Comments | anteros_lmc: "All Boys Together" podcast

anteros_lmc

"All Boys Together" podcast

Dec 14, 2013 23:32

A couple of months ago I wrote a wee post about the Bishopgate Institute's season of events, Girls & Boys, which set out to "examine the changing nature of gender roles, what gender is, how we interpret our gender identity and gender equality." Many of the events sounded fascinating, but the one that caught my eye was a talk by Justin Bengry, of ( Read more... )

homosexuality, history, gender

Comments 2

esmerelda_t December 15 2013, 00:03:34 UTC

I wonder if intense male friendships really are not so much a thing of the past but just not as socially acceptable as 'normal' as they once were? The phrase immediately made me think of the intense friendships you have as a teenager with a new friend where all your other friends sulkily say 'God why don't you just marry her!'

Never having been a teenage boy I can't say for sure if they also have those relationships but I suspect they do. Certainly when I was at secondary school boys could be best friends but would sit with a huge space between them for fear of being accused of being Gay. Which is all kinds of ridiculous.

I think it's swinging back the other way though with those kind of male relationships being seen increasingly as cute. Look at RPS for example.

anteros_lmc December 15 2013, 01:06:30 UTC

I think there's a lot of truth in that. I suspect that you're right that such friendships do still exist, though their expression is less of a norm. It's very difficult to discuss concepts like this, as we now have such a distinct concept of homosexuality, which is itself a fairly recent construct. (Though I know that's a moot point.) Now, feelings of intense love between men ( or indeed women), tend to be interpreted as "gay" but I don't think that was necessarily the case in the past. Out concepts of sexual identity have shifted radically, but our concepts of "friendship" have altered too. In some ways I think we have become very polarised in the way we view relationships.

I think Brideshead Revisited is a perfect example of this. Remember Cara's speech to Charles? "I know of these romantic friendships of the English and the Germans. They are not Latin. I think they are very good if they do not go on too long…It is a kind of love that comes to children before they know its meaning. In England it comes when you are almost ( ... )