It’s about Gender, my Friend
- by Pixel
Bah. I had a whole post written, but decided it was too emotional, even for my current trend. Essentially the post asked, “why do genders matter in platonic friendships?”
Which they do, often to the point where it borders on non-platonicity. But enough about that. No one wants to hear me wonder how I would act differently if my male friends were female and my female friends were male. The change would change so many things that it’s just useless to wonder that.
No, what I want to say is that the very concept of platonic friends is skewed. Friendship, as I tried to show in this post, is not an on/off thing like my hairstyles are. Friendship is more of a broad spectrum. At one end you have Mortal Enemies, at the other you have True Friends, right in the middle are Strangers. It’s a bell curve (for most people), and like all bell curves, there are many, many, more Strangers than there are True Friends or Mortal Enemies.
Allow me to illustrate:
Mortal Enemies/Enemies/People you Dislike/Annoyances/One-way Strangers/Strangers/Byte-sized Acq./Friendly Acq./Buddies/Good Friends/True Friends
If your browser didn’t show awesomeness: get a new browser. The point is that the scope of Platonic Friendships and that of Non-Platonic Relationships (the term should be Erotic, but that’d mean something different to this audience) have similar points, but aren’t even on the same realm.
Case in point: You may hate your Ex, but he or she cannot be a Mortal Enemy. Ever. Whereas a True Friend can become a Mortal Enemy in much the same way a Life Partner (for hatred of the term ‘Soul Mate’) can become a Dreaded Ex.
Perhaps in a future post I will elaborate on the scope of Erotic Relationships (oh, grow up! Or get a Greek-English Dictionary).
The point is that unfortunately, any person you meet who is of your preferred gender will automatically be associated, in your mind, with the Erotic Relationship scale rather than the Platonic Friendship scale. You can stop this thinking, of course, but you’ll have to be around each other for a long time– in a friendly capacity– to break your minds out of the Erotic Relationship scale and back into the Platonic Friendship scale (the guy’s mind is usually the one that needs the extra push).
Unfortunately, it’ll take a lot of training to break yourself out of the cycle altogether, and even then, the other person will likely still be stuck in it.
Such is life.
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Bah. I had a whole post written, but decided it was too emotional, even for my current trend. Essentially the post asked, “why do genders matter in platonic friendships?” Which they do, often to the point where it borders on non-platonicity. But enough about that. No one wants to hear me wonder how I would…
Wow. I like that analysis. I feel we can integrate the twain. My whole argument is that there is no such clear-cut division as your diagram suggests. So if you just blur the borders a bit (and add byte-sized acquaintances, buddies, and best friends), then our ideas are really the exact same.
So to speak.
Interesting analysis.
I see it more like worlds and donuts. I provide a diagram.
As you can see, the little man (purportedly, you, or whoever you’re talking about), is within the “family” world, but holds the “best friend” world and “mortal enemy” world in his right and left hand respectively. The “friends” donut or ring lacks the best friend/family/mortal enemy element (which is why it is a donut in the first place), and the “acquaintances” donut lacks even more to be whole or to be an actual world.
The “platonic friendship” I wouldn’t place in a world at all, like you can’t place it on the spectrum: it would be more like a force from outside – denoted by arrows – which travels freely between worlds, but doesn’t necessarily land in a specific location. It never fully penetrates any world, really, unless you – who are also mobile within these worlds/rings – decide to penetrate the corresponding world/ring of the other person – ie, if both of you decide to land in “friends” world, then you will find each other as friends; if one lands in “friends” and the other lands in “best friends/lovers”, you won’t find each other at all or you will be operating from different worlds.
And thus, the expression, “worlds apart.”
(Eee I think I need sleep. But I will read The Hobbit first and try to stop being wierd.)
But what if you’re bi! oh well, such is life.
“They’re more like the rings…” I’m pretty sure that’s a simile. That being said, I was simultaneously very disappointedly and interested in this post. For me to explain, would take time and effort. So I leave all in peace.
I had a dream about you last night. I thought you’d like to hear that. It was disturbing to me, I must admit, seeing as I do not know you. I dreamt that I decided on a whim to meet you in Australia (absurd in itself), and then you picked me up, and sometime during the night I got separated from you and your friends and I was stranded in Australia without your number or anyone to call and I was very very frightened.
Weird. =|
Oh, and the lines of the worlds/donuts are not meant to be solid – just for diagram sake they are drawn as such. They’re more like the rings of Saturn in that they are truly not solid objects, but many rocks floating around up there that generally stay within their own orbit, but occasionally may break through layers.
Ooo I got a whole metaphor going on here. I like metaphors. 😀