Reggie Yates documentary on the manosphere - A review
19 upvotes | December 16, 2015 | by NightwingTRP
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For those of you who aren't aware, there was recently an hour long
documentary put together in the UK on the manosphere. I recently
watched this and have put together a review so that you won't have to
waste your time watching it.

BACKGROUND:

In short, the "documentary" - and I use the term loosely - by Reggie
Yates on BBC 3 entitled "Men at war" (a part of his "Extreme UK"
series) doesn't seem to actually understand the topic they're
covering. (If you're wondering who Reggie Yates is... just consider
him a minor celebrity from the UK.) In addition to this, the choice of
language Reggie uses gives a clear indication of his biases and
prejudice. His mind doesn't seem open to any of their views in the
first place. Most of the men featured in this have their statements
put forward and then (if they did justify the view afterwards) their
justification or logic behind the statement is edited out. So this is
pretty standard misrepresentation and spreading of misinformation
about the manosphere.

Reggie himself is a feminist supporter because "I have sisters and
like they need to be allowed to blossom" or some such nonsense.
Demonstrating that he hasn't actually done his research properly.
Everybody here knows that feminism is not a cut-and-dry "we want
equality for women" movement. It does not act that way when you
research it properly and you don't have to look far to find this
evidence. A brief youtube search will find videos full of evidence.
Stop assuming feminism can do no wrong Reggie, they can, have, and
continue to do so.

THE REVIEW

So let's hack this shite into a few pieces. First off, they're
poisoning the well rather nicely from the outset. When the show is
called "Extreme UK" it's automatically suggesting that anyone who
participates in the manosphere is an extremist of some description.
(Nobody here could possibly be remotely reasonable, durr!)

A major issue for Reggie is that he is from another world where the
problems we talk about don't actually exist. In the realms of
celebrity, your SMV is artificially inflated so he'd never have any
reason to seek out advice from the likes of Roosh and has no incentive
to truly consider what he has to say. Roosh himself is misrepresented
through some clever editing. Once again it is the issue of keeping the
outrageous statements and skipping over any logic or reason to back
them up. Reggie notes that the men going to Roosh's talk don't want to
be seen and says this is odd... but then never tries to actually
understand why. There is no further attempt to research and understand
why these actions are being taken. This is a familiar theme in the
documentary: they take statements and behaviours of people and portray
them in a way to make them seem as absurd as possible and then never
try to make any sense out of it. It is quite literally the definition
of how not to make a documentary.

Which brings him to his discovery of MGTOW. When the community hears
he's trying to interview some of them, the community itself closes
ranks and advises everyone to stay away and keep their faces well away
from this. Again, Reggie makes no attempt to understand this, instead
he remarks while chuckling "we haven't even done anything yet." -
Again, trying to portray them as stupid instead of actually trying to
comprehend their behaviour. I've said before that the BBC is
horrendously biased, and many of the MGTOWs pointed this out too.
Reggie dismisses this without any thought. By this point I'm starting
to wonder if he's actually capable of independent thought. His
behaviour suggests he isn't.

Next, the first interview with Milo Yiannopoulos is absurdly short. It
has about 2 minutes of screen time. He builds up Milo as someone worth
talking to and then gives him about 3 sentences worth of air time
beyond the "hi, how are you" intro bit. Seriously Reggie? You think
this is making a quality documentary?

The biggest problem that Reggie faces is that his mind is closed. When
you see him discussing false rape with the 18yr old MRA, Reggie states
"rape is happening on every street" which is an utterly absurd claim
when you look at the stats. (You should be happy Reggie. We live in a
society where gang rape isn't a bonding ritual and rite of passage
like it is in some parts of Africa.) If the MRA took him to task on
that, then it was cut during editing and the statement is left out
there like some universal truth. The whole rape culture myth is
probably one of the most damaging myths our society currently spreads.
It's extremely disheartening to see it so casually reaffirmed. He's
basically just a mouthpiece for the mainstream. There's no analysis or
research going on here. I'd probably get a better level of research
from a school kid.

Reggie comes back to check on how the MGTOWs have responded to his
call for an interview. And the MGTOWs have basically told him to fuck
off... quite literally. Some of the abuse is directed at his race and
it's simply not making the MGTOWs look very good. Giving him precisely
the ammunition he needs to portray them negatively.

So now he moves on to talk to Laurie Penny who does the standard
complaint about abusive messages etc etc. No point delving into the
fact that this happens to both feminists and MRAs Reggie... no, that
would be balanced reporting and you're too busy doing a hatchet job.
Seriously, there is no analysis of her views or what she says... it's
just a pity party for the fact some idiots send her mean messages and
shop her face into porn pics (if this is the worst thing that happens
to you... oh boy have you had an easy life!)

But no hatchet job is complete without returning to Roosh for the
piece de resistance: quote mining Roosh's books and who could forget
that "make rape legal" piece he wrote. Basically all of the most
retarded things Roosh has ever written being read back to back in the
space of 60 seconds. Then he describes him as the "mammoth of the
manosphere." Great... In fairness to Reggie, he does keep in the
explanations Roosh gives for these things... but it seems like the
well has already been poisoned and he describes Roosh as attempting to
act like a victim. Which he does because he is partially a victim - he
was assaulted in Canada. We just see what we already know, that Roosh
isn't the brightest penny in the fountain when it comes to PR.

The whole thing ends on a rather odd note where he talks relatively
coherently on the issue of male role models. He uses this to have a
dig at the men in the manosphere having "issues" and "inadequacies."
Makes you wonder what he'd make of the role models here on TRP.
Perhaps he could interview GLO on the topic of treating women like
children? He wraps it up saying that all these men really need is just
a confidence boost. That's a nice coat of gloss to put over pretty
much everything you've missed.

I don't think Reggie is a bad person. He seems like an affable kind of
guy, but I think he's probably just too lightweight to deal with
something like the manosphere. (Also, an hour is nowhere near long
enough to actually do a proper documentary on it. They'd need to do a
series of hour long episodes to explain it all properly.) In summary,
the research was poor and there was a lot of quote mining to simply
reinforce the mainstream image and portray all of this as a large
number of extremists. It's what we've come to expect from the BBC...
they are feminists through and through. It is their religion. They
blindly believe everything without question and parrot it all back to
the viewing public. I wouldn't bother watching this: it's just another
misrepresentation.
 
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