ABSTRACT
The danger with the ritual group is that it can get so exciting and positive that gender issues get ignored altogether. Men’s groups can be very positive places, where men can come away feeling better about themselves and better about relating to women in today’s society. Once the male chauvinist assumptions are challenged, they quite quickly give way in the group setting, and change can come about reasonably fast. Sexism is deeply engrained, and hard to get at. It often requires a real change in the whole attitude structure of the person before it can shift. Group work lends itself to ritual, and new rituals seem to arise quite spontaneously in many groups. The women started to dance round in their circle, and the men danced their way into an inner circle. A man can be strong and vulnerable at the same time: they are opposites, they are all part of the same thing.
