Here's how this came about. I am what might once have been called "hopeless with women", a phrase that to me evokes the same usage as "hopeless with horses" or "hopeless at Bagatelle", as if women are an aristocratic pastime to be discussed over cigars and brandy at the Club. What it actually means is that I don't really get the flirting thing, never really know how to point out that I'm sexually available, and am 5'4" with the face of an eight-year-old and so never come across as particularly sexually threatening anyway. All of which is fine, and puts me in a category with a lot of vaguely geeky males who drew the short straw in being born into a bullshit patriarchal society that expects men to "make the move" like predators roaming the Serengeti for prey. It's just one of those things. But this one night, when I was chatting to one of my more feminist female friends on walk home from a social occasion about quite why I was so hopeless, she suggested that the reason I might spend all my time in the "friend zone" is because I think I'm a Nice Guy. And once I finally got what she actually meant, I was, as I say, horrified.
Now, as a rule I find putting people into neat pigeonholes that the blogosphere has come up with to be dehumanising and simplistic, but there's no getting away from the fact that there are plenty of guys who do spend an awful lot of time wondering why they aren't getting any and blaming it on their Niceness as compared to all the Bastards that women in their silly, easily dominated way tend to go for. They blame it on the Friend Zone, the mighty weapon of women everywhere that prevents you from getting into her pants via a sophisticated social force-field of friendliness. And yeah, I recognise that, at least a bit. There have been plenty of times when I've decided I'd definitely like to try and make a move on someone I'm friendly with, only to realise that's not a great plan, because, well, that particular sexy ship has sailed and we now are quite comfortable as friends. So my friend got it part right.
The reason that I ended up being toweringly offended by the accusation, however, is that there is a very, very key difference between me and the standard fedora-wearing internet Nice Guy. I don't think I'm owed sex. I really, honestly don't. The notion that I might end up resenting one of my female friends because I had assumed that part of the friendship contract we signed included the odd one-night-stand whenever I was feeling blueballed is horrible. It's also enough to make me feel goddamn offended when someone suggests I would be such a twenty-four carat arsehole.
Yet I can forgive my confidant her assumption of my utter moral turpitude in as far as there are no internet-generated categories for Nice-Guy-who-is-incompetent-with-flirtation-but-doesn't-blame-it-on-the-womenfolk. And I'm sure I can't be the only one. The thing is, so much of the internet discussion around the Friend Zone has focussed on its use as a concept by entitled arseholes. This has led to plenty of feminists denying that it's a thing at all. But I think it is.
The key question here is whether you think sex is a right (a clue: it isn't). As long as you don't think that, you don't quite deserve the scorn and opprobrium heaped on you by the antagonists of the Friend Zone and the Nice Guy. Isn't there a space for the guy who makes friends with a woman, realises he fancies her but has firmly found himself beyond the point where he should have made something clear to her, and whose response is not "Waaaahh" but "Oh, shit"?
And this brings me to my final point. Isn't the Friend Zone in that form going to be more of a problem for male feminists than anyone else? After all, as a feminist (or, to use the term I prefer, A Decent Person) you go into every new relationship with a female acquaintance looking at them not as a potential penis-receptacle but as a person, hopefully. And the moment you actually start fancying them should with luck come a little further down the line once you know them as a person. And then, because we live in a ridiculous society that has trained us to see Real Men as dick-swinging gorillas making sexual advances the moment they even make eye contact with a vagina-owner they like the look of, you might be a bit stuck for ideas.
Yes, there are plenty of things you can do to make it clear to someone you've known for a while that you're suddenly into them. That's a topic for another post. But for the moment, consider this. Not knowing what those things are does not make you a misogynist Nice Guy. It is perfectly possible to be a feminist guy who reads Jezebel, signs all the petitions against Page 3 and knows what the Smurfette Principle is and still be clueless as to how to actually get someone to fancy you. Tarring every resident of the Friend Zone with the same brush is not fair. More categories, please, internet, it's what you're good at.
No really, I am. I'm lovely. Honest.
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