About 20 students attended “Celebrating the History on Women’s Friendships: Present Possibilities, Future Potential,” held Monday in the Charleston/Mattoon Room of the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union.

Carrie Peirce, the keynote speaker, is an associate professor of sociology and has been studying and examining the relationships between men and women for 20 years.

Although the topic of the lecture mainly concerned relationships between women, Peirce said,” You can’t talk about women without talking about men, contrary to what traditional feminists think.”

In the lecture, Peirce used the movie “When Harry Met Sally” as a parallel to the common ideal of what exists in a relationship between a man and a woman.

“The presentation taught me that men and women can both be in a non-sexual relationship,” said Matt Matthews, a sophomore criminal law student at Lake Land College, who attended the lecture to obtain information for a research paper.

Peirce also used historic relationships from the past such as the one that existed between Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and those that existed between the women in concentration camps during the Holocaust to explain the importance of the friendships of women throughout history.

“We can look in the past for an understanding of the future when it comes to relationships,” Peirce said.

Peirce said the purpose for her lecture was to teach students that history can give them better understanding of women’s friendships and also that platonic relationships can exist between a man and a woman.

Shannon Hash, a freshman biology major, said “I have a really close male friend and the presentation really summed up alot about friendships between men and women. It was very interesting.”

The lecture was held in honor of Women’s Awareness Month and sponsored by the Women’s Advocacy Council.