Coming from a more hug-prone country, two-armed hugging with or without patting is completely ok.
I remember taking an EFL seminar (on what i don’t remember), but at some poitn you had to hug your partner to demosntrate the point the presenter was trying to make. By chance to American teacher had paired up, and when it came to the (two-armed) hugging, you could see in their faces that they didn’t know the protocol and was like Data hugging Sheldon. You could as well had asked them to French kiss.
The ass-slapping thing, no way.
The Art of Manliness is a web site that has interesting information on all those little things your father may not have gotten around to teaching you. Here is their take on the Mechanics of the Man Hug featuring added details on the American Man Hug.
And here is a step-by-step (British?) video on How to Give the Perfect Man Hug. It is very funny, but it’s funny because everything it says is so spot-on true.
Alleydweller - I think that article is a bit ridiculous in that it seems to think there is a tension between masculinity and hugging. It also posits that the one armed pat hug is “the way” to do it, when it’s clearly not the only option. Again, I can’t imagine someone from Europe writing that kind of article.
Hand to hand combat for killing enemies.
That is all.
Grew up playing rugby (and jumping naked into a bath with fellow players afterwards). Went to an all boys school. Has no issue hugging men at all. Do it pretty much daily.
I think I’m about as comfortable with this as straight men get.
ehh. I hate hugging, and I don’t man hug ever. I really don’t like hugging chicks either, but there are a couple who just get really offended, so I go through with it half assed(well more half pectorall, as most women are shorter so I kind of lean down and forward and twist to the left which leaves the area of contact minimal and leaves the left half of my body free and clear to deal with any Lion attacks or such).
I really am uncomfortable with touching or being touched unless it is part of sex/feeling up before sex etc. It doesn’t make me feel closer to anyone, and makes me seriously uncomfortable. And the sneak up behind hand on the shoulder makes me freeze up like a statue. Basically like the Bush/Merkel photo 10 times more. For me contact should be hand to hand, or part the sex spectrum. And I don’t really want to have sex with a dude, or any of my family, or my friends wives/girlfriends, so
High five
Do blowjobs count as “gay”?
Could Europe BE any gayer?
I’m good, actually.
Breaking a chair over the head of a male friend is not acceptable behavior.
What is it about football players? Ass-patting seems to be acceptable.
When Real Men meet, they make eye contact, perform the fist pump several times, have a quick fart contest and then kick each other in the balls.
Look at the hug featured at 2:02 of this clipand tell me you’ve seen a more manly, heterosexual display of emotion in your life.
Reading this thread, I get a feeling I’m way more accepting with regards to the OP than many if not most straight men (well, I’m a Euro…). I hug my close male friends much more “passionately” than I do my female friends, because I’m safe from crossing certain boundaries with this arrangement, and I really like to hug people I like. Aside from hugging, I have no qualms about jokingly grabbing the ass of a straight male friend when out drinking and having my own ass grabbed in return, faux-homo commentary included. I’ve been known to “assault” close friends for a doggie-style dry humping when at a party (this sounds really creepy when written out, but it isn’t). I’m fully aware that pulling any such stunt on the wrong person would result in a prompt fist in the face; not all of my friends are OK with any of this and I respect that.
I, too, remember the bad old days when any accidental physical contact with another guy would result in a mutual jolt of awkwardness, and when accusations of being gay flew from any slight breach of ridiculously rigid Hetero Male Rules.
I’d imagine this is an appropriate time to hug your straight guy friend, what with the one guy still covered in blood presumably from the stumps of his friend’s legs.
Man hug is excused in these particularly trying circumstances.
Never any excuse for being a hipster though.
Well, how many girls hug their friends all the time? I almost never hug or touch my girlfriends, but I have been accused of having a masculine bent of mind. Last time I hugged my girlfriend, really hugged her, was when her mom was dying.
As for the hand-holding. Sure, in India, men hold hands all of the time and it’s never considered gay - it’s just what friends do. But homosexuality is still pretty much taboo over there, and gay people are in two camps - in the closet, or flamboyant drag queens. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a quiet gay in India…so it almost seems to be that the more gays come out, the less man-to-man affection is prevalant. This is an acceptable trade-off, though I wish it didn’t have to be that way.
What really is when fathers and sons never hug, or brothers. That’s blood, and I hug my family all the time, even though they are jerks and as I said I don’t hug my girlfriends.
I’m a touchy-feely bi woman, my husband is fairly hands-off (raised in a very emotionally trying and distant environment) and very straight. He has no problems hugging our male friends, be they straight, bi or gay. He does not initiate more than a handshake, but that’s just because of the environment he was raised in. He likes hugs, it just never occurs to him to initiate them unless someone’s crying. Then, they get a hug of his own initiation.
Just dropping by for the data point.
That’s the best the book can come up with? That any man who doesn’t greet other men with a long, slow stroke on the penis must be afraid of the gay? Could it not be possible that some men just don’t like to be grabbed and fondled as much as Mr. Biddulph would like? Is there some practical reason I need to have physical contact with other men beyond a handshake? Do I need to have the same contact with women?
I don’t think “our culture is quite starved of affection for men.” I get plenty enough affection from the people I have affection for and I don’t need a hug from a random person. There is almost zero reason for a person to touch me uninvited, even if they really, really believe I “need a hug.” Ick.
To answer the OP: Whatever the two staight men think is acceptable. To be on the safe side you start with a handshake. If you don’t know when a pat on the shoulder, or on the butt for that matter, is appropriate then don’t do it.
Are you quite finished beating the shit out of that straw man?
Neither I nor Biddulph said that. His point (and I agree with him) is that it’s healthier to construct a masculine identity around something other than just not being gay. He specifically addresses this and makes the point about how unpleasant this is for gay men too, it’s a constant rejection of them as males. It’s unnecessary and unhelpful, so why bother?
If you don’t like touching then don’t do it, and I wasn’t positing that any particular level of physical interaction was the “right” one.
It’s a fair point. My male friends and I usually go for the quick mutual cock-fondle— anything longer than a couple of seconds starts to feel awkward.
To be fair, I know quite a few women that really don’t like hugs from male or female friends at all, either. Some people just don’t like it and it isn’t necessarily a “Man thing”.
I am okay with hugs, even have had a few friendly kisses on the cheek with my gay pals for being a “great guy”. Never bothered me, but I am okay with that sort of thing.