Men's groups are as old as history itself. The Neolithic hunting group, the rulers of the ancient Greek city-states, the Roman Senate, the Knights of the Round Table, the Freemasons, the Garrick Club, the MCC- all men's groups, all bastions of patriarchy. Women therefore have good reason to be suspicious when they see men getting together; after all, the usual result is drunkenness, violence and misogyny.
Since the 1970s, however, it's become clear that men's groups can be more than a place where men collude to prop up their prejudices and power. The 'new' men's group, which first emerged in supportive response to feminism, is in fact one where men can begin to undo the damage inflicted by their socialisation into a warped masculinity. There is now a wide variety of this more positive kind of group, a development reflected in many of the articles in this issue of Achilles Heel.
The media may periodically have fun knocking contemporary men's groups, but they are actually of considerable social significance. Given men's well-known difficulties with feelings, nurturing and physical closeness with other men, for any man to choose to make himself vulnerable in front of those he's been taught to fear and compete with is a major achievement. For men to start looking to each other for emotional support is as much a breakthrough for men as it is a relief to women. Although the results may be slow to see, the movement is clearly in the right direction.
But it's important men don't get side-tracked. One of the dangers of men's groups is that their members may end up seeing themselves as victims rather than members of the dominant gender. It's certainly important for men to understand how they have been hurt by society's treatment of them as males but it's also vital for them to appreciate how they in turn hurt women. An awareness of the importance of challenging sexism is in fact central to men's 'reconstruction' of their maleness since our repudiation of 'the feminine' holds our masculinity firmly in place. While 'personal growth' work is essential, both inside and beyond men's groups, it has to be linked to wider political objectives and activities. Whereas the early men's groups of the 1970s tended to be too political now, in the 19909, we're in danger of going too far the other way. There's currently very little practical anti-sexist work being done by men in the UK. The few notable exceptions are to found principally in the fields of anti-male violence and youth work. There are now plenty of men's groups from which wider political and anti-sexist work could begin to develop.
We hope it will.
Copyright © Achilles Heel Collective
