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This paper is based on research carried out with youths in a system of semi-liberty who receive socio-educative care at Belo-Horizonte in Brazil. These adolescents live in a violent world where a warrior ethos dominates, associated with the idea that manliness implies having no emotions. This imaginary and real construction of the modern world alienates manhood into violence. The bandit has no friends, with friendship considered to belong to the realm of the sacred. The creation of privileged areas of dialogue would help to deconstruct this violent ideal of manhood and its relations of domination so that friendship is not banished from relationships between human beings.