“Same-Sex” and “Opposite-Sex” 65growing literature on third sexes, third genders, and the transgender community
(Cole, Denny, Eyler, & Samons, 2000; Herdt, 1996). Nevertheless, one approach
for determining whether a friendship is same- or opposite- sex (or some other as yet
unnamed type of friendship), the one advocated in this chapter, is to ask the indi-
viduals in the friendship how they view the relationship. When using this approach,
same- sex friendships would be those friendships in which both members of the
relationship perceive that they are of the same- sex, with “sex” encompassing both
biological sex and gender identities (Monsour & Rawlins, 2014). If two individu-
als both perceive themselves and each other as males, then that would be a same-
sex friendship, even if one or both of the individuals did not have male genitalia or
the “correct” chromosomal pairing. Similarly, an opposite- sex friendship would be
one in which both friends believe that they each occupy distinctly different gen-
der identities, typically “female” and “male,” but not limited to those two categories
(Harper, 2007).
The word “opposite” in “opposite- sex friendships” is troublesome, which partly
explains why friendships between males and females have alternatively been
referred to as cross- sex friendships (Booth & Hess, 1974), cross- gender friend-
ships, or other- sex friendships (Monsour, 2002). Use of the words “opposite- sex”
erroneously implies that women and men share no similarities and are completely
opposite of one another, which is clearly not the case. Researchers from the fields
of communication and psychology contend that the similarities in communication
styles of women and men are much more prevalent and significant than are the dif-
ferences (Canary, Emmers- Sommer, & Faulkner, 1997; Hall, Carter, & Horgan,
2000). Since communication is, among other things, the behavioral manifestation
of beliefs, attitudes, and values that people have about friendship (Monsour, 2002),
then it logically follows that a lack of pervasive and significant gender differences
in communication styles suggests great similarity in same- sex and opposite- sex
friendships.
Partly as a result of frustrations with the very limited view of gender and friend-
ship, Rawlins and I recently proposed the term “postmodern friendships” (Monsour
& Rawlins, 2014). Postmodern friendships are those relationships in which individ-
uals “co- construct the individual and dyadic realities within specific friendships ...
involving negotiating and affirming (or not) identities and intersubjectively creat-
ing relational and personal realities through communication” (Monsour & Rawlins,
2014, p. 13). Individuals in a particular friendship are free to create their own indi-
vidual and joint gender identities and to decide for themselves what friendship
expectations, if any, come with those negotiated identities. For example, through
our extended conversations about each other, the relationship, and gender identity
issues, Susan and I negotiated the degree to which labels such as “same- sex” and
“opposite- sex” made sense within the lived reality of our specific friendship.
Now that some attention has been devoted to unraveling some of the com-
plexities of the deceptively simple terms “friendship,” “same- sex friendship,” and