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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   25214 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 2023

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There was a book some time back about homosociality.

I think part of the greater visibility, openness, and acceptance of gayness in public (even with fears of gay-bashing and so on) has, ironically, created that closing-off of open affection, since the new understanding now presumes 'ah, if you're fond of your pal and like to touch him then that means sexual attraction so you're gay' and that means straight guys don't behave like that because hey, I'm not gay and I don't want to give that impression.

Expressions of such affection have waxed and waned over time in different cultures, and I think it's always been more acceptable for women to express this to their female friends since women are considered more emotional and affectionate and so on, but it did exist. From 18th century cult of sensibility, so that a man bursting into tears was acceptable (even if sometimes mocked), to romantic friendship. Certainly, some of it was entangled with homosexuality (see Walt Whitman the poet) and it could be used as a cover for LGBT expressions of sexual love in public ('they're such good friends', 'Julie has a crush on Annie, it's only natural at that age', 'confirmed bachelor', 'boys will hero-worship older boys and men, that's a phase' and so on).

In fact, I think the post-Freudian view that "aha, all affectionate display indicates sexual desire" has done a lot of wrecking such displays because now unless it's between parents and very young children, it's not seen as friendship, affection or the rest, but potentially if not actually looking for a sexual partner/lover. The pendulum has swung to the opposite extreme: where past relationships that very probably were same-sex romantic ones were seen by society as platonic, because thinking of them any other way was unacceptable, now we're gone to judging all such relationships as 'must have been/must be same-sex' because why else would you write about or talk to or be physically close to someone in such a way?

C.S. Lewis, "The Four Loves", 'Friendship':

The homosexual theory therefore seems to me not even plausible. This is not to say that Friendship and abnormal Eros have never been combined. Certain cultures at certain periods seem to have tended to the contamination. In war-like societies it was, I think, especially likely to creep into the relation between the mature Brave and his young armour-bearer or squire. The absence of the women while you were on the war-path had no doubt something to do with it. In deciding, if we think we need or can decide, where it crept in and where it did not, we must surely be guided by the evidence (when there is any) and not by an a priori theory. Kisses, tears and embraces are not in themselves evidence of homosexuality. The implications would be, if nothing else, too comic. Hrothgar embracing Beowulf, Johnson embracing Boswell (a pretty flagrantly heterosexual couple) and all those hairy old toughs of centurions in Tacitus, clinging to one another and begging for last kisses when the legion was broken up ... all pansies? If you can believe that you can believe anything. On a broad historical view it is, of course, not the demonstrative gestures of Friendship among our ancestors but the absence of such gestures in our own society that calls for some special explanation. We, not they, are out of step.

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