Using NFL references to write "If You're in the Friend Zone, You'll Never Get in the End Zone," was brilliant: it makes the fact that the article reads as a playbook for date rape, misogyny, and heteronormativity almost understandable.  Maybe Lawrence Taylor, the famous NFL linebacker currently under indictment for raping a sixteen-year-old, followed the article's recommendations to inappropriately touch female friends "like you would a girlfriend" and to not ask or hesitate before sticking your tongue down a friend's throat.  That's a good way to get your tongue bitten off, by the way.  You are her friend because she trusts you and feels safe with you, and nothing could destroy that trust more thoroughly than "getting rid of the nice guy persona," being rude to her, "double book[ing] her," "flirting with other girls in front of her," and spending the "political capital" you've earned to take advantage of her.  At least the article is correct on this one point: anyone who follows its suggestions will certainly no longer be said woman's friend.  (See, e.g., Ben Roethlisberger; Brett Favre.)

Let me break down a few of the article's major fallacies for you:

First, I won't be "surprised by your comments and flattered" if you say nothing nice to me for weeks and then tell me I look sexy.  I'll be pissed off and creeped out.

Second, making me angry makes me angry, not horny. Third, seeing you objectify other women is not a turn-on. And last, Making me "second guess the status of our relationship," and refusing to be honest with me about your feelings is not a foundation for a relationship.  It's cowardly, and the reason I'm ignoring you.

In a 2009 Campus Tolerance Foundation study, George Washington University ranked first for "attempts of force kissing or fondling without consent."  As a community, we should be standing up to condemn these assaults, not encouraging them in articles like "If You're in the Friend Zone, You'll Never Get in the End Zone."

You may think that we are friends, and that you are just following the article's advice for how to get into "scoring position."  And maybe you keep buying me drinks because alcohol will "let me open up."  But 84 percent of women who are raped know their attacker (National Victims Center), and 90 percent of campus rapes occur after alcohol has been consumed by one of the parties (factsontap.org).  How many of those rapists defended themselves by saying they just wanted to get out of the "friend zone?"  That doesn't make following this article's advice for putting the moves on a friend justifiable.  That makes it illegal.