The men's movement offers emotional support and friendship. It offers the company of other men, men who understand the pain and confusion. Groups allow men to share their experiences, of fatherhood, relationships, sexuality, anger and a host of other areas loaded with emotion and history. Many men are able to develop a positive male identity through their experience in the men's movement. This is an identity built not on toughness and isolation, but on emotional connectedness, groundedness and caring.
Men can learn to be playful, open, relaxed and loving.
Their involvement and their political commitment can't be explained simply in terms of personal crisis and the need for therapy. These men have made a vow to stand beside her and not abandon her, to wholeheartedly be her ally. I'm thinking also of those men whose commitment to feminism draws on their own experience of sexual violence or sexual abuse from other men, perhaps as a child or adolescent. It was a sexuality that set them apart, whether with women or other men. I'm thinking also of those men whose advocacy of feminism derives from other sorts of principled political activism.