When I first entered university from my all-girls high school, my dad told me something I have continually tried to forget over the years. Not only because getting relationship advice from my dad is analogous to taking financial advice from a shopping addict, but also because I desperately wished for it to be untrue.
He told my 17-year-old self that if a man ever seemed to care for me, it was because he either was romantically interested in me or one of my friends. He told me I could never trust a guy to be content with being my friend because they would always expect more from me; they would always demand more.
I hate that the men I have met in university have proven him correct.
I reluctantly acknowledge that I often find it difficult to grasp the notion of romantic relationships. The thought of having a single person with whom I am expected to share everything with has always felt more like a burden than a privilege. Yet, despite my complicated feelings about romance and sexuality, I deeply cherish human connection. I love the moments of shared meaning when a stranger becomes a little less strange. If I could, I would be friends with everyone. Now, of course, this is impractical, but what seems downright impossible is the formation of genuine friendships with straight men.
In heterosexual social settings, I find myself having to constantly defend my intentions—because why would a girl interact with a guy for something as simple as friendship? Why would I want any relationship with someone of the opposite gender unless romance or sex was involved? These assumptions erase and invalidate the reality of non-heterosexual perspectives on male-female relationships.
I am so tired of women and our relationships being reduced to a single dimension. As if our existence, our presence in a room, our bodies, our voices, our kindness, must serve a purpose for men. As if we are not individuals with autonomy, but things to be possessed. Because to exist as a woman who does not desire men is, apparently, unnatural. Because, ultimately, men still believe they are entitled to women.
We are analysed through this belief, evident in common labels for women, solely categorised in one-dimensional ways to describe them relative to men and sex. The manic pixie dream girl. The girl next door. The gold digger. The wench. The prude. The slut. And my personal favourite—the tease. Always cast in some role, always made out to be a male fantasy. Margaret Atwood has a more eloquent way of putting my frustration:
“Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it's all a male fantasy: that you're strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren't catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy…”
But I will not apologise for offering friendship instead of romance or sex. Women should not be forced to shrink themselves to fit the narrow script men have written for us, where kindness is mistaken for invitation and attention is a debt to be repaid. Our time is not a transaction. Our presence is not a promise.
The idea that women exist to mislead men, to dangle false hope, to play some imagined game of seduction, is nothing more than a tired delusion designed to deny us our autonomy. I once believed that these archaic, heteronormative myths about women had long faded into history, but I now see that they are alive and well, particularly in university settings.
I like to think of myself as a social butterfly, but with men, I feel more like a moth, drawn to the warmth of connection only to be burned by the realisation that friendship was never what they truly wanted. Beneath the surface, I find that there is always an expectation, an unspoken assumption that a woman’s presence, kindness and time must eventually lead to something more. When that expectation is not met, frustration replaces familiarity, and resentment takes the place of understanding.
I have searched for exceptions, convinced myself that things could be different, and clung to the hope that platonic relationships could exist without ulterior motives. That a woman's sexuality, or lack thereof, does not determine her worth in a heteronormative society. But time and time again, I have been proven wrong. This is not just my experience—it is history repeating itself, repeating the same tired story written in the margins of every woman’s life. A tale as old as time.
-