I have watched this several years ago, and I did find it interesting. But then these are all issues that most feminists I know also look at, a lot of the major feminist sites do put some emphasis on these issues as they see them as being part of unhealthy gender stereotypes. I for example am really big about removing gender stereotypes, I believe if you take away a lot of the macho stuff that a lot of problems men face will ease off and with them issues I face as a woman will also start to disappear.
One problem is with some of the issues I noticed raised in this documentary is they're either actually kind of ignorant when you look at statistics and many things are just myths. Custody cases for example tend to be based on who gives the primary care rather than gender. It's just that statistically more women are the primary caregivers, so of course they win custody battles. In cases where the male stays at home and takes care of the children and the woman works then he will win custody. There are also plenty of cases I've noticed from my experience where the man didn't want full custody and chose not to have it but then complained about the outcome. Joint custody is also an option which many people don't go on for.
This is an interesting article with some statistics, I haven't checked them on this but from what I've checked up on before this is about right:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cathy-meyer/dispelling-the-myth-of-ge_b_1617115.html
In this it shows that in 91% of custody cases the decision is made before they get to court, between the parents.
I hear these complaints a lot from some men, especially in the case of child support or having to support their ex wife. The complaints make me think, they just haven't thought it through. You can't expect someone to quit their job, raise your children, look after your home, support and look after you as you work and then upon divorcing them leave them with no way to gain an income because they're close to retirement age and it's unlikely they'll be able to find suitable work or a pension. The courts are there for this reason, and marriage is a lifetime contract which cannot be got out of without consequences. Courts aren't biased towards gender, they help the vulnerable party and try to make sure things are fair. In most cases this has been the woman.
Now that more women are able to work and keep their jobs through having children this may change and be very different in the future.
Male suicide rates are interesting. Men are 4 times more likely to die by suicide but females attempt it 3 times as often as males. I've done some research into this subject and the general conclusion is the way that men try to kill themselves tends to be more drastic, aggressive and permanent, for example shooting yourself in the head. While women tend to use methods which are less immediately lethal (like poison) which mean they're more likely to be caught and saved. Interestingly in the UK successful male suicide rates aren't as different as to women as in the USA which I wonder is because we don't have access to firearms. So I don't know if this is to do with social conditioning making men less happy with life or just the natural differences in men and women and how we like to do things.
There were also some issues I can remember being mentioned as well about abortion and men having no rights to whether the woman wants to keep or abort it. Unfortunately for men who have this complaint, I feel ya, but if you want to change that and hold control over the woman's body then you're a fucking dickhead. It's anatomy and there's nothing we can do to change, I might as well sit and complain all day about how sucky it is that if I want a child I'll have to carry it inside me and then squeeze a head out of my vagina. Also, you do have some control over getting a girl pregnant and knowing you're on the same page, and it's not so crazy common that the person you're with won't discuss it.
Honestly the whole "Red pill" thing makes me sad because gender issues aren't a "male vs female" thing, they're something that effect all of us. That particular documentary seemed to focus on a few nice seeming guys having a moan about how much worse it is to be male. It was a while ago that I watched it but I can't remember it going much into what the "red pill" is actually about in internet culture and the kind of guys who talk about it. In my experience it tends to be used in the same way that some people try to deny the holocaust, denying the obvious facts that women have a lot of pretty serious issues against them which while are gradually getting better are still there.
I can understand from the perspective of a man who has never groped, harassed or done anything bad to a woman but has had many negative experiences due to his gender. Not being trusted as much as women, having women being rude to him or completely unattainable. Maybe has a bitchy mother/sister who weren't nice to him or bullied him. Maybe he sees his father working hard at a job so much he barely gets to see him, and when he sees him he's stressed. Maybe he thinks his mum is being lazy staying at home. Maybe a couple of times he's had an experience where a woman has groped him and he hasn't been able to say anything, so he wonders why women are always complaining about it. He hears stories from his mates of nasty girls who will lie about being raped to get revenge on guys and ruin their lives. He sees girls at the clubs getting bought drinks and having all the control. Maybe he gets used by a girl and feels he has to spend money on her. He falls in love and has his heart broken. He hears more stories and fears it if he gets a girl pregnant and then she has all the choice. He then hears stories of how women are favoured in courts and men have their children taken away from him. He starts to feel passionate about this. Maybe when he grew up he saw all these cases of men in charge and he doesn't understand why this isn't the case, he wants that. Women are bitches, women have all the power.
Yeah, I can see why some men get very angry towards women. My current boyfriend didn't have that dissimilar experience growing up. He definitely had nothing against women, but it was only after moving out of the countryside and going out with me that he saw some of the issues women face and became a feminist. We talk about issues that both men and women face and see them in a "fix one and the other comes with it" kind of thing.
I have got the feeling that certain mens rights activists are a little bit like holocaust deniers. If you mention problems faced by women such as rape statistics or pay gaps they often actively deny it or try to brush it off with something else. The idea of men's rights activists is not to actually try to make things better for men, as they rarely campaign for anything. It's the idea that women have it better than men, which often comes with the denial of any of the negative stuff women have to face. Because let's face it, put rape statistics up against "I might not have a choice if she wants an abortion", and you're facing a losing battle.
What I also notice is that a lot of men's rights activists don't bring up genuine problems that men face. As in real statistics or things men face and not "I heard from such and such that x happened". Like more men are at risk of being a victim of a violent crime (except rape). MRA's often talk like it's a battle between the sexes, but men get attacked too. By men. And in rape cases men are much more likely to be raped by another man than a woman. Men are also significantly more likely to commit a crime, especially a violent crime. Why is this? Recently I did a bunch of study on crime and conviction statistics, men vs women. It's interesting because I had heard people say courts are biased and women get smaller charges. By looking at this in cases that were similar to male cases such as robbery women actually got sentenced more harshly. From what I could see because the majority of women committed less serious offences (mostly fraud or speeding) they were getting shorter sentences, while men were much more likely to commit violent offences known for harsher sentencing.
Another area I have studied recently is viewing aggression in others and how it makes you more likely to commit it. Girls are as susceptible as boys to violent conditioning, except more violent programmes have strong male leads and are therefore more interesting for boys. Perhaps this could be why more men go out and commit crimes. Or maybe not. But it's definitely something worth looking at, as crime is not only bad for society, it's also bad for the person doing so.
The red pill as far as I can tell (not this documentary so much) talks a lot about things which in my opinion are gender stereotypes which are more harmful towards men. I thought the documentary was interesting enough but really didn't show much of what the red pill is about, it was more focusing on the mens rights activists who had perfectly normal seeming lives and families. I think absolutely great to have something that isn't biased, but it turned out to be biased as it was about her turning around to their cause and then getting confused. I don't agree with the amount of grief she was given, I don't think she should have made a documentary about hating them, but I think she ended up going a bit too lovey dovey. It's quite an American thing to have biased and more dramatic documentaries which is why I usually stick to British ones as I prefer to look with an open mind while having the person being questioned about various different issues. I don't like the drama, just the information. I think I'll have to re watch it as I could have missed things in my memory, but as I can remember she didn't really touch on enough of the issues that MRA's cause. To me it's kind of like white people saying black people get everything better because some employers or universities like ethnic minorities. Which would just be the height of white privilege. You're not only completely missing all the discrimination and racism they have to deal with that you don't, you're also pulling attention away from those peoples issues and help stall any progress. MRA's to me come from a land of male privilege. All men have issues which it'd be great to resolve, I don't know any man without their own set of problems, but I know very few men who would try to say they trump the issues women face. It takes a certain kind of special guy to become an MRA, and that just isn't something to be proud of IMO.
