Damned if I do, Damned if I don't.

A topic we recently discussed in lecture includes the question of whether men and women can be friends without there being a sense of sexual attraction or interaction. At first when Professor Jackson announced the topic the first thought that came to mind was of course men and women can be friends. Later that night it got me thinking about my friendships with the opposite sex. Growing up for me was a bit different from the average American Girl. I grew up with five friends, and I was the only girl. These friends weren’t friends that I had formed myself but rather were friends I had been given due to the fact our parents had been friends long before we were thought of. This might have some influence of why I have always thought as the opposite sexes being friends without sexual intention wasn’t a problem. As I got older I soon realized that the friendships I had formed at a young age wasn’t very common. The first time I experienced this was in middle school when one of the boys I grew up with was playing basketball with other boys in our grade. I waved him on trying to get his attention and he was clearly ignoring me. All I wanted was to play with them, not sit on the floor with the girls snickering about who was cute. After school I caught up with him on the walk home and he started explaining to me that it wasn’t cool for guys and girls to hang out during school and that he didn’t want me to tell any of his new friends that we hung out outside of school. Many years later we were in high school and I tried to rekindle our friendship seeing how we now went to different schools. The more we started to hang out the more our friends thought something else was going on. No matter how many times we’ve explained our friendship it didn’t matter, people thought what they thought and it eventually ruined a great friendship. I guess our culture and generation is partially to blame for the idea of men and women not being able to be friends without there being some sort of intention involved. The point of my story is to show at a young age innocence takes prevalence over us whereas, at the age of a teenager, our innocence fades and culture teaches us how to act, think, dress, and so forth. In Conclusion, I myself believe that men and women can be friends without there being sexual intentions involved because I have witnesses and been apart of friendships as such. However, if I hadn’t been apart of those friendships, I would think likewise because I didn’t know better and our generations culture wouldn’t allow it. In the article linked above I agree when the author concludes that feminism has something to do with the friendship links between men and women. However, I highly disagree with the statement that friendships between men and women are still disregarded in some societies.