When Harry Met Gender Essentialism

Actual Headline: Men and Women Can't be 'Just Friends'.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. I am deleting all "Texting! With Liss and Deeky!" posts immediately before we BREAK THE UNIVERSE.

Actual Lede: "Can heterosexual men and women ever be 'just friends'?"

Welp, I'mma go with "Nope!" since the headline just told me they cannot.

Actual Next Two Sentences: "Few other questions have provoked debates as intense, family dinners as awkward, literature as lurid, or movies as memorable. Still, the question remains unanswered."

LOL. STILL?! After all the scientists discussing this provocative question at dinner, and reading about it in books on their Kindles, and watching SO MANY Rob Reiner movies about it, science is still leaving this question unanswered?! WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH YOURSELF, SCIENCE?

Actual Remaining Sentences in the Opening Paragraph: "Daily experience suggests that non-romantic friendships between males and females are not only possible, but common—men and women live, work, and play side-by-side, and generally seem to be able to avoid spontaneously sleeping together. However, the possibility remains that this apparently platonic coexistence is merely a façade, an elaborate dance covering up countless sexual impulses bubbling just beneath the surface."

So, men and women—which naturally means exclusively "women and men who are not asexual and who are attracted to people of genders other than their own"—can be friends, but only if they're faking it. Or something. And gay/bi people don't exist. The end. Amen.