AskMen and BroBible and the unexpected tolerance amongst the male-only audience

As I was browsing Facebook this morning, I stumbled upon the AskMen.com article, When Your Friend Comes Out To You. It was charming, accurate, and refreshingly geared towards AskMen's audience of online bros. 

Then, like the internet masochist I am, I went to the comments. Despite AskMen's vocally liberal tilt, I thought, "Oh, this is gonna be a disaster." I mean think about it: a website by men and for men. Sites like AskMen and BroBible are ruthlessly oozing in testosterone from football to memes wrapped up in big butts. They snatch their readers with photos of scantly clad women clutching svelte models that trigger internalized and unaddressed body image issues. 

Throw in an article about homosexuality, and insecurity is going to fly unchecked, right?

But that didn't happen. Long ago when internet comments became the anonymous playground for trolls, I wished someone would have invented an app that would allow you to opt-out from seeing the feed below every single article, forever. I'm glad I didn't, because I've noticed a trend in this, the last place you'd expect to find massive, unwavering, and unconditional support for the bros who bat left: sites catering excessively to men.

Maybe we're just not that threatening.

Beneath AskMen's Comes Out story was almost unanimous solidarity amongst all men gay or straight. With the exception of a very few, comments ranged from the simple, "gay or not he's my friend, grab a beer" to humorous reactions like, "get him to help me dress better." Some even shared their own heartfelt, personal accounts.

Even more astounding, every single negative comment was followed up by someone supporting the notion of the article and the friendships between all men, gay or straight. 

So where is this coming from, and why does it happen here, in the locker room of the internet? Why is social media and the comments sections that plague it chock full of rabid, anonymous homophobia affixed to some of the most benign coed articles, but here, on AskMen and BroBible, where dudes talk with dudes about dude stuff, tolerance and acceptance reign supreme?

It's been long assumed that male homophobia is an insecurity in most, that the most homophobic men feel that the very notion of two guys getting it on is somehow threatening to their masculinity. If that is truly the case, wouldn't it be most prevalent in a place catering almost exclusively to men, sites that flaunt this notion of masculinity? 

Perhaps it goes deeper, or maybe it's more dynamic. Maybe male homophobia is a byproduct of having a girl in the room. Maybe the homophobic men feel more inclined to display their masculinity through homophobia, one of the easiest and cheapest routes, when they feel they have something to prove. In a room full of men, men may be more inclined to showcase their character, whereas when they're around potential mates, more apt to display their animalistic dominance. 

Maybe. I'm not a sociologist. 

Or maybe AskMen and BroBible are just good sites read by good men.