Last week, as usual I was tuned into Radio 4, my radio station of choice as I assume it’s the most unbiased ‘grown-up’ BBC Station. However, this particular day I found myself shouting at the radio. Now what could have set this fury off? Had Ed let his ferrets loose in the house #Archersrivetingplot, had there been a new development in women’s feminist thoughts on tampons? No, strangely enough, I was finding myself becoming more and more infuriated with one of the half hour factual documentaries.
The Red Pill, episode 1, presented by Jolyon Jenkins, introduced the the concept of ‘men going their own way’ (MGTOW), a movement made up of a minority of men who feel they are living in a gynocracy, organised to the advantage of woman and the feminist forces that be.
“Some of them think that there is still time to organise and fight back. They think that the system can be changed, and that relationships between men and women recalibrated. But others are more radical. They believe that male/female relationships are inherently toxic, the system is unbeatable, and that the only sane strategy for a man is to exit from the gynocracy while he still can, even if this means ‘living as a ghost’ within broader society.”
In short, a group of men described their feelings concerning women’s desire for high value male partners, that they are seen as disposable and worthless and nothing more than status symbols. These men felt used and if they could not live up to the standards set out by a society of women, now so ‘liberated’ due to the ‘remorseless march of feminism’ that they were completely redundant and had, on the whole, been in relationships that had ended due to the woman ‘trading up’. Indeed some of the opinions seemed contradictory, emotionally led and in a few cases downright ridiculous.
However, this is not why I was becoming more and more irate. My big issue was the enormous, gigantic and utterly hypocritical double standard in the story telling. The whole half hour was edited in a manner that I can only call patronising and pejorative. Jolyon Jenkins made consistent comments, contradicting and belittling the opinions of the men who were brave enough to take part, who did not number very many due to this very attitude. The whole programme culminated in a joke about these men flying off to another planet and that no one would be that bothered.
Now let’s put the shoe on the other foot shall we? If this had been a programme about women bitching on about being devalued by a male-led society, feeling used and undervalued, the BBC would have been fawning and back patting, as in the endless ‘girl power’ on Woman’s Hour.
I came away from listening to this programme feeling the absolute hypocrisy of the media system. These men had made their opinions known, yet had been portrayed as laughable idiots and ‘extremist’ fanatics, a contradiction in itself. The edit was completely counterproductive in promoting the ‘equality’ of gender the BBC are constantly banging on about. In a nutshell it was dismissive, patronising and rude and if it had been a woman’s matter documentary, the BBC would have been hung drawn and quartered.
Does this not, then, illuminate the idea that these men may actually have a serious point?
