Men are the New Women pt. 371: The Man Date

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http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/04/10/fashion/10date.xl.jpg

What's it called when straight men get together for dinner -- just the two of them? A man date.

Quote:

Anyone who finds a date with a potential romantic partner to be a minefield of unspoken rules should consider the man date, a rendezvous between two straight men that is even more socially perilous.

Simply defined a man date is two heterosexual men socializing without the crutch of business or sports. It is two guys meeting for the kind of outing a straight man might reasonably arrange with a woman. Dining together across a table without the aid of a television is a man date; eating at a bar is not. Taking a walk in the park together is a man date; going for a jog is not. Attending the movie "Friday Night Lights" is a man date, but going to see the Jets play is definitely not.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/10/fashion/10date.html?

(Read the whole article if you haven't, lots more interesting stuff I haven't quoted.)

I think this is a great development. It's something that my otherwise fairly enlightened circle of male friends just won't do, and I don't GET it. My hubby's best friend moved to L.A. shortly after we did, the first time they'd lived in the same city since college. He's married too (E.G. also knows the wife from college), and the four of us would get together. It was OK, but a) they all knew each other well and would get into endless reminiscences (fine, just a bit boring for me) and b) E.G. and his friend's basic level of interaction was -- well, think Slappy. Not quite as funny. Again fine, again got old.

So it was fine with me to get together, but I was busy a lot, it wasn't actually super fun for me, and I thought it would work better if E.G. and his friend just got together. They plain wouldn't. It drove me crazy.

Do you guys go on man dates? What are they like? Why don't you if you don't?

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I thik it's just called hanging with a bud.

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Do you and said bud have deep meaningful conversations or just talk about penises and women?

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freeduck women and our dicks ARE meaninful conversation to us. You need to understand that simple premise. Laughing

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Hah.

I was just thinking about the kinds of things I talk about with my female friends. My closest friend and I go on woman-dates but they usually involve the kids. We talk about kids, interesting topics not just who has boogers today, neighborhood happenings, good shopping deals, etc... Maybe some of these man-dates happen with new fathers who are interested in talking about the same sort of stuff? Apologies if that's in the article -- didn't read it all yet.

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Heh. Well, I have one male friend. We meet up every other week or so at our regular pub to play a game of Go or two and chat a bit.

I guess that just kinda proves the point tho Razz

Why dont we, say, go out to dinner or something? I'd be bored. Its cool to shoot the crap, play a game, hang out in the pub - but pure face-to-face conversation, hours on end? Oh God. Perhaps men just dont have that much to say to each other Razz

:

Replace "walk in the park" with "hike in the forest" tho and I can imagine it again. Doing something together is fun. But a walk in the park just means more face-to-face talking. Yawn.

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FreeDuck wrote:

We talk about kids, interesting topics not just who has boogers today, neighborhood happenings, good shopping deals, etc... Maybe some of these man-dates happen with new fathers who are interested in talking about the same sort of stuff?

Well we do talk, in between and after games, but not about shopping deals Razz

. Just, I dunno - work, his little daughter, new music we've heard or ideas he's cooking up, how's things at home (read: relationship), stuff thats in the news ... its ever more about work instead of the creative things he was doing, alas ..

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FreeDuck, that's what I tend to talk about now, but I've been going on woman-dates since high school, long before kids entered the picture. I think it's just sorta whatever is on our mind.

Anyone read the rest of the article yet? I think I'll quote some of the parts I thought were interesting:

Quote:

While some men explicitly seek man dates, and others flatly reject them as pointless, most seem to view them as an unavoidable form of socializing in an age when friends can often catch up only by planning in advance. The ritual comes particularly into play for many men after college, as they adjust to a more structured, less spontaneous social life. "You see kids in college talking to each other, bull sessions," said Peter Nardi, a sociology professor at Pitzer College in Claremont, Calif., who edited a book called "Men's Friendships." "But the opportunities to get close to another man, to share and talk about their feelings, are not available after a certain age."

-snip-

Dinner with a friend has not always been so fraught. Before women were considered men's equals, some gender historians say, men routinely confided in and sought advice from one another in ways they did not do with women, even their wives. Then, these scholars say, two things changed during the last century: an increased public awareness of homosexuality created a stigma around male intimacy, and at the same time women began encroaching on traditionally male spheres, causing men to become more defensive about notions of masculinity.

"If men become too close to other men, then they are always vulnerable to this accusation of, 'Oh, you must be gay,' " said Gregory Lehne, a medical psychologist at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine who has studied gender issues. At the same time, he added, "When you have women in the same world and seeking equality with men, then all of a sudden issues emerge in the need to maintain the male sex role."

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I don't know how you can be so hung up about this very normal thing.
Until last year I used to have 4 hetero friends with which I'd have lunch (the Mexican long lunch) once a while on a regular basis. Now I have 3. One passed away in dramatic circumstances.
These are the topics, in order of importance:
#1 (the one who died): personal feelings & life, our kids, sociological/philosophical/psychological babble, politics, life at work, sports.
#2: personal feelings & sexual life, sports, politics, psychological babble, our kids.
#3: personal feelings, politics, our kids, life at work.
#4: sociological babble, politics, life at work, our kids, sports, personal feelings.

I hardly ever talk about penises. But I do talk about butts and boobs, specially with #2.

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I think I would love to be a fly on the wall at one of your man-dates, fbaezer.

I'm a slack-ass and don't want to register with the NYT to read it all, so thanks for posting more bits, soz.

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I don't get it either, fbaezer.

I suspect nimh is actually much talkier than the average American guy.

I think -- not sure -- that this whole thing may be especially pronounced in American culture with its weird masculine roles. Which I think are changing, finally, and which I think is a good thing.

That's my "the new women" thing btw, is that for so long men were just kind of baseline/ default and women got all the attention in terms of oppression and gender roles and blahbedy blah, and meanwhile all that shifting of female gender roles has left the male gender roles a little adrift. It seems like that's being addressed more and more in a variety of ways.

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I'll post the whole thing for anyone else who doesn't want to register:

By JENNIFER 8. LEE Published: April 10, 2005 THE delicate posturing began with the phone call. The proposal was that two buddies back in New York City for a holiday break in December meet to visit the Museum of Modern Art after its major renovation. "He explicitly said, 'I know this is kind of weird, but we should probably go,' " said Matthew Speiser, 25, recalling his conversation with John Putman, 28, a former classmate from Williams College. The weirdness was apparent once they reached the museum, where they semi-avoided each other as they made their way through the galleries and eschewed any public displays of connoisseurship. "We definitely went out of our way to look at things separately," recalled Mr. Speiser, who has had art-history classes in his time. "We shuffled. We probably both pretended to know less about the art than we did." Eager to cut the tension following what they perceived to be a slightly unmanly excursion - two guys looking at art together - they headed directly to a bar. "We couldn't stop talking about the fact that it was ridiculous we had spent the whole day together one on one," said Mr. Speiser, who is straight, as is Mr. Putman. "We were purging ourselves of insecurity." Anyone who finds a date with a potential romantic partner to be a minefield of unspoken rules should consider the man date, a rendezvous between two straight men that is even more socially perilous. Simply defined a man date is two heterosexual men socializing without the crutch of business or sports. It is two guys meeting for the kind of outing a straight man might reasonably arrange with a woman. Dining together across a table without the aid of a television is a man date; eating at a bar is not. Taking a walk in the park together is a man date; going for a jog is not. Attending the movie "Friday Night Lights" is a man date, but going to see the Jets play is definitely not. "Sideways," the Oscar-winning film about two buddies touring the central California wine country on the eve of the wedding of one of them, is one long and boozy man date. Although "man date" is a coinage invented for this article, appearing nowhere in the literature of male bonding (or of homosexual panic), the 30 to 40 straight men interviewed, from their 20's to their 50's, living in cities across the country, instantly recognized the peculiar ritual even if they had not consciously examined its dos and don'ts. Depending on the activity and on the two men involved, an undercurrent of homoeroticism that may be present determines what feels comfortable or not on a man date, as Mr. Speiser and Mr. Putman discovered in their squeamishness at the Modern. Jim O'Donnell, a professor of business and economics at Huntington University in Indiana, who said his life had been changed by a male friend, urges men to get over their discomfort in socializing one on one because they have much to gain from the emotional support of male friendships. (Women understand this instinctively, which is why there is no female equivalent to the awkward man date; straight women have long met for dinner or a movie without a second thought.) "A lot of quality time is lost as we fritter around with minor stuff like the Final Four scores," said Mr. O'Donnell, who was on the verge of divorce in the mid-1980's before a series of conversations over meals and walks with a friend 20 years his senior changed his thinking. "He was instrumental in turning me around in the vulnerability that he showed," said Mr. O'Donnell, who wrote about the friendship in a book, "Walking With Arthur." "I can remember times when he wanted to know why I was going to leave my wife. No guy had ever done that before." While some men explicitly seek man dates, and others flatly reject them as pointless, most seem to view them as an unavoidable form of socializing in an age when friends can often catch up only by planning in advance. The ritual comes particularly into play for many men after college, as they adjust to a more structured, less spontaneous social life. "You see kids in college talking to each other, bull sessions," said Peter Nardi, a sociology professor at Pitzer College in Claremont, Calif., who edited a book called "Men's Friendships." "But the opportunities to get close to another man, to share and talk about their feelings, are not available after a certain age." The concern about being perceived as gay is one of the major complications of socializing one on one, many straight men acknowledge. That is what Mr. Speiser, now a graduate student at the University of Virginia, recalled about another man date he set up at a highly praised Italian restaurant in a strip mall in Charlottesville. It seemed a comfortable choice to meet his roommate, Thomas Kim, a lawyer, but no sooner had they walked in than they were confronted by cello music, amber lights, white tablecloths and a wine list. The two exchanged a look. "It was funny," Mr. Speiser said. "We just knew we couldn't do it." Within minutes they were eating fried chicken at a "down and dirty" place down the road. Mr. Kim, 28, who is now married, was flustered in part because he saw someone he knew at the Italian restaurant. "I was kind of worried that word might get out," he said. "This is weird, and now there is a witness maybe." Dinner with a friend has not always been so fraught. Before women were considered men's equals, some gender historians say, men routinely confided in and sought advice from one another in ways they did not do with women, even their wives. Then, these scholars say, two things changed during the last century: an increased public awareness of homosexuality created a stigma around male intimacy, and at the same time women began encroaching on traditionally male spheres, causing men to become more defensive about notions of masculinity. "If men become too close to other men, then they are always vulnerable to this accusation of, 'Oh, you must be gay,' " said Gregory Lehne, a medical psychologist at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine who has studied gender issues. At the same time, he added, "When you have women in the same world and seeking equality with men, then all of a sudden issues emerge in the need to maintain the male sex role." And thus a simple meal turns into social Stratego. Some men avoid dinner altogether unless the friend is coming from out of town or has a specific problem that he wants advice about. Otherwise, grabbing beers at a bar will do just fine, thank you. Other men say dinners may be all right, but never brunch, although a post-hangover meal taking place during brunch hours is O.K. "The company at that point is purely secondary," explained Steven Carlson, 29, a public relations executive in Chicago. Almost all men agree that beer and hard alcohol are acceptable man date beverages, but wine is risky. And sharing a bottle is out of the question. "If a guy wants to get a glass of wine, that's O.K.," said Rob Discher, 24, who moved to Washington from Dallas and has dinner regularly with his male roommate. "But there is something kind of odd about splitting a bottle of wine with a guy." Other restaurant red flags include coat checks, busboys who ask, "Still or sparkling?" and candles, unless there is a power failure. All of those are fine, however, at a steakhouse. "Your one go-to is if you go and get some kind of meat product," explained James Halow, 28, who works for a leveraged buyout firm in San Francisco. Cooking for a friend at home violates the man date comfort zone for almost everyone, with a possible exemption for grilling or deep-frying. "The grilling thing would take away the majority of the stigma because there is a masculine overtone to the grill," Mr. Discher said. And man dates should always be Dutch treat, men agree. Armen Meyer, 28, a lawyer in New York who is an unabashed man dater, remembers when he tried to pay for dinner for a friend. "I just plopped out the money and didn't even think about it," Mr. Meyer said. "He said, 'What are you doing?' And I'm like: 'I was going to pay. What's the big deal?' And he said something like, 'Guys don't pay for me,' or 'No one pays for me.' There was a certain slight power issue." When attending a movie together - preferably with explosions or heavy special effects, never a romantic comedy - guys prefer to put a nice big seat between each other. (This only sounds like an episode of "Seinfeld.") "Going to the movie with one other guy is sort of weird, but you can balance it out by having a seat space between you," explained Ames McArdle, a financial analyst in Washington. Men who avoid man dates altogether are often puzzled by the suggestion that they might like to spend time with male friends. "If you're buddies with another guy, there shouldn't be any work involved," Mr. Halow of San Francisco said. Which is why many men say that a successful man dates requires a guy to demonstrate concern for his friend without ever letting on. "The amount of preparation that the other guy is making is directly proportional to how awkward it is," Mr. McArdle of Washington said. When man daters socialize with non-man daters, the activities always fall to the lowest common denominator. Mr. Meyer of New York remembers how he would ask his roommate Jonathan Freimann out for dinner by himself. But Mr. Freimann would instinctively pre-empt, by asking other guys along. "If I had known he wanted to spend one-on-one time, I would have," Mr. Freimann explained, adding that group dinners had simply seemed "more fun." (The two had dinner in San Diego last week.) Jeffrey Toohig, 27, is a more reliable bet for Mr. Meyer. They regularly have dinner together to discuss women, jobs and whatever else is on their minds, because, as Mr. Toohig put it, "the conversation is more in-depth than you can have at a bar." Mr. Toohig, who is looking for a job helping underdeveloped countries, divides his male friends into two groups: "good friends who I go out one on one with, and guys I go out with and we have beers and wings." And, he pointed out, dinner with Mr. Meyer has the advantage of not making his girlfriend jealous, the way dinners with his female friends do. All men, however, agree that one rule of guy-meets-guy time is inviolable: if a woman enters the picture, a man can drop his buddies, last minute, no questions asked. A romantic date always trumps a man date.

(The author's middle name really seems to be "8" -- interesting.)

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I was going to say something along the lines of this being an American thing, too. I know men from other cultures that hold hands in public and that is not taboo, even though homosexuality is practically a stoning sin in the same.

There's definitely something to the notion of men's roles being left adrift in this country. I wonder if that is a necessary effect of increased attention to women's roles. Is there something like this going on in European countries too?

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I think calling hanging with your buds a man date is just a way to invent a new term and sell some papers or products myself.

I have a couple of good friends that I talk with all the time about a wide range of subjects, boobs and butts being only a couple.

You girls may be surprised to know that it's not ALWAYS about you, so get over yoursleves. (Sound familiar? :wink: Laughing

)

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Wasn't Jennifer 8 a horror flick?

Very interesting. I confess though, that other than my sisters, I am also uncomfortable in the same situations mentioned in the article.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_8._Lee

Really about uncomfortable?

I haven't rustled up a local best friend yet, but that's what I usually do when I have one -- go to dinner/ lunch/ coffee/ movies/ museums/ concerts/ walks in the park/ walks in the woods/ whatever.

In addition to more standard hanging-out stuff.

Usually dutch treat, occasionally one person gets it with the expectation that the other will get it next time.

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Yeah. Even with my one good friend, we don't spend a lot of time in deep conversation. We mostly meet around kid-events and don't go out just the two of us -- unless you include joint grocery outings (our local grocery store has a kid drop-off).

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the author wrote:

When you have women in the same world and seeking equality with men, then all of a sudden issues emerge in the need to maintain the male sex role

So women are to blame for men not being able to be intimate one-on-one with their male friends? I don't get that. Are they saving it for the women in their lives?

soz wrote:

The author's middle name really seems to be "8" -- interesting.

Jennifer 8 was the name of a movie with Andy Garcia and Uma Thurman. Could be a nickname.

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Wikipedia link above explains the name.

I don't think it's necessarily "to blame", I think it's just one of the side effects of changes in gender roles. Like, it's obviously a good thing that women have more options in their lives, but it's hard to reconcile childrearing and women in the workplace. Who's fault is that? Etc.

It makes sense to me that there are lots of similar side effects. There was a time when after a mixed-gender party, the men would retire to one room with their brandy and cigars and the women would be in another room. That started to be frowned upon -- rightly -- but then what do those men do?

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