Take a look at the snapshots from WWII. Notice something?
The guys quite often are leaning on each other or have their arms casually draped over one another's shoulders.
Holding hands, not so much. :)
But that is the kind of touching I think that the author is talking about. He is however wrong about why it stopped. It was not because of "Puritanical sexual shaming" but the LACK of it. We are bombarded with sex. Everything is sexual, even when it is not. We have been conditioned to see sex in everything. So a guy putting his arm around you is sex because everybody is out of the closet and shoving their sexual persona in our face.
Women have less trouble with it but even among women you will find less touching. And it is all for the same reason. If everything is about sex then any sort of touch means that you will welcome sexual advances from the person you touched.
It is really rather horrible.
Perceptive points.
“...The guys quite often are leaning on each other or have their arms casually draped over one another’s shoulders....”
That’s because they had the living sh*t shot out of them, they’re exhausted, they’re beat, but they’re alive, and joyous at the fact.
My old man was WWII Airborne. He was 5 feet 7 inches worth of North Philly Badassery in a compact ass0kicking frame.
The whole “gentle platonic touch” thing was NOT part of his, nor his generation’s lexicon.
They had shared experiences of war; they truly were a Band of Brothers.
We’re not supposed to be “genteel” except when it comes to our wives and children.
What I got out of that article was something different, maybe, than you did. No offense.