The 'men's rights' documentary The Red Pill has been pulled from Melbourne's Palace Kino cinema, sparking a debate over censorship and what constitutes partisan reporting.
Time will tell whether the full documentary will be widely available in Australia. However, even the trailer raises questions over the legitimacy of the men's rights movement, commonly known as MRAs.
The men's rights movement is founded on the idea that 'feminism has gone too far', to the point that men are discriminated against. Though men's rights had more benign beginnings in 1970s, since the internet and the third wave of feminism, the majority of MRA groups seem to be little more than a veil for misogynists to legitimise their sexism.
Most women's interactions with MRAs are online, and most likely involve some kind of harassment. MRAs will often troll feminists and invade feminist spaces under the guise of 'debate,' making demands on women's time and derailing feminist conversations. 'But what about men?' they type, in a conversation clearly about women. 'Don't men deserve attention too?'
And that's just scratching the surface. The Red Pill Reddit threads are an absolute joy (read: horrifying) to look through. Click on the 'required reading' to find Trump-esque locker room talk on how to 'manage your bitch' and why 'rape culture is 100 per cent bullshit'. I fail to see how likening women to children in need of an 'alpha man' is equality, but obviously I must have been 'brainwashed by feminism.'
The documentary trailer features Paul Elam, generally regarded as a moderate within the 'manosphere', who has been described as the Gloria Steinem of men's rights. In his article 'Jury duty at a rape trial? Acquit!' he vowed that due to the 'prevalence' of false rape reporting, if he were to sit on a jury, he would refuse to convict a rapist — 'even in the face of overwhelming evidence'.
Though an editorial note claims the article was merely intended to be 'provocative', it does troublingly echo wider MRA sentiments regarding rape culture.
This type of misogyny isn't shown in the trailer. What we see instead are a lot of staid MRAs carefully choosing their topics, interspersed with feminists responding to the MRA movement. This framing paints feminists as the reactionaries, rather than MRAs being the backlash counter-cultural movement.
"Feminists have been pointing out that gender roles are toxic to both women and men for a while now. If the men's rights movement was what it