Friendships Between Men: Masculinity as a Relational Experience by Matthew L. Brooks A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Communication College of Arts and Sciences University of South Florida Major Professor: Arthur P. Bochner, Ph.D. Carolyn Ellis, Ph.D. Kenneth Cissna, Ph.D. Stacy Holman Jones, Ph.D. James King, Ph.D. Date of Approval: November 2, 2007 Keywords: Friendship, Masculinity, Autoethnography, Dialogue, Friendship as Method, Narrative © Copyright 2007, Matthew L. Brooks Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to my son. Acknowledgements I wish to thank my advisor, Art Bochner, without whom this dissertation would not have been concluded successfully and artfully. I also thank my committee members—Ken Cissna, Carolyn Ellis, Stacy Holman Jones, and Jim King—who lent creative and critical support along the way. My most gracious thanks to all my peers, whose conversation in the hallways between classes sustained me. Finally, to my best friend and wife, Kimberly, for always living with me through the pits and pinnacles of writing and researching; I love you. Contents Abstract iii Foreword 1 Chapter One: Necessary Baggage 17 Chapter Two: Details, Desire, Names 36 Chapter Three: Touched 48 Chapter Four: Hair, Muscles, and Orgasm 63 Chapter Five: Assuming Old Habits 86 Chapter Six: Opposites 121 Chapter Seven: No Method but the Self 139 Chapter Eight: Participant Monologues 167 Bert’s Monologue 167 Sidney’s Monologue 174 Kirk’s Monologue 181 Chapter Nine: Hard Habits to Break 196 Chapter Ten: Speak your Heart and the Rest will Follow 221 Chapter Eleven: Man, I Love you 238 Chapter Twelve: Reflections at a Rest stop 262 The End? 262 Analysis 266 Masculinity & Contradiction 266 Knowing a Good Friendship & Sticking to it 269 My Friends; My Self 274 Calling Home 287 i Epilogue 291 References 300 About the Author End Page ii Friendships Between Men: Masculinity as a Relational Experience Matthew Brooks ABSTRACT This dissertation is an auto/ethnographic account of close friendships between the researcher and other men. The various narratives contain intimate dialogues about being a man, having friends, and the process of resisting and succumbing to orthodox masculinity. The purpose of the research was to investigate and artfully depict the communication and development of close friendships between the researcher and other men, in hope of gaining more knowledge of the difficulty forming and maintaining male friendships given the strictures of orthodox masculinity. The research combines methods of autoethnography and dialogic conversations with four male friends. In the first chapter I set the stage with a review of the scholarly literature on male friendship and masculinity. In chapters two through six and nine through eleven I present two sets of dialogic conversations I had with four men. Chapter seven provides a theoretical tour of the method. Chapter eight consists of monologues about friendship given by three participants. Chapter twelve concludes the dissertation with personal reflection and analysis. iii The analysis draws links between the author’s experiences of friendship with each participant, grounding research on masculinity, as well as research on male-male friendship. In male-male friendships, the performance of masculinity, especially proving one’s manhood, reverses the order of expected dialogical tensions in interpersonal relationships. For example, to be a man requires demonstrating invulnerability before allowing vulnerability. Forming close personal bonds, however, requires demonstrating vulnerability from the onset, something that runs counter to prescripts of orthodox masculinity. This observation demonstrates the double bind many men face when first forming friendships. To counter this bind, I argue for the need of a reflexive turn at level of self to provide the necessary gap in self-knowledge that allows for dialogue and redefinition of orthodox masculinity between men. iv 1 Foreword As I drive west on Highway 60 toward Tampa, I see the sun peek over the horizon behind me. The flash of light in the rearview mirror breaks the trance of the road. I’ll be in town soon, so I begin thinking about my best friend, Bert, who I’ll be meeting later in the day. If it weren’t for my dissertation, I probably wouldn’t get to see him at all today, and we might not have become so close. It is hard for me to believe that we have known each other for five years, and we love one another. And wasn’t that the point. For my dissertation research, a project I began in the fall of 2002, I wanted to figure out what counted between men—what mattered when it came to establishing and maintaining close male friendship, and what research method was best suited for examining those relationships. What method could help me get close to what I needed to know about friendship between men? For that matter, what did I need to know? Why was I drawn to research about masculinity and friendship? My desire to know other men has been a desire to know myself and to call into being the kind of man who values openness, vulnerability, empathy, care, tenderness, emotionality, affection, intuition, self-disclosure, and a host of other behaviors that have been, unfortunately, deemed feminine by popular culture and thus naturalized as unmanly. In my early teens, I struggled to come to terms with 2 what I perceived was a fundamental difference between myself and other boys. Around twelve, I lost interest in typical boy activities, especially sports. I began keeping a journal, writing poetry, reading literature, and talking with girls; I had an easier time drawing girls into the kinds of conversations that fascinated me then, particularly conversations about the treacherous turns life sometimes takes (Heasley, 2005). On too many occasions during these formative years, other boys reminded me violently of how different I was from them. At first, my own father struggled to teach me how to fight, how to protect myself with my fists, how to stand up and be a man. But I failed. I can still remember the night dad and I danced around the backyard throwing punches at each other; how, in his eyes, I saw adoration; and how, as our shadows stretched across the dry grass, I promised to make him proud. But that promise only compelled me to hide my difference and ultimately my self. I was drawn to this research project out of the anger and outrage I suffered through as a boy, and because I lived in a culture that seemed to hate boys like me. No wonder I learned to hate myself (Heasley, 2005). I am drawn to this research because at the end of my undergraduate days, a professor, a man, helped me to go from asking what is wrong with me to what is wrong with the culture in which I live. This shift in perspective began my journey into masculinity studies. Later, during my Ph.D. program, another mentor inspired me to ask, not what is wrong, but what is going on, something that makes it easier to love myself and also easier to live a just life within a culture that I co- construct with others. He shifted my perspective from victim to survivor of 3 orthodox masculinity. As a survivor, I can now contribute to redefining masculinity. Surviving and contributing is something done alongside significant others, a journey best shared with friends. Thus the dissertation, the act of researching, talking, and writing, is highlighted as a relational experience where, like any good friendship, we are in it together—participants, researchers, mentors. My questions—even my quest—bend toward my self; my self and all the doubts about other males that have burdened my heart since childhood: doubts about my father, doubts about my companions, but most of all doubts about myself. Could I love, truly love, another man? Is that something I really needed? Maybe, like many other people, I hadn’t yet learned to love myself. Even though I have a loving wife and adoring son, why do I sometimes feel something is lacking? Do other men feel this lack? How do they cope? I wanted to learn why I longed for a male companion and almost always ended up turning to the woman in my life to fill this need. Did other men feel this way too? Maybe I’m too demanding of my self. Maybe I’m asking too much, while demanding nothing at all. Maybe I’m too much like my father, while fearing I’m nothing like him at all. Maybe I’m not man enough and too much of a man. The pressure to prove my manhood began with my father. For a military man, he was gentle and understanding. Though my father failed to assuage my fear and anxiety, he stood ready to accept me, a son who, from an early age, struggled with the question: am I normal? Am I gay? As a boy, associating being gay with being abnormal went unquestioned and, looking back, I see how this blind link was used as a weapon to enforce the homophobia prevalent in the 4 performance of orthodox masculinity (Sedgwick, 1986). Being emotional and needing to explore and express my feelings, seemed unmanly. Abnormal. Feminine. Gay. These labels fed a fear of being found out, of being deemed unworthy by the important males in my life at that time. While growing up, everywhere I turned I was confronted by stoical males who preferred activity to talk, brutality to tenderness. And I felt compelled to hide my sensitivity, my need for deeper, emotional connections (see Heasley, 2005). Undoubtedly, my desire for a deeper connection with my father translated into a need for deeper connection with my friends.