Can men and women really be just friends? God I hope so.

The alternative ensures men see women as sexual objects first. As humans second.

Last week I published an article that received 20x the traffic my articles usually do. I articulated the difference between the men who like women and the men who don’t.

I posited a few reasons that so few men actually like women (as opposed to needing them, loving them or being attracted to them):

• Boys are socially punished for acting girly or liking anything girly, so why would men suddenly respect the embodiment of everything they’ve been trained to shun?

• Men are neither required to nor rewarded for liking women. Their reputation, success and popularity does not depend on treating women well. Often the opposite.

My brain has been busy mulling over your comments all week. You guys helped me see that I left out a sizable piece of the puzzle as to why many men don’t like women:

Thanks for your honesty here Ed.

I left out the sex piece, which admittedly is a pretty big piece.

Stanley Fritz

in his Substack “Let’s Not Be Trash” helps fill in even more of this particular puzzle piece. Like Ed, he admits that when he was rejected by women, he began to hate them:

"Men have been brought up in a culture that tells us we are more important than women. We are made to believe that they should defer to us and do what we say....

After every rejection...suddenly I was failing as a man, and unlovable. With nowhere else to turn, I grew tired of beating myself up. I shifted that negative energy towards women." -

Stanley Fritz

(stay tuned for more on Stanley’s story)

I’m equally appreciative of and frustrated with the bald admission from these quotes that men see women primarily as a vehicle for sexual gratification.

This of course is an ugly but important undercurrent to our “why do so few men like women” discussion.

As Stanley said, men have been brought up to believe that they should hold power over women. How incredibly frustrating then, that women have the power to withhold the thing they crave most. As the “less important” gender, women hold the devastating power to reject men and jeopardize their masculinity.

I’ll call this culture of seeing women primarily as vehicles for sexual gratification fraternity culture.

Purity Culture and Fraternity Culture: Two Sides of the Same Coin

But what about society’s “good” men? Those upstanding Christian men who show their respect by keeping their distance from women?

Well.

That’s part of the problem.

Listen to how similar this quote from Jacob, a Mormon missionary, sounds to Ed’s and Stanley’s above:

"It really bothered me seeing so many women in various states of undress. It was hard to focus and I felt weak and powerless around them. How were we to be strong and stay faithful? I had prayed and fasted about it constantly, and felt little strength in return. And I began to despise many of the women I encountered for “making” me feel that way. I knew plenty of other missionaries who felt the same in the face of these hellish sirens."¹

Purity culture and fraternity culture are two sides of the same coin. Both see women as sexual objects first. Humans second.²

Fraternity culture sees women as sexual objects to be used.

Purity culture sees women as sexual objects to be avoided.

Which is a real shame because by avoiding women, this keeps men from any environment where they could actually learn to see women as more than sexual objects. Where they could actually learn to like women.

As Bethany Cline articulated in her Instagram comment to last week’s article:

“In addition to your point of boys being taught to shun/hate all things feminine I believe purity culture makes boys/men fear actually liking women. They are taught ANY intimacy with a female will instantly lead to breaking the law of chastity....Heartbreakingly, [some men] strike me as the type who would actually like women if purity culture did not make them so scary."

After reading my article one man messaged me this:

“I love having friends that are women. But I've been warned time and time again not to be alone with the opposite sex that isn't my spouse. Don't drive in a vehicle alone. Why? why can't I have friends of the opposite gender and not have it be a sexual thing? I genuinely want a good friend regardless of gender. Where does that come from?”

Where indeed?

Well just a guess, but I think it stems from a culture that does not expect men to see women as something other than a means of sexual gratification.

This expectation is set so young and reinforced thousands of times.

The Antidote to Fraternity and Purity Culture: Female Friendship

One factor came up again and again in the comment section last week as the gold standard of men who like women:

Men who have female friends.

But cAn mEN aNd WOmEn jUst BE fRieNds?!?!?

In a viral video viewed over 15 million times, a Utah State student set out to answer this question once and for all:

Too long; didn’t watch: All the men answered no. All the women answered yes.

One of the boys said, “Because of physical attraction, it’s not possible.”

Which begs the question- what exactly is not possible? Controlling physical urges around girls? That’s a frightening prospect. Or is it not possible to want to be around women for anything other than sex?

Both paint a wildly unflattering picture of men and makes me, as a woman, feel like nothing more than a piece of meat.

Utah State later interviewed the creator of that viral video, Patrick Romero. Patrick had nothing but generosity in mind in creating the video: “I just want to show women how men’s minds work.”

In a similar act of altruism, Billy Crystal’s character in When Harry Met Sally nobly explains how things really are to Meg Ryan’s character:

Billy Crystal: "No man can be friends with a woman he finds attractive. He always wants to have sex with her."
Meg Ryan: "So a man can only be friends with a woman he finds unattractive?"
Billy Crystal: "No he pretty much wants to nail her too."

Women are not for being friends with. They are for having sex with.

All the men in the comment sections of these YouTube videos are in agreement- this is just the natural way of things. It’s just basic biology. Evolution. Genetics. Wired that way. Can’t be helped.

I appreciate the altruism of honesty here boys, but can’t help but wonder:

Are men just sayin it like it is? Or are they CREATING the way it is?

How much of this is a self-fulfilling prophecy? Men say they can’t control themselves, so we treat men like they can’t control themselves. Consequently no one- neither men nor women- expect them to be able to control themselves.

We don’t expect them to be able to form meaningful, respectful friendships with non-sexual partners.

But not being expected to respect women is not the same as not being able to.

Two things are true: 1. Heterosexual men get turned on by women. 2. Heterosexual men can learn to see women as more than just sex toys.

I have to believe that men and women can be friends. I have to. The alternative is to accept that men see me as a walking vagina instead of a human being.

I don’t accept this.

This is an insulting measure of men’s capabilities.

Men are capable of respecting women. Men are capable of being friends with women. Millions of men are proving this to be true every day.

But men historically have neither been required nor expected to respect women.

Men are capable of change.

Remember Stanley? He openly admits in the past he was kind and respectful towards women not because he wanted to be their friend, but exclusively to get them to sleep with him.

But now he says,

“I wish I could tell you that the number of women I hurt could be counted on one hand, but it can’t. I am deeply sorry for the things I said, and I hope that maybe this will get to some of the people I hurt… We have to be committed to shifting the way we think about and engage with women. We are all living in a world that has created unhealthy norms around gender and gender roles. Just because we now see it as a problem doesn’t mean it will all magically stop. That takes effort, support, love, and empathy. It won’t be easy, but we can do it."

Remember Jacob, the Mormon missionary infuriated by women dressing “immodestly?”

He too has had a change of heart; assisted greatly by one of his missionary companions who grew up in Hawaii and showed him it IS possible to see women as humans (even, gasp, the ones in bikinis). Of this companion Jacob said,

“His friends’ mothers often wore bikinis to the beach; he was used to seeing every girl he knew like that....it really didn’t bother him.

...his normal sexual desire was disassociated from crippling anxiety and the feeling of losing control, of being everywhere surrounded by harm and threat. He loved girls, he said, and had always wanted to be with them regularly. But he didn’t obsess over girls or think of them as sexual objects designed for his own titillation, to constantly flee from until you hopefully found the safe haven of marriage at some point in the future. He didn’t think girls could directly and irrevocably cause inappropriate thoughts, but that such thoughts were just part of becoming an adult human being, and needed to be acknowledged and managed accordingly. He said he felt free."

Can women and men just be friends?

God I hope so.

The alternative is discouragingly bleak for both men and women.

1. This missionary changes how he views women and modesty culture in an article I’ve quoted MANY times in the past decade: Men, Sex, and Modesty.

2. if they ever get to the human part.