Men embracing men - we're not comfortable with it, but in the political wrestling ring, PDMAs (public displays of male affection) are de rigueur if you want to maintain close diplomatic relations, writes Shane Hegarty.
ANY IRISH MAN watching the coverage of Nicolas Sarkozy's visit to Dublin will have empathised with the dilemma encountered by Brian Cowen at the end of the press conference. The French president grabbed the Taoiseach in an embrace. With impressive confidence, Cowen reciprocated warmly. However, complications arose when it transpired that Sarkozy's manoeuvre was only the first half of a double-cheek kiss. Culturally ambushed, Cowen hesitated and then compensated by overdoing it a bit. Once safely in his state car, Sarkozy's first act must have been to drain the spittle from his left ear.
It is a credit to the Taoiseach that he didn't follow up the embrace by shuffling his feet, looking at the ground and trying to strike up a conversation about the football. Formalised displays of affection with other men remain largely alien to the Irish male. In France, men kiss twice on greeting and departing. In Italy, they sometimes back that up with a bear hug. In several cultures, male companions will hold hands.
How men should greet women is subject to its own peculiarities. In Holland a three-kiss policy has become customary in modern times. In Paris, a four-kiss greeting isn't unusual between good friends.
And in Ireland, what should a man do? Maybe a handshake with a stranger, although sometimes a single press of the cheeks might suffice with a woman. It could be a double air-kiss, depending on the social situation. Or a hug on leaving. And all of this will depend on how well he knows the person, whether he is related to them and just how comfortable he is with hugging his dad.
What was so fascinating about this week's meeting was how often Cowen looked at ease in a clinch with Sarkozy. The following day's papers were filled with shots of the two men, linked to each other and practically skipping from Government Buildings. So, perhaps it is time to reappraise the stereotype of the repressed Irishman, and accept that Cowen was representing "New Irishman", confident in how he displays emotion, unafraid of a hug. Although, before that, we have to wonder whether all this conviviality masked a private battle for dominance between the leaders.
"When Blair met Bush a few years ago, there was a lot of talk about who had guided who in with the arm," says sociologist Paul Anthony Ryan. "There is a protocol of men wanting to be seen as the one to lead rather than being led."
As a fellow with the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences, Ryan is currently examining the stereotype of an earlier generation of Irish men as being "emotionally inexpressive".
"There's a nostalgia when we look back at that period, with a certain one-dimensional idea that they were all so repressed. But we know that people were having sex, they were in relationships, so it was more multi-dimensional than that."
There have been some clear changes, though. "There used to be a distinction between public and private behaviour," says Ryan. "In public, men wouldn't even be seen with their wives. I'm in my thirties but I remember how at Mass there used to be a women's aisle and a men's aisle. In the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, Ireland was a more formalised society. But there has been an informalisation of many things, including how we dress, how we speak and how we interact."
WITH THAT HAS come a change in the etiquette surrounding greetings - particularly when it comes to how men might greet other men. In English-speaking countries especially, the relaxation of social protocols has not gone unnoticed.
The London Times, for instance, has offered up the do's and don'ts of the "man hug", which was based on a very popular, and very funny, man-hug video on the How-To website Videojug.com. This maintains, for instance, that a pat is vital in "distinguishing it from a cuddle". ("You may be affectionate but you can still dish out some pain.")
Elsewhere, the online Urban Dictionary describes a "bro hug" as a "manly hug between two dudes who are cool with each other". Wikipedia gives greater depth in its surprisingly lengthy entry on the "pound hug" (also known as a "dude hug" or a "hip-hop hug"), which it explains is a combination of "a handshake and a one-armed hug". Many Irish men will be aware of this form of embrace. It is affectionate but manly, and combines the attitude of the modern metrosexual with the physicality of rutting stags.
Obviously, social intimacy between men is not necessarily the preserve of societies with enlightened attitudes towards homosexuality, otherwise Saudi Arabia (where men hold hands) would be a bastion of tolerance. However, Pat Fitzpatrick of the University of Limerick's department of sociology believes that the lingering reticence about public displays of affection is not solely down to Irish men's fears that their sexuality might be compromised or questioned.
"Men tend to monitor and police their emotionality for anything that might appear feminine," he says. "So there would be a distancing from anything that contains expressions of femininity. There would also be a sense of what it means to be a man, and how they are meant to be strong and there shouldn't be a weakening of that."
Given the impact of popular culture - the rampant hugging on American television, the bone-crushing clinches on The Sopranos - and at a time when younger men style their hair in a more feminine way, wear beauty products, tans and even make-up, are they not happily giving over to their feminine side already? "I grew up in the 1980s," laughs Fitzpatrick, "have you not seen the style from then?"
Despite the fact that certain aspects of masculinity have changed in recent years, Fitzpatrick says that "displays of emotionality still come with threads of anxiety and questions about 'how exactly should I act?'"
The exception to this remains the sports pitch or the terraces, where men let loose their inhibitions. "There is safety in numbers for one thing," says Fitzpatrick, whose doctoral thesis will examine Irish masculinity across the past three generations. "There is a big connection between men and sport. They have a dialogue through sport. They connect through it. They find camaraderie and identity. So, when men are in this group, that connection allows them to let the barriers down. If they met on the street, they wouldn't suddenly hug each other, but if it's in Thomond Park it's no problem."
It might seem unfair to stereotype every previous generation of Irishmen as emotionally undemonstrative, but there have been changes in the role of the father which will ultimately leak into wider society, says Fitzpatrick. "There is no doubt that that older generations of men and fathers would talk of how their society didn't allow them do what they do now, such as pushing a pram down the path."
Maybe then, having been shown more physical affection by their own fathers as children, Irish males will grow up feeling more comfortable in showing affection towards other males.
Meanwhile, the influence of other cultures, through travel and immigration, may be having an impact. "One thing this generation has is that many more can afford to travel and they witness other cultures," observes Fitzpatrick. "And if they see that it's OK for men to be affectionate to each other in other cultures then they ask how come it's not OK here."
Cowen's moment of cultural anxiety, then, may become an increasing rarity. If those anxieties can be shaken off, Irish men may be ready to embrace a more Latin way, and a new era in which they will become increasingly comfortable with the man-hug - even if knowing quite when to kiss, and how often, may lead to the occasional wet ear incident or two.
