THE FRIEND ZONE IS A SEXIST MYTH

The Friend zone isn’t real. The idea that every “Nice Guy” is owed a romantic relationship by his female friends is ridiculous. And if you think that’s not what Friend zoning is about, it absolutely is.
I’m being gender-specific about ‘’the friend zone’’ because it’s mostly used against the girls while the guys prefer to call the girls they are sexually engaged with but don’t love a ‘’SIDE CHICK’’.
The idea that when a girl decides that you’re her friend, you’re no longer a dating option. You become this complete non-sexual entity in her eyes, like her brother, or a lamp is what friend zone is deemed to be.
To some degree, the assumption of every guy claiming to be “friend zoned” is that if they indicate an interest in one of their friends, she is in some way obligated to return the interest, and reward it with a relationship. This assumption is problematic for a whole host of reasons, but most in that it ignores choice. Everyone has the right to say “Yes” or “No” to someone’s romantic or sexual interest. There is no obligation to return interest, and if a person rejects you, it does not make them an awful person. Especially when that person is your friend.
I understand that rejection sucks. It hurts and its heart breaking when someone you like, want to have a relationship with doesn’t return that interest. However, no one is obligated to be interested in you or want those things with you. While sex or relationship may very well be a human need, it is not something anyone has a right to, and thus we are not “owed” it.
Underlying the promulgation of friend zoning is the idea that a female friend who rejects her guy friend’s advances is a bad person, and is a bad person in part because she sees her friend as just that-a friend. To me, Friend zoning breaches the natural right of girls to make choices because girls are not machines that you put kindness coins into until relatioship falls out.” ROGER THAT!!! because that underlines the inherent sexism in friend zoning. That women should in any way be obligated to reciprocate sexual or romantic interest completely undermines the notion of women as autonomous people with the right to make their own decisions, and especially the right to make their own decisions about romantic relationships and sex.
I’m really saying all these because I’ve had a personal experience. I’ve been a friend to a girl in my class for roughly two years now. We are best of friends. Her name is Stephanie. Some of my course mates,( I won’t readily call them friends because no friend would not want to understand my friendship with the opposite gender) started making jokes about my friendship with Stephanie, saying that I’ve been FRIEND ZONED. But as a reasonable man of prudence, born with all my reasoning faculties functional by default, I didn’t let that affect my friendship with her because if I can be friends with guys, nothing stops me from being best of friends with a girl who by nature is so beautiful, awesome ,and kind.
No person is ever obligated to return romantic interest. That we penalize and antagonize women who reject men interested in them is sexist, and, to beat a dead horse, stands against the idea that men and women are equal.
If a guy determines he is interested in a woman, there are a few obvious courses of action. If he has just met her, he can indicate his interest in her. At that point, it is the woman’s choice to either return his interest or to reject him. If a guy doesn’t realize his interest in a woman until they are already friends, he can tell her how he feels. There is nothing wrong with that. What is wrong is to react to rejection by the girl by referring to her as ‘’that idiot wey been wan friend zone me’’ or b*tch or what have you and complaining about how you were just a “nice guy” unfairly trapped in the friend zone.
There are NO CIRCUMSTANCES under which a person is obligated to be in a relationship with another. That is what consent is all about. Everyone has the right to say “Yes” or “No” to any romantic relationship encounter, and everyone has the right to give, or not give, consent and to have that decision be respected.. No man who disrespects consent or the idea of consent is a gentleman or “Nice Guy.”
Beyond that, friend zoning suggests that all women are good for is sex. When a man laments the three years he wasted as a friend of a woman, only to be romantically rejected at the end of it all, he invalidates the idea that this woman might have any other worth beyond sex.  The reward of being someone’s friend is not sex, it is friendship. If you are actually this person’s friend then their friendship is a really awesome reward.
As friend zoning gets an increasing amount of attention the dialogue around friend zoning has begun to change. The voices that recognize that women are people worthy of friendship and worthy of having their choices respected are beginning to dominate the conversation, and are delegitimizing the friend zoning phenomenon. Hopefully with this dialogue shift we can see the death of the “Nice Guy,” and focus instead on the people in our lives who are truly awesome people worthy of friendship, and if both parties desire, more.
I’m not trying to woo the girls by writing this article neither do I want to be controversial but I’m just talking sense to the ones that would listen. Really, I can’t keep quiet when it’s my generation that is labouring under this ignorance.
PEACE!✌
                                               ~ITORO ETIM~