You Have Misunderstood Friendship.

The idea that people should simply exclude half the human population from the pool of potential friends is extraordinary to me. If you genuinely cannot fathom why anyone would ever have a friend of the opposite sex, I would suggest that you cannot really fathom friendship at all.

I know that one has been in my “Links” posts, but wanted to say a little bit about this. I also find it nearly-unutterably idiotic the idea that men and women cannot be friends. I’m extremely grateful for my women friends. I am not “orbiting” them (whatever that means); they are not orbiting me. We hang out. We do fun things. We watch movies. We share thoughts, ideas, and advice. We laugh.  We visit museums. We go to restaurants. Just like male friends (though most of my friends are in fact women).

The fear beneath the dogmatic claim that heterosexual men and women cannot be friends is, of course, that friendship might lead to romantic or sexual attraction, with all the complications that could follow, particularly if one or both people are already in relationships. But this concern reflects a curiously immature understanding of human relationships. Mature human beings generally move through the world encountering many attractive people while simply not acting on that fact. Attraction does not compel any action and, in partnered adults with rudimentary impulse control, it generally functions as an observation that passes through the mind and passes out again.

Exactly. I find all my women friends beautiful in different ways. That does not mean we have to sleep together. Anyway, why in hell would I want to hang out with someone of either gender I did not find attractive or interesting in some way? Sounds stupid, like something a clown would do. And I’ve spent my life attempting to avoid clownish shit.

Men who cannot be friends with women and vice versa are intellectually stunted and not full human beings. Simple as that.