Gay & straight
Posted December 30, Reviewed by Vanessa Lancaster.
Can Gay and Straight Men Really Be Friends?
The two men first came to know each other well on the set of the first X-Men film inand although the duo played adversaries on the silver screen, offscreen, they were developing a close friendship. On the set, the two men had adjoining trailerswhere they spent more time getting to know each other than in front of the camera.
Both actors are straight photographed together doing mundane things, such as walking a boardwalk while deep in conversation. Perhaps one of the reasons their friendship has drawn so much popular attention is the duality of their sexual identities. McKellan is a gay man who came out inand although 33 years have passed since he came out, it can still be shocking to the world to see such a close same-sex friendship that crosses sexual identities.
As a graduate student, Raymond McKie was interested in learning more about friendships that crossed sexual identities. Along with his supervisor, Robb Travers, he launched a study that surveyed straight men and gay or bisexual men from across North America. The vast majority of participants in the study indicated that they had at least one friend who had a different sexual orientation than their own.
Similar to questions that loom about whether straight men and women can ever truly be platonic friends, the same question lingers over the friendships between gay and straight men. It seems that whenever there is the potential for sexual attractionwe question the possibility of a truly platonic relationship.
A bromosexual friendship is a nonsexual friendship between two men, where typically one friend is gay or bisexualand the other is straight. In days past, this may have seemed as unlikely as a friendship between a lion and a mouse, given the traditionally high levels of homophobia among straight men. In the case of bromosexual friendships, it appears that many in such relationships view each other as the ultimate wingman, particularly when cruising for potential dates in a bar setting presumably in pre- COVID times!
Other research has shown that women prefer friendships with gay versus straight menpartly because the threat or looming question of sexual attraction is rendered moot. However, straight men in bromosexual friendships have perhaps learned how to harness this ease of friendship between straight women and gay men for their own advantage.
McKie noted that the straight men felt their gay friend was able to make successful introductions to straight women because the women trusted their gay male friends to introduce them to a good person. But the benefits gay bromosexual friendships are not unidirectional. Gay men also reported unique advantages to having a straight wingman when pursuing their own dating goals.
The lack of competition for the same prospective partners allows the friendship to flourish in a way that may be hindered to some degree for gay or straight men in friendships with men who share the same sexual orientation. For gay men, friendship quality with a straight male friend was particularly high when the friendship pre-dated the gay man coming out.
These men felt enough trust and closeness in gay existing friendship to disclose their sexual identity. When these friendships continue beyond that gay, they grow into straighter and more supportive relationships. Once again, however, the benefits are not just one way. Straight men also reported having more emotionally vulnerable conversations with their gay friends because they felt safer to do so, relative to attempting to discuss similar topics with other straight men.
Some of the straight men in the study also reported that having a close friend come out to them helped change their attitudes towards the LGBTQ community writ large, even to the point of becoming advocates for equality themselves. Despite the positive outcomes of bromosexual friendships, their prevalence still varies greatly across different geographic locations.
This attitude may be related to the greater emphasis on hypermasculinity in these regions as well as differences in political beliefs.