The “rise” of male friendships “bad” for women

It has been a while since people took a positive thing for men and turned it into a problem for women, so I suppose we were due for one.

According to a recent study, men’s friendship with other men — commonly called a “bromance” — could ruin women’s romantic relationships.

The researchers interviewed 30 straight college men, all of them part of the college’s sports department. The researchers found that the men valued their platonic relationships with their male friends over their romantic relationships with their girlfriends.

None of this is new. Men have had intense platonic relationships with each other since humans existed. We have plenty examples of this throughout history and mythology. Many of these real and fantasy relationships were closer than any relationship the men had with women in their lives.

The researchers drew the rather bizarre conclusion that changing attitudes in homosexuality have led to a rise in the so-called “bromance.” However, this is inaccurate. Talk to men in the military, police officers, and athletes, and one will find that these intense male relationships are quite common. The reality is that our culture’s focus on homosexuality, specifically in treating any male intimacy as sex-driven or romantic — like calling such platonic relationships “bromances” — led men to keep their close relationships with other men secret.

Another factor is women’s reaction to men’s platonic relationships. It is not uncommon to hear of girlfriends and wives driving away their men’s friends, particularly their closest male friends. The unspoken element is that the platonic relationship poses a risk to the romantic one. Most specifically, the emotional intimacy provided in the platonic relationship would subvert men’s need to depend on women for it, thereby stripping away one element women could use to control, for lack of a better word, the relationship.

Puritanism’s Shameful Secret

The Honey Badgers had an interesting stream with YouTuber TL;DR about the “puritanism” of the current progressive and feminist movements. The Badgers and TL;DR break down some of the reasons why so many modern leftists fall into the a cycle of smug arrogance. As TL;DR notes in the stream, everyone has this capacity and everyone does it from time to time.

Alison mentions this as well. She notes that she and Karen Straughan went through a series of videos and noticed the smug looks on many feminists’ faces in the videos. This is something I have noticed as well in my dealings with feminists, both offline and online. The contempt for those who disagree with feminists or feminism is often palpable, as is the arrogance when feminists know they are in a protected space.

One can see this in spaces in which the opposition is heavily moderated or banned. The feminists in those spaces behave with a kind of self-righteous indignation based solely on their assumed superiority over whomever represents the opposition. Yet this attitude quickly shifts when they enter uncontrolled spaces. Feminists then become defensive to a comical extent, reflexively accusing anyone and everyone of hating feminists, women, and social justice.

A Lesson About the Cult Mentality

Sargon of Akkad continued his series of videos about Dr. Arthur Deikman’s book The Wrong Way Home. In a recent video, Sargon goes through a series of case studies featured in the book.

Listening to those examples immediately brought to mind the current situation within the progressive movement. This is partly due to the similarity of their shaming and excommunication processes. Yet it is also because the case studies are essentially about liberal movements.

It worth noting that many of the people in these movements start out with good intentions. Many of them genuinely want to help other people. Yet as they become further entrenched in the ideology of the movement, the movement itself and the ideas that govern it grow in importance. It does not take long for the ideas to trump the people. Protecting the group becomes more important than helping or respecting others. This applies to every member of the group. Anyone can be chastised or kicked out, including the group’s founder.

Cult Behaviour: An Analysis

I hate to post another video, however, the subject is one I have meant to write about for some time. Several years ago I read the book The True Believer by Eric Hoffer. The book breaks down the myriad of ways in which mass movements prey on people and result in the “true believer”, a type of person who will defend the movement not because they believe in it but because it is necessary for their own sense of self.

The book is not about a specific group, although it frequently mentions Communists, fascists, and the religious. As I read the book I thought of the far left and feminists. Yet the notions could easily apply to groups like the Tea Party or Black Lives Matter.

The video, another one by Sargon of Akkad, analyzes another book that covers the same material from a different angle. Sargon gives an overview of Dr. Arthur Deikman’s book The Wrong Way Home, which focuses on cult behavior. Sargon mentioned in other videos that he was somewhat hesitant to post the video out of concern that his viewers might simply use it to label other people “cultists”.

The Torture of Dylan Voller

Few things enrage me as much as prisoner abuse, particularly the abuse of child inmates. I will entertain no excuse for it. I feel no sympathy for the guards to commit the abuse. I do not care what the child did prior to the abuse happening.

You do not get to torture children.

Yet this is something that most countries allow when they imprison children. A recent case in Australia shows frequently this occurs.

Guards at the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre repeatedly stripped, choked, and restrained Dylan Voller over the several years he was imprisoned at the facility. His abuse has only been taken seriously due to the release of a video showing guards strapping Voller into a restraint chair, which they left him in for two hours:

It is part of a chilling catalogue of vision released for the first time showing the repeated stripping, assault and mistreatment of the boy, who was one of six children tear-gassed at the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre in Darwin in 2014.

The boy in the chair is Dylan Voller, who was a detainee at the Youth Detention Centre in Alice Springs at the time.

The footage, along with other instances of mistreatment highlighted on Four Corners, prompted Human Rights Commissioner Gillian Triggs to call for a formal inquiry.

On the day of the incident, he was transferred to the adult prison and strapped into the chair for almost two hours after threatening to hurt himself so that he would be taken to hospital.

In the vision, Mr Voller, who is handcuffed and hooded, is being ordered by guards to walk backwards, hunched over, into an isolation cell before asking the guards why his mattress was taken away, telling them he has been treated like a dog.

Prison officers on duty can be heard saying Mr Voller had misbehaved by chewing on his mattress and threatening to break his hand.

The guards offered an explanation for their actions:

The Art of Male Bonding

The Honey Badgers recently chatted with former professor Allen Frantzen about male bonding and male love. Frantzen studied medieval history, primarily English history. He wrote several about male bonds during that period of time, particularly how men expressed their mutual love one another. This love was not sexual, but was still intimate.

It is something that we have lost today. Outside of a handful of situations, men and boys are discouraged from creating those kinds of intense bonds via accusations of misogyny and homosexuality. The situations where those bonds do occur are usually situations in which males can only depend on other males for support, such during war or in sports. The intensity and longevity of those bonds may be part of the reason why so many boys and men gravitate towards male-only spaces. It seems to be part of the male experience to want such bonds.

Frantzen explains part of why that happens, and the Badgers offer some interesting insights:

Men’s Mental Health

The Honey Badgers hosted a podcast discussion about men’s health several days ago. The show stemmed from an email the Badgers received from a man who feels disconnected because he has trouble making friends. He is a “straight-acting” gay man, and found that other gay men want little to do with him because he doesn’t share their interests and straight men want little to do with him once they find out he is gay.

Allison asked the listeners if any would be interested in supporting him. The outpouring was high, and the Men’s Mental Health show features some of those emails as well as other men sharing their stories of isolation.