A recent study out of the UK found that 93 percent of straight, male college athletes surveyed had enjoyed a good cuddle with their straight bros more than one time, and a whopping 98 percent admitted to sharing a bed with another man during college.
“They don’t realize this is something that older men would find shocking,” said study co-author Mark McCormack. “It’s older generations that think men cuddling is taboo.”
But if you go back a few more generations, straight guys expressing intimacy wasn’t remotely taboo — it was an accepted form of affection.
With the advent of the idea that people can be gay, overt signs of affection became taboo by association, and this guy-on-guy contact fell out of favor.
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
Related: The Ultimate Collection Of Cuddling Bros Photos
These vintage photos look homoerotic through our modern-day context (and perhaps some of the men featured in them really did have strong emotional/sexual desires for their male companions), but back then they would have simply shown good old fashioned male bonding
Check out more below:
Christopher Hayward
I would term it as we human beings, male, female, we as a species love the touch of another human being.
David Rogers
I’m betting some of the guys in these pictures were not straight. In any case, nice to see guys comfortable enough with themselves to show genuine affection to one another.
meghanada
ANOTHER straight entry?
Juanjo
I am a bit confused about this whole idea that straight men did not share “a bed with another man”. This was not uncommon when I was a kid or young adult. In Boy Scouts on winter camp outs it was common for two or more to share sleeping bags, unzipped and spread out in a couple layers. Likewise in college it was not unusual to share beds for example on any sort of road trip or even in apartments. Maybe that was just the way things were in the 60s and early 70s.
Will Glitzern
Still, you have to wonder how some of these came about: “Hey, let’s take a picture holding hands!”
Damon Robbins
I don’t know even one straight guy that likes to cuddle with another guy.
John Smith
Is that a youner Barack Obama and John Boehner frolicking on the beach together as only virile, hip, red-blooded American boys ever could and always have? Or are my eyes deceiving me…um….again?
Hun
If these guys weren’t white, they would have been arrested or worse.
inbama
Aren’t #9 twins?
Billy Budd
So cute and adorable.
Sluggo2007
If those pictures were of women, nobody would bat an eyelash. The truth is, men love their buddies, just as women love their BFFs. Some aren’t afraid to show their affection for their buds. They’re called REAL MEN.
Brian
In the old days – and I mean as in the 1800’s – male to male contact was actually prized. In the last 100 or so years, it’s been adulterated by the gay rights movement, unfortunately.
Liberals haven’t helped – they are obsessed with segregating and dividing any male to male contact into the “gay” category, thus leaving a gaping chasm for any male to male contact that is physically reassuring but not necessarily a lead-up to a sex act.
Joe
These guy are not straight. another dumb story from Queerty
jmps
It is also cultural. I have found that this reluctancy for straight men to touch or cuddle is kind of a white middle-class thing. I teach high school in an impoverished community of primarily Hispanic, and some white, kids. Although I see males of both groups showing physical affection towards one another it is mostly the Hispanic boys who are always hanging all over each other. They walk down the halls with their arms around each other’s necks and I have seen more than once boys tenderly placing a kiss on the back of the necks of their friends. And, both the boys and the girls tend to hug and kiss friends as they greet them around campus. The openly gay and trans-gender students are accepted very well and some of them have held leadership roles including Home-coming king and queen and student body president. All in all this population of kids, both genders, is really a lot more physical than populations of middle-class white kids that I have known.
Sansacro
We don’t know anything about these subjects’ sexuality. Stop pandering. Sick the self-loathing on this site.
Sansacro
@Damon Robbins: Guess you haven’t attended a Northeast liberal arts college.
Kieran
(and perhaps some of the men featured in them really did have strong emotional/sexual desires for their male companions) Perhaps? LOL
Homoeroticism wasn’t invented in the 1970s. Its been around since forever.
Maude
@Kieran:
BRAVO!
Nick Grillo
Homophobia as we experience today (as a hateful response) is a very new concept in society. Where having an intimate relationship once ment being emotionally close to another person, men had no problem developing these types of relationships. Today being intimate automatically conveys a sexual relationship. It’s also important to remember that both sexuality and gender identity exist on a spectrum. Most people are not found at the extreme ends of that spectrum but within the bell curve.
Captain Obvious
Gotta love a “gay” site always trying to prove straight is better… even when they’re using obviously gay men as “evidence” that straight guys go gay whenever they feel like it.
Nevermind that gay men spent 20 or more years proving that being gay is not a choice. Now we have a ton of morons trying to prove that it is.
DavidIntl
The sharing a bed with straight friends has always been a thing. It was common on school trips when I was a kid. And my ex-husband and I had actually shared a bed several times in hotels when traveling well before either of us acknolwedged that we were in fact gay and the relationship turned sexual.
Nahald
I think after Stnewall, straight men didn’t want to be percieved as anything remotely gay. All people need affection regardless of gender. I’m so glad that the younger generation could mostly care less about who’s gay or who’s straight.
Brian
You know, I think there’s a lot to be said for the idea that, as a result of gay rights, many men have become increasingly suspicious of other men’s designs on them.
It’s as if trust has vanished. Men now fear being ogled by other men whereas in the past they might have played along with it.
It also doesn’t help that women have become very demanding and intrusive into male domains. Where once there were many opportunities for men to be amongst men only, today it’s more difficult as women want to be involved in everything men do. This slow destruction of the all-male domain has reduced the opportunity for deep emotional and physical relationships between men.
Women’s liberation has harmed the male-male interaction.
1EqualityUSA
“Gaping Chasm,” the name of Jason Smeds (brian) newest book?
Chris
I cannot find them now; but I could swear that a very similar collection of pictures was used to show that people have been gay since pictures could be taken. In either case, how do we know that the subjects were either gay or straight?
Actually, these pictures seem more consistent with the premise of the celluloid closet which is that demonstrations of affection between men were accepted until sometime when censorship and shame reared their ugly two-faced head.
Whether the men were gay or straight, they showed affection between each other. And finally, after 50 plus years of denying ourselves that demonstration, men are reclaiming it as an acceptable thing to do.
While I am happy for those who will benefit from this development, I am saddened that so many from my generation were forced to deny this to themselves.