Friending
profgalloway.com
profgalloway.com
It's because, for decades, getting too close to another man was suspect. You hug your friend, you're "gay." You open up about your feelings? "Gay." You even care about another man? "Gay." That's the legacy. The slur is always there, hanging over you, weaponized by kids, by dads, by teachers, by sitcoms.
The structure of masculinity up until the 90s at least told boys and men that by playing the game of status, prestige, and success, you have value and most importantly, you're not women. Guys are terrified of being cast out of the "real men" club, so you end up with a whole gender refusing intimacy it's been made dangerous. There are real, tangible punishments for not playing along: mockery, exclusion, even violence.
You want to know what happens when you train an entire gender that closeness equals weakness? You get men who can't ask for help, who don’t know how to grieve, who lose their friends at 30 and never make new ones. You get men who only feel permitted to touch each other during a touchdown celebration or a bar fight.
The solution is hiding in plain sight. Vulnerability is contagious. One guy has to go first. One guy has to risk it and say "hey, I appreciate you," to hug, to call, to care, and not apologize for it. It's hard. I get it. But there's no other way out. The graveyard of failed ideas includes men's clubs, church, sports leagues, beer leagues, online communities, just hanging out. None of these address the root cause because the thing that builds friendships is connection and the thing that builds connection is closeness.
One thing you can do today that's a step in that direction? Text an acquaintance to ask how they're doing. If the thought of that feels weird, congrats you're on the right track. Connection starts with risk. Follow that North star because that's the path to getting from here to there.
are we more homophobic than 50, 70, 100 years ago? Absolutely not
are we more loneliness than 50, 70, 100 years ago? Seems like it.
Think about your grandfather's era:
Yes, the culture was deeply homophobic. But a man could spend every Wednesday at the lodge, every Sunday at church, fish with his friends, hunt, drink, play cards—all in male spaces, no questions asked, no suspicions raised. There were scripted ways to be close to other men without risking masculinity. Did it solve everything? Hell no. Was it emotionally mature? Not really. But it worked as scaffolding for adult male friendship.
Now? The institutions that provided that cover are gone or crumbling. The internet replaced the Elks Club. Church is out, especially for millennials and Gen Z. So even as homophobia has declined in the culture, the absence of those shared spaces means men don't have anywhere to go be together without suspicion.
To clarify, I'm not saying that homophobia is up. I'm saying that the antidotes, the social architectures that let men be friends anyway, are gone. Residual effects of over a century of homophobia stand exposed with no institutions around to act as a counter.
Maybe you think that re-establishing or creating new institutions that serve as arenas for male friendship is the way forward. That's respectable, but every attempt adds to the graveyard of failed loneliness cures. Why? Because the factors that caused the decline of the past institutions are still in effect.
To me at least, it seems much more possible to teach folks how to build connection - the new institutions will follow.
I'm not sure that's right but there seems to be something too that idea. It might very well be that at least in the sense we do now widespread acceptance of homosexuality and platonic friendships just aren't compatible.
I'm not sure what one is supposed to infer from this.
I'm reminded of a Gallup poll[0]:
> How worried are you that you or someone in your family will become a victim of terrorism -- very worried, somewhat worried, not too worried or not worried at all?
> 36% in August 2021.
[0] https://news.gallup.com/poll/4909/terrorism-united-states.as...
...is this really the openness to chance that anyone (other than LinkedIn influencers) has in mind? Friendship is super flipping far from making business connections. We want people who sympathize, care, make themselves available, so we can be the same to them.