Writing Male Friendships

Many of my characters happen to be men, and unfortunately I happen to be quite deficient in male-ness. I've been researching in order to ensure they sound 'male,' and one if the things that's been brought up is exactly how does one write a close male friendship that isn't rife with unintentional homoerotic subtext? (I know that fangirls don't really give a shit about how much there is in order to slash it, but I'm referring to GLARING examples) This is what I've managed to pick up so far (please correct me if any of these generalizations are wrong)

• Guys don't usually like socializing in situations where they are talking 'face to face' and prefer to have an 'event' to talk around (such as a sporting event, video games or a movie)
• Guys often use petty insults on each other, (such as "Hey, Asshole") not to offend each other, but almost as terms of affection to show their bond (I have to admit, me and my female friends sometimes do this as well) Occasionally soft punching and such may also be used for the same purpose

I know not everyone is the same, but any 'man-friendship rules' that usually apply would be very helpful if you could share them with me.

• Also, I heard recently that in some 'gay accepting' countries (I heard this about the UK specifically) young men will often think nothing of kissing a close male friend on the mouth or even 'cuddling' on a couch in a way that wouldn't be too unusual if two platonic female friends did it, but for many other people would be completely unthinkable if two 'bros' did. This conflicts with previous statements I've heard, which say that anti-gay areas will sometimes think nothing of same sex gestures that would define a 'romantic friendship' or a particularly 'Ho Yay -y friendship' due to the fact they couldn't possibly think that two best friends could ever be 'homosexual deviants.'
  • Any thoughts or tips on either would be greatly appreciated :)

Well, I'm male and I don't do either of these with neither my male or female friends, but I can say (except for the third, which I've never seen in my life), but I can say that amongst my social groups I'm a minority, so I can also say that there are some male friendships that move along that line.

"All you Fascists bound to lose."

The first bullet point sounds about right. The second edges into Testosterone Poisoning stereotype. Some guys might be like that, while others are not (I'm not). The third.....I'm not even sure I understand what you were trying to say. I live in the US, which I'm not sure qualifies as pro-gay, anti-gay, or both; but I know that over here girls/women kissing on the cheek is OK, but for guys it's unheard of. I have never seen two male friends kiss each other.

Go to the source. And by that I mean go somewhere that male friends would be hanging out and do some serious people-watching. A sports game. If you're of age, a bar or club. The mall.

Every would-be writer should be a people-watcher.

edited 29th Jul '13 5:50:09 PM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Vitriolic Best Buds and using insults to refer to each other is mostly true, though real close friends will often have their own pet nickname insults (usually a variation on a name or an inside joke). You generally don't hear guys saying "Hey, asshole" to get each other's attention, though it will be used in playful banter.^note Consider playing Super Smash Bros with your buds. If your friend is constantly evading your attacks, you might say "Get over here, asshole!"

The thing about kissing...well, in other countries it might be accepted, but in the US it's totally unheard of and much awkwardness would ensue. Although two sufficiently close male friends may engage in Gay Bravado.

ok boomer

as someone from the UK, that 3rd point isnt true at all, as far as personal experiences go.

i have heard of kisses on the cheek as a form of greeting, but more from other european countries rather than england.

the insult flinging thing varies a lot by situations and the participents.

back in middle school, insulting each other was infuriatingly common (infuriating because when i had a legitimate issue with the guy sitting next to me being a raving douchebag, he would take it as affectionate and just make whatever pissed me off worse); violence usually being the quickest way to get someone to take an insult seriously.

but outside of middle school on the way back home, insulting each other...eh, generally not done. but that might have just been because it was a group of people across multiple years.

while playing a competetive game...yeah, theres going to be a lot of insults hurled that are completely affectionate. aside from that...i refrained from socializing after middle school so im afraid i cant help. although, the first isnt always going to be true, but for people like me (who have trouble socializing), its the best chance at actually getting involved in a conversation to a meaningful degree. otherwise we just hang around, keeping silent, waiting till we're addressed.

oh! and also, and this might be the case for people in general but, how much someone is willing to throw insults at a friend affectionately probably relies heavily on 1. how outgoing the person is, and 2. how long they've known the friend, how comfortable they are with them, and especially how many people are present (aaaaaand finally how well they know those people). unless extremely outgoing, i doubt everyone is willing to hurl insults at a friend in a large group consisting of mere aquiantences.

I can kind of vouch for #1. With #2, my friends and I don't really great each other with insults or anything like that. Like others said, that level of blatant name-calling is typically more common when playing video games or something, but most of my friends just make fun of each other for our differences or if one of us winds up saying something that at least sounds stupid. #3, I'm from the Bible belt, so that kind of stuff definitely doesn't happen here. Most of my friends don't even touch me unless they have good reason. I used to hug a couple of my friends, but that was really just to annoy them and their reactions amused me, not really out of affection.

I agree with Madrugada in that it'd probably be a good idea to observe male friends wherever you can, although the way people act in public is different than the way they act in private (ie: when there are no girls around, I notice my guy friends tend to curse more, make more vulgar jokes, and so on). Another idea I'll just throw out is to do a bit of reading about the difference between male and female communication. Sure, not all males and females communicate in exactly the same way, but regardless, I think acquainting yourself with different communication styles can probably help you learn how at least some guys will talk and act towards each other.

edited 30th Jul '13 4:54:06 AM by FingerPuppet

My friends and I are foul to each other. To the point that I've found myself acting the same way to people I've only just met, and they've written me off the biggest jerk they've ever met.

I write stuff sometimes. I also sometimes make youtube videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/majormarks

I wanted to know if, hypothetically, if a guy was in a more pro-gay enviroment, would he be more likely to be willing to be openly affectionate towards male friends, even though there could be a greater chance they would be interpreted as non-platonic? (I know everyone could react differently but from your experience)

I don't think that I have experience of such an environment, but perhaps it would essentially work much like a male-female friendship: there might be some holding back by one or each in order to reduce the risk of giving the wrong idea to the other in the friendship, unless they each know the other's sexuality and know that it's incompatible with them.

I could see plenty of instances in which they're mistaken for partners, however.

My Games & Writing

#2 depends entirely on the people involved. There are plenty of women who do this and plenty of men who don't do this.

#3 depends on culture and not on how pro- or anti- gay they are. For example in many middle-eastern countries it's normal for men who are friends to hold hands while they are not what I would consider pro-gay. The US in general, no matter where you are, is a pretty low-contact culture, meaning people just don't touch each other much, whether or not the contact would be considered "gay" or not.

edited 30th Jul '13 5:21:39 PM by ohsointocats

#1: I kind of agree with but feel that guys think of it differently. We don't often get together solely to socialise. If we go to an event, often conversations will wander far from that as a topic. Into outright gossiping. I mean things are organised with an implicit understanding that there'll be chatting, just (I suspect for most guys) it feels a little weird to get together to just talk. We could be doing something else at the same time!

I guess my experience of this is my weekly tabletop session. Yeah, there's an event there, but it's kinda half an excuse to meet. There's plenty of warm up, in game, and cool down socialising that goes on.

That said, I have gone out to coffee with my best friend a couple of times, which is diving straight into Heterosexual Life-Partners territory.^note Well, I'm bi.

#2: As for the insulting endearments, not such a thing for my circles of friends. That said there's plenty of in-joke-insults that we often throw around. Bringing up people's backgrounds as country kids, or being from a dodgy part of town, always being a werewolf if he can, etc.

#3: Yeah, we're pretty hug happy but that's really more a personality quirk of a couple of us than a cultural thing. I mean kissing would probably be a bit much, unless it was over-dramatised continental cheek-air kissing. But yeah, overly long hugs or kisses probably would give a gay-relationship impression.

I guess my advice would be not to worry too much about it. I mean I don't think male friendships are that different to female ones. Nor are either type homogeneous.

edited 31st Jul '13 8:49:47 PM by Luthen

You must agree, my plan is sheer elegance in its simplicity! My Tumblr

One of the biggest differences I've noticed between female friendships and male friendships is that girls in general seem to be a lot more anxious and uptight about what their friends might think based on what they say or do. Girls tend to take things more personally. If a male friend of mine says something unkind, I'll generally think "Wow, he's having a bad day" and shrug it off. But if one of my sister's female friends says something that could possibly be interpreted as unkind, she'll agonize over it for hours and wonder why her friend suddenly hates her and it will really bother her for a long time. That could just be a cultural thing, but in my experience guys don't have as much "drama" with their male friends.

Fear is a superpower.

I would argue that a really good friendship between two men can't help but have at least a little bit of homoerotic subtext to it. If you think about it, all a homoerotic subtext would really be is a certain amount of closeness, it'd be seen as homoerotic because it's more expected of females, but male friendships can develop to that point too.

I dunno, I might be missing the point of what you really are looking for but I think a good male friendship will have at least a little bit of homoerotic subtext.

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit.” - Aristotle nec-plus-ultra.tumblr.com

That kind of implies that all love/closeness/intimacy is erotic, and I really don't think that's the case.

Fear is a superpower.

Hmm, I agree but I guess my viewpoint kind of comes from viewing the erotic as like the top level of intimacy, so everything else is like a level below it. So to look at a friendship the closer and closer you get the closer it gets to that final level of intimacy that is the erotic. That wasn't what I was trying to say though, what I meant was more that the things that keeps a male friendship male centric is the masculinity, but the more intimate side of friendships (like the sharing of secrets, insecurities and such) are more often seen as feminine and would lead to a male friendship possibly having a homoerotic subtext. I just wanted to point out that as a friendship gets closer it's more likely that these kinds of things will possibly manifest (like sharing secrets, insecurities, eventually hugging each other and such) and so a strong male friendship could lead to that point and maybe have a homoerotic subtext.

I'm not sure if I explained myself that clearly, and I'm still not sure this is what the original poster was after...

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit.” - Aristotle nec-plus-ultra.tumblr.com

That sounds like a problem with audience expectations, not something the writer can do much about. :P

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

Exactly my point!

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit.” - Aristotle nec-plus-ultra.tumblr.com

The thing to remember is that men are not a homogenous mass, who all share identical social norms and expectations. At the very least, these things change dramatically depending upon national setting, ethnicity, race, urban vs. suburban, and most esp. social class. Age is huge as well.

edited 1st Aug '13 3:14:09 PM by DeMarquis

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

Yep. Don't write men. Write people. There's really nothing stopping one guy from calling up another and asking if they can get together for drinks. One group of guys may not want to talk about anything other than sports, getting drunk and getting laid. Another group of men might talk about work, their wives, their kids, share cooking tips, bitching about that ass at work who wears too much cologne . . . or anything else.

Honestly, I figure that you could take almost any conversation between two women, change the characters to men, and no one would bat an eye at it. Only a few cosmetic changes would be needed.

I think what you're describing is less men than it is "bros." And even bros aren't a monolithic group that follow rigid rules of behaviour. There are totally bros who get together just because they need to let out their feelings on something or other.

X-Men X-Pert, my blog where I talk about X-Men comics.

I don't agree with what you said because I don't agree with your viewpoint. That would be like saying that the level of intimacy a mother will have for her newborn child is weaker than the level of intimacy that their future spouse will have for him/her, simply because a spouse can be erotic but a mother can't. The erotic is not the top level of intimacy, but rather just one aspect. Is your native language English? I think some English-speakers have this viewpoint because the word "love" is usually equated with the erotic, unless family is involved, and is almost never used to refer to friends. Love/intimacy can take different forms of which one is not necessarily greater than the other. Have you heard of the trope The Four Loves?

edited 2nd Aug '13 5:25:24 PM by shiro_okami

Thank you for voicing my disagreement more clearly than I did.

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

"Honestly, I figure that you could take almost any conversation between two women, change the characters to men, and no one would bat an eye at it."

Also, I wouldnt necessarily use this as the basis of a writing technique, except perhaps as a learning exercise. I happen to be of the school that male and female characters should incorporate known gender differences in order to say something about human nature, but that's just me.

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

That's really not what I meant. My posts were all discussing intimacy in friendships, specifically between males. I was saying that the closer a relationship between two people gets the easier it is for the audience to read subtext that implies that they're attracted to each other in a sexual way.

Either way, I'm doing a horrible job of explaining myself and I think we're dragging the thread slightly off topic, so I'm gonna bow out for now.

(And I am aware of the Four Loves and English is my first language)

edited 3rd Aug '13 4:33:02 PM by keerruhn

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit.” - Aristotle nec-plus-ultra.tumblr.com

I sincerely apologize for the dog-pile. That was uncalled for by us. Your opinions are greatly valued.

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."