User:CalebTerronez/Friend zone

(Top at the end of the first paragraph)

The friend zone has a strong presence on the internet, for example like facebook, dating sites and other social media platforms. However, overtime the term has expanded into middle schools, high schools, and colleges where young men and women are discovering their identities when it comes to dating and romance.

(Terminology)

It is describe as “[a] situation in which a friendship exists between two people, one of whom has an unreciprocated romantic or sexual interest in the other.”

(Research on the term, New section)

The Binghamton University did a study on undergraduates from a midsize university in the northeastern United States. There were 562 participants with 305 identify as female and 257 as male. Of the 562 participants 427 of them were exclusively heterosexual while 113 were not exclusively heterosexual. The participants were asked "Have you ever friend zoned someone else?" and "Have you ever been friend zoned?" The study found that 65.7% of exclusively heterosexual males have friend zoned someone while 92.6% of exclusively heterosexual females have friend zoned someone. The study also found that 75.2% of exclusively heterosexual males have been friend zoned before while only 41.2% of exclusively heterosexual females have been friend zoned before.

(This would be put under the Criticism of the term at the end of the first paragraph)

Being rejected by a potential partner does not mean a person has been friendzoned, it means that potential partner does not want to pursue a romantic relationship. The socially agreed-upon friend zone definition can cause sexual violence that is legitimized as a natural outcome of a women's disobedient exercise of any sexual activity. This sexist belief is internalized through the common practice of male peers's policing of one another's masculinity. Men are more likely to look at the opposite sex friends as potential sexual partners while women tend to prefer a non-sexual friendships. Thus, women tend to be annoyed when male friends desire sex and romance while men find the time and money demands costly and frustrating when romantic desires are not reciprocated.

(Popular culture)

Chris Rock mentions the term in the 1996 "Bring the Pain" skit. He says that women have male friends but these men are friends with women they "haven't fucked yet". Then claims that men who have platonic friends is because of a accident and ending up in the friend zone is because of a "wrong turn somewhere."