unfair treatment of men. The MLM is kind of a liberation for men from stereotypes and things that prevent them from expressing their feelings and emotions just because they are “men”. Feminist and gender scholars believe that the MLM was created among heterosexual middle-class men to respond to the cultural changes happening back then. The men's liberation movement began in the early 1970s as consciousness-raising groups to help men free themselves from the limits of sex roles. Proponents of men's liberation argued that male bonding is a mechanism to conform men's identities to a single sense of masculinity, which reinforces patriarchy. In lieu of such bonding, the men's liberation movement called for open acknowledgment of the costs of masculinity: men's entrapment in their fixed role as the breadwinner of the nuclear family and the taboo against men expressing emotions. Most significantly, this movement intended to make it acceptable for men to be open about their emotions while maintaining their masculinity. The link between the biological male sex and the social construction of masculinity was seen by some scholars as a limitation on men's collaboration with the feminist movement. This sharply contrasted with sex role theory which viewed gender as something determined by biological differences between the sexes. Other key elements of the men's liberation movement were the ideas that genders are relational and each cannot exist without the other, and that gender as a whole is a social construction and not a biological imperative. Thus, second-wave profeminist writers were able to explore the interactions between social practices and institutions, and ideas of gender. Men's rights movement The men's rights movement was formed in the 1980s as a splinter breaking away from the men's liberation movement, as part of a backlash to feminism. This group claimed that men's rights were being reduced by feminism, that feminist advances had not been balanced by the elimination of traditional feminine privileges, and that the men should empower themselves by revitalizing their masculinity. This argument was also echoed in religious circles with the Muscular Christianity movement. Male feminism and pro-feminism The feminist movement is divided on whether or not men can be considered feminists. Male-exclusionary feminists believe that men can not be true feminists because they do not have the experience of living as a woman, such as facing the discrimination and stereotyping that women do. They may also believe that male feminists might have