To The Editor:
As a group psychotherapist and sociologist, I concur with the author’s assessment of the vicissitudes of the unexamined male libido. However, I disagree with his conclusion. In the last paragraph he writes: ‘I’m not asking for male consciousness raising groups…” I ask, ‘why not?’ Over the last 35 years of practicing psychotherapy, I have led men’s groups in prison and in my private practice. I have also been a participant a men’s group that included both straights and gays. I have observed in these groups, where the leader fostered progressive emotional communication between participants, the amelioration of the tendency to objectify women. While my evidence is anecdotal, it seems to me that social change starts on the small scale, in face to face interactions between men in group therapy rather than in large scale changes in cultural norms, improved laws and improved social systems.