We need a new 'mance?

Remember When Harry Met Sally? I mean, apart from that 'diner scene'. If you'll recall, the central premise of that film was a probe into whether men and women could be 'just friends' (which is offensive to friendship since it implies that it's somehow lower on the rung than romantic relationships). The answer, to anyone who is familiar with even the rudest blueprint of romance, was HELL NO. A lot of films and books and songs have been produced about this persistent puzzle of heterosocial interaction: The Friendship. They all seem to come up with a dismal and skewed picture of man-woman camaraderie.

 

WHMS was remade in Bollywood a few years ago as the forgettable Hum Tum, a film that managed the feat of trying to be both insultingly sexist and refreshingly modern at the same time. Sadly, it only actually accomplished the first part. Male-female dynamic has always been confusing territory but ever since the entry of women into public spaces and the collapse of concrete societal barriers between boys and girls, gender politics has forayed into some interesting areas. The relatively recent cultural desire to scrutinise non-sexual relationships among members of the sexes is fun to glance at.

What is so mysterious about a guy and a girl hanging out with absolutely no wish to get with each other? 

 

There are a couple of reasons this transaction is such an enigma: here are two members of a species designed to copulate with each other and procreate, to propagate said species. The fact that they aren't doing that is enough to throw our evolutionary rationale off balance. The Homo Sapien(s) hasn't yet caught up with history. Perhaps suspicion of opposite-sex platonic friendships is natural because it violates our instinctive understanding of primordial mating rituals. If  a man and a woman spend inordinate amounts of time in each other's company, this is a sign of coital interest -  the woman, with her limited eggs and honed screening sense, would take that time to gauge the male, with his compulsion to ensure his genetic legacy's survival by increasing the odds, and decide that she is willing to have his offspring and thus preserve her legacy. Darwin would probably tell you that it makes absolutely no sense for a gal to be wasting time that could be better spent getting knocked up and guaranteeing her awesome math skills' transfer to a child, hangin' with a pal that she doesn't consider good enough to change the diapers. Selection is a process that does not brook much deviation from the practice of...well...sex and everything it entails.

 

However, as we've seen throughout the past of (wo)mankind, biological factors are one part of the story and rarely suffice to explain complex social phenomena. What could possibly be the societal reason for a mistrust of X-Y associations that claim abiding love but denounce the possibility of co-parenthood? 

 

Obviously inhered in a font of patriarchy that seeks to control women, property and ultimately power, customs of sexual segregation and work demarcation have maintained the sociopolitical machinery that supports the physiological chasm between men and women, ensuring very little non-bodily exchanges between the two. In a global tradition that disallows equality and facility of opportunity, why would men and women want to be platonic friends at all? If I'm slaving away in the kitchen and you're off fighting wars, there's not much to talk about over a cuppa, is there? It's a documented fact that in cultures forbidding intergender contact, sexual discrimination is the highest; one needn't look far to infer the obvious: sexual discrimination and sexual inequality are logical equations. Friendship can only occur among equals. Thus, friendship cannot occur between men and women in societies that do not permit egalitarianism in public culture or communication between the two. Over the past 5,000 years, that has been pretty much every society. It's only in Western Europe in the past few centuries that the divide has been  very slowly but steadily lessening and yet there's still a long way to go in terms of breaking millenia of conditioning. It's only now, with equal participation in the sphere outside the domestic, that true sharing of space and time has led to sharing of  lifestyles, jokes and secrets, the mortar of  friendship and affection. Ta-da.

 

Which brings me to my point of inquiry: we know why we doubt the existence of platonic love between men and women and acknowledge that those hang-ups, both natural and constructed, may have descriptive value i.e. we can rationally understand why things are this way. However, and this is really the heart of the matter, is this doubt justified? Can a woman and a man be best buddies, even though their inherited biochemistry is screaming at them to do what their ancestors created them to? Even though up until two hundred years ago they would have had zilch to talk about? Is it OK for every movie where the male and female lead start out as BFFs to end with them realising their 'true' feelings for each other and riding off into the sunset together? Can they talk about their dirtiest, most intimate feelings with each other because they're privileging the person above the gender? 

 

Yes. But much like Facebook noobs, most of us mishandle this rather new kind of relationship combination because we're still not used to it. It is very possible though, provided one knows how to navigate waters that are uncharted compared to the usual model of companionship. 

 

Most people in intense best-friendships with someone who belongs to the other gender are the first generation of people grappling with this novel permutation. Dating, for a lot of us in this country, is a first generation exercise...and in my family likely to prevail only through my brothers' efforts. I've already embedded this phenomenon of heterosocial relationships in a particular kind of background that is sociohistorically manufactured; neither of my parents would've been allowed close-knit cross-gender socialisation and so it would be impossible to've had the privilege to have had cross-gender best-friendships.

 

Ceteris paribus, are there things men talk about only with men and women only with women? Sure, but that's more out of experiential empathy than anything else. In a truly close friendship you should be able to talk about anything even though you may choose not to. For example, if male-only interaction involves chauvinistic jokes, well, then I'd question the integrity of their friendships with the women in their lives (and their IQ). In this case, that homosocial interaction has already begun the insidious task of conversational segregation (which we have established to be a sign of sexual discrimination). However, if the men choose not to talk about something with their women friends because they wouldn't understand or empathise with on the level at which fellow-men would, then that makes sense. Like their baffling crush on Mickey Rourke AFTER 1990.

 

The three people closest to me in the whole wide world (outside of my six member family) are men. A LOT of people I know have best friends who are of the opposite sex and they seem perfectly content with this state of affairs. I think the one thing that we've all had in common with our respective friendships is that we have been attracted to our friend at some point of time for a short period, the infatuation  has been acknowledged and resolved and then the friendship has been enriched and strengthened without the spectre of sexual tension haunting and weakening our rapports. 

 

The problem that I've seen consistently over a decade and a half of being in the 'friendship' game is the pretence that sexual undercurrents simply do not exist between a straight boy and girl. Nah-uh Junior, it don't fly like that. Thanks to good ol' aforementioned copulatory imperatives, that li'l sumthin' sumthin' is going to be there until you bring it out onto the table honestly and talk about it, thus discarding centuries of  totally clueless gendered upbringing. Harbouring a crush on your best friend can either lead to you marrying him, you deciding you have nothing going for the two of you except the sex or you happily realising that your fleeting biological reactions aren't worth losing his general awesomeness for many years to come, during which you will both meet other mates, bitch about them to each other occasionally and force your children to like each other. 

There is absolutely no substitute for the kind of friendship a guy and a girl can have, if honest and respectful of each other and their bond. The kind of antics I can get up to with my guy pals, I cannot even dream of with doing with my girl-buddies (who are no less vital though) and cherish the kind of codependency that comes from knowing that in exchange for your (admittedly taught) womanly openness to hear them bawl, they will  look the other way and stand guard honourably as you relieve yourself on an intercity highway at midnight. The quality of jokes, equal parts boy-bawdy and girl-giggly is priceless; the constant renegotiation of differentially nurtured physicality and emotionality and common individual nature provides a chemistry like nothing else does; there is an unending source of accurate information about the 'enemy' and there is always someone to take to a 'couple entry' event uptown. Lemme put it this way: you never have to worry about liking the same guy (even if your BFF is gay, in which case any man you fancy will have to choose an entire side to bat for rather than which member of the team, far less abrasive for your ego and friendship)...that's one whole can of worms thrown out right there. And I'll tell you another thing: when your love interest is an asshole, your male friends will be the first to pick up on it and warn you. The fact that they  probably specialise in this kind of assholery with other women is none of your goddamn business. Case rested.

So, in a nutshell: can a man and a woman ever really be friends? Absolutely, but only if they want to. And only if they're not characters on any generic TV series entering its 4th season.