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I was once in the intimate apparel section of a clothing store with a close female friend who was visiting from out of town. She wanted help picking items that fit, so I went to the changing rooms with her and helped her choose. Later we went to see a play together and sat next to each other. Then we had a candlelight dinner at a restaurant.
I suspect the two of us felt comfortable doing all these things because we were women. If a heterosexual man had been visiting a male friend of his, the two would not have gone shopping for clothes, let alone entered a changing room together, pieces of underwear in hand. If they’d gone to see a show, they might have left a “safety” seat between the two of them. A candlelight dinner à deux would have been, for many, out of the question.
On a different occasion, I was meeting a male friend for coffee right after he’d played softball. “How was it?” I asked.
“I am feeling sore. It was pretty aggressive,” he replied.
“Why?” I said. “Men are rough with each other when they play,” he replied.
“What do you mean?” I pursued, “You were playing with a ball, not fighting.”
“Men hit each other when they play,” he responded. “You know, to keep it masculine.”
I told him about the time when I helped a friend pick underwear. “It doesn’t seem fair,” I observed. “I can do whatever I like with my female friends, and we never have to be aggressive.” He nodded pensively.
My friend’s experience at the softball game is probably not uncommon. The satirical newspaper The Onion once ran a piece titled, “Area Man Unsure If He’s Male-Bonding Or Being Harassed,” saying in part, “When Bill called me ‘limp [expletive]’ and punched my shoulder, I wasn’t sure if he was insulting me or just being friendly, but everyone else was smiling and laughing, so I smiled back.”
The piece is a caricature, but like every good caricature, it exaggerates a real feature of what it depicts, in this case, a feature of male friendships. Such friendships can be rough, not simply physically but psychologically. Most importantly, perhaps, male friendships may not involve the kind of intimacy that characterizes good female friendships. Here, I want to ask why.
The Cynical View
One may think that perhaps the situation is not at all what it seems and that both the intimacy in female friendships and its lack in male friendships are a surface appearance. I recently came across a meme that said, “Men insult each other, but they don’t mean it. Women compliment each other, and they don’t mean it either.” Call this the cynical view of female friendship.
In my experience, this view is very far from the truth. My closest female friends have had me by their side as they went through parental death, job loss, and sometimes, numerous boyfriends. I was there for all of it. Most any woman I know has a female friend or friends with whom she is as close as I am with mine. Rhaina Cohen in an Atlantic piece several years ago went so far as to suggest that perhaps friendship, not marriage, is at the center of life, and judging from online commentary, the idea resonated almost exclusively with women.
By contrast, many (heterosexual) men I know do not have a male friend with whom they are emotionally close. For those who have a committed romantic partner, that partner is usually the sole confidante. The rest may experience a good deal of loneliness.
It is interesting why the cynical view persists. (Virginia Woolf, in A Room of Own’s Own, suggests that fiction from earlier eras portrays women “almost without exception…in their relation to men.” There is probably something to that. In addition, there is, in fact, sometimes an elusive boundary between friend and frenemy, though this is an issue that cuts across gender lines.) Here, however, I am interested not in the perceptions, but in the underlying reality. There are differences between male and female friendships. They are statistical and may not be present in any individual case, yet they are large enough to deserve comment.
Sexuality and Gender Norms
Contemporary men seem keener to defend what may be called their place on the totem pole than women are. Just why this would be is a question I cannot discuss in detail here, but for present purposes, I will point out that close female friendships are seen as consistent with femininity while close male friendships may be seen as inconsistent with masculinity. Perhaps seeking closeness and being open to it are more likely to be seen as feminine traits. While little boys are allowed to have very close friends, at some point boys are either explicitly told or otherwise sent a signal to be careful.
I suspect also that fear of sending the wrong signal about one's sexual orientation is in the back of many men's minds. A parallel concern isn’t in the back of women’s minds. When my friend and I went into the changing room together, neither of us was worried that the other would read anything homoerotic into that, and we did not think about what strangers would make of it either. I don't think most heterosexual men would have been so nonchalant.
Gender norms depend on historical context, of course. There are male friendships in Shakespeare's world so committed and tender, they would be seen as risqué today. Why culture should have been more welcoming of closeness between men in Shakespeare’s time is an issue worth thinking about. (Our changing ideas of marriage may be part of the explanation.) More importantly, though, one may ask, what's the worry? Shouldn't we expect norms concerning friendship to reflect people's preferences?
Preference and Imposition
It is true that no norm would persist if it didn't jibe with anyone's values. If and to the extent that male and female friendships today differ because men and women like things to be the way they are, none of what I have observed is a cause for concern.
But I do not think that this is true. It is, at any rate, not the whole truth. This is the main point I wish to make. Some of the differences are a result of social expectations that stifle psychological closeness among men. We all need someone we can talk to—not just softball partners, or buddies to hang out with after work, or music bandmates. Those are good too, but how important they are depends on one's personality and temperament. We all do, however, save perhaps for a few people with schizoid personality, need a true friend.
