The 'men's rights' documentary The Red Pill has been pulled from Melbourne's Palace Kino cinema, sparking a debate over censorship and what constitutes partisan reporting.
Time will tell whether the full documentary will be widely available in Australia. However, even the trailer raises questions over the legitimacy of the men's rights movement, commonly known as MRAs.
The men's rights movement is founded on the idea that 'feminism has gone too far', to the point that men are discriminated against. Though men's rights had more benign beginnings in 1970s, since the internet and the third wave of feminism, the majority of MRA groups seem to be little more than a veil for misogynists to legitimise their sexism.
Most women's interactions with MRAs are online, and most likely involve some kind of harassment. MRAs will often troll feminists and invade feminist spaces under the guise of 'debate,' making demands on women's time and derailing feminist conversations. 'But what about men?' they type, in a conversation clearly about women. 'Don't men deserve attention too?'
And that's just scratching the surface. The Red Pill Reddit threads are an absolute joy (read: horrifying) to look through. Click on the 'required reading' to find Trump-esque locker room talk on how to 'manage your bitch' and why 'rape culture is 100 per cent bullshit'. I fail to see how likening women to children in need of an 'alpha man' is equality, but obviously I must have been 'brainwashed by feminism.'
The documentary trailer features Paul Elam, generally regarded as a moderate within the 'manosphere', who has been described as the Gloria Steinem of men's rights. In his article 'Jury duty at a rape trial? Acquit!' he vowed that due to the 'prevalence' of false rape reporting, if he were to sit on a jury, he would refuse to convict a rapist — 'even in the face of overwhelming evidence'.
Though an editorial note claims the article was merely intended to be 'provocative', it does troublingly echo wider MRA sentiments regarding rape culture.
This type of misogyny isn't shown in the trailer. What we see instead are a lot of staid MRAs carefully choosing their topics, interspersed with feminists responding to the MRA movement. This framing paints feminists as the reactionaries, rather than MRAs being the backlash counter-cultural movement.
"Feminists have been pointing out that gender roles are toxic to both women and men for a while now. If the men's rights movement was what it says it is, both ideologies could co-exist to reach a common goal."
The sad part is that there are MRA groups who raise real issues. Men's mental health statistics are alarming, with recent statistics suggesting men are three times more likely to commit suicide than women. Domestic and sexual violence against men and young boys, though statistically less likely, are often dismissed. Whether there is bias towards women in the Family Court is debatable, but women are allocated more primary custody roles than men.
Where the real fault in their logic lies is in blaming feminism.
MRAs don't recognise that these issues are rooted in toxic patriarchal thinking. The demand on men to be stoic aggressors has created generations of emotionally constipated boys. In regards to parental custody agreements, the patriarchal expectation of women to exclusively play a nurturing role with their children creates absent fathers who were themselves never modelled how to be a present parent.
The thing is, feminists have been pointing out that gender roles are toxic to both women and men for a while now. If the men's rights movement was what it says it is, both ideologies could co-exist to reach a common goal.
But, for the majority, that's not really what men's rights is really about. I don't see men who care about justice; I see men who have been privileged their entire lives, and are scared that privilege will be taken away. Men who use real issues as a tactic to justify fearmongering and misogyny. The present men's rights movement isn't activism at all, just anti-feminism and anti-women by another name.
Neve Mahoney is a student at RMIT university. She has also contributed to Australian Catholics and The Big Issue.