Romantic friendship
The term is typically used in historical scholarship, and describes a very close relationship between people of the same sex during a period of history when there was not a social category of homosexuality as there is today.
[1] Romantic friendship between women in Europe and North America became especially prevalent in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, with the simultaneous emergence of female education and a new rhetoric of sexual difference.
Among those of the latter interpretation, in the preface to his 1961 Pelican edition, Douglas Bush writes:[5] Since modern readers are unused to such ardor in masculine friendship and are likely to leap at the notion of homosexuality… we may remember that such an ideal, often exalted above the love of women, could exist in real life, from Montaigne to Sir Thomas Browne, and was conspicuous in Renaissance literature.Bush cites Montaigne, who distinguished male friendships from "that other, licentious Greek love",[6] as evidence of a platonic interpretation.
In addition to distinguishing this type of love from homosexuality ("this other Greek licence"), another way in which Montaigne differed from the modern view[8] was that he felt that friendship and platonic emotion were a primarily masculine capacity (apparently unaware of the custom of female romantic friendship which also existed): Seeing (to speake truly) that the ordinary sufficiency of women cannot answer this conference and communication, the nurse of this sacred bond: nor seem their minds strong enough to endure the pulling of a knot so hard, so fast, and durable.
(The quotation also furthers Faderman's beliefs that gender and sexuality are socially constructed, since they indicate that each sex has been thought of as "better" at intense friendship in one or another period of history.)
Shortly after his marriage, while in George Washington's camp during the American Revolutionary Era, John Laurens met and became extremely close friends with Alexander Hamilton.
[15]: 12 The all-women peer culture formed at women's colleges allowed students to create their own social rules and hierarchies, to become each other's leaders and heroes, and to idolize each other.
[16] In the early twentieth century, "crush" gradually replaced the term "smash", and generally signified a younger girl's infatuation with an older peer.
[17]: 166 Historian Susan Van Dyne has documented an "intimate friendship" between Mary Mathers and Frona Brooks, two members of the Smith College class of 1883.
[17]: 190 At the turn of the century, smashes and crushes were considered an essential part of the women's college experience, and students who wrote home spoke openly about their involvement in romantic friendships.
Historians like Faderman and Robert Brain[19] believe that the descriptions of relationships such as David and Jonathan or Ruth and Naomi in this religious text establish that the customs of romantic friendship existed and were thought of as virtuous in the ancient Near East, despite the simultaneous taboo on homosexuality.
[23] While some authors, notably John Boswell, have claimed that ecclesiastical practice in earlier ages blessed "same-sex unions", others maintain that this is categorically impossible given their understanding of individuals’ and officiants’ mores and values.
Brent D. Shaw, who is incidentally gay himself, noted some of the differences between the two types of solemnized relationships in a review written for The New Republic: Given the centrality of Boswell's new evidence, therefore, it is best to begin by describing his documents and their import.
