail to reward their friendship with sex. Or, to quote the immortal wisdom of the internet:
Slut is how we vilify a woman for exercising her right to say yes.
Friendzone is how we vilify a woman for exercising her right to say no.
Here’s the thing, Hypothetical Interlocutor: if you truly are a self-professed Nice Guy (and I strongly suspect that you are), then you probably espouse the belief that women and men are equal. More than espouse – you believe! You know! Except that, somewhere along the line, you’ve got it into your head that if you’re romantically interested in a girl who sees you only as a friend, her failure to reciprocate your feelings is just that: a failing. That because you’re nice and treat her well, she therefore owes you at least one opportunity to present yourself as a viable sexual candidate, even if she’s already made it clear that this isn’t what she wants. That because she legitimately enjoys a friendship that you find painful (and which you’re under no obligation to continue), she is using you. That if a man wants more than friendship with a woman, then the friendship itself doesn’t even attain the status of a consolation prize, but is instead viewed as hell: a punishment to be endured because, so long as he thinks she owes him that golden opportunity, he is bound to persist in an association that hurts him – not because he cares about the friendship, but because he feels he’s invested too much kindness not to stick around for the (surely inevitable, albeit delayed) payoff.
And if she never sleeps with him? Then she’s a bitch.
I cannot state this clearly enough: if you really believe in equality, then you have to acknowledge the fact that women have a right to say no. That no matter how pure and true your feelings, your ladylove is under no obligation whatever to reciprocate them, because friendship is not a business transaction, and women are allowed to want male friends. Yes, it is difficult and sad and heartbreaking to love someone who doesn’t love you back, and doubly so when that person is a friend. Believe me; I speak from experience. This is not a fun thing to endure! But discounting the woman as a bitch, a user, a timewaster, a whore with no taste who only wants to sleep with arseholes instead of Nice Guys like you is not on. It is pure, unadulterated sexism: the attitude that friendship with a woman is only ever a stepping-stone to getting into her pants, such that if the pants-getting is off the table, then so too is the friendship.
Which, frankly, is bullshit. If you don’t care enough about someone to enjoy their company and respect their decisions when sex is off the table, then that person is right not to sleep with you, because enjoying someone’s company and respecting their decisions is pretty much how sex gets on the table to start with.
To quote the single best point in an otherwise deeply problematic Cracked piece:
What we learned as kids is that we males are each owed, and will eventually be awarded, a beautiful woman. We were told this by every movie, TV show, novel, comic book, video game and song we encountered…
In each case, the woman has no say in this — compatibility doesn’t matter, prior relationships don’t matter, nothing else factors in. If the hero accomplishes his goals, he is awarded his favorite female. Yes, there will be dialogue that maybe makes it sound like the woman is having doubts, and she will make noises like she is making the decision on her own. But we, as the audience, know that in the end the hero will “get the girl,” just as we know that at the end of the month we’re going to “get our paycheck.” Failure to award either is breaking a societal contract. The girl can say what she wants, but we all know that at the end, she will wind up with the hero, whether she knows it or not.
And now you see the problem. From birth we’re taught that we’re owed a beautiful girl. We all think of ourselves as the hero of our own story, and we all (whether we admit it or not) think we’re heroes for just getting through our day.
So it’s very frustrating, and I mean frustrating to the point of violence, when we don’t get what we’re owed. A contract has been broken. These women, by exercising their own choices, are denying it to us. It’s why every Nice Guy is shocked to find that buying gifts for a girl and doing her favors won’t win him sex. It’s why we go to “slut” and “whore” as our default insults — we’re not mad that women enjoy sex. We’re mad that women are distributing to other people the sex that they owed us.
In pop culture, girls who crush hopelessly on guys they can’t have are painted as just that – hopeless. Over and over again, we’re taught that girls who openly express sexual or romantic interest in guys who don’t want them are pitiable, stalkerish, desperate, crazy bitches. More often than not, they’re also portrayed as ugly – whether physically, emotionally or both – in order to further establish their undesirability as an objective fact. Both narratively and, as a consequence, in real life, men are given free reign to snub, abuse, mislead and talk down to such women: we’re raised to believe that female desire is unseemly, so that any consequent shaming is therefore deserved. There is no female-equivalent Friend Zone terminology because, in the language of our culture, a man’s romantic choices are considered sacrosanct and inviolable. If a girl has been told no, then she has only herself to blame for anything that happens next – but if a woman says no, then she must not really mean it. Or, if she does, she shouldn’t: the rejected man is a universally sympathetic figure, and everyone from moviegoers to platonic onlookers will scream at her to just give him a chance, as though her rejection must always be unfounded rather than based on the fact that he had a chance, and blew it. And even then, give him another one! The pathos of Single Nice Guys can only be eased by pity-sex with unwilling women that blossoms into romance!
Well, screw that. The Friend Zone is a fundamentally sexist construction based solely on the idea that women should be penalised for putting their own romantic happiness above that of an interested man. If a lady doesn’t want you, then either respect her decision and keep away to salve your heart, or respect her decision and stay because you still think she’s cool enough to be worth the effort of friendship. But if you don’t respect her decision, then you don’t respect her – and if you don’t respect her, then stay the fuck out of her life.
*Amendment, 11 April 2012: Originally, the first quote in this piece was attributed to Aeryn Walker. However, she has since informed me that the kindness/coins line originated with @hexjackal, and though I don’t have the exact reference for that first attribution, I’ve nonetheless changed it in the text.
