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The key historical context of the bromance is the recent decline in homophobia, the paper argues. “We contend that the male preference for emotionality between other men, rather than women, has come about due to a significant cultural shift in the structure of masculinity,” reads the paper.

It's like having a girlfriend, but then not a girlfriend

The paper notes that in the late 19th and early 20th century, men posed for photographs together in physically intimate ways, wrote “endearing” letters to each other, and even slept in the same beds in non-sexual contexts.

But the increasing social visibility of homosexuality let to a climate of hysteria and stigma. “To prove that we were not gay, we acted hyper masculine,” White said.

As a result, men began to distance themselves from each other emotionally. The paper quotes one scholar to the effect that men “have not known what it means to love and care for a friend without the shadow of some guilt and fear of peer ridicule.”

Women’s behaviour has also been socially policed and restricted, but women are traditionally freer to express a wider range of emotional behaviour, and they maintain friendships through “sharing emotions and disclosing secrets.”

But men shared almost nothing of their emotional life, and only knew they were friends if they participated in activities together, “like playing sports, drinking, fixing things, or gambling,” the paper argues.

“As times have changed, and we’ve seen homophobia decrease, and homosexuality become a more accepted notion within society, what we’ve noticed is people no longer need to do that,” Adam White said. “People no longer care about being thought gay, and therefore they can behave in a number of different ways… All sorts of things are now open up for men without them being thought to be a ’sissy’ or a ‘fag’ because nobody cares.”