The prejudice about these links has sexist connotations, because there is a type of classification that tells us whether an emotional manifestation of one man towards another is within the meaning of a friendship or something else.
Close, a film that premiered on Netflix in the middle of this year, reactivates a topic that always generates tensions and prejudiced views: the manifestations of affection within the framework of male friendship. The story describes the characteristics of a relationship between two pre-adolescent boys. What is the “allowed” limit of these affective expressions?
The prejudice about these links has sexist connotations, because there is a type of classification that tells us whether an emotional manifestation of one man towards another is within the meaning of a friendship or something else. And that “other thing” is clearly related to his sexual orientation, although the moralistic sanctions of thirty years ago no longer apply.
AgainWhat is that limit? What happens to us socially when faced with a man who expresses his emotions? I still find people who are shocked when a man cries, as if male crying had an extra sensitivity… The well-established idea that if a man breaks down to tears it is because “his anguish is too much”, as if a dam would overflow due to accumulation of water. And many times those cries come to reaffirm endless cycles of violence “because he asked me to cry.”
Nor am I saying that men have crocodile tears, but that there is something that puts tension in the man’s crying. Something about masculinity is played, like when a child is told “not to fag” when he whines because something hurts, or, as in this case of the film Close, of two men who express their affection for each other. Perhaps this behavior is tolerated during childhood, but in puberty and adolescence the sexist mandates that were kept in a latent state will be activated, so that both boys distance themselves, both physically and emotionally.
Gender prejudice, called sexism, pigeonholes, almost syllogistically constraining the ways we relate. For example, between two people who show affection to each other, is this type of expression of affection expected of them? And narrowing the focus on the question, which would be the pairs where these manifestations are most accepted? Male – female? Woman – woman? Male – male?
What does an overly expressive friendship between two men imply, causing social disciplining mechanisms to operate? And this discipline, which is always a social order, we know operates under the theory of a heteronormative stereotype… So what are the acceptable behaviors according to this cultural norm? Is evidence of possible homosexuality what triggers sexist alarms?
These behavioral expectations, thought from a binary order, generate visualizations and areas of darkness where certain loving gestures go unnoticed while others do not. And in the case of the male-male pair, we can recognize that amorousness is viewed with a distrust marked by heteronormativity, recognizing as rarity any demonstration of affection between males from a certain age, pointing the finger, but also introjecting these mandates in a self-disciplining manner, as in the case of one of the protagonists, and taking physical and emotional distance, mutilating their ability to express their affection.
Psychologist and writer from Rosario. Author of the book Prince Charming Distinñe – Male Survival in Times of Deconstruction (Galáctica Ediciones, 2023).
Source: Ambito
