Talk:Romantic friendship

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Contents 1 General Comments 2 Removed Contrasts with latent homosexuality section 3 Original research tag 4 "Same-gender friendships with romantic overtones in American pop culture" 5 Removed "inclusion in the Biblical canon..." from "Biblical and religious evidence"

[edit] General Comments

For example, Mary and John are friends and don't consider themselves to be "dating", "going-steady", or "romantically involved", yet they engage in activities traditionally regarded as being exclsive to couples. ie. Holding hands, kissing, and such.

I'd take issue with the last, at least - I would say that romantic friendship is by its very nature a very close friendship that is not sexual. Loganberry (Talk) 20:15, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

I've now been bold and rewritten the article to something closer to Wiki standards. More input would be welcome! (As would a more appropriate stub notice, if such exists.) Loganberry (Talk) 20:32, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

I'm not certain a better stub category really does exist, but I'm gonna call it a Culture stub for lack of anything better and to get it out of the main stub area. Bold! =P --Jemiller226 06:05, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

It should be noted that the concept of "romantic friendship" existed prior to 1900, which was an era during which the concept of sexuality as an identity did not exist. - this is badly phrased, but I can't think of exactly how to change it. As it stands it seems to imply a) that "the concept of romantic friendship" only existed prior to 1900, and b) that "the concept of sexuality as an identity" has now directly replaced it, neither of which things is true. 86.132.140.139 03:30, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

If this subject is to be taken seriously (and not with a lot of snickers), it would be good to improve the examples. While using Xenia and Gabrielle and Lenny and Carl will allow contemporary WP readers to understand romantic friendship, it would be better to have more than one historical example. Also, if romantic friendship is nonsexual, why is sex brought up in the Shakespeare, Lenny, and Batman examples? If the issue is that all same-sex romantic friendship are really latent homosexuality and that men and women really can't be friends, that needs to be address generally and not in each example. -Acjelen 00:17, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Acjelen has done a much better job of saying what I would have said with much less tact. I'm far from an expert in this so feel ill-equipped to make changes. The current examples do seem to be entirely pop-culture based - surely real people have had more notable and well documented romantic friendships than Turk and JD! The point about sex is equally true - these either are or aren't sexual relationships. Tompagenet 15:59, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Removed Contrasts with latent homosexuality section

I removed an entire section from this article, as it was sourced from a crappy obscure website, and probably only here to advertise the website. Here is the text I removed, in case someone wants to do something with this:

"Contrasts with latent homosexuality According to the website celebratefriendship.com, a romantic friendship is not the same as latent homosexuality. The website says that romantic friendships have existed in civilizations both tolerant and intolerant of homosexuality, and therefore it seems unlikely that a romantic friendship is the same as homosexuality:

"Romantic friendship is not the same thing as latent homosexuality. Romantic friendship has existed in both cultures that violently oppose homosexuality, as well as in cultures that openly accept it, and for that reason it seems unlikely that it is derived from repression of homosexual urges. Some pretty homophobic people, as well as some pretty gay people, have supported romantic friendship. For example, a Renaissance-era man might well be hateful of 'sodomites' but perfectly happy to snuggle with his best friend at night, as long as they didn’t have sex." ^[1]

The concept of "romantic friendship" existed prior to 1900, which was an era during which the concept of sexuality as an identity did not exist."

--Xyzzyplugh 02:46, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Your comments couldn't be further from the truth. I am the one who placed that on the page, and I have no affiliation whatsoever with that website. People on Wikipedia are so damned paranoid that people are trying to "advertise" on here. Here's a clue: for anyone trying to advertise on this website, it ain't hard. Wikipedia has basically overtaken Google.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.191.111.217 (talk • contribs)

I have to side mostly with the anon poster (whom I would ask to sign their posts in future - use four tildes in a row to do so). It's true that celebratefriendship is an obscure website, but a problem we have here is that there doesn't seem to be a non-obscure website dealing specifically with romantic friendship. I think something along the lines of "contrasts with latent homosexuality" would be a valuable addition to this article, though probably with a considerably shorter quote from the website.

I also agree with two posters in an above section. The anon poster (86.132.140.139) is right to say that the wording they quote is awkward, and doesn't make it clear that both romantic friendship and sexuality as an identity can (and do) coexist - sometimes in the same person, since X can be in love with same-sex person Y in a sexual sense, but also enjoy a romantic friendship with same-sex person Z.

Acjelen also makes a good point in saying that the examples we have here are biased too far in favour of fictional characters. We really do not need so many of those, and some of them (eg the Batman and Robin one) seem not much more than fandom gossip. I'd be inclined to cut down on all these significantly, keeping maybe the Xena, Shakespeare and Oprah examples, with hopefully one more (preferably non-American) real-life example as well. Loganberry (Talk) 00:32, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Original research tag

The addition of this tag (by another editor) rather reinforces the last section of the discussion above. We can't simply have a heap of sections dealing with various "couples" who might or might not be examples of romantic friendship: we must have verifiable sources specifically mentioning that term. Without those, the example sections are in danger of deletion, possibly even by me! Loganberry (Talk) 23:39, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Hey, I just added it again before coming here! --Chris Griswold (☎☓) 10:12, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Hey, as the author of the crappy website www.celebratefriendship.org, I would like to concur that this article needs some unverified claims removed, particularly the pop culture couples section. I also would like to confirm that I have not edited (or created) the romantic friendship entry in Wikipedia at all, let alone used it to "advertise" my site. I would even not disagree with the "crappy" label as concerns the writing-- but the sources my site is based on are not crappy, <RANT ON>I do not list a bunch of speculations about TV characters and call it an "encyclopedic" description of romantic friendship</RANT OFF>, and I have a standard bibliography. I think the people who are working on this might do well to look up some of the non-Internet sources I used (http://www.celebratefriendship.org/sources.htm), like Surpassing the Love of Men-- as well as the primary historical documents cited by these books.

Romantic friendship is a tough topic to get reams of independent sources on, for these reasons:

(1) The Internet is not going to be the source for the most authoritative information because even in modern times, interest in the subject for RESEARCH purposes was greatest in the past, namely the '70's and '80's. Romantic friendship was interesting to LGBT and feminist historians like Lillian Faderman because its existence demonstrates that same-sex love is a culturally variable phenomenon that changes over time, and may do so again in the future-- and that philosophy was an important part of the radical gay/feminist philosophies of a few decades ago. In her introduction to Surpassing the Love of Men, Faderman was quite open about the notion that uncovering these past relationships, and separating the concept of same-gender LOVE from same-gender SEX for analytical purposes, challenges the notion that same-sex love has always been, or must always be, a "minority preference," let alone a genetic one. It goes without saying that in the '90's and 2000's, when my fellow LGBT citizens are fixated on the "we can't help it, it's genetic" tactic for political representation, this is not going to be a popular subject of research. At least one of the books on my bibliography is out of print, and getting Surpassing the Love of Men reissued apparently took some effort (as did keeping other feminist classics in print, like Kate Millet's Sexual Politics). It's not a conspiracy or anything, but talk like this is out of fashion for sure.

(2) The idea that romantic friendship existed is easily inferred from the fact that they wrote about it fairly often for 400 years; but the idea that it is not the same as homosexuality must be inferred from the fact that societies have existed which extolled the virtues of romantic friendship while simultaneously stringing up "sodomites" who expressed same-sex love sexually. So basically we are inferring the possibility of a positive relationship existing in the past that does not exist today, from evidence that includes an utterly barbaric past custom (virulent homophobia); this is not intuitive. Moreover, the existence of passionate nonsexual relationships, as well as the existence of passionate same-sex relationships of any kind within the majority "straight" population, challenges modern assumptions about gender and sexual orientation, discouraging writing and publishing.

(3) Although a small minority have advocated its resurgence, it is primarily a historical phenomenon from a past era in which understandings of sexuality and relationship were different from today, and although the Victorians and Renaissance poets wrote down a lot, they didn't write it in a way that addresses modern concerns (e.g. telling us whether they had sex or not). Modern love poems and songs are not trying to "prove" the existence of gendered, monogamous sexual love to some future society in which gender/sexuality is unrelated to emotional love, say, or conversely, where we have regressed to patriarchal arranged marriage or something; lovers and friends of the past were not out to "prove" their arrangements to us either, meaning all the evidence is circumstantial. I think both crappy-website authors and serious academics start out with a personal direct experience of intense nonsexual love (and usually also an experience of homosexuality with which to contrast it), and that is why we KNOW that the mainstream interpretation of sexual orientation and friendship is incomplete; then the academics go and sift through mountains of circumstantial evidence to prove it. Perhaps in the interest of NPOV, this article should be written as a description of a minority viewpoint in the history of same-sex love.

Although it is essentially impossible to make a hard-and-fast statement that "X relationship in the past was not sexual," I notice that advocates of the "essentialist sexuality" position have no more evidence that ambiguous past relationships WERE sexual. The main advantage they have is popularity. My thought is that of course some people interested in gay sexuality in the past used romantic friendship as a cover-- why wouldn't they?-- but romantic friendship MUST have been something ELSE in addition to a cover for gay relationships, because otherwise the homophobic nitwits who were stringing up "sodomites" wherever they saw them would have closed the thing down in less than 400 years (as they eventually, in fact, did in the mid-1800's for men and early 1900's for women). For a non-original-research version of this idea, I would say Surpassing the Love of Men is the place to start; it shows how flowery public celebration of romantic friendship could coexist with virulent homophobia in literature and life. As an academic book, it has plenty of sources you can go back to for more. Robert Brain's "Friends and Lovers" is another full-length book treatment of the topic (currently out of print I believe, I have one or maybe you can search for it online), focusing on non-Western cultures; many of the other books on my list cover it only as a part of broader history of relationships and use academic journals as sources, which you could look up.

I am not going to edit the page myself, partly to avoid being seen as "advertising" but mostly because I am working on other projects right now. Good luck!

Davelwhite 10:35, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Clearly you changed your mind! [1] (Not a criticism; it's good to see your input here.) Loganberry (Talk) 12:07, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Same-gender friendships with romantic overtones in American pop culture"

Following on from the very interesting comment above... this section's title rather betrays how unsuitable it is for this article. Some reasons:

1) Why are we emphasising American pop culture? Wikipedia is emphatically not a specifically American encyclopedia, but an international one. 2) "Shakespeare and Fair Lord"... since when was this an American relationship anyway? 3) Far, far too much speculation and original research. 4) Too many sub-sections. We should cut right down on listing every relationship that has some relation to this, especially unsourced ones such as "Clay Puppington and Coach Stopframe".

I'm actually quite close to putting the {{rewrite}} tag on this, the one that suggests that a complete rewrite may be necessary.

Oh, and before I forget... the Coontz quote used in the article lead seems to me to be much too long to justify under fair use. A couple of sentences, yes, but two paragraphs? This could be cut down a lot pretty easily, I think. Loganberry (Talk) 11:07, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Hopefully I indented this right... I agree with the notion of cutting the Coontz quote (and hopefully my new quotations from Emily Dickinson / Faderman are short enough, editing Victorian letters for length is always a tricky wicket :), but I didn't want to quote Faderman's allegation that "Emily Dickinson's letters were censored" without giving an example). I already moved Shakespeare out of the "American pop culture" section, and frankly I would favor deleting most of the pop culture references. I refer to Xena and Gabrielle on my site since some of the people involved in the show make particular reference to the 19th century custom on the record, but most of the rest appears to be baseless speculation. I don't want to delete the pop reference section myself, however, because it would look like I was erasing it in order to replace it with my own stuff now. Somebody else please do it. :)

When I first saw it after a long time's absence (the original romantic friendship entry was just a simple definition), I would have agreed with the "rewrite" tag. Hopefully the rewrites I am doing to the front part of it will help with academic sourcing and NPOV, although since I obviously (from my website) am from the "romantic friendship and homosexuality are different things, neither of which are bad nor sublimations of the other" camp like Faderman, I would imagine some unconscious bias is in there. At least now you have references, so other points of view can be added if my version is too slanted. Criticism is welcome because I really want this to be seen as a serious, encyclopedic article, not a polemic or pop-culture dumping ground.

I am still working on edits this morning, so if something looks unsourced, wait a few minutes. I'll probably finish by 5:00 PM UDT, 11 AM US Central.

Davelwhite 15:13, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Update - I have completed my edits, so feel free to start fixing all my mistakes, Loganberry & anyone else who is interested. I tried to fix the questionable quoting of that introduction to a Shakespeare anthology, but couldn't find it on the Net so I left it as is. I have other examples of historical romantic friendship, like Mary Wollstonecraft (Vindication of the Rights of Woman), and John Stuart Mill had an opposite-sex romantic friend Harriet Taylor (complicated situation-- opposite-sex romantic friendship was NOT customary at the time, Mill & Taylor were both feminist rebels, they did eventually marry but there is a quotation from Taylor stating that they were a platonic relationship and disparaging naysayers earlier in their history, and she was a big influence in his book The Subjugation of Woman). Anyhow, so I have primary (e.g. Taylor & Wollstonecraft themselves) & secondary references, but am leaving them out in deference to your statement that there are already a lot of examples of relationships. (I'm not sure if you mean all types of relationships, or just unsourced pop-culture speculation ones.)

Davelwhite 16:02, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Pps - Mill may also be a bad example since he doesn't prove anything about the cultural norm of the time, but he's insteresting anyway.

Davelwhite 16:12, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Thank you; this is just the sort of editing I think this article needs. To be clear about examples: I don't particularly like the idea of a long list of examples anyway: personally I would favour the deletion of most of the pop culture references, with the choice of which ones (if any) to retain being based on which can be verified; those that rely on speculation should be removed en masse. I'd be more than happy for the article to make mention of real-life examples so long as they can be verified, and actually the Mill/Taylor example sounds like an interesting one to discuss, so long as it can be done without turning such a section into a mini-essay. Loganberry (Talk) 23:44, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Removed "inclusion in the Biblical canon..." from "Biblical and religious evidence"

The full phrase was, "Their continued inclusion in the Biblical canon also implies that more recent and typically anti-homosexual Christian leaders did not consider the verses offensive." The statement was not cited and betrays such a complete lack of understanding of the Biblical Canon that it can hardly be credible.LCP 21:08, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

It's clear POV and you were right to remove it, especially with no citations to back it up. Loganberry (Talk) 00:08, 17 May 2007 (UTC)