@CasperSlakes.bsky.social

This tweet won’t be popular, but I think it’s relevant to the LoL/gaming community: I think most men would benefit greatly from close friendships with women and nonbinary people. Before I started university, nearly all my close friends were boys (high school, military, sports, gaming). When I started my university studies, I was lucky to find a friend group with a more diverse gender distribution: roughly 60% men. During this time period, I noticed my emotional and social intelligence develop significantly, which is a natural byproduct of aging and being exposed to new situations. Nevertheless, I think my non-male friendships were the primary catalyst for this development; I started to see the world through a non-male perspective. The most valuable conversations were usually one-on-one or in small groups of 3-4. I don’t want to generalize—I’ve had plenty of deep and emotional male-male conversations—but talking to women without any ulterior motive (reaching a level similar to what I imagine close female-female friendships are) is an insanely effective way of improving your mental models of the world—especially as a young man. This is all anecdotal, but being in a fully committed relationship is a catalyst for, and not a hindrance to, developing close friendships with women. (This is in addition to the positive developmental effects of living with a woman.) Perhaps my female friends have also learned a lot about the male brain from talking to me? Not sure how relevant. TL;DR: I think men should cultivate non-male friendships because they help communities become less gender-segmented.