repotting:

the answer to ‘guys won’t hug their friends cos they don’t wanna seem gay’ isn’t ‘remove the stigma by declaring it Acceptably Straight Behaviour’

it’s ‘get straight people to give up the homophobia that makes them treat gay people with such repulsion that they’ve built an entire culture around the violent disavowal of anything even tangentially related to gay people’

getting homophobic straight dudes to express affection for one another while leaving intact the homophobia that made them avoid it doesn’t solve the core issue

which is that straight dudes are such violent homophobes that they will literally cut themselves off from necessary emotional support in order to more effectively identify and isolate/attack gay men

the problem here isn’t just that straight guys don’t get enough hugs