In the interview, Gord talked about how he & his brothers learned from their Dad that it's ok for men to show their affection for oneanother. I think that's a brilliant legacy for a father to leave his sons.
I found it very moving when the guys hugged & kissed oneanother on stage during the tour, just that fearlessness about showing how much they care about eachother. & the emotional exchange at the end of the interview between Gord & Peter... they model a real challenge to the stigma men face about having & showing emotions & being affectionate with oneanother.
I was thinking about all this as I read this article this morning:
Houston’s Coach Pecks Away at Football’s Macho Culture, a Kiss at a Time
![[Image: 16kissing-master768.jpg]](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/10/16/sports/16kissing/16kissing-master768.jpg)
ANNAPOLIS, Md. — When the University of Houston’s football players arrive for a game, they know what to expect as a prelude to the coming hours of brutality as they file into the stadium: a kiss on the cheek from their head coach, Tom Herman.
It is an unusual ritual in a sport that embodies America’s most rigid ideals of manhood.
“A kiss on the cheek is when he shows his love for us,” Houston safety Garrett Davis said, adding, “No one here is thinking, ‘Oh, I shouldn’t let him kiss me.’”
For Herman, 41, there is no better way to demand the painful sacrifices of the game than to forthrightly convey his affection for his players. “How do you motivate a human being to do things against his own nature?” Herman said in an interview. “There’s two things: love and fear. And to me, love wins every time.”
The kisses are part of a larger message of brotherhood that Herman has made the core of his coaching style. The players have responded to a story he has shared — one also told by Herman’s former boss at Ohio State, Urban Meyer — about a soldier who confided that what most compelled him to fight was not self-preservation or hatred or patriotism, but love for his comrades.
Herman’s rite has earned praise from psychologists for its frank articulation of the emotion that inevitably develops on teams and glues together the best of them.
“He’s disrupting a stereotype about boys and men, a notion of masculinity that says boys and men are only driven by the desire for competition and autonomy,” said Niobe Way, a psychology professor at New York University. “All the research — not just mine — emphasizes that humans are actually not driven by competition and autonomy. What we’re driven by is the desire to be in connected communities.”
“Men struggle with the perception that they are somehow less manly when they reveal their emotions,” said Joel Wong, an author of the essay who teaches psychology at Indiana University. “That’s related to a lot of problems,” he added, “because it actually inhibits the ability for interpersonal connections, it restricts your ability to be vulnerable” and it prevents the expression of “your full human potential.”
Full article here: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/16/sports/ncaafootball/houston-cougars-tom-herman-kiss-macho-culture.html?_r=0">http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/16/sport ... .html?_r=0</a><!-- m -->
do people still think they will tour again?
