To hear some tell it, there is no crueller torture a woman can inflict upon a man than to be his friend. Because, as the saddest sad men of the internet will happily explain to you at length, men and women can’t really be friends. Any woman who think she has male friends is fooling herself; all her supposed male friends have ulterior motives, if you know what I mean and I think you do.
They want to take her to the Bone Zone, in the parlance of our time, but she has put them in the Friend Zone instead, a hellish sexless purgatory that only the exquisitely charming and wholly fictional Jim Halpert on The Office has been able to escape. Such, at least, is the Friend Zone myth.
I’ve read a lot of silly things about the alleged evils of the alleged Friend Zone over the years, mostly in the form of terrible memes or scary rants on some misbegotten misogynist subreddit. But the silliest thing I’ve read on the subject for some time is a post that went up earlier this week on The Federalist, a right-wing media outlet with a heavy Christian bent.
In “Why Men and Women Can Never Be ‘Just Friends,'” Lutheran pastor and “comical video” maker Hans Fiene argues that we need to “tear down the Friend Zone” so American men and women can marry younger and “raise our sagging birth rates” so the world won’t run out of babies.
No, really.
All of us need to start having more babies or else the upcoming demographic tsunami will consume our nation, cripple our social programs, and leave us with a future so bleak that our only source of joy will be the moment we’re chosen to receive the sweet, fatal kiss of the Obamacare Death Panels, the Trumpcare Firing Squads, or the OprahCare Hemlock Squadrons.
Despite the achingly off-key “humor” at the end there — did I mention that Fiene makes “comical videos” on the side? — this argument, such as it is, is meant in all seriousness. As Fiene sees it, every day America’s hapless males waste in the Friend Zone is a day they could be making babies with a loving wife.
Being caught in the Friend Zone is an inarguable drag on fertility rates, as a man who spends several years pledging his heart to a woman who will never have his children is also a man who most likely won’t procreate with anyone else during that time of incarceration. Free him to find a woman who actually wants to marry him, however, and he’ll have several more years to sire children who will laugh, create, sing, fill the world with love and, most importantly, pay into Social Security.
Quite simply, for the sake of our future, the Friend Zone must be destroyed.
Fiene’s case against the Friend Zone is if anything even sillier than his demographic alarmism. He begins by sketching out the true horror of the purgatory that is the Friend Zone.
Every year, countless young men find themselves trapped in the Friend Zone, a prison where women place any man they deem worthy of their time but not their hearts, men they’d love to have dinner with but, for whatever reason, don’t want to kiss goodnight.
Fiene is apparently baffled and appalled by the notion that any woman might want to have dinner with a man without wanting — literally — to have his babies.
The women of America, he argues, need to accept two harsh truths: “you don’t have any guy friends and, in fact, you can’t have any guy friends” — because any dude who likes to spend time alone with a woman actually just wants to get with her.
Fiene has a rather hackneyed notion of what men are looking for in a friend — basically a dudely dude type
who shares his interest in activities such as watching movies where things explode, playing video games where things explode, or putting fireworks in things so they’ll explode.
And in Fiene’s mind, women just aren’t qualified for that position, which strikes me as a rather strange contention because, well, my best friend IS a woman, and we have spent many hours over many years “watching movies where things explode [and] playing video games where things explode.”
We’ve also spent many hours watching Project Runway, and gleefully mocking the worst dressed at the Academy Awards. Because we’re actual human beings whose interests don’t map directly onto hackneyed stereotypes of what men and women enjoy. (She does have a hard time convincing me to watch Jane Austen movies though.) Oh, and we have no interest in sex or romance with each other; we enjoy those things with other people.
But I guess I’m delusional to think she and I are real friends, because everything she provides, friendship-wise, could apparently be provided much more efficiently by another dude. As Fiene sees it, “the average male coworker, male neighbor, or male Nepalese yak herder is better at producing masculine companionship” than women. Indeed, as Fiene (or his editor) declares in a big bold subhed, “There’s Only One Thing You Can Give His Man Friends Can’t.”
And, no, that isn’t “vagina.” It’s “vagina in the context of a loving marriage,” though Fiene doesn’t put it quite that baldly.
Addressing his female readers directly, Fiene tells them that when a man signs you up as a friend,
It’s not because he wants your friendship. It’s because he wants to convince you to open up the supply chain of a romantic relationship to him, and he foolishly believes he can do so by being a loyal friendship customer. “Pay my dues in the Friend Zone,” he thinks, “and one day she’ll promote me to boyfriend.”
Fiene assures the ladies that
Just because men don’t want to be your friend, however, doesn’t mean they don’t enjoy your company. They most certainly do. They love discovering how you see the world, what you think about life, the universe, and everything. They love your kindness, thoughtfulness, sensitivity, support, and your nurturing heart. They love being in your presence when you display the wonders of the feminine virtues.
At least when those “feminine virtues” come as part of a package deal with vagina — though, again, Fiene puts it a bit more delicately.
[B]ecause God designed these [feminine] virtues to entice men into marriage, the average man will never be content to receive those gifts in a form of companionship that doesn’t lead to marriage. Quite simply, men can’t be at peace being just friends. And there’s nothing you can do to change that. Platonic chilling won’t stop your inner (and outer) beauty from pulling a man towards romantic love.
So what is to be done? The women of America need to clear out their Friend Zones — kicking the guys they don’t find attractive to the curb and marrying up those guys who at least sort of stir their loins a little.
First, he informs the female reader, she needs to address those Friend-Zoned men who don’t
fill you with the biological desire to repopulate the earth? If not, then do your “friend” a solid and let him go. Call him up and tell him, “It’s not my fault that your facial symmetry grosses out my ovaries, but it was my fault that I got your hopes up by putting you in the Friend Zone. As restitution, please accept the phone numbers of five girls I know who find you attractive. Stop wasting your time with me and go hang out with a girl who might one day bear your children.”
Apparently Fiene thinks human beings talk to each other like that.
“Conversely,” Fiene continues,
if you find your guy friend attractive, and if you see him as a man of character and heart, then call him right now and tell him that he was placed in the Friend Zone due to a clerical error. Say to him, “You make me laugh and would be a great husband and father. Clearly, you need to be on the express track to the Marriage Zone.”
How … romantic?
Fiene concludes his strange little anti-Friend Zone manifesto with a stirring paean to the transcendent glories of … increased baby production.
So get brave. Get married. Get pregnant a bunch of times and give birth to a bunch of beautiful little future taxpayers. The time has come to fight for our future. The time has come to rebuild America’s demographic glory atop the rubble of the fertility-killing Friend Zone.
I think I’ll pass, thanks!
So who exactly is this manifesto supposed to inspire? Nothing in it bears much resemblance to the world I live in. Fiene’s resolutely heteronormative, baby-centric utopia offers nothing to the gay, bi, or trans folk I know, nor is it going to appeal to those with no interest in traditional marriage and/or children. Hell, its visions of masculinity and femininity are so constricted they don’t even fit most of the straight, cis people I know.
I certainly wouldn’t want to be trapped in the Fiene Zone, that’s for sure.
It’s not shadowrun, but I remember a cyberpunk game where we planned an heist for two session, started it, then decided midway to steal a flying tank that were visible on the scryscrapper next to the one we were in instead of finishing the heist.
The newspaper had an headline about super-sneaky thiefs who faked an heist to divert the attention from the flying tank where all that happened where that we had the consistency of a squirrel :p
*blech*
Jesus Christ, do articles like this on conservative websites like this from conservative pundits like this make me want to vomit before punching the guys who wrote them in the face and marching out to get a vasectomy.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the price of raising a child in the US in the present day is $250,000 dollars. What this means is that the cost of raising three children, and thus attaining that sacred cow of 2.1 children per woman, would be $750,000 dollars. Now, this may come as a surprise to you, but the average person, certainly not the average 18 – 30 year old, doesn’t possess a spare $750,000 dollars.
On one hand, if you do have children, and then request any federal assistance whatsoever (in the form of universal healthcare, a minimum wage, free college tuition, paid maternity leave, public housing, rent control, etc.) in meeting these costs, then these people (conservatives) are all: “Arrrggghhh! Soshullizzum! Komyoonizzum! Don’t have children you can’t afford! Millennials think they’re entitled to everything! Barglebarglebargle…” On the other hand, if you don’t have children because you can’t meet these costs, then these people (conservatives) are all: “Arrrggghhh! Demographic decline! White genocide! We’ll be taken over by the evil stupid subhuman Muslims! Millennials don’t want to commit to anything! Barglebarglebargle…” Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
I’m sorry, conservatives, you can’t have it both ways – berating white millennials for refraining from having multiple children whilst simultaneously refusing to spend a cent of taxpayer money on anything that would make having multiple children less financially-untenable than it currently is for most of them. The image that comes to mind is 20 people surrounding a man and ordering him to dig a 10-foot deep hole, whilst refusing to pitch in $2 dollars each so he can buy a $20 dollar shovel. People will have children as soon as they get rid of their six figure student loans, as soon as you don’t have to be a millionaire just to own a house in most cities, and as soon as a medical emergency wouldn’t bankrupt them. Until then, shut your self-righteous traps!
Ariblester says:
Yeah, 日本字 is an uncommon term referring to written characters used in Japan (ie. kanji and kana). In defense of Ooglyboggles’ typo, the now-banned anime nazi robot-humper probably would claim to be a supremacist of Japanese orthography, though I doubt he can read more than three kana at best.
Now, I love Japanese orthography myself. But I’d also be the first to admit that it’s one of the most needlessly complicated and difficult to learn writing systems in the world.
@abars01:
But if you don’t incur the expense on their behalf, then they wouldn’t be able to get rich. Haz u no feelz for rich old white men?
@Ohlmann, ChimericMind:
My experience of Shadowrun is that it involves six-hour planning montages to come up with elaborate schemes, which are then abandoned as soon as anything unexpected happens. My particular favourite session involved three different shadowrunner groups all coincidentally launching missions against the same facility on the same night, albeit with slightly varied objectives. It took a while to work it out because the third group had come disguised as a HTR team.
(It was also a heavily female player group, interestingly. They spent twenty minutes eating cheetos and arguing about the correct spells to cast to ensure that they could crash an armoured van through a glass-front lobby successfully. Gender norms, what are they?)
And they say sexism is over
Every time there’s a mention of Shadowrun I keep reading it as Shadowfax. Shadowfax was a computer game that just had had us all mesmerised back in the day because of the amazingly realistic horse animations. It won awards. Might not look much now, but back then we assumed they must have used magic to trap an actual horse in our tellies.
Troubelle and Ktoryx:
Speculated about running for president in 2020. Because clearly the future of US presidency belongs to nitwit TV celebrities.
IDK, from context I’m guessing she said she’d expand Obamacare or something. Meanwhile, mainstream Republicans are hoping to downsize Obamacare under Trump administration.
Now, people like Fiene apparently think any kind of healthcare system is evil and illegitimate. The only legitimate death panels are those held by unregulated private insurance companies.
The reaction of the Internet to this whole thing reminds me of two cats who had their box in my writing space (it was a complex rooming situation; their owner was rooming in my apartment in an emergency). Cat One would poop, then walk about a yard away, then make covering-up scrapes on the floor nearby. Cat Two would come in a few minutes later, look at the litterbox, look at me, and (I swear) sigh, and cover up the other cat’s poop, looking at me all the time as if to say, “Ugh, this guy is an idiot. Please don’t judge catkind based upon this moron’s lack of manners. THIS is how a real cat poops.”
#notallcats #weneedFullersearthforthisshit, etc.
Ain’t nobody here but us feminazi gynoids!
WWTH:
Refer him to Rosie Palm’s five daughters.
I dunno if Humbug is still reading, but if he is, do you guys think anyone should let him know that serious use of “SJW” and “feminazi” are both code for “I’m a /channer asshole that nobody should listen to, just in case that wasn’t clear from all of the other ignorant shit I’ve been spewing!”?
EDIT: I know technically Reddit and the /chans are different, but honestly I don’t see much point in distinguishing between them.
Why is the Department of Argiculture so interested in the costs of raising children? Is there some sort of “modest proposal” thing going on that we should know about?
Re : the Japanese “Establishment”
Just gonna leave a reminder out here that this is Japan’s Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe :
http://pds.joins.com/jmnet/koreajoongangdaily/_data/photo/2013/05/14214144.jpg
He might pretend to be prime minister but clearly that Decepticon is the one pulling the strings.
Like I’ve said in previous posts, it truly seems like the idea of choosing not to have children never, ever entered the minds of people like Hans. Obviously as a conservative minister of religion, there’s a cultural factor there as well, but it still amazes me that this seems to be the case. The bulk of these patronising “have ALL the babies” pieces seem to come primarily from cishet men, couching their own insecurity at not having bred in histrionics over demographic decline or shrinking taxpayer bases.
I dunno, you’d think with their constant braying about “not being told what to do” by society, that these conservative-libertarian types wouldn’t be easily cowed into pursing marriage and kids as “something you’re supposed to do.” I guess rugged individualism takes a back seat where outbreeding the brown people is concerned, eh?
@AlanRobertshaw.
‘Why is the Department of Agriculture so interested…?’
Maybe they’re going to grow wheat for flour and mix it with schoolkids to create self-raising children, which are surely cheaper!
Ba-dum-tss! You’re welcome!
And with that bombshell, two weeks without the internet begins. You all have a great time folks!
@Humbug
Wanking in the comments section doesn’t actually count as sperm donation. See if you’re qualified for one of these places instead:
http://www.spermbankdirectory.com/donating-sperm#eligible
@ Kat
The Pretty-darned-fundamentalist church I attended as a child held that “dancing [was] a vertical expression of a horizontal desire” and not to be engaged in….
@ Bina
Waitaminnit, isn’t that one of behaviors the chucklefuck-in-chief said was ok???
@ David
darnit… I was about to critique their grammar…. 🙁
@Weird . . . Eddie
Garrison Keillor (lately of Prairie Home Companion) says that his childhood church banned premarital sex because it led to dancing.
@Aunt Podger
I have a three-legged cat who can’t cover up her poop. Also, her fur is long and sometimes her poop sticks to it. Then it falls off later. She’s a very sensitive little girl who has gone through some difficult times, so I make sure to always congratulate her on her poop art. “Your art is so bold, so ‘outside the box.’ ” She seems to appreciate my compliments.
Ooglyboggles: “Speaking as an Asian American”
Ohlmann: …
Oh dear.
I had been confused about Ooglyboggles writing in US english sometimes, and in francophone-second-language-english some other times.
Turns out there are two user names that start with O, and they represent different people.
Man, the internet is hard!
@numerobis
Do you also struggle with Policy of Madness and Imaginary Petal’s cat gravatars ?
Because I do 😐
Wait, you’re all different people??
Humbug said that? In this comment section? I trust they were corrected. Very funny!
So if Hans is so worried about falling birth rates in America, he probably agrees we should let in more immigrants and refugees, right? *crickets* Hmm, it’s almost as if he’s only talking about one specific type of American!
He was. He still insisted he was right. Just another guy who doesn’t believe in what he’s never seen.