Men and women can be, must be, friends
In the 1989 romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally, one of the first things Harry Burns (Billy Crystal) tells Sally Albright (Meg Ryan) is that “men and women can’t be friends because the sex part always gets in the way.”
Sally vehemently rejects this theory because Harry is annoying. But it turns out he is also correct: The sex part does get in the way of their friendship and (spoiler alert) the characters don’t remain friends for very long.
Fast-forward from 1989 to 2016 and the rom-com cliché that two people of different genders are incapable of platonic friendship doesn’t sound prophetic or clever; it sounds outdated and untrue.
After all, in today’s pop-culture climate, platonic relationships between men and women abound.
Just look at Leslie Knope and Ron Swanson on Parks and Recreation, Liz Lemon and Jack Donaghy on 30 Rock, Olivia Benson and Fin Tutuola on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and Stefan Salvatore and Lexi on the The Vampire Diaries. I could go on.
These duos aren’t merely examples of male-female friendships; they are also male-female mentorships. Swanson of Parks and Recreation isn’t just a shoulder to cry on: He’s Knope’s boss. Lexi of The Vampire Diaries isn’t just a fellow creature of the night: She is Stefan Salvatore’s trusted tutor in the art of being a “good vampire” (a.k.a. feeding on the blood of animals, instead of human beings.)
But it appears real life hasn’t been able to keep pace with popular culture. And while platonic malefemale mentorships are easy enough to spot on television and in the movies, they may be less prevalent in real life.
A study published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships in 2012, titled “Benefit or Burden? Attraction in cross-sex friendship,” determined that friendships between heterosexual people of opposite genders are very often messy affairs. “Because cross-sex friendships are a historically recent phenomenon,” the researchers conclude, “men’s and women’s evolved mating strategies impinge on their friendship experiences.” Or as Harry Burns puts it, “Men and women can’t be friends because the sex part always gets in the way.”
This is also true — it turns out — in the work world. According to a study from 2010, by the Center for Talent Innovation, almost twothirds of men in senior business positions refrained from entering into “one-on-one” mentorships with junior female employees in fear that coworkers would suspect they were having affairs with their charges. Half of the women involved in the study reportedly shared the same fear: They didn’t want to befriend male mentors because they worried others would assume their new relationships were sexual.
Alas, the ghost of Harry Burns is always present: Even when we aren’t attracted to our opposite-sex friends, the possibility remains that the people around us will think that we are — a scenario that can be just as awkward.
But the problem is bigger than awkwardness. The problem with the Harry Burns state of mind is that it may actually hinder gender equity in the workplace.
According to researchers Anna Marie Valerio and Katina Sawyer, who published their research on mentorship in Harvard Business Review this month, men who mentor women in the office “can help even the playing field” at work, and efforts to make a workplace more egalitarian that include both men and women — as opposed to just women — are generally more successful. They write: “Although many organizations have attempted to fight gender bias by focusing on women — offering training programs or networking groups specifically for them — the leaders we interviewed realized that any solutions that involve only 50% of the human population are likely to have limited success.”
In other words, in order to correct the gender imbalances in our world, particularly in our work world, men and women have to be friends. They have to be able to mentor each other, and to show an active interest in one another, free from the anxiety that their good intentions will be misinterpreted as inappropriate or impure.
And if they are able to do this, business might just boom. “We know,” Valerio and Sawyer write, “that gender parity in the workplace is associated with improved profitability.” Heterosexual men and women may not yet be able to be friends, but they really should be, if not for the sake of gender equality, then for the sake of their bottom lines. Emma Teitel is a national affairs columnist.
Men and women must be free from the anxiety that their good intentions will be misinterpreted as inappropriate or impure