I saw that The Red Pill, the documentary about the men’s rights advocates group, abbreviated as MRA’s, was getting a lot of attention on reddit, so I decided to check it out and I wanted to give my thoughts of the documentary and the situation as a whole. If you don’t know the red pill gets its name from the scene in the matrix where Neo is offered the blue pill or the red pill. Essentially by taking the red pill he goes down the rabbit hole and sees what the majority of people don’t see, or don’t want to see. There is also a subreddit by the same name, but I will talk about this later.
The documentary starts off with the director, a self proclaimed feminist, interviewing various people from both sides of the camp, those who believe MRA’s are sexist assholes and the MRA’s themselves who believe they are bringing up decent issues that no one even wants to talk about. In this respect I think the people they interviewed definitely make the MRA’s look very good, many of them were people who were those who had life experiences that brought them to the movement and most of them didn’t seem like they really had much prejudice against women. Those from the feminist camp were very anti MRA and disagreed with almost all of their points without hearing their point of view to begin with.
Im not sure how researched the people were in this documentary before they were interviewed, but I would say the hardest part is finding moderates of both sides. The huge problem with feminism and MRA’s is that many people who join the groups taint the fundamentalist ideals and it transforms into something unexpected. For example one woman who built one of the first battered women’s shelters in the UK was kicked out of the feminist movement for suggesting that they open a battered men’s shelter as well. She was called a slave to the patriarchy and driven from the movement. It is these types of extremists that give both sides a bad view. Many men on the subreddit the redpill are sexists that claim to be MRA’s and many of the moderates despite them.
In fact many of the moderates for both groups have the same stances and positions on the same issues. Another big problem is both sides are looking for funding from the government and in many parts it is a zero sum game. Only x amount of dollars will be given to run certain shelters and either the women can get it or the men can get it, not both. Because of this, men who suffer marital abuse at a sizable rate, but one that happens to be lower than women, get no funding at all. There are only a handful of shelters that will even take men to begin with. This is why many of the MRAs are upset.
I don’t think moderates of either side are making claims that are completely sexist or out of the park. The documentary does a good job of highlighting the core beliefs of many MRAs and actually makes you think about some of the inequalities against men in our society. Every type of group no matter how privileged you think they are, has issues to deal with, some more than others, but that doesn’t mean we should ignore the other groups. I think the best thing we can do is keep an open mind and listen to other people instead of instantly shutting them down. Those who don’t want people who have different views than them to speak, are just censoring people. If you could get groups to remove extremist members and keep the moderates who are willing to discuss and talk about both sides, we might actually have progress, but sadly I don’t think that will happen.
Thanks to @Elyaque for the badges
The world is still so unbalanced. I wholeheartedly believe that men and women should be equal in all things. The problem I have supporting feminism is that they only campaign for equal rights in the areas where women currently don't have equal rights e.g. the pay gap. They usually completely ignore areas where they are better off than men e.g. courts are well-known to favour women over men.
When I hear someone campaigning for equal rights in ALL areas, I will support that person. In the meantime, I believe that feminism is well-intentioned but ultimately unfair. The irony is that they are campaigning for equal rights, but because they only do so in aspects which help them, the world that would exist if they had their way would see women equal to men in most ways and better than men for the rest.
Does that sound fair to you?
Which, it is worth noting, is a carefully constructed lie:
The world is filled with problems... problems that never seem to be solved.
Feminism is just a social agenda is disrupt the American family. The feminists treat men the same way they have been treated. I was a male nurse in the 80s . Someday people will start to think for themselves again.
Wow.
Excellent
🆔 @haji
It's amazing how these terms like "Feminism" and "Men's Rights Activist" can get taken so far into weird ideological directions. Unfortunately it feels like the internet has turbo-charged the ability for the most extreme viewpoints to be heard, and made it harder for moderate ideas to get on the stage.
Not sure how we can fix it... at least documentaries like this can be a start.
"For example one woman who built one of the first battered women’s shelters in the UK was kicked out of the feminist movement for suggesting that they open a battered men’s shelter as well."
Unfortunately, the movement is the majority of feminism, so basically, feminism morphed into something that literally attacks women and egalitarianism.
When you look at it that way, it makes a perverse sort of sense.
We need a new, bisexual (sic) movement...Egalitarianism has gone out of style.
nice post
Something that always strikes me when witnessing such discussions, is that many people taking part seem to be unable to take the gender out of the equation (very much in the same spirit of a sports team fanaticism) and look at the matter as a problem affecting human beings.
In my view, this should not become a competition to see which gender gets the most abuse or who gets victimized the most, but a quest to help any person who finds themselves in a bad situation.
However, it astonishes me how some people seem to be unable to let go of their gender agendas to such a degree that they create an unnecessary layer of complication to the existing problem, delaying the achievement of an effective solution.