I could only repeat ‘we’re just friends’ for a certain amount of time until it seemed like no one would ever believe me. In 2011, a YouTube video called ‘Why Men and Women Can’t be Friends’ raked 14 million views, and was shared widely on social media; it made a self-explanatory case. Platonic relationships are almost always ridiculed, masked with the ‘it’s complicated’ narrative, when sometimes, it is really not complicated. By definition, platonic relationships are characereized by an absence of romance or sexual intimacy, coined after Plato’s ideal of non-sexual love. The main concept surrounding platonic relationships is that they are completely devoid of ulterior motives or intentions. But society has boxed and labeled friendships between men and women – it hard-wired us into thinking that it is impossible to have them. I could never really pinpoint why every time I mentioned my male friends, Egyptian society – particularly my family members and female friends –would look at them as my potential partners. I would always be met with loaded questions about whether or not there was ‘something’ really going on between us: ‘so there is absolutely nothing going…
‘We’re Platonic with a Capital P’: Navigating Male-Female Friendships in Egypt
July 12, 2022
