What I find amazing is the dismissal of the fraternal bond, which has been spotlighted in literature, going back as far as the ancient Greeks. It's a real thing: people in real life often have good, solid, fraternal bonds with friends of the same gender. It's part of our species makeup. Same with the mentoring system, where an older individual will mentor a younger person in a platonic only way.

The hyper-sexuality in our society, where every set of close friends has become a pair of closet cases, and an older mentor automatically becomes hidden sexual abuse, is just messed up.