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.

The Importance of Male Role Models

Where are the men?

It seems a bizarre question to ask, yet given the current situation in the education system and many community centers, it is one we must ask.

For almost three decades we have watched men lose their position in society. It is not only reflected in the education and community support systems. It also appears throughout pop culture. Gone are positive fathers from TV and film. Now fathers are the comic relief. Our commercials feature men barely (and often not) more intelligent than pets. Articles, talk shows, and studies abound touting the “inherent” uselessness and pointlessness of men. We are constantly told that men essentially do not matter, except in how they can benefit and protect women.

If the message is not the above, then it is the claim that men are predators who ruin the world for everyone, particularly for women. Men are harassers, bullies, batterers, and rapists. Men need to be taught not to rape, not to beat, and to learn affirmative, enthusiastic consent lest they remain villains.

The net result of this is that men stop engaging.

Support male victims on International Men’s Day

Today is November 17th, International Men’s Day. There will be plenty of articles from feminists bashing the focus on men’s issues. There will be plenty of articles from feminists claiming men’s issues are important, but not that serious. They will be plenty of articles from feminists giving lip service men’s issues.

What they are not going to do is offer support to men. In light of that, this post will include links to various organizations that assist men and boys. If anyone has any organizations that help men and boys, please leave them in the comments below and I will add them to the list. I do ask people check the organizations before adding them. Having gender neutral language on their site is not enough. It is important to make sure that the organization actively assists men and boys.

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The Innocence Project
The Campaign Against Living Miserably
Just Detention International
Living Well
MaleSurvivor
ManKind UK
Survivors UK
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests
Urban Light

Mothers and Sons with Tom Golden

The Honey Badger interviewed author Tom Golden again. This interview concerned his book Helping Mothers be Closer to Their Sons: Understanding the unique world of boys. From the Amazon blurb:

Do you sometimes wonder why your son is the way he is? Do you struggle in understanding him? Listen to the words of youtube sensation Karen Straughan:

“For any mother of boys who has ever been perplexed, flummoxed,bewildered, dumbfounded, flabbergasted, confused or stymied by the things they say and do, this book is a must read.”

Learn the secrets that make boy’s emotions invisible. Learn the reasons he seems so different from your daughters. The author has spent over 30years working with boys and learning their nature. This book will open you to their world and in so doing bring a deeper closeness.
Concise, written in a friendly manner, this book will help you shape a new way of being with your son.

Bonus sections on adolescents, teaching boys about emotions, discipline and more, this book will give you plenty of tips about getting close to your son while honoring your distinctly different ways.

Listen to Jennifer Fink, writer,founder of buildingboys.net and mother of four boys says:

“I wish I’d had this book when I started raising boys! And even though I’ve been raising and reading and writing about boys for 18+ years, I learned things.”

I have not read the book yet, although I intend to. I find Golden’s insights as mentioned in the interview helpful. He and the Badgers discuss the way boys think and behave and the ways mothers and women in general can learn to notice these things to better understand why boys are the way they are.

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:

Addressing the boy crisis

The Honey Badger Brigade interviewed author and activist Warren Farrell concerning the growing boy crisis. Farrell has spoken previously about the importance of paying attention to boys’ needs and understanding the unique role fathers and male mentors play in boys’ lives.

Farrell has been on the receiving end of much feminist hatred, including a concerted effort to paint him as a supporter of statutory rape. Much of their complaint about Farrell is simply that he criticizes their policies and methods.

Like several notable critics of feminism, Farrell used to be a feminist. He was once the president of the National Organization for Women. I think this makes his criticism more irritating to feminists, much like a former believer criticizing their old religion.

Silent Suffering: Supporting the Male Survivors of Sexual Assault

The Greater London Authority (GLA) Conservative London commissioned a study on male victims of sexual violence. The study collected the reporting rate of male victims to local police. The results showed a stark situation:

On Wednesday, the GLA Conservative Group issued a thorough study that highlighted the gulf between adult male sexual assaults and the amount that get reported to the police.

Titled “Silent Suffering – Supporting the Male Survivors of Sexual Assault”, the paper highlighted the fact that between 2010 and 2014 there were 26,483 recorded incidents of males being victims of sexual assault or rape. This is contrasted with research conducted by SurvivorsUK, the largest and longest established specialist male sexual violence support charity in the UK, which evaluated five years of self-referral data (more than 600 individual entries) to establish that less than 4pc of the sample had reported their experience of adult sexual assault to the police.

The study provided an estimated numbers of victims:

Figures collected from all the UK’s police forces show that between 2010 and 2014 there were 26,483 recorded incidents of males being victims of sexual assault or rape.

This includes 3,748 incidents recorded by the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) – the highest rate in the UK.

Using these figures alongside the research conducted by SurvivorsUK, we can estimate the number of males over the age of 16 who were sexually assaulted or raped between 2010 and 2014, who did not report their experiences to the police.

These numbers suggest that across the entire UK between 2010 and 2014, 679,051 sexual assaults and rapes of males took place. Of these – 652,568 were not reported to any police force.

In the geographical area covered by the MPS this would equate to 96,103 sexual assaults and rapes of males between 2010 and 2014 – with 92,355 of them not being reported.

The study also analyzed why men do not come forward.