Let's talk about the Friendzone

Today seems as good a day as any to talk about the friendzone. The friendzone is defined as when you want to date someone, but they only want to be friends.

The problem with the friendzone is it makes it seem like the person whose “zone” you are in is actively keeping you there. This allows the person in the friendzone to blame them and get bitter about it, believing that they are the passive participant in this social exchange, that this is happening to them. However, if you are stuck in the friendzone state of mind, it’s your fault. You can stop being friends with them, you can try and stop feeling that way about them (fake it ‘til you make it, amirite), there is something you can do to get out. The person “friendzoning” you is only acting according to their feelings, which will not be changed by your complaints about the friendzone. Men and women have found themselves in the friendzone, and if they deal with it like responsible adults, no one gets hurt.

Many men complain about being “stuck” in the friendzone of a woman and don’t think of these ways out. Men often have a sense that they “deserve” women, “deserve” to have sex with them, regardless of what the woman wants (because that is what society and media have taught them from childhood. The hero always gets the girl after all that hard work, because he deserves her, regardless of any reason the “girl” would want the hero). This leads a man “stuck” in the friendzone to believe even more strongly that it is the woman who is causing the problem, because this is the sex he deserves because he has worked hard feigning friendship and must deserve it by now, right?

What has actually happened here is that these men are no longer stuck in the friendzone as they believe. (In fact, if his understanding of their relationship with this woman and his entitlement have become even a little bit apparent, the woman might not even want to be friends anymore.) The man has moved past being interested in friendship and only wants a romantic and/or sexual relationship. On Tumblr, this has become known as “Girlfriendzoning.” The man cannot perceive the woman as a friend but a potential girlfriend. Notice that here, the active verb is given to the subject who actually does the action.

This can also be linked to what I like to refer to as “Nice Guy Syndrome,” where a man believes he is being a perfect gentleman yet gets turned down at every attempt to “get the girl,” leading him to believe that “girls only like douchebags.” Little do these men know, often their behavior reflects this attitude, ironically making them douchebags.

Unfortunately, sometimes this entitlement and need to prove that they “deserve” women leads men to violence. This violence is often attributed to mental illness, or- our favorite scapegoat these days- video games. The women involved may even wrongly get the blame for it. The real problem? Toxic masculinity. Men are told to “man up,” which apparently means assert their strength through violence. This results in shootings because “I deserve girls much more than all those slobs” or stabbings because of a rejected prom proposal.

(If you need more explanation on how those translate, I encourage you to watch the documentary Tough Guise, or its sequel Tough Guise 2, unfortunately not available on Netflix at this time. A ten-minute intro can be found here, and Jackson Katz’s Ted Talk on men’s violence can be found here.)

However, women are not prizes. You do not “deserve” to have a girlfriend. Stalking is not an acceptable response to rejection, nor is harassment, nor is murder. Threatening women with violence is not the way to their hearts, it's the way to avoidance and a restraining order. Blaming women for not responding favorably to these threats puts them in danger.

Elliot Rodger may have had some mental health issue (ETA because I couldn't figure out how to word it: mental health issues are more likely to result in self harm than outward violence), but his actions were not caused by the actions of young women. His actions were caused by a society that tells young men that they deserve sex, that to be a virgin at 22 is a tragedy, and that men must prove their manliness through acts of violence.