Watch out, I’m full of quotations today.
I’ve been scanning a lot of Substacks recently and laughing at them. No names, but at a certain age, you’ve read it all and you don’t need to read it again. With precious few exceptions (like Jonathan Haidt) they’re mostly semi-obscurities who want to make a name for themselves, so they write hifalutin’ crap that they think is original. None of it is.
As the show biz saying goes, “It’s been done.”1 The quotations are a way of acknowledging this.
The eternal question: “Can men and women be friends?”
My answer: “Can women be friends with anyone?”
I say no.
As the catty saying (probably coined by a woman) goes:
“Men insult one another and don’t mean it. Women compliment one another and don’t mean it.”
As the old radical feminist Ti-Grace Atkinson said: “Sisterhood is powerful. It kills. Mostly sisters.”2
I credit my skepticism about female friendship completely on what’s already been written by Lionel Tiger (yup, that’s his real name—don’t laugh, he was friends with another anthropologist named—Robin Fox!)3 an unjustly-overlooked anthropologist. He became a Big Name in the late 60s and has sunk into obscurity.
Anthropology as a discipline has a deservedly terrible reputation but some of them are good. He’s one of the good ones. He originated some key concepts about human evolution, which have been assimilated into the culture. He either never got credit for them, or they were misunderstood, or thoroughly vulgarized.
His concept of “male bonding” is the one that’s been corrupted to uselessness. Please read his book, Men in Groups, to understand what he was saying. It wasn’t some goofy “boys will be boys” theory. The theory of male bonding is a dead-serious appreciation of the murderously important impersonal bonds between men, how they work out in real life, and how they’ve shaped the evolution of our species.
In brief: men form hierarchically-ranked impersonally bonded groups whose purpose is to destroy or dominate other groups of men. They last as long as the goal is in sight, then they fragment or regroup.
Impersonal means it’s all transactional. I can hate your guts, hate your face, but if you’re useful to me, you’re on the team. When you’re no longer useful, you’re off the team.
It gets complicated with the creation of larger social organisms like the nation-state, and he doesn’t deny the reality of affective bonds, but the theory is sound. Just look around you.
When you're a Jet,
You're a Jet all the way
From your first cigarette
To your last dyin' day.…
You're never alone,
You're never disconnected.
You're home with your own—
When company's expected,
You're well protected!
Again, read the whole thing. Read the original. Tell me ole Dr. Tiger wasn’t dead on the mark.
Tiger didn’t ignore women; he pointed out that women just don’t form these impersonal hierarchical bonds, they form dyadic relationships based on personal affiliation.
Let me anticipate two objections.
“My wife has a best friend that she’s known since kindergarten! Tell me that’s not a friendship!”
It isn’t. It’s a quasi-sisterly dyadic relationship.
“I see girl groups/gangs all over the place.”
They aren’t groups the way men/boys form groups. They are groupings of dyadic relationships based on personal affiliation. They have no structure and their only goal is to enhance their own marketability to males, not to gain power over males beyond the erotic realm. Hence their instability and transience. The only lasting relationships in these groupings are the quasi-sisterly ones.
And those quasi-sisterly relationships will always take a back seat to the major relationships of a woman’s life: that to her blood family, husband(s) and children.
It’s no contest.
With men, it is a contest. In our society with its shrivelled social relationships when a man gets married he tends to forsake all other relationships but in traditional societies, that’s not the case (something that modern trads don’t take into account).
I left out this verse in the ellipses above:
When you're a Jet,
If the spit hits the fan,
You got brothers around,
You're a family man.
There’s an inherent tension between family life and male bonding. The idea in our society is that men put all that adolescent junk behind them when they get married but I think they lose something quite useful to their well-being when they do so, which partly accounts for the instability of modern men. Men with buddies, allies, bonds from their pre-marriage life are in a much stronger position psychologically when the shit (we can say that word now) hits the fan. Modern guys are so bereft.
It’s hazardous to put all your sperm in one basket.
I thought about all of this for a while. It’s fair to ask this:
“Can men be friends with other men?”
Ok, I’ll be that person and say, “define friend.”
If a friend is someone who will die for you, no questions asked, take a bullet for you, no questions asked, for no reason other than pure love…
No. Dr. Tiger says so.
Men can be buddies, allies, band mates, teammates, comrades, mates, pals… but be honest, are you going to take a bullet for your best friend? Let’s put that proposition to the acid test.
“Friends? Your friends? If you lock them together in a room with no food for a week…Then you could see what it is, friends! …”
OK, sorry not sorry to have gone there. But… he’s right, isn’t he?
Do you remember what Animal Mother said in Full Metal Jacket, looking down on the corpse of a comrade?
“Better him than me.”
You don’t say that when you look at the corpse of your own child.
We’re all trying to get back to the pure relationship we had with Mommy, the one who would take a bullet for you. If you’re lucky, Daddy will take a bullet for you, too, but Daddy comes later.
If you’re a man, you are condemned to a lifetime of jostling, scheming, insults, heckling, and competition.
Get some allies. Try to keep them. But, although the lyrics were clever—they’re not really family and don’t expect any of them to take a bullet for you. Would you take a bullet for him?
And if you’re a woman, no, your friends aren’t your friends. Frenemies at worse, sisters at best, but friends, not really. And who cares?
“I am but too conscious of the fact that we are born in an age when only the dull are treated seriously, and I live in terror of not being misunderstood. Don't degrade me into the position of giving you useful information. Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.”4
Well, Oscar, you’re right, but I offer these bits of wisdom from you and others so that some might benefit.
When the student is ready the teacher appears. I keep having to learn and relearn this myself.
The old Mad Magazine had a brilliant spoof of this. If I ever come across it on the ‘net I’ll post it. Guy dressed as Noah goes into an agent’s office. Takes out a little suitcase, opens it. It’s full of water & has little boats & animals floating around on it. Guy raises his hands to the heavens. Lightning flashes from on high. The waters part. The guy looks at the agent, who has been sitting there, puffing on his fat cigar. Agent says, “It’s been done.”
And look at what she said about feminism. Honest lady!
If you don’t get these allusions, shame on you.
Such an intelligent man and such a fuckup.
“Men insult one another and don’t mean it. Women compliment one another and don’t mean it.”
This is is actually true.