'The Red Pill' movie controversy

[TraneWreck]

Of course I am serious. Don't try to KKK your way out of this one.

For reference, think of the alt-rights attempts to dismiss the BLM movement due to any single instance of wrong doing, or a specific tweet/article/interview/video put out by a member/leader of that organization. Should we ignore any points they make or actions they are attempting due to the worst actions and words of anyone associated with them?

Perfectly fine to bring that up. Perfectly fine to distinguish it or argue it's an outlier. But the worst stuff absolutely has to be part of the evaluation.

I see this stuff used far to often of late, specifically in a way to avoid having to discuss or debate an issue. Simply demean and categorize the opposing side/author as something negative and dismiss away without any need to actually address anything. It's intellectually dishonest.

Folks are free to post the brilliant ideas of the Mens Rights Movement at any time.

 

[Belz...]

Saying it's satire doesn't make it satire.

Now that's a very nice bit of hypocrisy there. You're not accepting from others the exact same form of argument you're using.

 

[pharphis]

Because Elam wasn't being sarcastic. He does the "I'm joking, but seriously" routine.

Saying horrible things and adding, "just kidding" is not super convincing. And for the record, the Jezebel piece was done, even if it was transparently mocking the weird opening of the piece.



So, opening of her first video we get, absent any citation, academic feminism, "promotes the idea that women's feelings are more important than objective reality or the search for truth." Great stuff.

What part of this do you find convincing?

uh, she's building a case. She makes the claim, and sets out to provide evidence for it. It is episode 1, after all

 

[TraneWreck]

I'm right because I'm right. Religious dogma, basically.

Have fun with that.

I'm right because I'm talking about a specific, discreet group of people. You seem to not know who they are.

Now that's a lie, and you know it. Saying that you're talkin nonsense is not defending anyone.

Haha, that's exactly what you're doing.

Here you are saying I've misrepresented them:

If you're not going to bother at least representing your opposition accurately, why even bother participating in a discussion on the topic?

Here you are explicitly defending them from a charge I made:

Of course you can't. Nobody said that "men have issues, ergo feminists are ruining the world". From what I've seen, they say "men have issues, and they are getting ignored because feminists focus exclusively on women's issues and have made it socially unacceptable to do otherwise." Isn't that reasonable?

You say there's "more to" their views:

Your posts in this thread indicate that you are utterly uninterested in challenging your views and finding out if there's more to this, allowing you to continue to say anything you want about the opposition, safe in your ignorance.

You argued my examples were not representative of their beliefs:

Any idiot can find quotes supporting any idea. I'm asking you to show that what you've said is representative of them as a whole. So far you've simply insisted that it is so.

In this thread, you are defending the MRA movement from my critiques. I'm not sure why you're running away from that. It's fairly obvious.

Irony. Nice.

What am I missing? Feel free to provide the super cool ideas coming from that group of people.

Then you're ignoring the content of my post like you're ignoring her video.

No, as you can see, I read them all. I have read them, understood them, and found them lacking.

 

[TraneWreck]

uh, she's building a case. She makes the claim, and sets out to provide evidence for it. It is episode 1, after all

I waited for that claim to be substantiated. How many videos do I have to watch before she does that? I would think you would want the evidence to be tied somewhat closely to the claim.

 

[TraneWreck]

Now that's a very nice bit of hypocrisy there. You're not accepting from others the exact same form of argument you're using.

Fair enough. Again, I think that Jezebel article is ****. I also don't think they were substantively arguing that male victims of violence should be ignored.

But, let's say I'm wrong about that. I can accept that Jezebel did something very stupid and also that Elam's response was horrifying.

Also, notice that what I'm complaining about is slapping "satire" on a post as a way of trying to distance oneself from the contents. Jezebel didn't do that. I am not a hypocrite if I conclude that Elam missed the satire in Jezebel's post, then tried to use an unconvincing label of satire to distance himself from the horrible stuff he wrote.

 

[pharphis]

Perfectly fine to bring that up. Perfectly fine to distinguish it or argue it's an outlier. But the worst stuff absolutely has to be part of the evaluation.



Folks are free to post the brilliant ideas of the Mens Rights Movement at any time.

What do you mean by "brilliant ideas"? This sounds like an ill-defined thing you can wiggle out of by saying "those are men's issues, not the MRM" like earlier, or claim that feminists "do it better"

Here is a brief list of some of the biggest issues MRAs talk about. From what I've heard, The Red Pill has a limited scope.

1) custody rights
2) conviction rates of men vs women and time served
3) empathy gap - men as victims are ignored or minimized, women are amplified
4) genital mutilation is normalized (circumcision)
5) government spending: healthcare, education, etc. emphasized more or exclusively on women in some areas
6) domestic violence research and funding almost entirely goes to women and girls as victims and men as abusers which lead to
7) the duluth model that makes police presume the guilt of men even when THEY are the abused and
8) domestic violence shelters and hotlines presuming men as being the abusers. It's something like a 2000:1 ratio of shelters for women vs men (though I think another opened recently)
9) "rape culture" presuming men as guilty regardless of evidence
10) the insanity that is university campus culture (tied to the former) which leads to the silencing/banning of men's groups

 

[applecorped]

This is a handwave.





You cannot believe that both that the issues are totally illegitimate and that they are legitimate.

You're doing exactly what I was being critical of. You're lumping all the criticisms of Men's Rights issues in together to call them all valid, when many are not. You're ad-homing all their concerns and calling them invalid, when many are not. One does not need to agree with or like the MRAs overall to agree that they do indeed have some valid points, and some of the criticisms of them are invalid. Making it this black and white all encompassing when it is not. Take the arguments on their own merits or lack thereof.

Assuming this film maker is operating in bad faith simply because the film reportedly doesn't outright condemn all MRAs and their issues is poor critical thinking, and does not justify the reaction.

You're even making up arguments I haven't made, straw-manning already. Who said you don't know anything about MRAs?

Yes, many feminists thankfully do work on those issues you named, but many also belittle, dismiss, and outright attack the validity of those issues. Do you know that on pages devoted to discussing male rape survivors, we get feminists coming in accusing us of 'what about the men' arguments to marginalize the rape of women? On discussions of male rape, not on discussions of female rape or rape in general, male rape. That behavior not only fails to be called to task from the feminist community in general, it's rationalized and if a male feminist calls it out, he's pilloried and accused of mansplaining, suddenly a dirty MRA. That's probably one reason when it happens, the male survivors of rape walk on eggshells not to appear even a little harsh of the person trying to silence their discussion.

To me it no longer matters how bad this documentary might be, it might be straight up propaganda, but the reaction to it is more important. It shows how intellectually bankrupt pop feminism has become. Attack the arguments, don't just ad-hom out of it. This pisses me off because feminism is actually really important, and to see them behave as Trump supporters, to use your own well poisoning, is heartbreaking.

Pop feminism!

 

[TraneWreck]

What do you mean by "brilliant ideas"? This sounds like an ill-defined thing you can wiggle out of by saying "those are men's issues, not the MRM" like earlier, or claim that feminists "do it better"

Here is a brief list of some of the biggest issues MRAs talk about. From what I've heard, The Red Pill has a limited scope.

1) custody rights
2) conviction rates of men vs women and time served
3) empathy gap - men as victims are ignored or minimized, women are amplified
4) genital mutilation is normalized (circumcision)
5) government spending: healthcare, education, etc. emphasized more or exclusively on women in some areas
6) domestic violence research and funding almost entirely goes to women and girls as victims and men as abusers which lead to
7) the duluth model that makes police presume the guilt of men even when THEY are the abused and
8) domestic violence shelters and hotlines presuming men as being the abusers. It's something like a 2000:1 ratio of shelters for women vs men (though I think another opened recently)
9) "rape culture" presuming men as guilty regardless of evidence
10) the insanity that is university campus culture (tied to the former) which leads to the silencing/banning of men's groups

See, this is the sleight of hand I'm talking about. Why does the film refer to the "Red Pill":

Enter 'red pill' theory. This is the belief that what women really want from men is a bit of good old-fashioned subjection.

Rather than focussing on the very real issues affecting men today such as mental health stigma, suicide and the under reporting of sexual abuse, the activists focusses on how women 'should' behave instead.

Red pill aficionados, who mostly hang out on Reddit boards, really believe that women are wrong when they claim that they want respect and equality. Apparently what we really want is dominance and traditional gender roles. We’ve just been brainwashed by feminist propaganda.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/li...anti-feminist-group-who-know-what-women-want/

The Red Pill folks are a very specific group of people. It's important to track the various players and their commitments:

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Men's_rights_movement

I see MRA's referring to those issues all of the time. I see very little actual work being done. You mostly end up with stuff like this:

‘Don’t Be That Girl’ was the brainchild of Men’s Rights Edmonton, a local advocacy group that is part of the Men’s Rights Movement (MRM), one of the quirkiest, fastest-growing, and most frustrating civil-rights movements in the Western world today. After its initial media success, other MRM groups began promoting 'Don’t Be That Girl.' Paul Elam’s A Voice for Men (AV4M), the MRM’s largest and most visible on-line website, adopted the slogan as their meme of the summer, creating their own images and posts that urged women 'Don’t Be That Lying Feminist,' 'Don’t Be That Bigot,' 'Don’t Be That Princess' and 'Don’t Be That Bitch.'

http://www.thedailybeast.com/the-masculine-mystique-inside-the-mens-rights-movement-mrm

And again, the reason I'm talking about Elam is because he runs "the MRM’s largest and most visible on-line website," lest folks continue to accuse me of cherry-picking.

 

[Newtons Bit]

See, this is the sleight of hand I'm talking about. Why does the film refer to the "Red Pill":


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/li...anti-feminist-group-who-know-what-women-want/

The Red Pill folks are a very specific group of people. It's important to track the various players and their commitments:

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Men's_rights_movement

According to the director, the name of the film is coincidental. I don't remember how she got to that name, but I think it was a pretty serious mistake to use it.

 

[TraneWreck]

According to the director, the name of the film is coincidental. I don't remember how she got to that name, but I think it was a pretty serious mistake to use it.

...Coincidental? I'm not doubting your report, but that strikes me as...unlikely.

 

[pharphis]

The movie title is probably a poor choice, from an accuracy perspective (though it is provocative, I guess). Red pill means a lot of different things, but it primarily is a matrix reference. Lots of people use it in the "get woke" sense or as I think you're suggesting the "learn how to bed women" sense (that's what the red pill subreddit is for).

Very few MRAs fight for traditional gender roles (after all, this is part of the source of men's issues).

And once again, RationalWiki is about as biased as you can get on this topic. They have some acceptable articles but they will ALWAYS minimize men's issues or those fighting for them and push feminist ideology in its place. They will only push groups that are "feminist friendly" as being the good guys. To them, any ounce of antifeminism is equivalent to misogyny.

 

[rustypouch]

What do you mean by "brilliant ideas"? This sounds like an ill-defined thing you can wiggle out of by saying "those are men's issues, not the MRM" like earlier, or claim that feminists "do it better"

Here is a brief list of some of the biggest issues MRAs talk about. From what I've heard, The Red Pill has a limited scope.

1) custody rights
2) conviction rates of men vs women and time served
3) empathy gap - men as victims are ignored or minimized, women are amplified
4) genital mutilation is normalized (circumcision)
5) government spending: healthcare, education, etc. emphasized more or exclusively on women in some areas
6) domestic violence research and funding almost entirely goes to women and girls as victims and men as abusers which lead to
7) the duluth model that makes police presume the guilt of men even when THEY are the abused and
8) domestic violence shelters and hotlines presuming men as being the abusers. It's something like a 2000:1 ratio of shelters for women vs men (though I think another opened recently)
9) "rape culture" presuming men as guilty regardless of evidence
10) the insanity that is university campus culture (tied to the former) which leads to the silencing/banning of men's groups

There's also suicide rates, which ties into #3.

 

[Newtons Bit]

What do you mean by "brilliant ideas"? This sounds like an ill-defined thing you can wiggle out of by saying "those are men's issues, not the MRM" like earlier, or claim that feminists "do it better"

Here is a brief list of some of the biggest issues MRAs talk about. From what I've heard, The Red Pill has a limited scope.

1) custody rights
2) conviction rates of men vs women and time served
3) empathy gap - men as victims are ignored or minimized, women are amplified
4) genital mutilation is normalized (circumcision)
5) government spending: healthcare, education, etc. emphasized more or exclusively on women in some areas
6) domestic violence research and funding almost entirely goes to women and girls as victims and men as abusers which lead to
7) the duluth model that makes police presume the guilt of men even when THEY are the abused and
8) domestic violence shelters and hotlines presuming men as being the abusers. It's something like a 2000:1 ratio of shelters for women vs men (though I think another opened recently)
9) "rape culture" presuming men as guilty regardless of evidence
10) the insanity that is university campus culture (tied to the former) which leads to the silencing/banning of men's groups

With regard to #2, are you sure it's conviction rates and not total sentencing? I know men get convicted of crimes... because... well... they commit more crimes. But there is an actual sentencing issue where, all other factors being equal, men receive about twice the sentence length do. The advantage of being a woman over a man is about the same as being white vs. black IIRC.

 

[TraneWreck]

There's also suicide rates, which ties into #3.

Largely due to choice of suicide method. Men are far more likely to use guns:

Females attempt suicide three times more often than males. As with suicide deaths, rates of attempted suicide vary considerably among demographic groups. While males are 4 times more likely than females to die by suicide, females attempt suicide 3 times as often as males.

https://afsp.org/about-suicide/suicide-statistics/

 

[rustypouch]

Largely due to choice of suicide method. Men are far more likely to use guns:


https://afsp.org/about-suicide/suicide-statistics/

3) empathy gap - men as victims are ignored or minimized, women are amplified

 

[pharphis]

There's also suicide rates, which ties into #3.

And complete lack of reproductive rights (no I'm not referring to giving men the right to force a woman to carry a baby to term, here). There are a few other big issues as well but I wanted one that wasn't too broad. Some of these things I don't necessarily consider "men's issues" just like I don't consider every single disparity in favor of men a "women's issue". Many things come down to choice, in the end (pay gap, workplace death gap)

With regard to #2, are you sure it's conviction rates and not total sentencing? I know men get convicted of crimes... because... well... they commit more crimes. But there is an actual sentencing issue where, all other factors being equal, men receive about twice the sentence length do. The advantage of being a woman over a man is about the same as being white vs. black IIRC.

Sorry I don't know about conviction rates. I meant just total sentencing. I wouldn't be at all surprised about conviction rates, as well, but don't have evidence for that.

 

[TraneWreck]

It's satire.



It's satire.


It's satire.



It's satire.



It's satire. I still don't like the article. But it's satire. Stop acting like any of it was supposed to be taken seriously.

Just to follow up on this, here's Elam defending Ray Rice for punching his girlfriend in the elevator. The justification was that she lunged at him:

In response to Ray Rice tagging his then fiancé as a matter of self-defense, major sports media like ESPN and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell have gone to MuffCon1, opening the door for feminist ideologues and handing them a jar of Vaseline on the way in to ideological control of the National Football League.

https://arthurgoldwag.wordpress.com/2014/09/18/some_thoughts_about_ray_rice/

There are about 20 articles on this from A Voice for Men. Here's the Ray Rice video of him hitting his now wife:



Is Elam's defense of Rice satire also? Because it's exactly what he was "joking" about in the satire article.

 

[TraneWreck]

3) empathy gap - men as victims are ignored or minimized, women are amplified

How is referencing the actual statistics minimizing anything? It's painting an accurate picture of the situation.

If you care about male victims of suicide, your efforts should be aimed at keeping guns away from men. All other tactics, though important and helpful, will be of minimal utility in comparison.

 

[Belz...]

I'm right because I'm talking about a specific, discreet group of people. You seem to not know who they are.

Yeah, stop making this about me vs you. "Movements" don't have memberships or defined leaders.