even above and beyond the totally fallacious idea that a girl owes you her romantic interest in exchange for being treated with basic decency.
It’s got this absolutely toxic undertone to it in the idea that of course you’re after her romantically, you were nice to her. It suggests that it would be utterly unthinkable for you to treat a girl as a friend or an equal if you weren’t actively trying to get into her pants.
What the fuck?
HELLO
JUST A SMALL NOTE TO LET YOU KNOW THAT GUYS AND FRIENDZONE GIRLS TOO AND THIS IS A THING THAT HAPPENS OK I KNOW WOW SHOCKING HOW DARE BOYS NOT WANT TO SHOVE HIS DICK IN OUR GLOWING SELF-RIGHTEOUS FEMINIST VAGINAS
GOOD DAY TO YOU
There’s a small but vitally important semantic distinction here; guys do not ‘friendzone’ girls. That is not a thing, because that is not a word that girls en masse use to describe the act of a man wanting to be friends with her. ‘The friendzone’ does not refer to one individual choosing only to view one other individual as a friend rather than as a romantic prospect. It is a mistaken belief that on a cultural level, women - in general, as a UNIT - pathologically deny men their ‘right’ to romantic relations with them.
If a man chooses to treat a woman as a friend, he is not ‘friendzoning’ her. He is being a friend.
I am a girl. I have been friendzoned. Out-right, in my face, friendzoned. This. is. not. gender. exclusive.
I think you may’ve misunderstood my drive here - in which case, I explained it poorly, apologies.
No, of course it happens. Of course there are occasions where a woman’s romantic intent is misinterpreted as friendly and treated determinedly as such.
The whole umbrella notion of the ‘friendzone’, though, is inherently, exclusively referent to when a woman does this ‘to’ a man. There is no larger quasicultural belief at work here suggesting that men-as-a-whole do this to women-as-a-whole, whereas those who bandy about the term ’friendzone’ do seem to believe the reverse.
'The friendzone' isn't about isolated incidents. It's about the perceived 'rule'.