The Extended Trailer

 

Events and Screenings

 

TL;DR: Definitely worth seeing if you can!

 

I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to see this film at a private screening through a Tugg.com event. The event was hosted by a small MRA group in my area, most people had to buy more tickets than they needed just to ensure the event happened. But the small group allowed us to do more than just the screening, we had a Q&A session with Hannah Wallen of Honey Badger Brigade, which extended about a half hour longer than scheduled since no one bought tickets for the following show. We also got to do a meet and greet at the bar in the theater, so I got to talk and exchanged ideas with other people in the MRA community. Fortunately there were no protesters (or unfortunately in some people’s opinions). All in all it was a pretty cool event, before after and during the film.

 

Some background about the film: I remember when the movie was first announced last year (maybe the year before…), it was supposed to be another hit piece to show how terrible MRAs are, but during her process the filmmaker, Cassie Jaye, actually began to agree with the men she talked to. Once it was announced that her piece would be more fair, a bunch of her feminist participants pulled their support.

 

The film itself was well done and well presented. I’m not any sort of movie critic, but it at the very least kept me entertained. A lot of the information that the filmmaker, Cassie Jaye, was just learning about during the film were the same talking points you’ve probably already heard if you’ve spent any amount of time in the Manosphere, but to be fair there is only so much you can cover in a two hour film. I liked that she had included some mainstream (non-radical) feminists in her interviews as well, I have to assume there was some editing involved, but it was a good demonstration of how feminist talking points seem to miss the value in what the MRA’s are doing and saying. It was subtle and out of order at times, but if you payed attention you could see the feminists’ hypocrisy. Other times, their hypocrisy was loud and unabashed, like an interview with the infamous Big Red. She also interviewed a second wave feminist, Erin Pizzey who opened the first women’s shelter in the U.S., and who is now banned from her own shelters for saying that women can be as violent as a man.

 

One of the things that I had learned from this documentary (and the conversations that followed) was how the gay population fits in with MRA’s. Afterall, gay men are still men. And once there was this massive ‘coming out’ culture, many families broke, and gay men felt the brunt of the lop-sided divorce system. After the show, I spoke with a gay MRA who said that “gays feel like feminism abandoned them, and so they gays are abandoning feminism”. I’m not entirely sure what he was referring to specifically, but I will definitely be asking around and reading articles when I get a chance.