Samantha Allen calls attention to the “intimacy crisis” between men — and how facilitating homosocial relationships between men and boys could prevent violent out-lashes.
Elliot Rodger certainly wasn’t gay, as a Fox News guest recently hypothesized, but cultivating more satisfying forms of male homosociality might be one step we can take to curtail future mass shootings perpetrated by lonely men.
Men like Rodger tend to have very few friends. According to a recent article in the American Sociological Review, white heterosexual men have the fewest friends of any group of people in the United States. And, as Lisa Wade notes in an article for Salon, “men desire the same level and type of intimacy in their friendships as women, but they aren’t getting it.”
By perpetuating straight male homophobia, straight men starve themselves of a much-needed source of intimacy and affection: each other.
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Straight white men in the United States are facing an intimacy crisis. There’s a lot we don’t know about Elliot Rodger but we do know that he craved intimacy. His voluminous and horrific manifesto chronicles his yearning for physical contact from his adolescence until his death. Elliot Rodger was a young man who wanted touch and closeness in his life.
But Rodger, like so many straight white men, could only tolerate one particularly narrow form of intimacy: sexual contact with conventionally attractive white women of a certain social status. The possibility of participating in forms of physical intimacy that are not tied to heterosexual intercourse does not occur to so many men in Rodger’s position.
The problem that straight white men like Rodger face is one of their own creation. By perpetuating straight male homophobia, straight men starve themselves of a much-needed source of intimacy and affection: each other. As Mark Greene of The Good Men Project notes, “straight men have been banished to a desert of physical isolation” because male-male touch now reads as “gay” and “gay” is anathema.
In his essay, Greene observes that the stigmatization of male homosocial intimacy in the United States is a fairly recent historical development. Prior to the historical construction of the figure of the “homosexual” and the formal inauguration of heteronormative systems of oppression, straight men held hands, shared beds, and cuddled. Even the founders of the notoriously homophobic Mormon religion, for example, were accustomed to this form of homosocial intimacy.
In light of this history, public displays of male homosocial affection (such as Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen’s heartwarming relationship) are nothing new; these displays model what male homosocial intimacy would look like today if we had bypassed a century of homophobia. Greene argues that we need to turn back the tide of this history, that “we need to empower men to touch” once again.
Most women don’t suffer from the “touch isolation” that Greene describes. Like many women, my friends and I can hold hands and cuddle whenever we want without any homophobic squirming. In the United States, straight women and gay women alike kiss, hug, hold hands in public, and share beds. In fact, affection between women is so pervasive that my public displays of affection with my female sexual partner are often coded as platonic: “You’re just really good friends, right?”
Women have long since proved that we don’t need to rely exclusively on our sexual partners for all of our emotional and physical intimacy. We put the model in place for men to follow. But straight white male homophobia prevents straight men from meeting their emotional and physical needs in the same way as women. Straight white men are literally starving themselves of the emotional resources that they need to survive.
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The cruel twist in the logic of Elliot Rodger and other Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs) is that they blame their loneliness on women instead of themselves. Rodger famously claimed, “All of my suffering on this world has been at the hands of humanity, particularly women.” Women in close friendships with one another perfectly demonstrate one potential solution to Rodger’s loneliness and yet they are also his first targets.
Like so many men in his position, Rodger blamed women for failing to comply with his single, narrowly-defined mode of companionship instead of expanding his emotional horizons to accept companionship from other men. His predicament is equivalent to claiming that you can’t eat at a buffet because your favorite dish is not readily available.
Instead of softening the blow of romantic rejection via supportive in-person contact with male friends, Rodger settled for indirect and often asymmetrical modes of expressing his emotions: video logs, forum posts on PUAHate.com, and angry manifestos. He sought catharsis in the most lethal way possible but never seemed to consider alternate solutions for his problems.
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It’s time for straight white men to quit blaming women for their loneliness and to start finding solace in each other’s company. Women can’t bear the brunt of men’s misogynistic violence while simultaneously providing them with one hundred percent of their physical and emotional needs. We can’t continue to suffer from sexual violence and murder because men can’t figure out how to manage their sadness.
Elliot Rodger was a lonely young man whose possibilities for affection and intimacy were severely restricted. But I have no sympathy for a man who chose to target women instead of dismantling the prejudices that narrowed his possibilities for happiness.
If men in Rodger’s position want to work toward a world where men can express their feelings without using bullets, one of the best places to start might be cultivating meaningful homosocial friendships.
Men have to learn to take care of each other. We can’t do it anymore.
Samantha Allen
Samantha Allen is a doctoral fellow in the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Emory University. In addition to writing regularly for the feminist gaming blog The Border House, her writing has also appeared on Salon, Jacobin, Kotaku, and First Person Scholar. You can find her on Twitter at @CousinDangereux or on the web at www.samanthaleighallen.com.
This article originally appeared on The Daily Dot.
Photo by PhotoCo./flickr
Just wondering what was wrong with my initial comment. It said it was in the spam filter when I first submitted it. Thanks.
Joseph, well stated.
Good article. I agree full on with both Samantha and Amy. I think the lack of male physical contact is very much the result of homophobia. I suppose some guys are lucky enough to avoid the worst of it, especially if they had an affectionate father, or if they were successful enough in their love life to both satisfy their need for contact and gain self esteem to guard against the sting of homophobic banter. But I think homophobia has left most men with at least a little fear of male-male contact and even more with the sense that their… Read more »
Paul, I think your observation is right on target.My brother and I grew up thinking that male/male affection and touch was taboo because our Dad had received that message from his father and in turn transmitted it on to us. It wasn’t until years later that I realized that he loved us but didn’t know how to express affection except in a male-female setting.By then the damage was done and it has taken me years to understand that warmth and affection are not restricted to females, that both men and women need that in their life to be healthy.It may… Read more »
You are exactly right. However, both men AND women tend to discourage closeness between males. It is not just heterosexual males. Both men and women tend to be far more homophobic against male homosexuality and so become suspicious of any male homosocial contact/close friendship! I agree with you that the double standard needs to stop. I bet gay men would Also agree with you as this hostility towards male-male affection affects them the most. If Michael Sam and his boyfriend were a lesbian couple, there wouldn’t have been all that hoopla and commotion about their normal show of affection!
Sam ,may I can you Sam? I really need to ask you not that it means anything to me but are you gay? Did you not get enough hugs when you were a kid? Do you not have anyone to touch you or hug you? I being a male get a hug any time I want it andi give anyone a hug that want it. So you and who ever things like you that thinks I need to have a Homo social relationship with other Man so far out in left field it’s not even funny. So please tell me… Read more »
Male homophobia against male homosexuality needs to stop! While it is true that this excessive level of homophobia mostly affects gay men since they are on the receiving end of most of the hate, make no mistake about it: straight men are also victims of their own homophobia. They constantly have to watch every move they make and are often not free to share or disclose their thoughts and needs because they are terrified of being seen as gay! Straight men cannot expect to rely completely 100 percent on their wives/girlfriends for all their emotional needs and physical contact!!! It… Read more »
I wanted to add that another way homophobia affects straight men is it makes them police their and other men’s behaviors.
may i ask , what do you know about being male? Im male and im not in any way by a gay man as a matter of fact I’ve had several gay men friends . if any one can say i dont share my feelings its because I dont let very many people that close. If you want to push it its because of the hate my mother had for my father and she took it out on me . so saying i need to get over the gay thing is just wrong . we as people need to stop… Read more »
Are you kidding me?