Original headline: “The Man Date,” from April 2005

Wow, what a different era: Check the date. Yep, this article is indeed from 2005, not 1965. While some remember the aughts as a time when gay acceptance began to go mainstream (“Will & Grace” dominated sitcom ratings; “Brokeback Mountain” won a handful of Oscars), it apparently still had a ways to go. Look no further than this provocative Styles feature, which still had keyboards clacking more than a decade after the fact . The article probed the putatively awkward social dynamic created when two straight male friends hung out together somewhere other than a hockey game. To dine together, or see a movie one-on-one, it seems, required pretzel-like social contortions to avoid any “undercurrent of homoeroticism.” The dilemmas, according to the author Jennifer 8. Lee, were endless. Is it O.K. to split a bottle of wine over dinner? If you go out to a movie, do you need leave a seat open between the two of you? This article was written only 13 years ago. Was it really that different an era?

Defining the terms: You may not find it in Webster’s, but a “man date,” as defined by Ms. Lee, consists of “two heterosexual men socializing without the crutch of business or sports. It is two guys meeting for the kind of outing a straight man might reasonably arrange with a woman. Dining together across a table without the aid of a television is a man date; eating at a bar is not. Taking a walk in the park together is a man date; going for a jog is not. Attending the movie ‘Friday Night Lights’ is a man date, but going to see the Jets play is definitely not.”

And the problem was … “The concern about being perceived as gay is one of the major complications of socializing one on one,” according to the “many straight men” whom Ms. Lee interviewed. One University of Virginia graduate student and his lawyer friend, for example, decided to grab dinner at a buzzy Italian restaurant, only to bolt in horror when they were confronted with cello music, amber lights, a wine list and — yikes! — another friend who happened to be dining there. “This is weird,” the lawyer was quoted as saying. “And now there is a witness maybe.” Out of discomfort, the duo high-tailed it out to a fried chicken joint for a proper bro-down. Even the most casual of outings involving two straight men sometimes involved a degree of “social Stratego,” the author asserted, referencing a board game that now seems as antique as the “man date” itself. “Some men avoid dinner altogether unless the friend is coming from out of town or has a specific problem that he wants advice about,” Ms. Lee wrote. “Otherwise, grabbing beers at a bar will do just fine, thank you.”

It was not always thus: Ms. Lee’s article posited that straight male anxiety over such social engagements was a relatively recent phenomenon. “Before women were considered men’s equals, some gender historians say, men routinely confided in and sought advice from one another in ways they did not do with women, even their wives,” Ms. Lee wrote. “Then, these scholars say, two things changed during the last century: an increased public awareness of homosexuality created a stigma around male intimacy, and at the same time women began encroaching on traditionally male spheres, causing men to become more defensive about notions of masculinity.”