Doesn't that tenderness between men also go with a different model of acceptable male emotionality? 'He shed manly tears' - and no-one thinks the worse of him for it - Crimean veterans soaking their whiskers as they sobbed over The Heir of Redclyffe.

(I think John Tosh in A Man's Place talks about a shift quite late in the C19th to a more stiff-upper-lip mode)