Today is the kind of day that I wish I could always have. I woke up at 8:00am, wrote some emails, watched The View, and headed out to meet an old camp friend for lunch. We sat in a little park with our gourmet deli food and talked about various updates in our lives, and resigned ourselves to the fact that when straight girls get together, most likely we will talk about guys for the rest of eternity. And that is just the way it is. The thing about her and me is that I think we both intrinsically reject being typical "girls" but have also needed to accept that, well, we are girls. And there's something very empowering about embracing that rather than making it some weird source of shame.

Then I met up with a recent Haverford graduate friend for drinks. I love her despite the scarce amounts of time we spend together, and I've really come to realize that it's because she doesn't let conventional gender expectations limit her. She told me a story about an email friendship that she'd been carrying on with a guy who had a girlfriend - last night they met up for dinner and he spent an extravagant amount of money on her, then made a move on her and tried to invite her back to a hotel room for the night. She declined, and was clearly a bit taken aback that he would be so presumptuous. Which of course begs the argument, what did she think would happen if she was exchanging emails with a guy and then had dinner with him?

Excuse me, but what day and age are we in that women can't befriend men and dine with them without being expected to want to do anything more than enjoy good company? Are we really so animalistic? Isn't there such thing as intellectual connection? Or even just plain platonic connection?

This is a heated debate that I've been having with someone else over the span of the past five or so days. Regardless of a woman's romantic attachments, she should have the freedom to accept another's friendship of either gender. And, in any situation, accepting a friendship does not entail any sort of romantic or physical interest unless she expresses it!

Last week I had dinner with a male friend who had expressed some level of interest in me at some point. I also knew that he was in the process of dating someone, and up until last week he had known that I was in a relationship. I made it a point to tell him almost at the outset of the evening that I was dating someone new, and thought that would set an appropriate tone for the evening. As it turned out, he had different intentions and later on I had to repeatedly set increasingly clearer boundaries about where the friendship would and would not go. I don't necessarily blame him for trying; I'm not one to take anyone's attraction to me for granted. But what really gets me is this societal assumption that if a girl spends time alone with a guy, no matter if she's (or he's, for that matter!) taken, single, or voluntarily unavailable, that she might be interested in anything more than friendship with said guy. What is that?! Are we all really that presumptuous these days?

Anyway, I'd be interested to know other people's thoughts about whatever this classifies as... social etiquette? Is a girl really expected to not spend time alone with a guy if 1. she's not interested in any more than friendship 2. she is in a relationship with someone else or 3. he is in a relationship with someone else? What happened to friendships? And no, I do not believe that men and women are incapable of being JUST friends. I believe that a lot of men and women CAN'T just be friends with every man or woman they meet, but there are definitely male-female friendships that will never extend beyond those boundaries.

So, tell me your thoughts. I'm waiting!!