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"Boston Partnership: A Defense of Primary Friendship"
"The only thing lacking in Izzy's life was a romantic relationship, but even that wasn't enough to spoil the sense of peace that had settled over her. So many of her friends were single that it didn't seem odd for her to be that way as well. They filled up the holes in each other's lives and managed to pretend, most of the time, that they didn't need anything else."
--Charles de Lint, Memory and Dream. New York: Tot, 1994. p. 334.
Preamble:
Our dominant cultural narrative pretty much thinks friendship is unimportant. The de Lint passage I've quoted, in fact, comes from a novel that is notable in emphasizing friendship over romance. Even so, it gives us lines like this, just like 90% of the songs on the favorite radio station of the teenage girl I mentor. Just like one of this season's Doctor Who episodes, in which the Doctor protests, in the age-old words, that he and River are "just friends."
So convinced is our society that one's greatest loves (aside from one's children) must be based on sexual attraction that the movie, Troy, all but erased the second most important character in the Iliad because if Patroclus looked like the love of Achilles's life, it must mean they were sexually in love (and would, thus, frighten the audience with their "gayness"). So convinced are we of this that even the spectacularly toned down scenes of affection between Frodo and Sam in the Mordor segment of the Return of the King movie earned jibes of "faggots" from certain moviegoers in a Serbian theater, according to a friend of mine. My point is not that these relationships necessarily preclude sex, but rather that our society immediately assumes that if two people are deeply loving, they must love sexually (either overtly or unconsciously) because "true love" is "sexual love" by definition.( Read more... )
"The only thing lacking in Izzy's life was a romantic relationship, but even that wasn't enough to spoil the sense of peace that had settled over her. So many of her friends were single that it didn't seem odd for her to be that way as well. They filled up the holes in each other's lives and managed to pretend, most of the time, that they didn't need anything else."
--Charles de Lint, Memory and Dream. New York: Tot, 1994. p. 334.
Preamble:
Our dominant cultural narrative pretty much thinks friendship is unimportant. The de Lint passage I've quoted, in fact, comes from a novel that is notable in emphasizing friendship over romance. Even so, it gives us lines like this, just like 90% of the songs on the favorite radio station of the teenage girl I mentor. Just like one of this season's Doctor Who episodes, in which the Doctor protests, in the age-old words, that he and River are "just friends."
So convinced is our society that one's greatest loves (aside from one's children) must be based on sexual attraction that the movie, Troy, all but erased the second most important character in the Iliad because if Patroclus looked like the love of Achilles's life, it must mean they were sexually in love (and would, thus, frighten the audience with their "gayness"). So convinced are we of this that even the spectacularly toned down scenes of affection between Frodo and Sam in the Mordor segment of the Return of the King movie earned jibes of "faggots" from certain moviegoers in a Serbian theater, according to a friend of mine. My point is not that these relationships necessarily preclude sex, but rather that our society immediately assumes that if two people are deeply loving, they must love sexually (either overtly or unconsciously) because "true love" is "sexual love" by definition.( Read more... )
