Next week, on 7th October, I will be attending a screening in New York for a documentary that addresses the other side of gender politics: the needs and rights of boys and men.
The title of the film is The Red Pill, which takes its name from the 1999 film The Matrix. The red pill and its opposite, the blue pill, represent the choice between embracing the painful truth of reality—the red pill—and the blissful ignorance of illusion: the blue pill.
The Red Pill film highlights the uncomfortable truth about America’s boys and men. Namely, that they are the real victims in our society.
And just in time for its release, The Washington Post has provided proof for precisely why we need such a film. In “My teen boys are blind to rape culture,” Jody Allard, a feminist and single mom, publicly shames her 16 and 18-year old boys for simply questioning the anti-male narrative she feeds them.
For not swallowing the blue pill.
“They’ve been listening to me talk about consent, misogyny and rape culture since they were tweens. They listened to me then, but they are 16 and 18 now, and they roll their eyes and argue when I talk to them about sexism and misogyny.”
That Allard’s boys will not take up her fight against so-called rape culture makes them “part of the problem,” she writes.
Actually, it makes them smart.
Perhaps the boys know what their mother does not: that one or two bad experiences with men (Allard claims she is a victim of sexual abuse) does not make all men bad. Perhaps they know their mother says things that have no real basis in fact or are wildly exaggerated, yet beg to be believed due to sheer emotion, and the boys are too level-headed to fall for it.
Perhaps they know the feminism of today has nothing to do with equal rights. Using this banner is just a tactic feminists use to make it impossible for anyone to argue against it. After all, who wants to be the person who argues against a movement that claims to be for equal rights?
Yet argue against it we must.
The feminist revolution has carried on long enough with its ‘women good/men bad’ narrative, one that insists women are always victims and men are always perpetrators. That is categorically false.
Men and boys are repeatedly told, in one fashion or another, that the way they’re made is “toxic,” as if being male were a biological error. And women are just as likely as men to be perpetrators of abusive behaviour. In fact in Australia, husband abuse is on the rise.
The Red Pill seeks to bring these issues to light—and to swing the gender politics pendulum back to the middle, where both men and women can be respected as fellow human beings rather than as adversaries in a battle that can never be won.
I hope Jody Allard’s sons get a chance to see the film. If they do, they will most certainly be vindicated.
Suzanne Venker is the author of five books that challenge feminist narratives re men, women, work & family. Her newest book, The Alpha Female’s Guide to Men & Marriage: HOW LOVE WORKS, will be published February 2017. You can find her at www.suzannevenker.com.
