What Happens Next: A Gallimaufry

melancholic romantic comic cynic. bi & genderqueer. fantasy writer. sysrae on ao3.

Anonymous asked: In response to your 'friend zone' post: It doesn't seem to be entirely fair. You're responding to a small group of albeit douchey people. By saying the term means that you're not a sexually compatible partner that is to say that dating is merely a verbal/societal contract in which two friends have sex. A relationship that develops between people beyond a friendship is more than just sex but 'being friendzoned' is as if to be unnoticed. Its not a feeling of denial, its to feel unappreciated.

I agree that wanting to move beyond friendship is about more than just sex, and that doubtless many people who think they’re in the friend zone care more about the rejection than the lack of nookie. I’ve also had a lot of people come back to me and say things along the lines of, ‘But I/we use the term differently, in a female-positive/gender neutral/inoffensive context - why are you just singling out the worst possible usage of it?’

To which I have two responses:

1. I strongly suspect the negative usage to be the dominant usage; and even if not, it’s significant enough that other people using the term should be aware of the extent to which that negative definition impacts on and bleeds into their usage of it, and other people’s reactions to it. No matter which way you cut it, friend zone is a loaded term, and a lot of people who use it casually tend to forget that. Particularly as:

2. No matter how benevolently you think your usage is, if you’re using it - as the majority of people are - to refer to the fact that Person A has caused Person B to enter the friendzone, then for Person A? The usage is not benevolent. All the supposed neutrality, tactfulness and kindness implied by 'positive’ usages refers only to the motives, actions and status of Person B: the term is geared to make them, whoever they are and whatever they’ve done, appear sympathetic, or to describe a situation which is emotionally difficult for them. But Person A, the person who has either rejected their advances or is the subject of their longing? For them, the term will never have a positive usage, because it exists to define their actions, or their romantic choices, or their personality, as having done damage to someone else. And though, human nature being what it is, there are doubtless times where Person A has done this carelessly or even maliciously, in the vast majority of instances, Person A’s only crime can be boiled down to their lack of romantic interest in Person B, for which they are then declared to have put Person B in the friend zone.

This is why friendzoning, as a terminology, is problematic: because no matter how kind or accurate the user means to be, it’s still ultimately a negative term for the person it’s used against - and a lot of the time, the user isn’t even trying to be kind. 

  1. fozmeadows posted this