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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.
No, it is men. I don't want to lead my friends on full stop. Before the normalisation of homosexuality (decriminalisation means nothing for this argument as the issue is societal stigma that didn't decrease prior to normalisation) the only friends I could lead on were female. Not literally of course, but in my head I put women into one bucket labelled 'people I should only get physical with if I'm trying to woo them' and men into a bucket called 'people I will never romance, so it doesn't matter'. After the normalisation, believing the media's lies, I maintained those buckets until I hurt my first gay friend by not reciprocating their affections and leading them on, and I put everyone into the first bucket.
And yeah I'm not surprised this argument is fairly new. The normalisation of homosexuality is fairly new. The red tribe gents who might have made this argument in the first place had no need, because they didn't go near those queers and homos in the first place, and like you say it would be gay to care about male intimacy. Meanwhile the blue tribers couldn't even ask the question, after all they aren't homophobes. So it only emerges amongst us freaks who don't fit neatly into a tribe. Add on top the fact that the establishment cares more about its message than the truth, and I doubt we'll ever see a study on this. I guess if you phrased it as somehow men's fault, like male homophobia has decreased male intimacy you might.
Huh I tried that and these don't exactly line up with what I'm saying, but I think they gesture in its direction.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10591-013-9249-3
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-014-0358-8
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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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