{"id":3079,"date":"2012-05-21T13:40:14","date_gmt":"2012-05-21T17:40:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/?p=3079"},"modified":"2013-01-10T15:33:25","modified_gmt":"2013-01-10T20:33:25","slug":"what-are-we-going-to-do-about-homosocial-friendship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2012\/05\/what-are-we-going-to-do-about-homosocial-friendship.html","title":{"rendered":"What are we going to do about homosocial friendship?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"
It\u2019s a mystery! Let\u2019s grab a dectective.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Last night was the season finale of Sherlock<\/em> (which I hope you were all watching), and, in one sequence, Sherlock and Watson end up handcuffed together. \u00a0As they clasp hands and start running, Watson shakes his head and mutters, \u201cWe\u2019re never going to hear the end of this.\u201d \u00a0Watson\u2019s frustration that everyone assumes he and Sherlock are, ahem<\/em>, involved is shared by Maureen Ryan, who wrote at HuffPo<\/a> that the \u201cnot-that-we\u2019re-gay\u201d joke that follows around male-partners-in-crime (or crime solving) is extremely played out.<\/p>\n

Now that kind of joke \u2014 \u201cWe\u2019re close friends, but we\u2019re not gay!\u201d \u2014 feels like a distancing technique, something that draws attention to gays and lesbians as something out of the norm. That feels wrong for a lot of reasons.<\/p>\n

And honestly, who cares? In this day and age, are you telling me that two men who are best friends would constantly have to deal with the assumption that they\u2019re gay? I just find the whole idea fairly preposterous. Who doesn\u2019t know straight men who hang out all the time without anyone thinking about or guessing about their sexuality? How is drawing attention to not-gayness, at this point, anything but a representation of lingering shreds of mild but unmistakable gay panic?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I agreed with her complaint, and also agreed with s.e. smith who guest posted at Alyssa Rosenberg\u2019s blog and singled Sherlock<\/em> out for praise<\/a> precisely because Sherlock and Watson are involved<\/em> without being sexually attracted to each other. \u00a0We have a tendency to sell friendship short<\/a> \u2014 treating them as a pale substitute for real<\/em> relationships which necessarily include some naked time. \u00a0That\u2019s why, in our debate about gay marriage<\/a>, Matt was worried that opening up the possibility of male-male sexual<\/em> relationships would mean devaluing male-male platonic<\/em> relationships<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I kind of read the Sherlock<\/em> coverage, mentally filed it for future arguments, and moved on. \u00a0Then, this past weekend, I was reading the NYT Book Review<\/em>, and paused over the write-up of Code Name Verity<\/em><\/a>. \u00a0The story is about a WWII spy and the female pilot she works with. \u00a0The review included the following paragraphs:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like being in love, discovering your best friend,\u201d Queenie writes, and Wein conveys that love gorgeously. \u201cWe\u2019re still alive and we make a sensational team,\u201d Queenie says.<\/p>\n

And they do. This is a rare young adult novel entirely about female power and female friendship, with only the faintest whiff of cute-boy romance. I\u2019d tell you more about the \u201cUsual Suspects\u201d-meets-\u201cIf on a Winter\u2019s Night a Traveler\u201d plot, but then I\u2019d have to kill you.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And I immediately assumed that the book was YA lesbian romance. \u00a0Whoops.<\/p>\n

During our debate, I outlined how I try to avoid tripping up platonic friendships with sexual tension<\/a> in my day to day life (after all, I\u2019m bi, and people of either gender might not know how to parse my friendship). \u00a0But I haven\u2019t thought much about how to change my expectations of or reactions to\u00a0other people\u2019s<\/em> friendships.<\/p>\n

My usual solution is to hope that the build up to romantic entanglements becomes a lot more formalized and scripted, but I realize that most people don\u2019t like this model as much as I do. \u00a0How do you guys negotiate the blurry line between friendship and romance, whatever the gender pairing? \u00a0Do you try to sharpen the distinction or just cultivate a kind of agnosticism about the status of relationships?<\/p>\n

The way we handle these\u00a0distinctions\u00a0is very much in flux, and sometimes it feels like the only people really working on delineating categories are the \u201cRelationship status\u201d programmers at Facebook.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last night was the season finale of Sherlock (which I hope you were all watching), and, in one sequence, Sherlock and Watson end up handcuffed together. \u00a0As they clasp hands and start running, Watson shakes his head and mutters, \u201cWe\u2019re never going to hear the end of this.\u201d \u00a0Watson\u2019s frustration that everyone assumes he and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[11,164],"class_list":["post-3079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviewsrecommendations","tag-lgbt","tag-sex-and-sexuality"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat are we going to do about homosocial friendship?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Last night was the season finale of Sherlock (which I hope you were all watching), and, in one sequence, Sherlock and Watson end up handcuffed 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