Can Men and Women Ever Be "Just Friends"?

This is one of my very favorite discussion topics, and one of the bloggers I follow, Joanna over at A Cup of Jo, just blogged about that very thing today, which made me want to blog about it.  I have had numerous conversations with my girlfriends about this same question, and I am always interested to hear what people, male and female, think.

To start things off, Dan shared this video with me a few months ago that, I think, gets at the crux of all of the confusion.  The filmmakers ask a group of college guys and college girls in Utah that same question, and the responses are very interesting.  All of the guys say, without hesitation that, if any of their female friends proposed hooking up, they would.  The women interviewed in the film initially all said that yes, guys and girls can be "just friends" without sexual tension.  However, when probed a little further and asked whether they thought any of their guy friends had feelings for them or would hook up with them if the possibility presented itself, these ladies sang an entirely different tune and admitted that yes, they would.

So does that mean that Billy Crystal was right in When Harry Met Sally?  Meg Ryan insisted that men and women could be "just friends," but her at-first contentious relationship with Harry blooms, over several years, into a full-fledged romance.  It seems as though the world is telling us something.  Obviously, this might change if one or both parties is in a relationship or married, meaning that those lustful feelings might morph into just a general fondness for another person, but if both parties are single, watch out!!  A friend of mine listed off her guy friends who she grew up with, saying why they were just friends.  Then, I had to play devil's advocate and but in.  "Hold on, didn't X kiss you, however unwilling a participant you may have been?  Didn't Y ask you out in middle school?  And you don't think Z has ever had feelings for you, even if he never acted on them?".  And there we go.  Going through my own list of guy friends, I would say that there are only a few who I have never had some sort of feelings for or who have never had any sort of feelings for me.

However, is it that cut and dry?  I would love to hear what all of you think!