Do Not Touch!

I have no memories of my father’s affection towards me as a young boy. I have no memory of his ever kissing me, playing with me, holding me, hugging me, touching me, telling me he loved me, that he liked me and was proud of me, asking how I was feeling, or telling me what kind of man he thought I’d become. No sports, no board games, no engagement with my plastic American Revolutionary War soldiers, no family games – nothing.

In all fairness, he was a product of an earlier era when affection between fathers and sons was not considered an essential part of parenting. This is not to say he was coldhearted and didn’t love me. On the contrary, he loved me a great deal but showed his love through his role as provider not through the role of playmate. Still, it wasn’t until I was 20 years old when my father hugged me for the first time and told me he loved me.

Fast forward some years to the day when I’m a dad with two young sons. There you will find me wrestling vigorously on the floor with both of them. I grab them often throughout the day. I tickle them at every opportunity. I hug and kiss them at bedtime. Physically, I’m all over my boys all the time! How was it that for me the limits of male affection were nearly nonexistent? Today I still hug and kiss my adult sons and I suspect I will do so until my last breath.

Many years ago, I had the opportunity of traveling through the Middle East with a group of Egyptian men. While walking through one of Damascus’ largest bazaars, I noticed numerous couples of men walking hand in hand or arm in arm. I commented to my friends that I was shocked at the bold public affection demonstrated by gay Arab men!

They were equally as shocked that I thought the men were gay. Their affection was not a signal of homosexuality but a symbol of fierce camaraderie, a sign of brotherhood and support. This model of affection and unconditional love between men is a central constituent part of Arabian masculinity. Photographs of President George W. Bush holding hands with Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and kissing him attest to this truth.

I met my best friend for dinner one night in a public restaurant. When I arrived, he stood up from the table and we hugged as we normally would have done, but I lingered in the embrace. He immediately became uncomfortable, especially in that public setting, and pulled away quickly!

At a party attended by the new, young husband of a distant relative, I approached the guy with the intention of giving him a hug. When I launched the beginning motions of such an embrace he backed away abruptly telling me he didn’t like to be touched. It was clear he was actually repulsed by the idea of a man hugging another man.

A YouTube video shows football phenomenon Tom Brady lying on his back while getting a massage. His young son walks into the room to see what’s going on and decides to leave. Yet, his father asks him why he’s leaving without giving him a kiss. The young boy dutifully approaches his dad and kisses him on the lips, the duration of which was longer than a peck. Self-informed child advocates were outraged at what they considered the pedophilic nature of the kiss and went so far as to suggest the kiss was essentially child abuse.

What kinds of social experiences fashion a young man’s detestation of all forms of touch from another man, or perhaps from anyone? What has happened in American culture where fathers can’t hug or kiss their sons, where male friends are reluctant to hug in public, and where men actually fear being touched at all? How have the limits of male affection come to the point of disallowing virtually any meaningful physical interaction between two men? How have even platonic displays of male affection become so highly sexualized that a man simply cannot express his love and gratitude to other men outside of the rough physicality afforded male athletes? (And butt-slapping isn’t homoerotic?)

The Art of Manliness website (artofmanliness.com) has a gallery of old-world photographs depicting male friends in various physical poses, all of which are nonsexual. Yet, these poses would be unthinkable in today’s homophobic world. The book The Overwhelming of Friendship is an intriguing look into the manner in which American men communicated with one another in the 18th and 19th centuries. The vocabulary is flowing and embellished and in today’s heterocentric environment the undertone is presumably homosexual. However, in the context of those earlier centuries, there is no homosexual implication. The YouTube video Perfect Bromance: Reclaiming Affection is a global, multicultural view of male affection shown in a positive light.

How can these depictions of close physical association between men be explained? Borrowing an overlay from today’s culture, it would seem that homosexuality was rampant in early America. Photographs of male friends seem to show they were all over each other in pose. Letters from male friends seem to suggest homosexuality was openly discussed even in polite society. And video clips from non-Western cultures seem to hint that homosexuality is a prominent, worldwide singularity. All of these assumptions are wrong. The question is not whether these pictures, letters, and clips suggest homosexual behavior, but why was the limit of male affection and association in America much broader two centuries ago; and, what changed to create the limits we see today?

The concept of homosexuality was different in the 18th and 19th centuries because the prevailing science of that age was different. Homosexuality was considered a choice, not a psychological or biological state of being. This choice was an observable act wherein two men were sexually intimate. It was not something mysterious within a personality syndrome invisible to the naked eye.

Juxtaposed with same-sex intimacy is platonic same-sex affection, which is a choice for physical, nonsexual relationship. As long as two men were not engaged in a homosexual act, their fondness for one another could be displayed nearly limitlessly. They could hold hands, walk arm in arm, hug, cuddle and kiss. This behavior wasn’t considered homosexual conduct because it did not involve the act of sexual intimacy.

In America, men see affection as sexual behavior rather than social behavior. We frame all contact by men as being intentionally sexual until proven otherwise. It’s a different story in Europe. As many as 89 percent of heterosexual undergraduate men in the United Kingdom report having kissed another man on the lips.

However, things are changing here, too. A survey of 442 college-aged American men asking how they show and receive affection indicated that 53 percent had kissed another man on the cheek and 13 percent had kissed another man on the lips. Both kinds of kissing were associated with positive forms of social bonding and displays of close friendship. None of the participants reported any shame from these expressions of affection.

My claim is that American men need to be touched by other men but our culture easily misinterprets warm friendliness as passionate social behavior that is a precursor to sexual intimacy. This drought of platonic affection that includes some physical connection is turning men into emotionless, soulless zombies promoted in part by a rigid gender role that leaves men nearly inhuman. As a result, grown men can’t express their love, gratitude, and affection to their sons or other men.

Being human requires touching other people, including men touching men. Toxic masculinity denies men the feelings that would make them fully alive. Men can become grounded in their humanity when they surround themselves with other men who are engines of deep and unconditional love, who are compassionate, affectionate, forgiving, and open. Only then can a man embrace another man without feeling compromised in his manhood.

Whenever a man shows affection to another man and it is labeled as gay it’s done in order to minimize the act of affection. Men who rush to verbally degrade a show of emotion between men don’t understand masculinity in its pure sense or may even have doubts about their own masculinity and sexuality. And since boys imitate men, by the time they’ve reached puberty boys have learned that whatever touch depravation they may have acquired can only be satisfied through roughhousing or team sports. If they do seek gentle touch in their lives it is expected to take place in the exclusive and highly sexualized context of dating.

This needs to change in order to make healthier men. It doesn’t mean men should start to French kiss their best friends. It does mean that men should be allowed to show platonic affection to their friends without the judgment that it is sexual. Men can’t grow into better men without making emotional and physical connections with other men. There is a limit to male affection but it doesn’t start and stop with a fist bump.

Let me leave you with this provocative insight from Prof. Marilyn Frye.

To say that straight men are heterosexual is only to say that they engage in sex with the opposite sex. All or almost all of that which pertains to love, most straight men reserve exclusively for other men. The people whom they admire, respect, adore, revere, honor, whom they imitate, idolize, and form profound attachments to, whom they are willing to teach and from whom they are willing to learn, and whose respect, admiration, recognition, honor, reverence, and love they desire…those are, overwhelmingly, other men. Heterosexual male culture is…man-loving.

Need a hug? Give me a call.