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Ishmael and Queequeg, Sam and Frodo, Kirk and Spock, Maverick and Goose. All legendary “bromances,” and all are considered “kinda gay.”
Why is it that a close, loving friendship between men is ripe for ridicule, yet no one doubts the heterosexual love between Cher and Dione in Clueless, for instance?
An article in The Guardian discusses The Sad Demise of Celibate Love, focusing on the curious exhumation of Cardinal John Henry Newman in October 2008. Newman was being exhumed as part of a process toward making him a saint, but when they began digging, they found out that Newman had been buried in a tomb for two:
The controversy turned on the curious fact that Newman was not alone in his tomb, having asked to be buried in the same plot as another priest he was very close to. “He loved me with an intensity of love, which was unaccountable,” Newman wrote after the death of Father Ambrose St John, 15 years before his own.
Newman was going to be moved to a sarcophagus where people could publicly pay their respects. The trouble was that Father Ambrose St. John was going to stay behind, and gay rights activists claimed that Newman’s removal was a way of covering up his secret homosexuality. Journalist Jack Valero isn’t so sure.
Instead, Valero argues that Newman and Ambrose were friends in a “simpler time,” and that Newman had famously kept his celibacy vows, so there certainly hadn’t been any hanky-panky with Ambrose. This was just a time when men could be close to one-another without sinister rumors or suspicions.
All of this reminds me of a conversation I had a couple of weeks back when spelunking for books at an infamously (and wonderfully) disorganized bookstore here in Vancouver — MacLeod’s. I told the guy behind the counter that I was a Melville nerd.
Upon hearing that, he asked me something along the lines of, “Have you heard that people thought Melville and Hawthorne were gay together?” And then went on to explain that, in the 19th century, men just sent suggestive letters to each other out of admiration for one another’s genius. It wasn’t gay.
But does it really matter either way? Does it matter whether Newman and Ambrose or Melville or Hawthorne secretly yearned for one-another, or whether they were just bros? Is there a reason why we think that men can’t be best friends without it meaning that they want in each other’s pants?
Somewhat ignorant straight men view being gay as being necessarily effeminate, whereas lesbians are not considered instantly “mannish,” even if they are barred from prom. My guess is that because when most men think of homosexuality, they picture someone like Jack on Will and Grace or Kurt on Glee — the latter of whom infamously declared himself “practically a girl, anyway.” With a best friend, men might be tempted to “share their feelings,” or they’d just be alone with one-another on a regular basis and what if one them accidentally catches the “gay”?
Really, I’m trying hard to make this make sense, but either way, isn’t this another way to make homosexuality a dirty and fearful concept, even with a newly-official LBGT Pride Month?
But what do you think? Why is it that women don’t have to worry as much about being labeled gay for having close female friends, but men do?
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I actually haven’t experienced this at all. My male friends have admitted “bromances” together, and my husband is really super close to his best guy friend, to the point where I jokingly call his guy friend his “boyfriend” when he calls. But there’s no jealousy in it, because there is absolutely nothing sexual about their relationship. Nor is there anything sexual in the “bromances” of my other male friends, and no one ever implies that there is! Maybe it’s because we’re all in the field of Classics and therefore have as our frame of reference a time when bromances were totally okay! But I do think (at least, I hope) that the “bromance” is becoming more acceptable in our society – just look at the recent strain of movies like “I Love You, Man”…
If a dude said “all female friendships are kinda hot”, they would be labeled sexist so fast it would make your head spin.
Good job, ZL!
My boyfriend is quite thoroughly straight, but he’ll throw around suggestive one-liners and inside jokes with his guy friends the way I do with my girlfriends. Admittedly, he doesn’t grab his friends’ asses and I do…but that’s beside the point! It’s unfortunate that there’s always something sinister and sexual about close male relationships.
Homosexual men do on the whole tend to be more effeminate, though, to the point of affecting effeminate dress or speech or mannerisms (whether consciously or not).
Oh bring back the ‘romantic friendship’! If you want to see straight chick on chick love go to a girls boading school – its not sexual at all, but the sheer passionate intensity of friendship is romantic. Thats why I like twighlight so much. I used to have all these Jacob and Bella-esque love-ins with straight chicks. Super intense. Lots of little kissy heart notes. Borderline obsessive.
Mind you, then I left school and had a proper relationship with the school bully, so…
My best friend is female as well as am I. We always get the “you’re totally gay together” in a joking way same way that our guy friends do. No big, kinda funny :)
OMG, that happens all the time to me too! My friend and I are always refereed to as gay (not that we mind) and when we say we’re not people always sez something like: “But you do inside jokes, you always hang out…”
Which by my standards are typical friend-things to do. We are not hugging or kissing and such…
I’m not getting this.
Everyone needs friends, male and female. I guess I’m surprised that anyone finds this an issue.
What kind of person doesn’t have any friends, especially one in particular that you’re very close to? I’d be looking at them from a distance and wondering if they were a serial killer or something.
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