But the thing is, why is this considered a problem really? Should we only have sex with our enemies or persons we don't like? I understand the underlying reasoning, the questions are for the most part rhetorical, but I just don't find the whole idea very well thought out, not to mention it's completely wrong in the "always" part. Also, I never heard people say gay men or lesbians can never be friends. Why is that? Is there some bogus assumption that hetero sexuality is somehow different in nature?
The point is that the "sex part" does not have to get in the way. In most cases the sex part is very superficial, it's just an idea that comes naturally to peoples minds and it's simply not a big deal at all. People, men and women, think about sex (almost all the time, both sexes) and worthless semi random thoughts about sex with almost any person will be had. It simply is not such a big deal. The funny thing is that we are all aware of the universality and banality of these thoughts, yet act as though it's something special, extraordinary and serious. Just to be clear, I'm not advocating promiscuity (although, again to be clear, I have no moral issue with that as long as it's honest), but simply putting the whole thing to rest, it's not even worth talking about.
And it better not be true that sex stands in the way of friendship because long, commited, beautiful relationships sure involve a lot of sex and deep friendship. Sex can only stand in the way of friendship if all one wants is sex.
Except it ... doesn't? Not only it doesn't seem to be a well designed study (the 9 point scale doesn't make much sense, there is no graph with the numbers for each answers, etc), the conclusion they get from it seem strange, since most people don't want to go on a date:
On average: Male: 4.55 Female: 3.90, since it's a 9 point scale[1]: 5 mean "Neutral/Unsure" and below is the "no" range.
A study on the gender interactions of undergraduate students really shouldn't be used to describe the wider population. They're in a very artificial environment, in a tumultuous phrase of life.
No, not really. What about same sex friendships in homosexual men and women? Why would we single out hetero sexuality? As I said in my comment to Colin's post, no one ever makes such a statement for homosexual relations.
Let me put it a different way then. Is it possible to make a general comment on the heterosexual interactions between men and women without implicitly excluding homosexual people? And, is that exclusion sufficient reason that such general comments should never be made? (I'm not answering yes or no to these questions, just figuring out where we want to draw the lines.)
I don't think it's possible in this case. And, yes, I think it is a sufficient reason that such comments shouldn't be made. Not because it's exclusionary (although discrimination is an awful thing, I don't think homosexual people would mind being excluded from the implications of the premise we're discussing), but because it shows how wrong the comment is. The implication is that specifically heterosexual persons have the sex-friendship issue, or if not, then all humans have this issue, in which case the "men and women" part has to be thrown out.
Is there any evidence that friendship, sexual and romantic relations work differently among homosexual people? And to such an extent that the negative tension between sex and friendship exists only with heterosexual people? I don't know of any. Has anyone ever made a comment: "Gay men can't be friends because sex always gets in the way." or "Lesbians can't be friends because sex always gets in the way."?
I'm not implying there's homophobia in this kind of thinking, just very bad, shallow "analysis" of interpersonal relationships (of the kind you tend to get from "women magazines" and "men magazines", no surprise there) and, in some cases, a lot of rationalisation by people who only want infantile sexual relations from persons of desirable sex and don't even try to make friends, although they try to fake it to get sex (i.e. by people for whom friendship was never actually a motivating option).
Well, it's technically correct. The sense I get is that most people aim their "generic" comments at the 95% (straight, cis, etc). Because reality, in a statistical sense, is heteronormative. But being inclusive is kind as well. There's no exact answer - if you are 100% inclusive, people scoff at you being "politically correct". If you're not, different people get offended.
It is more like aiming generic comments at a subset of the population makes that subset "normal" and the other "abnormal" and one must conform to the "normal."
I always hate it when people say "women do this" or "women think this" because I often don't do or think that. Plus within the women I know there is a large range of personalities, actions, thoughts, beliefs, motivations, etc. It reduces women down to a stereotype.
