But we are jumping the gun a little, lets go back to the beginning... The first thing we noticed in the cinema was the variety of people that were attending the screening. Naturally there were many men, but they were from all walks of life, all ages and all shapes and sizes. There were pairs of females sitting together as well as several small groups of young people and just before the film there was a flurry of people scrambling to quickly purchase a "Make America Great" cap from someone down in the front row. The connection? Well the POTUS is another target for feminists so it was cheekily brandished, in case of an ambush perhaps. Daisy gave a warm, yet brief, welcome and thanked everyone who had helped to make the screening happen, including those present who bought all of the tickets.
As the film begins, Cassie Jaye explains how she decided to choose Men's Rights Activists as the subject for her film after ten years of making documentaries about women's issues and marriage equality for LGBTs. She informs us that she was an active feminist and was always interested in gender issues which inspired her earlier films. She further explains that it was by researching rape culture that she stumbled across a website called 'A Voice for Men' and began reading the articles from Men's Rights Activist Paul Elam. She admits that she couldn't get completely through a single article due to the offensive language used in them and as a feminist she was quite offended by much of the content. Her response to this site and the men's rights movement in general was what gave her the idea to pursue this group and make a film to either expose or make people aware of what messages they were sending out about women.
Cassie went right to the source, to meet the man behind the website, Paul Elam. Many have criticised her for choosing Elam, (e.g. Andrew 'mangina' O'Keefe) but they obviously had not seen the film to understand why she went to him. Instead of exposing Elam as a woman-hater, she discovered his reasons for writing the articles on the website, and began to question whether there was more to the men's right movement than met the eye. Elam explained that the issues they raised awareness for on the website, encountered a lot of vile backlash from feminists.
There was incriminating messages on Elam's website that Jaye was criticised for not addressing, but again if you actually saw the film you would have seen this was indeed addressed at the end. There was an article that suggested that it was 'Bash a Bitch month' and feminists went to town quoting it to further disparage the movement. But as Jaye discovers it was a response to an article in the leading feminist publication Jezebel that promoted and encouraged violence against men and shared stories of women who bash their partners with the reason "he deserved it". But those who didn't watch the film would have missed all that.
The film then goes through a series of issues that Jaye discovers as she 'goes down the rabbit hole'. She interviews both feminists and antifeminists and speaks to people who are involved with men's issues and sees the impact the feminist narrative is having on the lack of services for men.
Most striking is the death rates and legal system statistics shown in the film as the featured lawyer explains in great detail. The issues of suicide relating to those men who lose custody of their children, the difference between wrongful paternity and paternity fraud, and the abhorrent Duluth model are very serious issues that are hardly on the public radar compared with women's issues.
We meet the Honeybadgers, a group of women advocating men's issues and they discuss many more issues that men are facing without any legislative protection. We hear how a woman raped a male minor and fell pregnant, then whilst serving her prison term for raping him, was able to force him to pay child support for the child he had not even wanted due to being raped by her. But if men speak up about this, instead of being listened to, they are talked over and discredited by feminists and nothing is done.
We witness the sheer terror invoked by feminist activists whenever men wish to hold meetings about the issues they face. They raise issues in a public park and are chanted at and talked over by male feminists attacking them on megaphones and calling them women-haters, anti-gay misogynists - even though they are merely raising issues and not even mentioning women. We then witness a more violent showing of feminists needing to be pushed back by security guards who wont let them storm a venue hosting a Warren Farrell talk. A feminist dogs a man outside the venue waiting to go inside, abusing him just for buying a ticket to listen to Warren Farrell speak. They seem to be overcome with hatred and anger as they point viciously at the security guards and chant 'this is what men's rights looks like'. We witness a presentation by Janice Fiamengo being hijacked by feminists in the room making noises and chanting over her to shutdown her talk on men's issues. We then see another meeting shutdown, as feminists illegally activated the fire alarm forcing feminists and MRA's to come face to face outside the venue. This where we meet Big Red and while her manner is quite vile towards the MRA's it comes across as so bizarre that you can't help but laugh at her antics and it provides a moment of comic relief when she gets annoyed at the MRA interrupting her and advises him "I'm reading fuckface". But this is another example of the inequality of acceptance - women can speak to men like that without any consequence, but if a man spoke like that to a woman, he would be dragged over the coal and fully demonised.
I think one of the more sullen moments is the treatment of Erin Pizzey. She is famous for opening the worlds first shelter for women and her pioneering success was once highly praised by feminists. That is until she extended her compassion to offer help to men as well. The backlash against her from feminists saw her forced to leave the United Kingdom altogether. She even stated that she is banned from speaking anywhere by feminists, they lobby against her visits so places simply have to cancel. She is even banned from entering her own shelter, the building she bought, because the feminist that runs the place wont let her in. This is all because she recognised that both men and women can be violent. It is a scary world that manages to silence people if they don't like you raising an opinion or a truth that they don't agree with.
For me, apart from following Cassie Jaye's incredible soul searching, heartfelt journey as she faced her own beliefs and doubts in regards to feminism, the real standout of the film is Karen Straughan. Along with the treatment of Erin Pizzey, it does appear to be Karen to finally convince Jaye that feminism is not the way. Straughan quietly and succinctly explains how tragedies that involve men are overlooked by the media and how females are singled out. She raises the Boko Haram situation and the #BringBackOurGirls campaign. Karen explains that whilst girls may have been kidnapped from schools, all the boys were killed, burned alive, yet whenever fatalities were reported, the headlines never mentioned the words men or boys, rather used generic terms like villagers or just the number, e.g. 123 killed. Karen also examined the terminology of feminism and their description of the ever-seeing 'patriarchy' being the devil, and the force of 'feminism' as the way forward to salvation. She sees it as being very similar to religion particularly with the language and terms that feminists use. Her line, followed by a very cute smile, defines this hypocrisy. "We're not blaming men, we're just naming everything bad after them"
Cassie Jaye, weighs up the facts and confirms that the MRA's have a point about the falsehoods and misinformation being communicated by feminists and finds the feminist narrative too narrow minded and harsh to support it, or stay aligned to it.
She ends her narrative with the following - " I no longer consider myself a feminist" - and it lingers until the credits roll.
There is much, much more in the film and it should be broadcast on the ABC immediately, but instead they decided to broadcast a film last night that has been proven to provide false claims by multiple attorneys and the film makers on "The Hunting Ground" admit it is not a factual film. Yet our ABC presented this film and promoted it as a real expose' on rape culture. It is both disgusting and humiliating to see this shit on our tax-payer funded national broadcaster. It is exciting to learn, however, that Bettina Arndt has suggested that there may be legal action taken against the individual board members of the ABC for not upholding the regulations of the charter that governs the ABC. That would be a very bitter pill for them to swallow.
Hats off to Daisy Cousens for hosting this amazing film and a big Hats Off to Hoyts for having the balls to house this event. Hats Off also to Cassie Jaye and all those who were featured in The Red Pill who provided incredible stories and information to show the world that their men are hurting and need attention and support, and above all proper legislation to help reclaim their lives.
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