A new study will make every last one of you want to pack up and move to Britain. According to a study published in the journal of Men and Masculinities, 93% of straight young British straight guys have spooned with another man while 98% have shared a bed with a straight guy. The best part is all the participants were college-age male athletes.
“We knew they [straight males] were hugging and cuddling, and we wanted to understand this phenomenon in more detail,” Mark McCormack of Durham University, sociologist and co-author of the study, said to Huffington Post, “How do men gain from rejecting the homophobia of previous generations?
Along with Eric Anderson of University of Winchester, the two sociologists conducted interviews with athletes because of their likelihood to have physical contact with one another. The stereotype that all athletes have to be super masculine was flipped to its head when they realized how comfortable these athletes were in talking about their spooning activities.
Two students, Jarrett and Max, are a fine example. According to the researchers, Jarrett repeatedly stressed the amount of cuddling he and his friends engage in. “We’re always cuddling. We’re all comfortable with each other… I love a cuddle, just so you remember your friends are about and are there for you.”
Max once described his friends hanging out at his house the morning after they went clubbing, all with hangovers. Describing their cuddling sessions as “feeling good,” he also added, “if your mate has a headache you can like massage his head, so you just lie there together holding each other and laughing about how awful you feel.”
Because our culture is slowly learning to embrace homosexuality, the need for straight guys to distance themselves from each other out of fear of looking “gay” is decreasing widespread. Even though Britain might be more advanced than America in their tolerance, it doesn’t override the fact that straight men are cuddling more than ever before and are realizing the psychological benefits.
While I enjoy the idea of straight men cuddling (what gay man doesn’t?), I also am looking forward to a time where straight guys and gay men will be comfortable doing the same type of cuddling – sex aside. Homophobia still exists, but research like this proves the progressive direction our world is heading.
