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People aren't so simple. And who said anything about fear? Doing X would convey signal Y, and I don't want to convey Y. The kind of physical intimacy that was de rigeur a couple of centuries ago (somebody linked this) is not ambiguous these days, that's the point.
I suppose I could sit my friends down and give them a sort of autistic manifesto along the lines of, 'I'm totally straight and I know you're totally straight but I don't think men touch each other enough now so let's cuddle (no homo)', but for the entire 90's we laughed at such behaviour exactly because it was regarded as a classic sign of closeted homosexuality.
It's like selling stocks: if a founder sells a big chunk of their stocks in their successful startup, it signals that they think it's peaked. It doesn't matter what signal they want to send, that's the signal it sends, and everyone including them knows that that's the signal it sends, so they can't sell without sending that signal.
In olden times, homosexuality ('sodomy') was something that was commonly agreed to take place far off and among degenerates like sailors. The average person didn't think about it from week to week. I'm not arguing for recriminalising homosexuality, I'm arguing for vastly reducing its visibility outside select subcultures. In the last 50 years, we made a decision to prioritise visible harm to small minorities over the potential for less visible harm to 95% of the population; that was understandable at the time but I don't think it's aging well.
I'm not accusing you of homophobia or any other phobia, it's just that I don't see more to this theory than correlation: yes, gay pride parades are correlated with a decline in male intimate friendships. Tornado damage also increased.
The mechanism making it a causal relationship doesn't work. why do I care that my friend could think that I'm a closeted homosexual when I'm clearly not ? A closeted homosexual can perfectly provide all the duties of a friend - he would be a bad husband, but that's not the friend's problem.
Are you a man?
Yes.
Huh, are you 25 or under then? I'm surprised because I kind of thought every man could feel it in his bones. Like, all the other things you mentioned play a part too for sure, but it seems indisputable to me that the tension and insecurity that accompanied the societal shift also played a part, because after the first gay friend I had propositioned me I changed my behaviour.
Sorry it took me so long to reply, I'm not well.
Also no. I'm sorry, what are you guys feeling in your bones? That pride parades have fundamentally changed how you relate to other heterosexual men?
Corvos laid it out pretty succinctly. Societal embrace of homosexuality has negatively affected male relationships. I am less intimate with my male friends than I used to be, I can only be as intimate with them as I would a woman, because I don't want to send the wrong signals. Partly to society, to my family, to my girlfriend and other friends, but mostly to them, I don't want to lead them on any more than I would want to lead on a female friend.
The last big decriminalization push was in the 80’s, so I presume you’re old. You’ve monitored your male friendships for intimacy and noticed a statistically significant change, based on a cutoff point like this, bearing in mind that friendships in later life are often less intense?
Excuse my skepticism. It’s just that until a few years ago, no one had heard of this theory, and now it’s seemingly so obvious it has seeped into people’s bones.
To me this argument looks like a recent product of cross-pollination between anti-woke strands, in this case manosphere + trad. Until the 2010s, imo it would have been shameful and somewhat ‘gay’ to even care about male intimacy. By that I don’t mean to say that the argument is wrong, just that it was not and still is not obvious .
The true analogy would be leading on, a gay friend. There is no ‘leading on’ a straight man.
Two straight men can play 'gay chicken', even while being fully aware of each others hetero credentials. It's still called 'gay chicken' for a reason.
That's the lab environment. Most straight men have little patience for 'gay behavior' sprung on them in the wild, even from a friend. I feel quite sure this is something innate albeit socially mediated depending on culture and/or subculture.
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