Thank you, Ela Özcan, for a very important question.
First, what is it for two people – any two people, regardless of their genders – to be friends? This is a slippery question, with many different answers. But among these answers seem to be three common threads. First, friends must care about each other for each other’s sake. Take you and I, for example: I must care about you for your sake, and you must care about me for my sake. Friends must trust each other: I must trust you to act in what you judge to be my best interests, and you must trust me to act in what I judge to be your best interests. And friends must engage in shared activity, motivated by the friendship itself: you and I must do stuff together for the sake of doing it together.
Now, what is it about men and women that may prevent them being friends? Presumably it is the fact that men and women may be physically attracted to one another. So, what is it about physical attraction that may prevent two people – any two people, regardless of their genders – being friends?
The risk is that if I were physically attracted to you, say, I may care about you not for your own sake, but only as a means to satisfy my sexual desire; I may do stuff with you not for the sake of doing it with you, but only for the sake of getting you into bed. In short, I may objectify you. And if you acknowledge this possibility, you may struggle to trust me to act in your best interests. (This sort of mistrust often finds expression in the adage, “Guys only want one thing and it’s disgusting.”) My physical attraction towards you thus seems an obstacle to our friendship.
But does that mean we can’t be friends? No, of course not; it just means we have to work harder at it. I must work hard to treat you not as an object, but as a person; and you must work hard to judge me not by some preconceived notion about members of my gender, but by my actions. And for having worked hard to overcome the obstacle of physical attraction, our friendship would be all the more meaningful.
So, Ela, to answer your question: yes, men and women – or any two people who may be physically attracted to one another – can be friends. But I would go even further: I think that they should be friends. For wherever we find an obstacle to friendship, we should endeavour to overcome it: to challenge our preconceptions and to treat one another as human beings. This would go some way towards healing an increasingly broken world.
What do you think? Can men and women be just friends? Let us know in the comments.
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Image: Man Woman, by Allen Jones (1963)
I did a BA in Mathematics and Philosophy at Lancaster University, followed by an MPhil in Philosophy at the University of Warwick. I spent a lot of time studying Kant (his first Critique), the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. My favourite philosophical idea is Quine's idea that the common-sense theory about physical objects and the gods of Homer are both just posits; the only difference is that the theory of physical objects turned out to be more efficient – that was the last idea to truly blow my mind.
Well, for a start, the world is not increasingly broken. In strictly factual terms, the opposite is the case. people are killing each at other at a far lower rate than ever in the history of humankind. Men and women can of course be friends. It helps not to have sexual desire interfering, but then again, perhaps some flirtatiousness may help. As does age. Eventually’ might be a good single word answer to the question.
Hello Mr Wynn P Wheldon! Thank you for your thoughts. When I said ‘increasingly broken’, I didn’t necessarily mean in terms of killings. I guess I meant it in terms of polarization and the tendency to demonise those with different opinions. I think ‘eventually’ is a good answer to the question: it captures the idea that men/women friendships may take more work than other friendships. As for whether flirting may help, I am not so sure; it may in fact play into the obstacle of physical attraction. Thanks again!