"The Red Pill"

I was looking for something else on Kanopy, the film site you can access through the library. This documentary by Cassie Jaye (the title references the Matrix and is commonly used in the men's movement to indicate someone who has awoken to the unvarnished "truth") caught my eye and I listened to it while sitting at the research desk on a quiet Sunday afternoon.

She makes some very valid and interesting points, but overall I found the film quite disappointing - very selective and one-sided in the presentation of the issues. I like what a self-proclaimed feminist man says early in the movie: "everyone suffers, but suffering is not the same as oppression." Of course there are men who have been treated unfairly by family court; of course there are men who have been tricked into raising a child who is not theirs biologically. HOWEVER, if the filmmaker had bothered to share some sad stories from women who have been abandoned by their partners, treated poorly by the courts, tricked by men, etc, you could show that there is suffering and unfairness on BOTH SIDES.

The film provides NO CONTEXT for the current situation and status of the sexes. The services for women, the protests for women, etc, etc, come from women who have fought for DECADES for attention and for care. Do you know what the #1 cause of death for pregnant women in America is RIGHT NOW? Murder by their partners. If you don't think men are predators, watch The Hunting Ground. Men DO oppress women - read about Gamergate. Highly qualified women are regularly driven from jobs in tech by vicious harassment, it’s been well documented. And if the media ignores the boys killed by Boko Haram, why is that women's fault??? The media is not controlled by women. Women fight for women, men should fight for men.

She starts out the movie talking about the misogyny that she read on the "men's rights" websites, but she never mentions it again. The film starts with statistics about the predominance of men in our society, such as 98% of the Fortune 1000 companies having a male CEO, but never returns to discuss the implications of this after the filmmaker has supposedly awoken from her feminist "brainwashing."

Unfortunately, the legitimate arguments of the oh-so-reasonable leaders she interviews are DROWNED by the tidal wave of hatred that the movement followers exhibit toward women, which is barely mentioned. Not addressing the continued dominance of men in so many areas of society and the continued very real victimization of women makes the film much less credible. You could produce a really powerful film that makes the case for men but still respects what women have faced and what they have fought for and what they have overcome and what they still deal with, but she has not made that film.