Just when I thought that this year would bring something to save my faith in humanity, I was duped once again. Recently, there was an article written on Odyssey called "Women Cannot Be Best Friends With Men." It was shared on the Odyssey Facebook page and gained a startling amount of hate. Go figure.
The article states that a guy and a girl cannot be best friends with each other without falling in love.
You would think after everything that's been going on in the world about gender, sexuality and what not, we would be tolerant of the idea of a guy and a girl being friends with no romantic feelings shared whatsoever, but apparently, that's not the case.
The author, Kimberly Annette Roach, states that the men and the women discussed in her article are heterosexual. This eliminates the case regarding two friends of different genders and sexualities. Roach's first claim is that the general population of heterosexual men and women are incapable of being friends with each other. Considering that she did not mention people of other sexualities, this implies that only heterosexuals practice this type of behavior. So a heterosexual guy and a heterosexual girl are unable to become best friends with each other without falling in love, but two homosexual men or two homosexual women can remain friends without falling in love? This claim also assumes that all women and all men are currently single as of this moment. She fails to consider those in relationships. For those people, it could be possible for one of the individuals in the relationship to view their current significant other as their best friend.
The second thing addressed is that men and women can be friends but not best friends. Where is that line? What splits "friend" and "best friend"? Throughout the process of friendship, the girl will "learn him." That means intense Facebook stalking right?
Wrong.
Apparently, that means meeting his family, learning his most embarrassing childhood story, his proudest accomplishment, which, according to the author, are "simple things that make you love him." It's flatly obvious why they're called that. These aren't things that anyone would disclose to their friends! Maybe I have a low level of self-disclosure, but by pulling out such personal things out of a person, she is essentially setting herself up to fall in love with him.
I guess the general gripe I have isn't really the issue at hand but rather the way our author approaches it. Every point she makes is purely based on assumption. She assumes that only heterosexuals are incapable of being "just friends" with each other. She assumes that all women and men are single, and are therefore capable of falling in love with their best friend. She also assumes that all people have the same method of befriending people, asking the most personal of questions so that he/she can eventually fall in love. By implying that her audience thinks like her or should think like her, I conclude that our author here has a massive superiority complex.
To the author: Just because you are incapable of doing something, that does not mean that everyone else in the world is. You may view every straight guy in sight as a potential partner but not all women view men that way. This does not mean that your views are wrong, it simply means that you should not tell people to conform to yours.
So yeah, guard your heart. But guard your brain, too. The last thing you want is more poison.
