Original subtitles

CBR900RR

Have you ever been through something

CBR900RR

and you don't know what just happened,

CBR900RR

but you know it was important to go through?

This is that journey for me.

Misogynist ranting would be at home

in the far reaching Internet subculture

widely described as the men's rights movement...

A toxic distillation of the worst aspects of American sexism.

It's a universe of message boards where men get together

to express their hatred towards women.

Well, I thought men had all of the advantages

in the world these days?

That's utter nonsense.

Men are routinely ground up in a family court system

that is misandrist and biased against them.

They are the majority of the homeless.

They are the majority of suicides.

They are majority of the drug addicted.

They are the majority of the unemployed.

They are majority of the school drop outs.

They are the majority of those in prison...

How do we know that they're not the cause of these problems?

There's a reason that women live longer, mark, let me tell you.

It is because we are stronger

and we are happier at the end of the day than most men,

and that is factual and you know it.

And when men are married to women who scream like you

they just want to die sooner.

- I'm not screaming. - When you have...

A voice for men...

An online hub for men's rights activists.

They were founded by a man named Paul Elam.

It's a website called “ a voice for men“

that's run by a man named Paul Elam...

Which is "male" spelled backwards,

but it is his real name apparently.

It's a gathering of women haters.

This Southern poverty law center has classified that group

and men's rights groups as hate groups.

He wrote a piece

declaring the month of October

to be "bash a violent bitch" month.

"I mean, literally to grab them by the hair,

and smack their face against the wall," he wrote.

Here he is.

You may be wondering why I'm sitting in a car

with notorious men's rights activist Paul Elam.

That's a valid question.

And to answer it,

I need to start at the beginning...

The beginning of how I became a feminist.

I was a quiet kid, preferring to observe from afar.

My mom put me in theater classes

when I was eight years old to break me out of my shell,

and I loved it,

so much to the point that I decided

to move to Hollywood when I was 18 years old

to become an actress.

What I wasn't prepared for was to be pigeonholed

as the blonde who always died.

Billy?

Granted, I had a good scream.

But the characters I played

weren't alone in feeling objectified.

I was commonly harassed on the streets,

hit on by married producers,

told by photographers to come back

when I lost 15 pounds and got a boob job,

and a plethora of other uncomfortable experiences,

all while still being a teenager.

I started to realize my role in the world

seemed a little too similar to the unfortunate roles I was auditioning for,

and it was not how I saw myself

or the person that I wanted to be.

So I quit acting and bought a video camera

to tell the stories I wanted to tell,

and now I've been making documentary films since 2008

when I was 21 years old.

Most of my work has been about women's issues and sexuality.

I've covered a range of topics

from the phenomenon of purity balls,

to reproductive rights,

single motherhood,

and LGBT rights.

After releasing my film in 2012 about marriage equality,

I was at a loss of what topic to explore next,

and that's when two horrific stories broke the news.

Two star high school football players

in Steubenville, Ohio,

have been found guilty of raping a West Virginia teenager.

The video shows the former Steubenville student

callously joking about the incident.

That's like rape. It is rape.

- Bro. - They raped her.

- Bro. - They raped her.

- This is the funniest... - They raped her.

Outrage across India as a 23-year-old woman,

the victim of one of the most horrific rapes

India has ever heard of.

A 90-minute horror for a 23-year-old

medicine student on this bus.

Gang raped and beaten,

her friend assaulted and thrown out of the bus...

Every day, every woman is facing violence on the streets.

People are scared...

I started to research this rape culture.

A website called a voice for men popped up.

Paul Elam wrote about how women long

to live out their rape fantasies,

to be taken by a man she's never spoken to,

let alone given consent to.

As I read, I was asking myself,

is this the rape apologist that I've been hearing about?

The victim blamer who perpetuates rape culture?

I continued to read a voice for men's website,

often stopping around the half-way mark

in every article, because I could only read

so many "bitch," "fuck," "feminazi,"

and "rapetard" words per minute.

But even still, I kept reading,

and thinking, and reading some more.

I was trying to understand how these,

what I perceived to be women haters,

could have so many followers.

So I decided to meet these MRAs...

The ones leading the movement,

and some of their followers, too...

And this begins my journey

down the rabbit hole.

This, ladies and gentlemen,

is an historic moment.

Never before has there been a gathering of this magnitude

to support men's and boy's issues.

We have got serious problems.

I have been working in this area,

advocating for the rights of...

MRA! Go away!

And here we go.

What you'll hear is that we hate women.

You'll hear that it's a backlash against women's rights.

You'll hear that we're regressives that want women back in the kitchen

and making sandwiches and barefoot and pregnant.

You're just bitter, you're a loser,

you're a whiner, you're ugly,

you're undesirable, you're lazy.

You're scary, you must be a racist,

you must be a misogynist.

When we do speak out,

women often don't want to hear what we have to say,

and so then we're called names.

We're called whiners.

And this is the way people who don't want men to talk about issues

try to shut us up.

Um, we all know that you guys

are a fascist Nazi front group of white supremacists,

no other way to openly organize

other than calling yourselves a men's rights group.

Yeah!

"We're somehow disempowered because we're white men."

Maybe it's just because you're pathetic.

We're here to fight how misogynistic assholes

think they have the right to oppress women.

White men are starting to feel misplaced

because women are sharing space.

It's disgusting, and just grow the fuck up

and don't confuse suffrage with oppression.

Everyone suffers. It's universal.

I am a man and I need feminism.

We're feminists'. We're fabulous'.!

We're here! We're queer!

And it is crystal clear

that the problems for men and boys are real.

I would like to turn the microphone

over to Paul Elam of a voice for men

for some words.

Whoo!

This is a historic day.

I've never seen a gathering like this

out of concern for the general state of affairs

for men and boys in this culture.

Trying to articulate the entire platform

of the men's rights movement

is kinda like trying to understand a snow drift

one snowflake at a time.

It's a very, very complicated matter.

Just consider this,

that 93% of workplace fatalities are men.

Four of five suicides are men.

Men are dropping out of higher education

at very alarming rates.

We're down to 38% now of college students are men,

and it's dropping rapidly.

Male suicide, male abuse, male unemployment,

male homelessness, male failure in education,

male health issues.

You got the paternity front issue,

and the wrongful paternity issue,

the false allegation issue.

Men are sentenced to 63% more prison time

for the same crime as women.

They're less likely to see a doctor.

They're less likely to have health insurance.

The family court system truly is biased against men.

I mean, there's just no question about it.

It's really the pro choice for women only movement,

because men... they're denying men any kind of choice

once a child is conceived.

Her body, her choice, right?

Think about men.

His body, his choice? Not so much.

Because the U.S. government

does not want to send you to die.

It would rather send me to die.

Young men that are failing to launch.

They're staying in their homes of origin

far past the time that we would normally expect them

to individuate and move out

and go live their lives.

We have video game addiction.

We have pornography addiction.

We have the abuse of young boys

with drugs like Ritalin to manage their behavior.

Almost all victims

of autism spectrum disorders are boys.

Boys are most likely to be homeless,

most likely to get cancer,

most likely to die young of every major cause,

most likely to be arrested, prosecuted,

imprisoned, and even executed

while being completely innocent.

It doesn't matter what their race is.

It doesn't matter what their ethnicity is.

It doesn't matter what their religious

or non-religious views are.

It doesn't matter if they're gay or straight.

Men and boys are in crisis

and they need your help and they need your support

because they are human beings, too,

and you will not shame me or anybody here

into silence about it anymore.

But if you start to talk about those issues

and address them in terms of how they affect

men and boys as a group,

people get hostile about it.

The idea is that men have all the rights.

They've always had the power.

But if that's true,

why can't men talk about their problems?

And that's what really got me

interested in this to begin with.

And shortly after I began filming men's rights activists,

I realized my own views were being challenged.

I kept a video diary throughout filming,

and I've decided to share

some of those diaries with you.

I really do feel like learning about the men's movement

and their specific issues,

the issues that they have issue with,

it's hard for me to completely understand them

and...

Just automatically feel welcome

in that space of talking about these issues.

Because at least with feminism,

whenever I heard about the issues

that feminists were fighting against,

I always felt like I had something to draw from

in experience to be on board with that.

And that's always been why I've been drawn

to the feminist movement,

is because a lot of what they spoke about

I had personal experiences with.

And with the men's movement,

I have very little personal experiences

with the issues that they talk about.

A cab driver who is driving a cab 70 hours a week

was not saying, "I am earning this money

to have power over my wife."

He was earning this money

even though it took power away from his life.

He was doing that so his child wouldn't have to drive that cab.

The garbage collector does not

get up at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning

in rain and sleet and snow

and get out to do the garbage

so he can have more power over his wife.

That's power he's losing over his life

in order to make his contribution,

his sacrifice, his way of loving.

And this has been translated into the culture of

"you make more money than women do,

you must therefore have more power."

Meet Warren Farrell,

best-selling author

and self-styled social anthropologist,

leading an assault on our traditional thinking about men.

I asked my girlfriend at the time

to buy me as a gift,

I think it was for Christmas or my birthday,

Warren Farrell's book "the myth of male power,"

which she did, and it just changed my whole life.

And his premise was while women are often seen as sex objects,

men are often seen as success objects.

And this resonated with me.

He wrote this book that questioned our notions of power,

of who had power and where it was,

and it questioned the roles of men,

but not the way feminists

had always questioned gender roles.

Every society that survived

survived based on its ability

to train its sons to be disposable...

Disposable in war as warriors,

disposable in work as firefighters,

as workers on oil rigs and so on, coal miners,

and indirectly, therefore disposable as dads.

What happens in men's life

when they're raised that they're worthless

unless they're a provider,

that they must work even if they have

to take on extremely dangerous work,

they must get this done or they're useless as men?

That is very, very powerful stuff.

See, feminism did see accurately

that we value male work

more than we value female work.

But there's also the issue

that we value female life

more than we value male life.

Even when that plane went down in New York City

a few years ago and, you know,

the pilot was a hero

for the way he landed it and saved everybody...

Word arrived over the city-wide fire frequency

that a commercial jet liner was in the water

with 155 people on board.

Then, over the next few minutes,

the doors opened, life vests were inflated,

and, women and children first,

everyone got off that plane.

They saved all the women first.

That's still... when I went on a cruise, you know,

there's still women into the life boats first.

Not because you're a man

so you should be able to swim halfway across the ocean,

but because you're a man you're expendable.

We have to look at not just the glass ceilings,

but also the glass cellars.

And, Paul, I think as you were saying,

we have to look at men just not only as human doings,

but also as human beings.

When you survive because somebody else is willing to die

like in war,

then that... You're immune to the pain

of the people who are dying

because you have an investment

in their being willing to die.

You say, "I will build a statue.

I will remember you in a history book."

But if you look at that from another perspective,

that building of the statue

or remembering you in a history book

is a bribe to be willing to die

so that I can live.

Both sexes in the area where they are rejected

tend to turn what rejects them into an object.

So the area where men...

I'm watching this, um, lecture

that Warren Farrell's gave in the '90s.

I see some women in the crowd,

and a lot of them have their hands folded,

and there is a little bit of...

Uncomfortableness...

By being a woman

in a crowd of people

while the speaker's talking about how men are oppressed

and women have it so great.

It kinda puts you on the defensive, as a woman.

And understanding that I feel that way

makes me wonder

are men having their arms crossed

listening to a feminist speaker

talk about how men have all the power

and women are oppressed?

Are men feeling like,

"what are you talking about?

I don't have power, and we have it pretty shitty

on this side of the grass, too"?

Women hold up half the sky!

Women hold up half the sky!

Women hold up half the sky!

Women hold up half the sky!

Fuck Warren Farrell!

Fuck Warren Farrell!

Fuck Warren Farrell!

Fuck Warren Farrell!

Fuck Warren Farrell!

Fuck Warren Farrell!

Fuck Warren Farrell!

In 2012, Dr. Warren Farrell

was speaking on behalf of men's issues

at the university of Toronto in Canada.

A feminist group protested the event.

be fucking ashamed of yourself.

You're fucking scum. You are fucking scum.

Fucking rape apologist,

incest-supporting, woman-hating fucking scum.

You're fucking scum. Yeah, just another...

You know what, though? Why would you pay money

to fucking support a fucking rape apologist

if you weren't fucking one?

I never heard him saying...

Well, it... Fucking scum!

Who do you serve? Who do you protect?

Who do you serve? Who do you protect?

No! Fuck! They're fucking scum!

Fuck you!

Fuck you!

Get a real fucking job.

Get out of here.

This is what men's rights look like'.!

This is what men's rights look like!

This is what men's rights look like!

This is what men's rights look like!

This is what men's rights look like!

This is what men's rights look like!

This is what men's rights look like!

- Hi. How are you? - Warren, I'm Cassie.

You' re Cassie? Oh, for some reason I thought you were a male.

I'm just delighted that you're a female.

Well, thank you.

Very glad to meet you. Come on in.

- Thank you. - Thank you.

But Farrell wasn't always so attentive to men.

In fact, for years, he focused almost exclusively on women's issues,

rubbing shoulders with feminist leaders

like Gloria Steinem.

And he's still a card-carrying member

of the national organization for women.

I believe that women cannot hear

what men do not say.

And he's got a lot to say to both men and women

in his provocative new book,

"the myth of male power."

I was making a very significant

amount of money speaking around the world

on behalf of women's issues alone.

I went through a period of forming men's groups.

And then when I listened to them,

I thought, "well, gee, this will be really helpful

to present to audiences so that they can understand

not only women's side, but men's side, too,

'cause I was really totally in the feminist's camp.

And immediately I saw my standing ovations drop.

I started hearing that there was people saying,

"don't invite him there to speak with us."

And pretty soon I had, you know,

very few college and university speaking engagements.

How did you originally get involved with feminism?

Where did that all begin?

I was doing my doctorate

at political science at NYU in the late '60s,

and the women's movement surfaced.

And I started to say,

"this is the most exciting thing I've ever heard."

Because I'd heard of civil rights, gay rights,

but suddenly women were saying,

"I don't wanna be confined to just being

a homemaker, a secretary."

So it's like, "why shouldn't women be encouraged

to do everything they possibly can do?"

And at that point in time,

I saw a lot of women marrying men

that they weren't completely in love with,

but the man earned a fair amount.

So I thought, that's just a form of prostitution

extended over a lifetime.

How depressed that must make a woman.

And it's not gonna be good for a man either.

He never knows whether he's loved for who he is

or loved for what he has.

And he's afraid to give up producing

because he's afraid to lose love.

And so women who were successful to me

appeared to be women who would free men

from having to be all, you know,

wrapped up in just being the only bread winner,

and supporting one, two, three, four, five people.

It's one thing to support yourself.

When you're supporting five people,

you don't have the freedom to question your boss,

because you're supporting five people.

The first issue of feminism

was to say, "just because I'm a woman,

maybe I don't wanna spend my life raising children."

You know, "don't force me into that role against my will."

So they looked at men and said,

"well, you're not forced to raise children.

You don't have any issue.

But for men, the traditional sex role

was not raising children.

For us, the traditional sex role

was to be a provider, a protector,

and to initiate relationships.

Each of us has traditional sex roles.

Don't force us to carry out

those traditional sex roles.

We have the same rules set up for men

that they've always lived by,

that you need to protect and provide at any cost.

But we've changed everything where it concerns women.

They now have access

to everything men have always had access to...

To education, to work, to whatever they want to do,

but they're not the ones driving the semis

and they're not the ones in the coal mines.

You don't hear the national organization for women

complaining that there is just not enough female ditch diggers.

It is still men carrying the lion's share

for what it takes to operate and maintain this society,

and it is still the expectation

that if somebody's gonna go down with the ship,

it's gonna be men.

Flexibility in roles is where we should be all headed.

Any men's rights activists that I would support

would support the portions of the women's movement

that is encouraging women

to have more flexibility in roles.

So where do the men's movement

and feminism disagree?

Well, only on the fundamental belief

that the women's movement

says men are the oppressors,

that they... we are involved in a patriarchal world

in which men invented the rules to benefit men

at the expense of women.

But don't we live in a patriarchy,

when most of the world's nations

still have never had a female leader...

And less than 5% of CEOs

of fortune 500 companies are women?

You have to look at this in a larger perspective.

Patriarchy is the result of gender roles

and not the vice versa.

Traditionally, women's power and responsibility

has been in the reproductive sphere,

while men's power and responsibility

was in the productive sphere.

You know, you have to reproduce to continue the species,

and you have to produce to feed people

so that they can reproduce.

So, you know, it's like they work together.

And most cultures divvy up roles

because women were responsible for childbirth

and were more likely to breastfeed.

They're not more likely to...

They did the breastfeeding.

They tended to be involved in the role of raising children.

Men tended to be involved in the role of raising money

or making a killing of the animals

or making a killing in wall street.

But those were our obligations.

So that's why industry was male dominated

and government was male dominated,

'cause that was our job.

So what we call patriarchy

is men giving in to the expected roles

that they're supposed to give in to,

and many of those roles are very harmful...

Working exceptionally long hours, difficult hours,

dangerous jobs, getting killed on a job...

Even politics a lot of people describe as masochism.

Imagine what it takes to be a successful politician.

Imagine how much of your personal life that you give up,

how much you work, how much privacy that you sacrifice,

how much freedom in your day to day life

that goes out the window.

There are more men willing to do those things

than there are women.

Oh, I think we got a pen for everybody.

But also, just because men are the ones,

for instance, writing the laws in general,

doesn't mean that the laws are protecting men.

You hear about patriarchy, right?

All the evils of the world is from patriarchy.

But we're the ones dying, you know?

And we die for you guys, you know?

To protect our families, our friends.

In every society that's ever existed,

women have had privilege and protection that men did not.

For example, we never hear about how men were excluded

from the forced labor convention of 1930.

For years, the forced labor convention

was an international treaty that banned slavery,

enforced servitude,

but it made an exception

for able-bodied males ages 18 to 45.

Eventually, they got rid of that,

but there was still an exemption

for prisoners and military, which is 90% male.

Stop pretending that you're oppressed

and men are your oppressors.

It's a lie, and it's a hurtful lie,

and it's a hateful lie, and it's wrong.

You talk a lot about the red pill

in a voice for men. What is the red pill?

Oh, it's sort of a cultural slogan.

It comes from the movie "the matrix"

where the character Neo is given the choice

between a red pill and a blue pill.

You take the red pill, you stay in wonderland

and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.

And if he swallows the red pill,

the scales will be peeled back from his eyes.

He will see everything that he hasn't been able to see.

And if he takes the blue pill, he'll just go back to sleep

and live in his sort of unaware,

semi-comatose state forever,

and probably be a lot happier.

It's a pretty apt analogy.

So what is the blue pill in this world?

Well, the blue is the paradigm that most people live by,

that men have all the power,

that they've always had all the power,

that domestic violence is a problem

that's committed by men against women only,

that sexual assaults are only committed

by men against women,

that women don't make the same money

for the same work as men.

"Teach men not to rape. Only men can stop rape.

Men commit domestic violence.

We need to stop violence against women... "

instead of just stopping violence.

That is feminist training.

The MRAs...

Say that we live in a blue-pill world

where women are victims, men are perpetrators,

and it's all a lie

and that we're brainwashed to believe this,

and that it's not true,

and that men are slaves in this world

and women are...

I don't think women are necessarily the puppet masters,

but I think they're saying that women

have the easy way out and men are...

They're given medals and statues

and written in the history books

to justify them dying and being slaves to work

or being, uh...

Being used to progress societies.

And I've just... I've believed for so long

that... that I'm...

At a disadvantage for being a woman

and that I have to work harder than everyone else

and I have more to overcome and I have more to prove

just because of my gender.

But the MRAs are saying that this is all a lie

and that guys are actually the ones

that are disadvantaged and discriminated against.

And, actually, the more I learn from them,

the more I think, "thank god I wasn't born a guy."

Because I don't think

that the expectations on men...

Is good or healthy.

I mean, they have so much pressure

to succeed and to be strong

and to stand up and protect others

and to put their lives on the line.

I don't think I would want that responsibility.

But, you know, 5o years ago,

no, I wouldn't have wanted to be a woman.

But now, I mean, maybe just it's right now

that the tides are changing

and women are the...

Have the better deal.

Well, no, I don't know.

And then sometimes I think

the MRAs are just duping me

and giving such a strong pitch

about what they believe in

to convince me of something

that's actually just some out there theory

that men are discriminated against

and women are... Have the advantage.

Yes, this is Cassie Jaye.

It's regarding a documentary about the men's rights movement,

and we're looking for feminist voices now

to speak in the documentary.

Feminist majority.

Yeah, hold on just one second.

So I realized, "okay,

I need to bring some feminists into the mix...

- Good. - ...To make sure that we have that side.“

good.

I was researching rape culture,

and so that's how I stumbled across a website

called avoiceformen.com.

So some of the people that we've already interviewed

on the MRA side is Paul Elam with a voice for men.

- Yeah. - Are you familiar with him?

Oh, I'm familiar with him. I've never met him.

- Yeah. - Obviously, they've spent

a significant amount of time and energy

denouncing me, so I figured I might as well

have a look at what they say.

Yeah, really, the men's rights movement is part of the backlash.

- The backlash? - To feminism.

The men's rights movement really got going

as women began to make gains,

and some men have felt threatened

by the opportunities that have been opened up to women.

And I don't know if it's because

some of them feel threatened

that they now have to compete

with a lot more people for their jobs.

They now can't get into the best schools

if a woman or a girl has better grades.

Think about it.

Grandfather's generation probably had it

pretty well, right?

All of his needs, his shirts were ironed,

all of that was always taken care of.

Well, you know, grow up,

realize the world has changed.

And as much as the MRAs

would like things to go back to the way they were

and use the argument

that women have an advantage now...

No person looking at the data

can possibly say women have an advantage.

We're just beginning to get a level playing field here.

It's not tilted in our favor, I can tell you that.

And they know it. They know it.

But it's the constant distortion of the data,

it's the spinning of a situation

to make it look like women are somehow getting ahead,

getting an advantage they don't deserve.

Um, it's, uh... It's part of the backlash.

Political organizing comes from a feeling of victimization,

which is why the men's rights movement makes that claim

that men are the victims of discrimination.

But it doesn't have much traction

because you look around and it's hard to see it.

We don't have movements called, you know, straight liberation.

Is the men's... the question I would pose rhetorically is

is the men's rights movement really the gendered version

of the white nationalist movement?

Because there are plenty of white people

who say that they are the victims

of reverse discrimination.

Of course, it's not gonna have very much traction.

You can't really organize the people who are super ordinate.

So do you think that men

are being discriminated against in any way?

Not under the law.

Men are not disadvantaged under our laws

or in the business world.

As a class, men are not underrepresented on corporate boards

or the top of the fortune 1,000 companies.

In the corporate world, in the business world,

in a lot of parts of academia,

in the military, in the sports world,

it's still pretty much a male-dominated world,

where a lot of the privileges

and power and status accrue to men.

Men are advantaged over women, no question.

No one can... No one can debate that.

Not with a serious...

Not in any seriousness.

I was a math major as an undergraduate,

and one of the fundamental things about geometry

is the distance from point "A" to point "B"

equals the distance from point "B" to point "A",

and if women are so different from men

that men can't understand the female experience,

we need to listen to women to describe it,

then the male experience is so different

from the female experience that you can't understand it.

You need to listen to us.

You can't really compare

how men and women have suffered from sexism.

There's no way to quantify,

you know, that kind of suffering.

So if a woman says, “well, I miss 30% of my income...

More than you miss six years of life..."

There's no way to quantify that.

Or "I've lost a job opportunity because I'm a woman."

There's no way to say, "I've suffered more than you"

because you've lost a kid because you're a man.

You know, we can't... But it is serious.

And at least if...

If you're denied a job because you're a woman,

at least you can go to another company

and apply for a job, you know?

But you can't... When you lose your kid,

you can't say, "okay, I'll get custody of that kid.

I'll try for that one."

It's a terrible thing that happens.

There was a case... The Serpico case.

You might be too young to know the movie "Serpico"

- with Al Pacino. - Yeah, I don't know.

It was about a New York City undercover cop.

He gets shot at the end of the movie

and retires from the police force.

And he was a real man, frank Serpico.

A woman, after the movie, after this was made,

decided she wanted to become a single mother

and tricked him into fathering a child.

And the court accepted that,

because she told her friends she was going to trick him

and they testified, and the court said,

"yes, you were tricked into it,"

and still awarded her over 90%

So everything that he goes through in this movie,

including getting shot, to earn his pension,

she won by sleeping with him one night.

My son's mom wanted to have children with me

and I had always refused,

you know, saying, "you have this anger problem.

You need to get counseling.

I'm not gonna consider having children with you

until that's dealt with,"

'cause she would lose her temper almost every day,

and just use any weapon she could.

And, like, a child's the perfect weapon,

so I was really definite about that.

But she also used to proofread my articles for me.

And I wrote an article for "playboy" about Serpico.

And when she read that, she told her friend

she's gonna trick me into fathering the child.

She doesn't need my permission.

And so that's how my son was conceived.

Then she said, "if you wanna see your son,

you have to stay in a relationship with me.

But if you break up with me,

I know all the things that a woman can do to a man."

You know, she read all my articles. She saw my talk shows.

She said, "I know all the things a woman can do to a man,

and I'll do 'em to you."

So, um, that's what I had to deal with.

Everything that I had been raising awareness about

for the previous 17 years,

she combined into one thing for me to live through.

It's really ironic.

For the first...

Five to seven years, I guess,

we would see each other four times a day for exchanges.

On average, every single day

I had to deal with some scene...

A scene meaning she would just not show up

or she would hold the kid out and then pull him back

and hold him out and pull him...

And just kind of play with me.

Or she'd let me have the kid

and then she'd stand in front of the car

so I couldn't move.

Another time, I saw her hold him by the shoulders

and say, "daddy is a bad man.

Daddy is a very bad man."

And so I had to go through this long custody battle,

and the decisions that they would make,

you would just go, "how... "

there couldn't be any explanation.

Either they're absolute idiots or it's biased.

There's just no other explanation for it.

One other thing, his mom is obese

and wanted him to be obese for various reasons.

One thing is so he would identify

more with her side of the family than mine,

'cause we're all... All thin.

Another was so that he would enjoy being with her more,

'cause when he was at my house, he had to get activity,

you know, and eat well-balanced meals,

and get his sleep and stuff.

And at her house, they would bake brownies

and stay up late and just watch TV.

So where would you... If you're a little kid,

where would you enjoy being more?

But he self-reported to the mediator

how upset he was about being obese,

that the worst thing in school

was when kids called him fatty and how he cried,

and his physician said that

he's really concerned medically.

And then what I did, he was at an age

where he would imitate things that I would do.

You know, I gave him a broken shaver,

so when I shaved, he would pretend to shave.

And what I did was,

I started weighing myself every morning

and writing down my weight, the date and my weight,

and I taught him how to read a scale.

So he kept his own records.

So I had six months worth of statistics to show consistently

that every time he was with his mom for a few days,

he'd come back weighing three to four pounds more,

and then he'd lose it while he was with me.

So they had, you know,

how much he was upset about the problem,

they had his physician being upset about the problem,

and they had the proof of where the problem lay.

So the judges' decision

was, um, that father should no longer

be allowed to weigh the child.

Problem solved.

After 14 years, my body gave out.

And I got sicker than I've ever been.

I realized I'm gonna die.

That's not gonna do anybody good.

I've gotta give up the fight.

So I gave up custody,

and so I don't see my son anymore.

He hasn't been in my house since.

- Um. - I'm so sorry.

So I did lose him.

♪ Just like a dream

♪ you're like a guiding light shining in the night

Fred claims that during his 14-year custody battle,

he spent the equivalent

of five years of his gross income

on legal fees, mediators,

and child support payments.

I was really in his life a lot longer

than most fathers would have been.

It's something most fathers can't afford.

♪ You are so beautiful

Ito me

we generally know that fathers

don't get as good a deal in family court

and we don't really complain about it

until it happens to us,

and even then, a lot of men don't.

Many men's rights activists

come into being men's rights activists

as a result of getting a divorce,

wanting to be equally involved with the children,

and realizing that women have the right to children

and men have to fight for children.

When your family courts run on the supposition

that mothers are more fit to be custodial parents

and that fathers are more fit

to provide a check every month

and to become what we like to call "uncle daddy,"

where they visit... Visit their children,

to me, that's one of the greatest obscenities in the world,

the idea of visiting your own children,

where you get to see them

for two hours on Wednesday night,

and you get to have them for “x“ amount of hours every other weekend,

and you have no say in how they're brought up.

You know, I can't tell you

how many men have been in this office,

in that chair,

in tears because they can't see their kids.

Yeah, and some of this stuff

ends up in horrific consequences.

Like this gentleman here, that's his little son.

They found him dead...

Not the son, but the young man,

in the desert with a bullet in his head

the day before the family court

where it became known

that he was gonna get to see his little guy even less.

And of course, he'd be falsely accused

one time after another after another.

It had destroyed his life.

It had bankrupt him, driven him into debt.

It caused him to miss work.

He was about ready to lose his job.

He was at the end of his rope,

so he just decided to end it.

The unfairness in the family courts,

the unfairness in the way child support

is so often structured,

it's commonplace, and it's everywhere,

and the more you start to become conscious of it,

the more you realize that it's there.

I started to research some father's rights issues

and came across some harrowing stories,

like this man in south Carolina

who found out his only daughter was adopted away

by the mother without his knowledge or consent...

His daughter was with

an adoptive family in California,

so he began his fight to get his daughter back.

Adoption is for children without families,

not children with a willing and capable family.

And this man in Colorado

who lost his daughter when the mother left the state

to give birth in Utah

where he wouldn't have legal rights to his child.

He fought for four years in court

and finally won visitation rights...

Only visitation.

I can't explain the emotion, the happiness...

This hard fight, and what this means to me...

And then there's this heartbreaking story.

The 2o year old father never left her side

until he was forced to give her to adoptive parents this week

after Kaylee's mother decided to put her up for adoption.

In order to keep Kaylee,

Colby needed to file paternity action, an affidavit,

and a commencement notice with Utah's vital records

a day before the mother signed

the adoption papers relinquishing her rights.

But in Colby's case, the mother only gave him a few hours notice

of what she was going to do.

I would like her back.

Men in the men's movement

are not upset about having to be fathers.

They're upset because they're not allowed to be fathers.

That guy...

Blows his head off, blows his brains out.

Out of family court?

And people don't think there's something wrong with that?

We just open the doors tomorrow for business as usual

and that's okay?

I've always thought of feminism

as being the fight for gender equality.

And yet I've never heard about father's rights

and the injustices going on in family court.

Why is this?

I decided to ask gender studies professor Michael Messner.

Well, I'll just say, I don't think it's...

I don't think that a lot of their assumptions

are correct to start with.

There's no doubt that there have been some men

who get just screwed

by court decisions and custody cases.

But I think when you look at the broader patterns,

it's still the case that

in intact heterosexual families with kids,

women are still doing the vast majority

of the housework and child care,

and there's a lot of sort of father absence,

lack of participation by fathers,

some of whom, I think, after divorce happens,

end up suddenly wanting

equality, you know, as fathers

when they haven't really been participating equally

as fathers before.

So to me, it always kind of swings back

to the feminist perspective of how we need to push

for full equality across the board,

including before divorces.

And if we have that, then we might expect

more symmetry after divorces happen.

The more I researched father's rights,

the more I realized how deep this rabbit hole goes,

not only in the amount of issues,

but also in the vast array

of perspectives on these issues.

I decided to create a flow chart

of what I thought fathers' options might be

following a surprise pregnancy.

I then put a green line for the paths

that I thought would be good turn-outs for the father.

And I put red lines for the paths

that seemed to not be good for the father.

Then I created a flow chart for women's options

and did the same with green and red lines.

And as I stepped back,

I saw all the red lines for the women's options

if she does not want the child.

But something dawned on me.

Of every path the biological father could go down,

he's at the mercy of the woman's sole discretion.

Although women have very difficult choices to make,

she at least has the choice.

But for biological fathers,

they have no say over their parental destiny.

This is my friend Darrah.

She's eight months pregnant with her first child

and she's a lifelong feminist.

It seems from what I've read, that women seem to have

more reproductive rights than men do.

I don't know what to say. We carry children.

They're never gonna carry children.

It's just a different thing.

So, I guess, as much as possible,

take the steps to prevent yourself

being in that situation.

It's just, like, I don't know what to say.

There's no... There's nothing...

A woman has been...

Women have been blamed for, and still are,

for unwanted pregnancies,

choosing to have an abortion,

not choosing to have an abortion,

choosing to put their child up for adoption.

When the burden lies on a single mother if the man leaves,

societally, she's lam basted.

So there's a lot of things

that women deal with in that regard

that men don't actually deal with.

So I can have compassion for their situation,

but I don't know that it's gonna change

in the way they want it to, because it's biology.

So if you're going to be having sex

that could result in pregnancy,

and you haven't had this conversation

with the woman that you're having sex with,

you better have it. You better have it fast.

That's when the man has the ability to make decisions...

Either not to engage in sex or to use condoms

and to use other forms of contraception.

That's where his role comes in.

Once he's impregnated her,

she's the one now faced with continuing a pregnancy,

faced with the health risks that accompany pregnancy.

So... his rights have to

be exercised early.

But once she's pregnant, all decisions must be hers.

Because ultimately, she is the most impacted.

There's just no question.

She ultimately has the responsibility for that child.

So before we were married,

he promised me we would have two kids,

and now he doesn't want anymore.

Aww.

My friends think I should trick him

and stop taking my birth control.

Men have never been in control of our bodies,

we're the ones in control.

Clap if you think that she should trick him.

My people. Up next, everybody...

So it sounds like men's reproductive rights

are limited to the choice of whether or not to have sex

and the choice of whether or not to use protection.

But what if he's tricked into fatherhood?

Or what if he's not even the father?

What does paternity fraud look like?

It's ugly. It's extraordinary ugly.

And we have to distinguish it between paternity fraud

- and wrongful paternity. - What's the difference?

Wrongful paternity can be innocent.

"Okay, we went to a party, I had sex with six guys.

I think it was when I was hanging out the window

I got pregnant, but I wasn't sure.

But you know, if anybody knows that guy's name,

would you please have him call me?"

And then she names one of the other guys

and he didn't have sex with her.

It wasn't malicious. It wasn't intentional.

She wasn't trying to harm anybody.

She was just trying to figure out who it was.

Wrongful paternity.

More often, and less facetiously,

"okay, I'm married and I had an affair."

Obviously, here there's all sorts of problems,

because there are more victims

than the person who's named as dear old dad

who may be the wrong one.

There's everybody involved in the family,

like the situation in Texas

where the family had five little towhead kids...

All guys, all little blondos.

And all of a sudden,

one day one of the little blondo kids gets in trouble,

has to go to the hospital.

They can't get ahold of mom. They get ahold of dad.

Dad rushes to the hospital, needs to give blood.

Whoops.

Can't do it. Wrong blood.

"What?"

All the kids look alike.

Turns out it was the guy down the street.

- You've heard of this case? - It's a real case.

So what happens to this family?

Can you fathom what happens to this family?

How do think the kids feel when they find out

dear old dad isn't dear old dad

and it's the guy down the street?

How do you think dad feels,

that these five little boys that he still loves dearly,

when he finds out they're not his bio children.

But he can't tear away, 'cause he loves them.

He's devoted himself to these...

How do you think he feels?

I mean, it's horrific.

Horrific.

That's not wrongful. That's deliberate.

- So that's paternity fraud? - That's paternity fraud.

She knew who the father was and lied about it.

Paul was right when he said

trying to understand the men's rights movement

is like trying to understand a snowdrift

one snowflake at a time.

There are unique father's rights issues

that vary between unmarried, married,

and divorced dads.

But there are also men's right's issues

for non-biological fathers...

Like this man who is facing jail time

for failure to pay child support

for a child that DNA tests prove isn't his.

Carnell Alexander still owes

more than $30,000 to the state for a child that's not his

because the mom wrote his name down

because she needed to name someone

in order to get welfare benefits.

I had to put him down as the father.

That was the only way I could get assistance.

I'm almost homeless. I'm almost in jail.

I'm out of work

my money is being threatened to be taken.

Reporter} He says the law needs to be changed,

so when this happens, as it often does,

other men don't become dad by default.

A lot of times people wonder about MRAs,

"why are you guys so angry?"

And my answer to that is, "why aren't you?"

How can anybody look at this and not be angered by it?

And the only answer to that I've ever been able to come up with

is that people aren't angry

because they don't see men as human beings.

I continued traveling north America,

meeting MRAs from all walks of life,

hearing their personal stories,

their red pill moments.

I met a young man who was sexually abused

when he was 16 years old

while living at a residential home

for people with developmental disabilities.

She was the only woman I've done anything ever with,

partly because it just messed me up so much.

She continues working there.

She hit me in the face.

She actually hit me throughout the house,

chased me throughout the house.

When I reported my domestic assault to police officers,

I did not at all bring up the fact that I was sexually assaulted.

Because if he wasn't going to believe

that I was a victim of domestic violence,

there was no way he was gonna believe

that I was gonna be a victim of sexual assault.

I met the honey badgers,

women who are men's rights advocates.

And then there was a 15-year-old boy,

there was a 35-year-old woman,

and then later on she came out of jail

and she was able to collect child support

from this boy that she raped.

Yeah.

After getting out of jail.

So there's lack of fairness for men

in the court systems.

When police officers show up to a domestic violence case

often men were just taken away

without asking what even happened.

It's just presumed that men are the criminals.

I was assaulted several times, and I never got any help.

I went to the police still bleeding a couple of times,

and one police officer said...

I'll never forget this, he said,

"if she starts hitting you again,

you better get out of there fast,

because if she just breaks

a fingernail trying to hit you,

we'll arrest you."

I mean, I can't tell you at this point

how many guys I've talked to who are like,

"yeah, you know, she stabbed me

and they put me in jail."

Not only are there endless studies

that show women are just as violent as men are,

when I would talk about it, invariably,

men would start coming out of the woodwork with stories...

Stories they were afraid to tell,

stories that they got laughed at for,

stories they they got blamed for.

It's hideous.

This is not flattering to men

to talk about men's vulnerabilities,

to talk about the ways that they are not strong

and that they are, well, weak.

And to be honest about it, it's not flattering.

A solution for both genders

is that we need to be able to recognize

how men are vulnerable

and we need to be able to recognize

how women are actors.

Because we have a huge blind spot

especially when women do bad things.

My best friend

that I grew up with since kindergarten

was being physically abused by his wife

who he'd been married to for 20 years.

She' ll break glass and throw it at him, punch him.

I've seen it happen spontaneously,

and it was frequent.

And he's bigger than her,

but he didn't want to hit her.

And he didn't want the children...

They had three minor children,

he didn't want them seeing this at all.

So he would usually just go outside,

because there would be glass breaking

or things being smashed or yelling,

and he knew that the neighbors

might think it's him.

So he would go outside

so that the neighbors could see what's happened.

Eventually, I said, "look, you're gonna need...

You need professional help, and so does she.

Maybe the kids do, too."

So I called a bunch of domestic violence shelters.

I just looked around online and I called,

but every place that I called said,

"we don't help men.

We don't help male... Men at all."

And I started becoming curious about why that was,

'cause I learned that these were state funded shelters.

And I know that men pay at least half of the taxes

that fund these shelters if they're state funded,

and I just was wondering why.

Basically, there was no place to take him

and it just continued.

The problem just kept going.

In the United States,

there are over 2,000 domestic violence shelters.

All of them serve female victims,

and nearly all of them turn away male victims.

In fact, as of 2016,

there's only a single domestic violence shelter for men.

My initial reaction was that there needed to be

thousands more women's shelters

because that many more women are being battered.

But as it turns out,

one in three women and one in four men

will be victims of physical violence

by an intimate partner in their lifetime.

Sure, there's a slight majority of female victims,

but how can that excuse deny men help?

Couldn't this be considered gender discrimination?

Think of it this way.

Roughly 78% of all suicides are men.

If suicide prevention services only served men,

wouldn't we see the gender discrimination immediately?

If there are over 2,000 women's shelters

that turn away men,

and only one shelter for men,

obviously, the resources don't match the need.

How are you involved in the men's rights movement?

Well, from the very beginning

when I first opened the refuge,

which was in 1971 in Chiswick in London,

almost as soon as I took the women in,

I got a house for men.

A voice for men's editor at large Erin Pizzey

founded the first ever women's shelter in 1971,

and she is widely revered in the men's rights community.

'Cause you see, what I knew from the beginning,

most domestic violence is consensual.

Both are involved.

Sometimes one's the perpetrator,

the other plays the victim, then it crosses over.

It's not as though it's just all men or all women.

It's both, and occasionally, innocent victims...

Very innocent.

Battered children grow up to batter, that's what I learned,

whether it be a man or a woman.

And I now know that if a woman comes in

with a history of violence in her own childhood,

chances are, she will be probably violent to her children,

and she will want to live on this knife edge of crisis and danger.

I haven't been allowed to speak.

- That's the difficulty. - Why is that?

Because I'm completely barred from all conferences.

I'm not allowed to walk up the step of my own refuge.

I bought the bloody building.

But, no, because there's feminists...

The woman who runs it is very heavily feminist.

She won't have anything to do with me.

What did you say that made them hate you?

That women could be equally as violent as men...

That was from the beginning.

Erin Pizzey says that 62

of the first 100 women to enter her refuge

were just as violent as the men they left,

and violent towards their children.

Verbally, and...

you know, very easily,

and I've had an argument...

But the feminists I've met

have an entirely different take on domestic violence.

On the whole issue of domestic violence...

That's just another word, really.

It's a clean-up word about wife beating,

'cause that's really what it is.

Or "dating violence."

And it's not girls that are beating up on boys.

It's boys that are beating up on girls

and using violence to intimidate and to control.

And we have very few

what's called domestic violence shelters,

which are places that women can leave their home

with their children and get a new start,

get out of the violence.

But they're not nearly enough of them.

We need more funding and more resources

because it is a tremendous disadvantage

for women and girls.

In 2014, the CDC released a report

revealing that over 5.4 million men

and 4.7 million women

had been victims of intimate partner physical violence

within the previous 12 months.

But then why does the media

paint domestic violence as a women's issue?

Reporter} The world health organization says

one in three women are abused by their partner.

One in three American women experiences domestic violence

or stalking at some point in her life.

And when it was addressed as a men's issue,

the speaker's point was that it's a men's issue

because men are the problem.

I'm gonna share with you

a paradigm shifting perspective

on the issues of gender violence.

I don't see these as women's issues

that some good men help out with.

In fact, I'm gonna argue that these are men's issues.

Why is domestic violence still a big problem

in the United States and all over the world?

What's going on? Why do so many men abuse physically,

emotionally, verbally, and in other ways,

the women and girls, and the men and boys

that they claim to love?

What's going on with men?

Let's Grant every single empirical case as being true.

Yes, it is true. Let's just say...

I mean, it is not true, but let's just assume

that there is gender symmetry in domestic violence,

that women hit men as much as men hit women.

If I were to say that, I would say,

therefore, we need boatloads more funding

for domestic violence

to develop shelters and adequate interventions,

'cause there's this hidden epidemic

of men who are being beaten up by women.

Or, I could say, as the men's rights movement do,

therefore, we shouldn't have these shelters

and we shouldn't fund them because the women are all lying.

well, it seems to me, that if you really believe in gender symmetry,

you're not questioning the number of women.

You're just saying the number of men is...

You would want to join with women

who are antiviolence

to say we have a real problem here.

It's not even a gender problem.

It's a problem of women hitting men and men hitting women.

We've gotta get boatloads more funding. Let's work together.

That seems the logical response to this.

But instead they're saying, it's like a zero sum game.

If we fund the women, then we're gonna ignore the men.

Well, we're not... we're not gonna ignore the women,

'cause we all agree that the levels are as high as we say.

But it does sound like a zero sum game

when only women are receiving services

in domestic violence situations.

And of all the men's rights activists I've met,

none of them question the number of female victims.

But they are calling attention to the high number

of male victims that are being dismissed.

So why aren't men's rights activists

and feminists working together?

Michael Kimmel briefly said something that made me wonder.

He said it would no longer be a gender problem

if both men and women were equally victims

of domestic violence.

Is that why the number of male victims

are never addressed?

To me, it's been fraud for all these years.

why is it we have this enormously powerful feminist movement

and virtually nothing for men?

Originally, it was capitalism

was the big enemy in the '60s and '70s.

And it was the radical feminists in America that moved the goal post.

They said, no, it's no longer capitalism is the enemy.

The enemy is patriarchy... Or men.

And that's how the women's movement began,

and it was enormously successful.

The new mood in the refuges

was gonna be that no man could work in refuges,

and can't today.

They can't sit on the boards.

And boys over 9,

or possibly 12, can't so into refuges.

You call them shelters.

Their mothers have to make other arrangements for them,

which I find shocking.

And it ring-fenced money.

I think that that particular time

when the feminist movement were desperate for funding

'cause they'd run out of publicity...

They were desperate for funding

and they needed a just cause.

And, unfortunately, it fell into their laps.

It's an enormous industry.

I mean, "violence against women,"

they get something like...

Well, it's a billion and over a year.

Hmm.

And an awful lot of that goes on, really,

supposedly rehabilitating men,

but essentially punishing them

with something that's called the Duluth model.

Duluth power and control. Well, you guys know about that?

- No. - I'll give you a copy.

In 1977, I think, a bunch of crazy women up in Duluth, Minnesota,

figured out they had the solution to domestic violence

and it was all about patriarchy

and all about men.

It's the Duluth power and control wheel,

'cause men are all about power and control.

Of course, not you ladies.

You guys, you don't control anything.

You have no power.

You're just sweet and innocent little things.

Okay, so this power and control wheel

is divided up in all these things,

you know, about who does this and who does that,

and blah, blah, blah. And of course, it's all men.

The entire domestic violence industry was founded on that.

I think it's still 37

or 32 states in the United States

that by law they have to use the Duluth model

for batter intervention program.

It's all shame, blame, and guilt driven.

If you're a man and you walk in,

you must admit you did it up front

or you're in denial.

There's no debate. There's no discussion.

There's no possibility that you could be falsely accused,

the criminal justice system could've made a mistake.

None whatsoever. You are in a state of denial,

and you will complete that course

or you're gonna go to jail.

You will be re-engineered.

That's frightening.

- Frightening? - Yes, that's frightening.

I think it's terrifying.

Absolutely terrifying.

All I had to do, I had a simple choice.

I could just say,

"yes, you're right. Men are the enemy."

No problem. But I couldn't.

I absolutely couldn't.

Just getting overwhelmed,

because...

I don't know...

Where I'm headed with what I believe,

and what is right and what is wrong,

and who is wrong and who is right and...

The truth is somewhere in the middle

and that's why I'm feeling frustrated,

because...

I don't know where the truth is,

and I don't know...

When I decided to make a film

on the men's rights movement,

I never anticipated

questioning my feminist views.

But the more MRAs I met,

the more I felt compelled

to remind myself why I was a feminist.

I signed up for a women's group.

Welcome to our “women, own your power“ workshop.

Only four percent of the fortune 50d companies are led by women.

Women only hold about 14%

of corporate executive positions

and less than 20% of our governmental positions.

I made video diaries complaining

about how I had to change what I wore

to walk alone at night,

how much time it took me to get ready for work,

all the housekeeping that was on my shoulders.

In comparison to other gender issues,

these videos seem trivial,

but I made them nonetheless.

I attended women's rights rallies.

No to violence.

That's what we are here for,

to say no more to violence in any form,

especially against women and girls.

I repeated women's issues in my head

like a broken record...

Female genital mutilation,

sex trafficking, reproductive rights,

maternity leave,

and social media helped remind me of women's issues.

We have fought for everybody's else's equal rights.

It's our time to have wage equality once and for all,

and equal rights for women

in the United States of America.

We are struggling for a uniting word.

But the good news is

that we have a uniting movement.

It is called "he for she."

Whenever I hear the MRAs' point of view

about how difficult it is for them,

I immediately go to,

well, what about us? What is like for us?

And then I get on the defensive

and want to make sure

that women's struggles are also heard.

And I don't know if that's necessary,

because the MRAs are saying that

the feminist perspective is the mainstream perspective.

But even when I hear their issues,

I still want to speak up for the women

because I feel like... I don't know.

I feel like talking about one gender's issues

now neglects the other,

and I guess that's what MRAs have been dealing with

is always hearing about women's issues

and feeling like their issues are neglected.

But whenever I hear them talk about men's issues,

I feel like I need to stand up for women and say,

"this is what we're dealing with,

an equal opposite."

I met with men's rights activist Karen Straughan

late one night in a noisy bar.

She became well known for her YouTube videos

talking about male disposability

and other men's rights issues,

and she's a honey badger.

Part of what I do,

what I research, and what I think about

is the reason psychologically

why feminism seems to be

such a comfortable warm blanket emotionally

for so many people, men and women alike.

And it's so comfortable

that it will make them not see things

that are right in front of their face.

Look at Boko Haram.

Hundreds 0f young girls fast asleep in their beds

are awakened by the sound of gunfire.

Armed attackers have stormed their boarding school

and set fire to dozens of buildings.

Nearly 300 of them are dragged from their dorm, loaded on to trucks,

and carried away deep into the forest.

...From New York to London rallied yesterday

demanding that the terrorist group Boko Haram bring back our girls.

It just gets to the core of you.

This unconscionable act

was committed by a terrorist group

determined to keep these girls from getting an education.

And what happened in Nigeria was not an isolated incident.

It is a story we see every day,

as girls around the world risk their lives

to pursue their ambitions.

I mean, you must have heard about all of that, right?

That's being spun as a fundamentalist Islamic group

that is so determined to be misogynistic

and oppress girls

that they want to deny girls an education.

But they are not against girls being educated.

They're against anybody getting a western secular or Christian education.

The initial attacks, and there were several of them,

there was one... there were over a hundred men killed

and one woman killed.

And the victims were described as "people," right?

Or "villagers."

And in the previous attacks on the schools,

they actually let the girls go.

They separated out the boys and the girls

and they let the girls go, and they told them,

"go home, get married,

renounce your sins,

and live a righteous life under Allah," right?

And then they burned the boys alive.

There was literally no outrage.

It was barely reported on.

It was one of those things, there was no opinion pieces on it,

no nothing, right?

Until the girls were kidnapped.

And look at it this way,

because we played right into their hands.

Because they want attention, right?

And they weren't getting any attention from the western media

when they were just slaughtering boys.

- Yeah. - Right?

They want attention.

And what do they do? They kidnap girls

and sell them into marriage or slavery, right?

And everybody... the U.N.,

Michelle Obama, Barack Obama,

the U.K. Government, the Canadian federal minister of defense,

they're all promising aid and help and equipment

and personnel to help find these girls and bring them back,

because this is such an outrage,

and, "oh, my goodness, something needs to be done."

Well, maybe if, like, last year,

maybe if we did something then,

all of these girls would be safe in their dorms right now, right?

But we didn't.

And the reason why they kidnapped those girls

is because we didn't do anything.

We didn't pay attention, and they want attention.

And they know that attacking girls or women

is gonna get them attention.

What are we gonna do? Start a campaign, “bring back our boys“?

Oh, wait, they're dead. Never mind, right?

The men... The people in Boko Haram,

they're chivalrous.

If those girls were boys,

they wouldn't be getting education,

they'd be dead.

They wouldn't be sold into slavery

with the hope of escape. They'd be dead.

Boko Haram has been fighting

for Islamic rule in Nigeria since 2002.

Its members have killed hundreds of people.

♪ Finally, brother, after a while...

At least 69 dead,

although some reports put the number at about 150

and scores more injured.

♪ For that day when we shall lay down our burden

♪ and study war no more

♪ finally, brother, after a while

♪ the battle will be over

♪ for that day when we shall lay down our burden

♪ and study war no more

♪ finally, brother, after a while

♪ the battle will be over

♪ for that day when we shall lay down our burden

♪ and study war no more

♪ finally, brother, after a while

♪ the battle will be over

♪ for that day when we shall lay down our burden

♪ and study war no more

♪ finally, brother, after a while

♪ the battle will be over

♪ for that day when we should lay down our burden

♪ and study war no more

one of the most important things the men's movement is doing

is being able to say men need compassion

and men deserve compassion.

And to have that happen,

I'm not expecting it in my lifetime.

It's an ocean of pain out there.

This stuff we're talking about

has been going on for so long,

and nobody listens, nobody cares.

It's one thing when you look at what happens to women

and you feel normal healthy outrage about it,

and that should happen.

But when you can look at what's happening

in our courts to men,

in our medical establishment to men,

in our schools to men,

and yet we remain so cerebral about all of it,

yes, well, that is certainly something to consider.

If it were happening to any other group,

we would be having protests from coast to coast.

And the fact is that it is happening to men

every day right in front of our eyes,

and people will get angry at you if you try to talk about it.

That's how deep the prejudice runs.

♪ No more

but there have been protests,

not with the intention of shining light on men's issues,

but rather with the goal of silencing

any discussion of men's issues.

Like at Ottawa university,

when professor Janice Flamengo attempted to give a lecture

that questioned the feminist narrative.

We'll take a moment

until we enforce some decorum in the room.

So you think this is a victory?

What are you so frightened of...

Yeah, why are you so frightened

of hearing an opinion different from your own?

Then there was the first international conference

on men's issues in Michigan,

where even "Ms. magazine" urged its readers

to protest the conference in hopes of shutting it down.

But perhaps the most well known protest

of a pro men's rights event

happened in April, 2013, at the university of Toronto,

when the Canadian association for equality

hosted a discussion titled

"from misogyny and misandry to intersexual dialogue."

Fuck the patriarchy!

Women hold up half the sky!

Women hold up half the sky!

Women hold up half the sky!

Women hold up half the sky!

A feminist group protesting the event

illegally pulled the fire alarm

and successfully shut down the event.

Okay, let's go. We got a fire alarm!

Once outside the lecture hall,

feminist protesters and men's rights activists

got to speak face to face.

So, number one. Number one!

Shut the fuck up for a second.

Feminists do not want you to lose custody of your children.

The assumption that women are naturally better caregivers

is part of patriarchy.

Feminists do not like commercials

in which bumbling dads mess up the laundry

and competent wives have to bustle in and fix it.

The assumption that women... This is a list

of the things that we're working toward.

Now if you would shut the fuck up

for the 50th billionth time...

These are things we agree on, actually.

These are things that we're agreeing on,

and these are things you've all got skewed fucking views on.

You think that feminists are trying to take away your fucking rights,

but as a matter of fact, what we're trying to do

is we're actually trying to work on the same things that you're working on,

except the fact that you're so...

You're just too busy hating women...

You're a fucking hate group.

You can't see we're trying to work on those same situations.

Are you conflating feminism, which is an ideology,

with women, which is a demographic of society?

Okay, mister derailing for dummies.

So, really, your hatred is for feminists.

- You're still a hate group. - An ideology, yes.

I hate also hate a lot of other "isms".

- So you admit, though. - Racism, sexism.

Oh, bullshit, bullshit.

Bullshit, you hate sexism, but you're an MRA.

Okay, no. Point taken. We... like, we win.

You obviously haven't read our literature.

Sorry. Okay!

You don't actually work on anything.

You're creating any change in the fucking world.

Your website, your fucking website,

the hate website against feminists...

You're not actually creating any change.

Feminists do not want you

to have to make alimony payments.

Alimony is set up to combat the fact

that women have been historically expected

to prioritize domestic duties over professional goals,

thus minimizing their earning potential

if their traditional marriages end.

I'm right here. You don't have to yell.

I'm reading, fuckface.

- It's for the fucking camera. - I'm trying to fucking...

I'm letting everyone else hear it, okay?

It's not just for you, mister entitled.

The assumption that wives should...

Why do you think the men's rights movement

is at odds with feminism?

What has created that clash, that war between each other?

Well, one, feminism has spent the last 5o years

demonizing men, which is sort of one of the problems.

Feminist scholars have characterized men

as inherently violent, inherently bad,

inherently predatory, inherently oppressive.

They have postulated that masculinity is a disease.

Feminists aren't the only problem.

The problems didn't start with feminism.

So when I start criticizing feminism,

I want you to know you're just part of the problem.

They're just part of the problem.

You calling men oppressors

and women oppressed demonizes men,

and I believe diminishes women at the same time.

It's a way of telling men to shut up.

It's a way of telling men

that their experiences don't matter.

You tell a man he's privileged,

therefore, anything he's gone through

or anything he has to say doesn't matter.

His lived experiences don't matter

because he's privileged.

So how old were you when you started calling yourself a feminist?

Or how many years ago?

It was probably, about three years ago, I guess you can say.

I'm relatively new, yeah.

But I'm pretty loud, so...

Silence only helps the oppressor, not the oppressed.

A lot of MRAs say that feminism

doesn't fight for the rights of men.

What would you say to that?

Cry me a river, really,

because feminism is a movement

about the discrepancies

when it comes to women's equality.

Because we're not up. We're still not there yet.

You know, don't even start with that whole

"oh, but you don't think about the men's issue."

Well, then you know what?

Start your own goddamn movement, which they have,

but maybe make it a little more about legitimate issues

like custody and alimony

and things that you think are unequal,

which all stem from patriarchy,

not from, "oh, my god,

feminists are trying to take away our kids."

No, dipshit.

That's not what we're trying to do.

We're not trying to do that.

I mean, if they look at the root causes of why,

for example, women get custody more often than men do,

women are supposed to be the mothers.

They're supposed to be the natural born caregivers.

So, obviously, duh, you has a vagina,

so, obviously, you're gonna be able to take care of the kiddies.

That's really what it is.

It all stems from sexism against women.

It's just, the oppression dialectic needs to go.

It's so hard to convince people

to look at men's rights activism and support it

without first allowing them to at least escape

the stranglehold that feminism has on their minds.

I do believe it is dogma. It's zealotry.

There are good people in the feminist movement.

Um...

There are not good people

in the radical feminist movement.

Um...

That system is based on hate,

and hate... in my opinion,

hate's the most destructive force in the world.

They're so quick to call us

man-haters or misandrists.

Misandry for life. No.

They're so quick to say that,

when all we're doing is talking about

patriarchal societies and structures

that we want to dismantle.

Nothing against men in particular,

but just saying, hey, this is the system that we live in

and this puts men above women.

And it's not necessarily their fault,

but, hey, recognize what's happening here

and let's work together to dismantle it.

The omnipotent, ever-present patriarchy,

the invisible force that directs

all of our lives, right?

And causes all oppression and all suffering, right?

Our devil.

And the beautiful, wonderful force for justice...

Feminism, the way.

It's the way.

It sounds like religion. It sounds like religion.

And, oh, my goodness,

for a moment that's only about equality

and isn't blaming of men,

they named the force for evil after men

and the force for justice after women.

They're really angry, and they're angry at women,

they're angry at feminist women.

Yes, men have gotten a crappy deal,

but it's not the fault of women or gay people.

when feminism says that they have no part in any of this,

I think they're not being honest about it.

I don't blame feminism for all of it,

but I think they've had a role in it.

They've written laws that discriminate against men.

They've fought to protect those laws,

particularly in domestic violence areas.

And for many, many years, second wave feminism

would go through the statutes

and change everything that was gender specific

to something gender neutral

unless it was something that benefited women,

like the domestic violence laws.

They didn't change those.

Other types of areas, like fathers in prison,

there are statutes that specifically give mothers certain benefits

that fathers in prison don't have.

And I challenged that as well, legally,

but we didn't win on that one.

When I wanted to get a commission on men

like the county has a commission on women,

the feminists fought that tooth and nail.

When prop 209 was before the California voters,

which was to end affirmative action,

every feminist organization opposed it.

Every time men's rights groups

try to pass joint custody legislation,

feminist groups fight them.

They fought us on paternity fraud.

The biggest opposition that I have faced

has been from the radical feminists that said,

"we don't want truth to be the standard."

Because if we did, they wouldn't oppose

automatic DNA testing at birth.

And in countries like France,

they're saying, "well, DNA should mean 'do not ask,"'

'cause it's now illegal to even get a test.

And if you get a test without the mother's permission,

you will be criminally prosecuted.

In Sweden, they tried to create a man tax.

In India, the men's rights movement is trying to get

the rape laws to include male victims,

and the feminist groups apparently are fighting that.

I'm not saying all feminists are this way.

But I think the ones who are affecting public policy,

who have the lobbying power, I think they are.

If you just look at their actions,

they don't want equality for women.

They want special privileges for women and girls.

And even though they know in a lot of areas

men do not have equality, they are silent.

The commander of the marine corps

said that he thinks, and I quote,

“ all eligible and qualified men and women

should register for the draft,"

talking about selective service.

Do you think women should also have to register

for selective service like men?

I have to think about whether I think it's necessary

to go as far as our military officers are recommending.

The idea of having everybody register

concerns me a little bit,

unless we have a better idea

of where that's gonna come out.

Where I want people to register,

I want every young person to register at the age of 18

to be able to vote automatically.

And I think if...

What's the motivation?

People don't ask, what's the motivation?

Do we need a men's rights moment?

No. We need common sense.

But if there's gonna be this woman's movement

and this is the movement that's gonna do all these things,

then maybe we need a counterbalance,

something called a men's rights movement,

or men's movement.

I hate to see either one of them.

I think it's a shame. I think it's destructive.

I'm hearing what the men's rights activists are saying.

And I'm finding the sources

to support what they're saying.

Men are just as likely to be victims

of intimate partner physical violence.

Men have little to no control over their parental destiny,

especially when he's tricked into fatherhood

or he's raising a child

that he later finds out isn't his.

The sentencing disparity between men and women

is six times larger than the sentencing disparity

between blacks and whites.

So while a black man may be sentenced

to ten percent more prison time

for the same crime as a white man,

a man is sentenced to over 60% more prison time

than a woman arrested for the same crime.

Boys are falling behind in education.

They are enrolling at lower rates

and earning less college degrees.

And while not all MRAs agree on the issue

of infant male circumcision,

most MRAs do believe it is a human rights violation.

I spent months learning about infant male circumcision,

but it only took me watching a five-minute

medical training video to convince me

this is a barbaric practice that needs to stop.

Okay, so first thing, make sure he's well restrained.

So the foreskin. Okay?

And we repeat the process with just one end on and clamp.

Anything that gets clamped gets cut.

All that was left, a partial penis

and his tiny testicles.

Rhodes says Ashton urinates through a hole in his penis.

She says she can't imagine now what she'll say to her son

when he's old enough to understand

what's happened to him.

How could you explain it to your child

that you don't have a penis

or you might never be able to have kids?

Yes, men are the majority

of workplace deaths and injuries,

war deaths, suicides.

They have a shorter life expectancy.

Warren Farrell makes the argument

that prostate cancer and breast cancer

mortality rates are similar,

but funding disproportionately supports

breast cancer research and awareness

over prostate cancer.

The red pill is about looking at these issues

in an honest way, even when it's uncomfortable.

And these things are uncomfortable.

But without the willingness

to set aside the programming

and to set aside the false beliefs about what power is

and what women are and who women are...

Part of what we do is a pretty serious critique of both sexes.

It's brutal.

But critiquing the sexes

is a real valuable thing.

Feminists don't want you to do it, though,

unless you're portraying women as the victim

and men as perpetrator.

The red pill is about understanding

men and women like everything else in life.

It's a mixed bag.

You've got victims and perpetrators

on both sides of the fence.

And that's all. It's real simple.

It's just not easy.

Hmm.

I... I think I agree with everything you said.

But there's... there's still some kind of unsettling doubt,

and I don't know where that's coming from.

I'm recognizing all of these

very serious men's rights issues.

But what I don't understand

is how I could be agreeing

with men's rights activists.

Is this the same misogynist hate group

I originally discovered online?

The Southern poverty law center

has classified that group

and men's rights groups as hate groups.

I looked into what I was hearing from feminists

and the mass media about the men's rights movement.

I've read a lot and I've heard a lot

that the men's rights movement

has been labeled a hate group

by the Southern poverty law center.

- Is that correct? - Yeah, that's not quite true.

No, they got it wrong. No.

This was somehow written up

on some kind of anti-men's rights websites

as us having listed them as hate groups and so on.

That we didn't do.

He wrote a piece

declaring the month of October to be

"bash a violent bitch month."

Jesus.

"I mean, literally to grab them by the hair

and smack their face against the wall," he wrote.

I then discovered that Paul Elam's famous

"bash a violent bitch" article was written in response

to this article by Jezebel called...

The article cited a study that revealed

70% of non-reciprocated violence

was perpetuated by women.

The author then went on to say

that she conducted an informal survey at the office

and the gist of her findings

was that many women had physically assaulted their man,

and it was interpreted as either being funny

or he was asking for it.

I couldn't help but see the hypocrisy

in a major feminist website making light of abusing men,

and MRAs stinging back

only to have the media paint them as the abusers.

After my year of filming men's rights activists and feminists

my descent into the rabbit hole

was not slowing down.

My education on gender politics

was really just beginning.

I learned about other sectors of the online manosphere,

like MGTOW, "men going their own way,"

and forum on reddit called "the red pill,"

which is separate from the men's rights community,

and they do not see eye to eye.

I'm told an easy way to remember the difference

is that while MRAs want to change the system

reddit's “the red pill“ want to take adv ant age of the system,

and MGTOW want to leave the system.

There are so many perspectives on gender,

and I believe they're all worthy of listening to.

However, the conversation is being silenced.

For a society to accept anything said

on behalf of women's rights

and then to shame any dialogue about men's rights

and call it hate speech is precisely the problem.

This is what men's rights look like'.!

I don't know where I'm headed,

but I know what I left behind.

I no longer call myself a feminist.

♪ Just think about it

♪ put on some borrowed kicks

♪ hang all your notions up

♪ it's never what it is

♪ wisdom is asking why

♪ there is another side

♪ down where the rabbit lives

♪ my world will blow your mind

♪ just have a look at it

♪ think, think about it

♪ just think about it

♪ think, think about it

♪ just think about it

♪ think, think about it

♪ just think about it

♪ think, think about it

♪ just think about it

♪ just think about it

♪ don't gotta change your mind

♪ just try to open it

♪ I'll let you use my eyes

♪ see what I'm dealing with

♪ people with different stories

♪ divided by different categories

♪ and reasons why

♪ the smart speak

♪ the wise, they listen

♪ the wise, they listen

♪ just think about it

♪ think, think about it

♪ just think about it

♪ think, think about it

♪ just think about it

♪ think, think about it

♪ just think about it

♪ think, think about it

♪ just think about it

♪ just think about it

♪ just think about it

♪ think about it

♪ think about it

♪ think about it

♪ think, think about it

♪ just think about it

♪ think, think about it

♪ just think about it

♪ think, think about it

♪ just think about it

♪ think, think about it

♪ just think about it

♪ think, think about it

♪ think, think about it

♪ you gotta think about it

♪ think, think about it

♪ think, think about it

♪ come on and think about it

♪ there is another side

♪ down where the rabbit lives

♪ I'll let you use my eyes

♪ see what I'm dealing with

♪ think, think about it

♪ just think about it

♪ think, think about it

♪ just think about it