Sorry if this documentary isn't old enough.

(Don't confuse it with the very different FICTIONAL movie, which was about the 2020 election!)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3686998/

It was directed by Cassie Jaye.

There are nearly 200 user reviews. I hope to read most of them eventually and pick the one that I agree with the most. (Likely one that gives it a 6 or a 7.)

I saw it on DVD. A good thing, too, because one mistake the director made was that every time someone's name and title appeared, it was in a thin red font, and I had to pause the movie and walk toward the screen to read it properly. Honestly - while I understand not using white or yellow instead, it would have been so much easier to read the first time!

But otherwise, it was filmed better than I expected, I have to say. And at least Jaye was willing to start with a few seconds of the truly ugly side of the website "A Voice for Men." (I'd rather not quote the hideous invented words commonly used at that site - but she did. Let's just say that even Rush Limbaugh probably wouldn't have used them.)

There were many valid points raised. No one can deny, after all, that men are the vast majority when it comes to wartime casualties, workplace deaths, the homeless, and suicides. Such cases deserve compassion and action, period.

However, there are definitely gaping holes that get danced around.

1. Regarding men's reproductive rights: if men insist on sleeping with women they don't know that well or even trust, why don't they use condoms - AND make sure she's using a diaphragm, since that's the easiest way to make sure she's using anything at all? It's for his own good, after all. (That goes for married couples as well; a husband can just say "even the Pill has a 6% real-life failure rate, honey, so I'm using condoms for both our sakes." Chances are, the wife would actually be grateful. Or, if he doesn't like that, he could at least pay for the wife's pills AND a diaphragm.)

2. In the film, when men list their limited reproductive rights compared to women's many options, they NEVER (even when being interviewed) bring up the subject of campaigning for better male birth control. This is not facetious; Warren Farrell, who is a big part of the documentary, made male birth control part of his platform when he ran for governor of California in 2003. I can only assume that Jaye would have included the subject had Farrell or anyone else featured in the documentary had ASKED her to do so. (To my knowledge, even Farrell stopped talking about it many years ago. That likely means that he thinks that even men's rights activists - MRAs - just don't care about it until unwanted fatherhood happens to them, and then they start raging about their lack of POST-conception rights.)

3. A child's right to be fed and clothed clearly outranks a man's "right" to condom-free sex. Therefore, MRAs who preach about men's right to see their children and be involved with them will only get taken seriously when they stop demanding the right to "legal paternal surrender" aka "choice for men."
After all, any man - married or not - could claim he was tricked when he wasn't, or that he never wanted a child when in fact he did. Granted, with the fall of Roe vs. Wade, it's hard to imagine MRAs demanding CfM anymore. (By the way, I've searched again and again, and there is STILL no sign that any MRA in the last year has said anything about the increased need for better male birth control or even easier access to vasectomies, which have become a lot more popular. Regarding the Dobbs decision, they only say things like: "Good, now women finally know how WE feel.")

4. If men don't want to do dangerous jobs or drive cabs for 70 hours a week, they at least need not to drop out of high school. (Oddly, I don't remember any mention of what fatherlessness does to boys and their futures.) They ALSO need to be very careful about birth control - see above. Obviously, many men want children and take care not to have them until they can afford them - but if they resent having to risk their lives daily just so they can afford to get married, they need to look harder at their past decisions in life. Most people ARE born into communities where education is more or less respected, after all.

5. Which brings us to the "glass cellar."

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=glass%20cellar
(Be sure to read all the way down.)

Aside from the fact that plenty of women DO want to become firefighters and combat soldiers, what gets ignored is that women have always done seriously dangerous work, whether it was farm work, factory work, or night shifts at liquor stores. They just didn't get paid much for it - and often, they didn't get paid at all. So why WOULDN'T they want to break away from both the danger and the minimal pay? "Safe," pink-collar jobs don't typically pay well. (Not to mention that even teaching children/teens can be seriously dangerous to life and limb - and it isn't even supposed to be dangerous.)

6. On men not going to college as much as they used to: everyone has been pointing out that college is way overpriced and so everyone has to think very carefully about whether it will really be worth it. After all, even many women are reconsidering going - and even most AMERICANS don't get college degrees. Columnist Katha Pollitt wrote in 2006: "Believe it or not, there are still stereotypically male jobs that pay well and don't require college degrees--plumbing, cabinetry, electrical work, computer repair, refrigeration, trucking, mining, restaurant cuisine. My daughter had two male school friends, good students from academically oriented families, who chose cooking school over college. Moreover, as I'll discuss in my next column, sex discrimination in employment is alive and well: Maybe boys focus less on school because they think they'll come out ahead anyway. What solid, stable jobs with a future are there for women without at least some higher ed? Heather Boushey, an economist with the Center for Economic Policy and Research, noted that women students take out more loans than their male classmates, even though a BA does less to increase their income. The sacrifice would make sense, though, if the BA made the crucial difference between respectable security and a lifetime as a waitress or a file clerk."

7. Paul Elam (his last name is biblical, for those who don't know - it appears in Genesis, Isaiah, and Jeremiah) wrote an article, circa 2010: "Bash a Violent Bitch." At the end of Jaye's documentary, it's said it was simply a parody of a Jezebel article called "Have you Ever Beat Up A Boyfriend, Cause, Uh, We Have." Nice dodge. However, if Elam had really wanted to condemn domestic violence, he wouldn't have risked being "misinterpreted" like that; he would have simply reprinted the Jezebel article and let its awfulness speak for itself - or written about it.

And there are some odd details. Namely, when it came to the subject of paternity fraud, they never mentioned that it's technically LEGAL, though of course other forms of fraud are not. Also, snowflakes are used as a simile by Elam - and no MRA seemed to say "wait, don't include that!" Hmm...maybe that was deliberate on Jaye's part? Also, the use of visuals showing Alice falling down the rabbit hole isn't exactly flattering to the subject of the film, when you think about it - the whole point of that book was that it was a nonsensical dream, after all!

Finally, while of course no one knew this awful crime would happen, back then, it's worth noting that MRA attorney Marc Angelucci (he was in the film) was murdered in 2020, by another MRA attorney.

More on that:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Angelucci