Thursday, January 24, 2013

I Have Male Friends, & This Isn't an Anomaly

Seriously. Evidently people are still confused by this whole concept of grown ass people being friends with each other, most recently in this ridiculous article on Role/Reboot ("Make sense of men & women" is their subtitle. I can't even). Let's break down the stupid, shall we?

1) Her opening paragraph describes her amazing friendship with a man. SHE DISPROVES HER OWN FUCKING HYPOTHESIS BEFORE SHE EVEN STATES HER HYPOTHESIS. She answers her own question in the fucking lede but then tries to prove the opposite is true. I just... why did she write this again?

2) Queer people, I'm sure you'll be absolutely shocked to learn that you once again don't exist. Following Leslie Rasmussen's train of thought though, you'd have to believe that coupled gay men and lesbians are only friends with people of the opposite gender and bi people have only their partner to rely on because they just can't be trusted around anyone.

3)
"maybe there's a lack of interest because our partner meets that need we have for getting attention from the opposite sex."
I am not friends with anyone just for any (presumed sexual) attention they may give me. And if anyone is friends with me for that reason? Well they're not really my friend because, dude, that's hella insulting. I am friends with the (female AND male!) people in my life because they are awesome people. Awesomness, like shit lordness, knows no gender.

4)
"Or it could be that the wives of our old male friends were less than thrilled that we were in their husbands' lives. I know I wouldn't have liked my husband having a close friendship with another woman, unless she looked like a Furby if the Furby was having a bad hair day."
 Jealous bitches be jealous.

5) There's also this assumption that being "just" friends means there's absolutely no sexual attraction, ever, the entire time you know the person. I am "just" friends with a few of my exes. And with people I used to sleep with, either on the regular or just once and then we realized that wouldn't work for us. And with people I crushed hard on for a bit but decided the friendship was worth more to me than acting on a fleeting crush. And people I did act on the crush on, and we went back to just friends (after some brief awkwardness) when it wasn't reciprocated.

This is probably the place to point out that non monogamous people also don't exist. Or maybe in point 4 where it's assumed everyone (haha ok, just women) gets jealous when their partner is with someone not them.

There's probably plenty more stupid to go around but really I just feel sad that the author holds this rather depressing worldview. To throw away the friendship and love of people based solely on their gender seems like a lonely way to go through life.