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Once we were feminists

By Phillip Hickox - posted Monday, 24 January 2022


It started to feel wrong and I could start to see that the young men in my classes were not privileged and I could see all the ways that women were being privileged

It is not only false, but It is shockingly cruel and unjust Even if it was true about the past, it is not true about the present.

Cassie Jaye has won a number of awards for documentaries for covering issues that affect women such "Daddy I do" that examines sex education and abstinence as well as teenage pregnancy, abortion and single motherhood.

Cassie who described herself as a proud feminist and in her desire to fight for women's rights realised that nobody had ever documented the Men's Rights movement in film before and that all she knew about the mens rights movement is what she had read online and that she would expose the dark underbelly of this group who she was told were fighting against women's rights. So as a proud feminist, she decided to meet her enemy.

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I saw it as an opportunity to continue fighting for women's equality by exposing those preventing it

In her TED presentation titled "Meeting the Enemy" she says;

There is an important rule in Documentary film making as an interviewer you do not interrupt. So I am asking questions and I am getting their full life story and in the moment I didn't realise it, but now looking back I can see that while I was conducting my interviews I wasn't actually listening. [emphasis added]

I was hearing them speak and I knew the camera was recording but in those moments sitting across from my enemy I wasn't listening

What was I doing?

I was anticipating I was waiting to hear a sentence or just even a couple of words in succession that proved what I want to believe that I had found the misogynist the ground zero of the war on women.

Well, after years of researching and fact-checking, what the men's rights activists were telling me, there is no denying that there are many human rights issues that disproportionately or uniquely affect men.

Before making The Red Pill movie, I was a feminist of about ten years, and I thought I was well-versed on gender equality issues.But it wasn't until I met men's rights activists that I finally started to consider the other side of the gender equality equation. It doesn't mean I agree with all that they've said.

But I saw the immense value in listening to them and trying to see the world through their eyes.

Dr Warren Farrell wrote;

Then one day ( in one of those rare moments of internal security) I asked myself whether the impact I was having was a positive one,; I wondered if the reason so many more women than men listened to me was because I had been listening to women but not listening to men. [emphasis added]

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Cassie Jaye then went onto say;

And that's when I experienced how engaged the media is in group think around gender politics. And I learned a difficult lesson. When you start to humanize your enemy, you, in turn, may be dehumanized by your community.And that's what happened to me.Rather than debating the merit of the issues addressed in the film.

I became the target of a smear campaign, and people who had never seen the movie protested outside the theatre doors, chanting that it was harmful to women.

Professor Janice Fiamengo also encountered similar types of protest and when she gave her first public presentation, in order to close down her presentation the fire alarm was pulled and the building had to be evacuated.

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About the Author

Phillip Hickox is a retired critical care nurse.

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