When Cassie Jaye set out to create her documentary, Meeting the Enemy, a film that follows the men’s rights movement in America, she was completely unaware of the lesson she would learn from the project, and the practice she would later teach.
It wasn’t until she sat down to edit the film that she realised that she hadn’t been listening to her interviewees at all, instead only listening for comments to argue against. One man argued, “everything you see was built by a man”. While this seems like a sexist unfair comment that implies women are unable to do the same thing, this is not what the man is arguing. Gender has naturally filtered men and women into different roles due to the fundamental different functions of each sex. Not to say that women can’t do the same, but gender roles developed through strength and environments. Cassie responds with, “every human was born from a woman”.
The important lesson to remember in both these arguments is that it is not a contest between who is more oppressed or worse off in society, both sides have valid points that should be listened to. Listen to the statistics to ensure that all needs are met, regardless of gender.
Actions that uniquely affect men:
- Paternity fraud
- War draft/ front line
- Workplace deaths
- Suicide
- Sentencing disparity
- Life expectancy
- Child custody
- Child support
- Criminal court bias
- Homelessness
- Male genital mutilation
- Lack of parental choice when child is conceived
- Male domestic violence resources
Women often believe that men have all the rights because we had to fight for them, and through this battle, we can justify why we feel the way we do. Men however have not yet been entitled to this liberation. We know that sexism of any form, racism or discrimination is wrong, but why do people do it? These are the questions we need to answer, and through this, we need to consider the other side of the gender equality equation.
As a result of her documentary The Red Pill, she was criticised by the feminist movement for humanising the men’s rights movement and consequently she distanced herself from the feminist movement. She now calls the enemy the ego, not the men’s rights activists or feminists, and argues that we all need to engage with each other to create equality.
“We have to stop expecting to be offended.”