Men are now the downtrodden sex: Feminist (and mother of a son) reluctantly admits women's fight for equality has gone too far

(Excepts from original article)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3988030/As-provocative-film-argues-women-s-fight-equality-gone-far-emasculated-men-one-feminist-mother-son-reluctantly-admits-Men-downtrodden-sex.html

By Linda Kelsey for the Daily Mail

Have men really been disenfranchised by feminism?
There is a new film called The Red Pill which makes a compelling case

Looking back, I can pinpoint the precise moment I became a feminist. I was 17, a bright-eyed student at Warwick University, with a well-thumbed copy of The Female Eunuch clutched in my hand. During the years that have passed since — some of them spent as the editor of Cosmopolitan magazine — the advances made by the women’s movement have been extraordinary.

The Red Pill film has provoked outrage among women’s groups. Its feminist director, Cassie Jaye, has been pilloried for questioning her own beliefs about women’s roles in society and the consequences of feminism for men.

I’ve witnessed the introduction of the Sex Discrimination and Equal Pay Acts, the recognition — and criminalisation — of rape in marriage, the right for women to be taxed separately from their husbands, not to mention massive improvements in maternity rights.

But for many years now — and as the mother of a son in his late 20s — I’ve had a growing sense of unease about what these achievements have meant for men. If, over the past half a century, women have been noisily smashing through glass ceilings in almost every field, then at the same time it seems as if men’s voices have been slowly drowned out.

We may have been building a better world for ourselves, but men, it seems, have been left behind in a way that will have negative repercussions for us all.

A controversial new film, The Red Pill, due to be released next month, has raised hackles by taking a closer look at today’s gender wars and questioning whether or not it is men who are the real losers in the battle of the sexes.

With the gender pay gap still yawning wide and men showing no sign of relinquishing the top spots in business around the world, it’s easy to scoff at the very idea of them being at a disadvantage.

But the fact is, in some crucial areas, they are. Take, for example, the fact that, according to the Higher Education Policy Institute, ‘a boy born in 2016 will be 75 per cent less likely to attend university than his sister if the present trends continue’.

That’s no feminist victory, it’s a terrifying prediction which will have widespread ramifications, not just for men in the workplace, but for relationships between men and women as well. There are theories that the paucity of male teachers in primary schools is holding boys back and that a lack of male role models at secondary school is also discouraging them from applying to university.

Which leads to another ‘tug of war’ men find themselves in: on the one hand, they’re encouraged to look like pumped-up superheroes, because for girls today, nothing less than a David Gandy lookalike will do. On the other, they must be kind and sensitive.

They must also be brilliant fathers — and put in as much work as women when it comes to parenting — but when it comes to break-ups, it is mothers who often have the upper hand.

So have men really been disenfranchised by feminism? The Red Pill certainly makes a compelling case. Its title is taken from another film, The Matrix, in which Keanu Reeves’ character takes a red pill to see ‘the truth’.

By daring to make a sympathetic film about the men’s rights movement, the 30-year-old has been shocked to find herself verbally attacked and ostracised by members of her own sex. Jaye described herself as a feminist when she set out to investigate the ‘hate groups’ of the men’s rights movement.

For more than two years, she spent hundreds of hours with the internet’s most notorious activists (for balance, she also interviewed the group’s fiercest opponents among feminists).

It changed her entirely. ‘When I started this project, my perception of men’s rights activists (MRAs) was definitely negative,’ she said. ‘I thought it would be a peek inside this mysterious, misogynist community.

‘All I knew of them were the cherry-picked, shocking comments used on feminist websites. But when I really started to listen to them, I started to emphathise with a lot of their issues. Our cultural conditioning is that women have been oppressed and that men are the oppressors. But I saw that wasn’t so.’

When backers got wind that Jaye had begun to question her own feminist principles, the money soon began to dry up.

The project was on the verge of being scuppered before the financial hole was filled via crowd-funding — putting a plea out on the internet, proffering a sob story and a virtual begging bowl — and loans from family and friends.

Jaye gathered support from all over the world. ‘People were disgusted that one side was trying to silence and prevent this film being made.’

According to Richard Elliott, the man who bought the rights to screen the premiere: ‘No one ever looks at the ways in which men are powerless.’

Elliott is a semi-retired handyman whose interest in the men’s rights movement stemmed from his own experience. He and his partner separated around the time their son was born, 19 years ago.

‘If it had been a 50/50 arrangement, I wouldn’t have had to pay my ex anything,’ he says. ‘But by restricting my access to two nights a week — which was not my choice — I was required by the courts to pay £230 per month.

‘I’ve had to get past a lot of bitterness in order to reach a calm point and I want to look to a future where men and women can resolve differences without throwing rocks at one another.’

Elliott acknowledges that there’s aggression coming from both militant feminists and some men’s rights activists. He says he doesn’t ascribe to the misogynist views of some of the extremists within the men’s rights movement.

The issues are complex, but they go right to the heart of the question of whether feminism has disenfranchised men.

At the end of The Red Pill, there is an extraordinary moment when film-maker Jaye states: ‘I can no longer call myself a feminist.’

I have watched the film and although, unlike Jaye, I have no intention of renouncing the feminist beliefs I have held since I was 17, there can be little doubt that, nearly half a century on, it’s time to listen to the other side of the debate.

Personally, I see no conflict between my feminist credentials and recognising the need to face up to the disadvantages faced by men in today’s society.

The time has come for women to recognise the ways in which boys and men are missing out, because what good will it do any of us if future generations of men are under-educated, angry and unable to provide healthy role models for our — and their — sons?