I believe men can have a strong bond, share thoughts and feelings, express ourselves honestly, and have a full and meaningful friendship. Mary Hunt explained the female friendships as ‘right relationships’ based on love, embodiment, power, and spirituality. She goes on to explain each of these elements of ‘right relationships’ to manifest friendships, which are both “liberating and witness to it”(Vernon, 2010). Unfortunately, I cannot draw from any personal experiences with female friendship, but I can talk to my friends about it. One friend I asked said, “I have close friendships with other women because we go through the same experiences,” That leads me to believe that men, can have that type of friendship as well. When asking my sister, she replied, “I prefer the company of men because they do not judge.” I found that observation interesting, in that I have at no point felt judged by my male friends, instead when I do something I would consider “judge worthy” my friends usually tell me how they would have handled that situation.
I do not think any changes need to happen necessarily with friends between men, but instead, we need to continue on our gradual improvements on the idea of how to define a man in western cultures. As I mentioned in my last discussion, generationally speaking, male friends today are different than male friends of 60 years ago. The newer concept of the “metrosexual male” coined by Mark Simpson and described as a man “who consumes in all the best gyms, clubs, shops and hairdressers (Vernon, 2010)”, could help speed the progress along. Metrosexuals aren’t just the guy at your gym wearing yoga pants with a man-bun in his hair, but also the man who wants his shirts to fit well because he wants to look ascetically pleasing to the eye. I think the term metrosexual will be incredibly short-lived in history as it is just the “missing link” between what we were and what we will soon be as a gender.
Reference:
Vernon, M. (2010). The Meaning of Friendship. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
