The view of the human being that underlies F*oRT applies to people of all genders. In addition to F*oRT groups for women*, there have always been Radical Therapy (RT) groups for men as well as gender-mixed groups.
More recently, groups for trans, inter and queer/non-binary people have emerged, as well as gender-mixed groups.
Gender continues to be a basic structural feature of Radical Therapy groups. This is due to its historical origins in the women’s movement of the 1970s in California, the Netherlands and Germany. The separation by gender was meant to create a space free of sexism and to disrupt the dynamics that tend to emerge in relationships between men and women.
Gender-segregated groups are still common today. The underlying assumption is that people can open up and engage more easily in gender-homogeneous groups. The idea is to acknowledge that the sex we are assigned at birth leads to a different socialisation, different types of discrimination, different role attributions and a power imbalance. Another important reason why groups tend to be gender segregated is the premise of “no teaching”.
Men’s RT-groups and women’s RT-groups use slightly different rules or structures that respond to gender-specific socialisation patterns. The aim is to enable more intensive work on those patterns.
We recommend joining a gender-homogeneous group for at least a year before switching to a mixed-gender setting.