I just logged into Hulu for the first time in a few months and to my surprise the controversial documentary "The Red Pill" by feminist filmmaker Cassie Jay was uploaded. This movie focuses on MRA's (Men's Rights Activists) and was strongly protested by feminist groups in Australia, and there was an instance in Canada where a screening of the film was canceled by feminists, after they flooded the ticketing sight in protest. Unfortunately for Feminists, they have not yet realized that censorship only shows that you are afraid of the argument of the opposing side, and it only strengthens the curiosity surrounding the film.
The movie follows Cassie Jay, a self-declared feminist at the beginning of the movie, and the shift in her worldview as she meets and talks to both prominent MRA's and Feminists, metaphorically swallowing the "Red Pill". For those who are not familiar with the concept of the Red Pill, it comes from a scene in the Matrix where Neo is offered a choice between a blue pill and a red pill, the blue pill representing blissful ignorance to the reality of the Matrix he was living in, the Red pill symbolic for the uncomfortable and life-altering realities that comes with discovering the truth.
If I was to share my overall takeaway from the movie, it would be this: both males and females face issues, whether those issues are gender specific or not, but there is a clear double standard when it comes to addressing these issues. Feminism is a state-funded social engineering project, and therefore women's issues are out in the open for all to see, propagandized even i.e. the "gender wage gap" that has been deconstructed by economists time and time again but is continually perpetuated by even our former President Barack Obama. Compare the attention and awareness brought to breast cancer, which even has its own month, to the attention brought to prostate cancer even though prostate cancer is equally common in men as breast cancer is in women.
The documentary focused on a variety of issues; mainly the biased heavy slant towards women in the family court system, male disposability, and domestic abuse.
On the topic of the family court system, the fact remains that once a child is conceived, the women has all the power to determine the fate of the child, including whether or not she will choose to get an abortion or not, and while feminists will argue that this is due to the biological importance of motherhood in the carrying of the child, the fact remains that the child shares 50 percent of the DNA of the father as well, and he should have some say in the child's fate. There was an example in the film of a man who had to pay child support for a kid that didn't even belong to him, a man who was much more suitable to be a father to his child than the obese mother was, yet after 14 years of battling for custody of the child, he lost and is no longer able to see his son. The family courts are so skewed in favor of women in fact, that many men are terrified of marriage, until the system is changed. A theme in the film was that feminists worked very hard to make instances where the law wrongly put them at a disadvantage and changed those laws to make them gender neutral, while simultaneously ignoring these laws that put men at a disadvantage.
Male disposability is addressed in the film by pointing out the statistics that show that society has a tendency to assign higher-risk jobs to men, such as soldiers, firefighters, and coal miners; almost all of the most hazardous professions are all-male, and those professions have a higher percentage of men as the hazard increases, and you never hear feminists complaining that they need more women doing those jobs. Other statistics point in the same directions: men fall victim to violent crime twice as often as women, and are "three times more likely to be murder victims". Suicide rates are much higher for men than for women—for men over 85, even 1350 times higher than for women of the same age. Society has run on the premise that men are more disposable then women are, probably biologically because of their child-bearing capacity. Whereas women are objectified sexually, men are objectified as a means of success and work production. They are both valid gender-issues, but when men openly express their dissatisfaction or their concerns, they are mocked, and even ridiculed for addressing very legitimate issues.
"Men's weakness is their facade of strength; women's strength is their facade of weakness." 1 in 3 women are domestically abused, but I'm sure you didn't know that 1 in 4 men are domestically abused by their partners as well, seeing as how society treats this issue as a problem that only affects females. The difference however is that there are thousands of shelters for women to go to if they find themselves in a situation where they are being physically abused, but there currently only exists ONE shelter for men in similar situations. Men are physically stronger than women so the thought of them being victims of abuse sound silly on the surface, until you realize that a violent women can use any object as a weapon to hit the man, and in a "her- word- against- his-case", the women will win that battle almost every single time. Again, why is this issue treated as a uniquely female problem, when men are also effected? It's a legitimate question.
I don't consider myself apart of the MRA movement or anything like that, but it is undeniable that they bring up valid points, and the fact that they are attacked by society for voicing their issues, when women are encouraged to do the same, only begs the question: if we are in a "Patriarchy", then why does it seem like in some cases women have special protections that men don't have? The fact is that while Feminists will say that they are all about gender equality and about both sexes, they seem oddly hostile to the idea that men get the short end of the stick on certain issues. You see, the "red pill" is realizing that both genders have their own share of problems, and certain problems probably aren't as gender-specific as society would lead you to believe they are. The red pill is realizing that women and men are equally depraved, and while men objectify women, women also objectify men, there are disgusting human beings who hit their wives, and there are disgusting human beings who hit their husbands. MRA and Feminism would be able to coexist completely if feminism didn't operate on the toxic premise that men are the oppressors and women are the oppressed. Leading the filmmaker to make a powerful statement at the end of the film "I'm not sure where I am headed, but I know what I left behind. I no longer identify myself as a feminist." This film was fantastic and I recommend you give it a watch.
