Just in case you were not clear on what the friend zone is. Many thanks to Angels and Angles for the definition.
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As defined by urban dictionary, the friendzone is…
“When you are expected to support a girl you really like while she searches for a smarter, richer, and more handsome boyfriend. There is little you can do without feeling like a dick. All in all, one of the meanest things a girl can do, whether they mean it or not.”
and ”The perennial location of nice guys everywhere.”
Although this hypothetical situation could work both ways, friendzone is almost always applied to a man who is rejected by a woman. Therefore, there is something inherently unequal, something inherently sexist about the term “friendzone”. But what and why?
From my experience, this is what friend zone is. A “nice guy” pursues a woman, but isn’t forward with his intentions from the get-go like, say, a “jerk”. The woman is pleased to see a man who is interested in her not as a sexual object but as a human being and wishes for things to stay that way. The man is not satisfied with seeing the woman as a human being because being “expected to support a girl” is a bad deal if she’s not putting out.
Before I delve into the sociological aspects of this, I just want to point out that ”friendzone” is no more pleasant for a woman than it is a man. First, that is to say unrequited love works both ways, but the person who doesn’t return affections is considered mean only when she’s a woman. And second, what option does the woman have in a traditional “friendzone” situation? Just stop talking to a close friend to avoid “leading him on”? In high school, I found out my best friend of 2 years liked me. Having to tell him I didn’t feel the same way and being immediately ex-communicated via Facebook status (“Thanks for wasting my time”) was one of the worst things that ever happened to me. Were our two years of friendship invalid because I didn’t want anything more? Was all our time together really wasted because there was no hypothetical pay off?
Guys who do this and claim to be “nice guys” are the worst misogynists because of their sense of entitlement toward a woman. They make investments in property and expect their dividends. They are fake friends. They are selfish. And they will jump at the chance to vilify you and victimize themselves when their attempts at manipulation don’t work. Clearly, “friendzone” is the remnant of a phenomenon that has plagued women since the beginning of time: women are not independent creatures. Our love lives exist only in the context of a man’s desire. When we make independent decisions, we are subject to a host of derogatory terms. “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”
The friend zone is bullish** because girls are not machines you put kindness coins into until sex falls out.”
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
7 comments
May 13, 2013 at 9:45 am
VR Kaine
I guess the “friend zone” can mean different things to different people but wow, where to start with that Urban Dictionary definition?
“When you are expected to support a girl you really like…”
Who “expects” you to support them, dude? I’ve known a number of women who put guys in the friend zone and a number of guys who have lived there, but not in one single case did I ever hear of a woman expecting that a guy support her while in the friend zone. a) this is a guy’s choice, and b) if there’s an unwritten expectation or demand behind it, that’s wrong on so many levels. “Sex trap/rape trap” comes to mind for me as a definition of that move.
“…while she searches for a smarter, richer, and more handsome boyfriend” Wow, look at all the male insecurities flying around here. Therefore what, she’s wrong for not choosing your loser ass and putting up with what is surely to be your constant whining about how “dicks and jerks get all the girls and you don’t”? You’d have to be paying for my dinners and movies to be listening to that crap, so at the very least you should be paying for hers.
“There is little you can do without feeling like a dick” Um, ya there is – stop acting like one, feeling like one, and both putting and keeping yourself in a situation where you quite frankly ARE ONE, on top of a loser and psycho-in-waiting. The choice is yours, hero.
“All in all, one of the meanest things a girl can do, whether they mean it or not.”
Haha. Ya, this is all THEIR doing. “Let me do all these things to show her how kind and nice I am, and hopefully I will win her attention and attraction away from the ‘jerks’ she usually goes for.” Wrong wrong wrong.
You want to be her mate, but you’re pretending to be her friend so basically you’re playing all the head games that you complain about women playing all the time, i.e. “making you guess at how they really feel about you” while you cry over your beers. News flash – no one “makes us” feel any sort of way – we choose how we feel ourselves, so own it.
I know the definition was probably a little tongue-in-cheek, but still.
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May 13, 2013 at 10:20 am
VR Kaine
How about this?
“The Friend Zone – Definition:”
A place where a guy knows deep down and yet refuses to recognize that attraction and friendship are categorically different, and instead, foolishly chooses to be all things that all women instinctively AREN’T attracted to in the insane hope that on a date of his choosing (forget hers), she’ll finally be attractive to him.
This, of course, is the easier and more emotionally safe route than owning the reasons for why the guy is actually being rejected by ALL women in the first place, which makes it the preferred choice of SO MANY INSECURE LOSERS in our society today.
“Use of the Friend Zone:”
“The Friend Zone” is a great way for a guy to hide from his own feelings of low self-worth and keep things fixated on someone else. It can serve as his fairy-tale world of cognitive dissonance where beliefs like, “I don’t want a girl who gets won over by money” and “Hey,why aren’t all these gifts I’m buying winning her over?”, can exist with the other unicorns and rats in his head.
It can be used as a conversation piece to further misogynist/sexist/hateful attitudes towards women, and keep her close for either a dramatic murder-suicide or at least a rape-in-waiting when all the ‘poor me’ pressures of being in the Zone finally get to be too much for him.”
I’ve known many a guy to fall victim to the friend zone as well as knowing women who used to laugh and brag about it with the guys in their lives. In either case, to me it is a man-created problem to which a man should own the solution to rather than trying to place it on a woman.
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May 13, 2013 at 1:25 pm
bleatmop
Wow, I came here to comment, but I see VR has already won the comment thread. Good comments Vern! The only thing I can add is that men also get to put women into the fabled friend zone. To me, the friend zone isn’t so much male vs female divide thing. It’s more a socially awkward person/persons who are not upfront with their feelings vs people who are upfront with their feelings and can accept rejection thing.
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May 13, 2013 at 6:06 pm
VR Kaine
Thank you for the compliment on the comments, Bleatmop, and I’m sorry if I butted in front of you :)
To your comment, I agree. To me, “accepting rejection” starts with someone not taking rejection so personally.
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May 14, 2013 at 10:53 am
The Arbourist
@Vern
Vern, you’ve got to stop throwing me these curve balls. I have you all set up in my mind and then on this particular issue you go all progressive and get it right. :) Will wonders never cease.
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May 14, 2013 at 11:14 am
VR Kaine
Haha! I’m happy to keep pleasantly surprising you, Arb, but perhaps the surprise keeps happening because my views are not so far from yours as you might think (not to suggest that the surprises are frequent, mind you, but nonetheless). :)
And as for being “progressive”, let’s just go with “somewhat evolved.” :) :)
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May 21, 2013 at 10:00 pm
Francois Tremblay
I think the Friend Zone has more to do with a certain category of men (I would include myself in that category) who simply don’t know how to interact with women. It’s really frustrating, but I don’t make up constructs to explain why that is.
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