May 31, 2007

Dear Colleague:  

    Male friendship in the United States showed a steep decline in the middle of the 20th century, displaced by the rising cult of the family (2.5 children, dog, and white picket fence). And it continues to decline throughout the century and into the next, with sexual indulgence surging on the one hand and the cult of the family continuing to surge, under the sponsorship of Christian fundamentalism, on the other. Well known to social historians, but largely unknown to the general public, was the extent and emotional fervor of male friendship in nineteenth-century America.

    Today, in part under the influence of e-mail, affectional modes of address have almost completely disappeared even when one is not using e-mail but writing a personal letter to a friend. "Sincerely" becomes, successively, "Best wishes," "My best, "Best," and then nothing at all. "Affectionately" and "Fondly" are used only with close relatives, and "love" only by children, or between lovers, although I suspect that the male member will try to wriggle out of that too committal word. And what has happened to "Dear" as in "Dear John" at the beginning of the letter? That was de rigueur in my time.

    Daniel Webster and James Hervey Bingham became close friends at Dartmouth, and the warmth of their friendship continued past graduation. When briefly separated, how did they address each other in correspondence? Not just "Dear," but "Dearly Beloved!" Other terms of endearment included, "Lovely Boy," "Accept all the tenderness I have," "My dearest J. H. B.," and "I am, dear Hervey, your Daniel Webster." Note the word "tenderness." That was a key word in male friendship. They felt for each other, they were emotionally open and engaged with each other, in a way that we in our time associate only with intimate friendship between women, if at all. Webster and Bingham sought female companions with a view to marriage. When frustrated, they consoled each other with words that sounded, to modern ears, dangerously homoerotic, if not sexual. Webster wrote to Bingham, only half jokingly, "Yes, James, I must come; we will yoke together again; your little bed is just wide enough..." Could two young men be that close, could they uninhibitedly use the word "tenderness," without some other, more direct physical expression? No, apparently not. Male friends touched, caressed, and even kissed. But that was all. "No sex, please. We are American," as young men might have said in America in the nineteenth century (E. Anthony Rotundo, American Manhood, pp. 78-79).

    Today, expressions of love between young males are absolutely forbidden. Unless they are homosexual. And unless they are soldiers on the point of death. In Iraq, American soldiers, with tears running down their faces, said repeatedly, "I love you, man," as they hugged and tried to comfort wounded and dying comrades. When one wounded soldier insisted that the mushy stuff had gone too far, "there was friendly resistance. 'What, I can't love someone now?' a soldier said. 'I love you,' he repeated. 'I can say I love you if I want to' " (New York Times, May 23, 2007, A10).

Best wishes,

Yi-Fu