11/05 (Sat)The Red Pill- Men's Rights, Feminism, Politics (Host : Julian)

[Julian]

Dear YOYOs,

Recently, I came across and was fascinated by a 2016 documentary film which I didn't wanted to touch/talk about because it's NOT POLITICALLY CORRECT at all!(kindly be reminded that it is on the coming meeting this weekend). The touch of gender issues is controversial, nerve hitting and could have a backlash that challenges ones beliefs.

However, the more I delved into this rabbit hole the more I believe the openness could assists the mutual understanding of both sexes, and the myth of man's power is definitely worth discussing as well.


When feminist filmmaker Cassie Jaye sets out to document the mysterious and polarizing world of the Men's Rights Movement, she begins to question her own beliefs. Jaye had only heard about the Men's Rights Movement as being a misogynist hate group aiming to turn back the clock on women's rights, but when she spends a year filming the leaders and followers within the movement, she learns the various ways men are disadvantaged and discriminated against. The Red Pill challenges the audience to pull back the veil, question societal norms, and expose themselves to an alternate perspective on gender equality, power and privilege.*

* The Red Pill is sort of a cultural slogan it comes from the movie "Matrix", where the character Neo is given the choice between a red pill and a blue pill. And if he choose 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.
So..what's your choice?

Suggested Questions: For Session I
Q1.Have you ever heard of "the red pill"? The idea that by knowing something it could really flip your mind? And what kind of person you are? Are you prone to take the red pill instead of the blue one or vice versa? Any reason in particular?
Q2.The Documentary stems from the subject of "men's rights". Have you ever heard about the "men's issue's movement"? I'm not planning to draw debates over gender issues but simply focus on the concept of the men's rights here. Do you think men should have equal rights as women? What is "equal rights" in your perspective and can you name some of them?
Q3.Many people believe that men have/enjoy more power than women do, what's your opinion about the power of men and the power of women? Who has the call? in family/workplace/society etc..
Q4.Some people say "Patriarchy" is the result of gender roles, not the vice versa." What is your opinion?
Q5.Do you believe that men can be victims of domestic violence? There are less stories being covered regarding male victims in this issues. Have you heard some stories related to it? Please share with us.

Suggested Questions: For Session II
Q6.In the video, some speakers referring the situation by mentioning that men are disposable. Do you think that men are disposable in the current society?
Q7.If human rights(female's rights and male's rights) are being protected differently referring to the laws of the country since different social norms and customs, can we argue that we are less advantaged due to the lack of some laws? in comparison with foreign countries.
Q8.How do you think the domestic violence situation in Taiwan? I do believe there are minority groups that could need helps. Are men less protected? or vise versa?
Q9.How could we better protect the rights of both genders? By initiating more laws? Any other solutions?
Q10.In your opinion, does a country has a female leader stops the fight on gender issues? Does it provide the solution or help solving the gender problems?

Additional questions for reference:
*MRAS are saying that guys are actually ones that are disadvantaged and discriminated. The film director supports feminism, she says that actually the more she learn the more she thinks "Thanks god I wasn't born a guy", "I don't think I would want that responsibility". What is your perspective?

*"Domestic violence is more of a clean up word about wife-beating and dating-violence. 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" Do you agree with the above sayings which is from a CEO of a feminist group?

*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 only as a women's issue? And when it was address as a men's issue the speaker's point was that "it's a men's issue because men are the problem".. Do you agree with the saying above? What's your opinion?


-- The documentary is about 2 hours watching which I understand that many of you could not have the time to finish it. I'll try to excerpt some of the points from the interviews of the film and list them below or combining them into questions for your quick idea, so you don't have to watch them all before meeting. It will be arranged & updated later soon.
-- It is highly recommended to watch the video which is not only because it's eye-opening, educational and also a nice watch, at least to me. I just can't stop watching till I finished.


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Agenda:
3:50 ~ 4:00pm Greetings & Free Talk / Ordering Beverage or Meal / Getting Newcomer’s Information
4:00 ~ 4:10pm Opening Remarks / Newcomer’s Self-introduction / Grouping
(Session I)
4:10 ~ 4:50pm Small Group Discussion (40 mins)
4:50 ~ 5:10pm Summarization (20 mins)
5:10 ~ 5:20pm Regrouping & Break
(Session II)
5:20 ~ 6:00pm Small Group Discussion (40 mins)
6:00 ~ 6:20pm Summarization (20 mins)
6:20 ~ 6:30pm Concluding Remarks

On-site meeting:
Meeting Venue: 丹堤咖啡 Dante Coffee (Minimum Order $80)
Address: 台北市濟南路三段25號[MAP]-捷運忠孝新生站3號出口步行3分鐘

Online meeting:
Zoom meeting ID: 875 5256 1813
Password: loveyoyo
Link: https://tinyurl.com/yoyobest

Important Notes:
1. We advise participants to print out the discussion questions and bring them to the meeting for reference. As for the supporting articles, feel free to print them out, as well, according to your preference.
2. We suggest that participants read the articles and think about the questions in advance.
3. Newcomers should prepare a two-to-three minute self-introduction in English to deliver when called upon by the host before the start of the discussion. The host may also ask you to give brief feedback about the meeting at the conclusion of the meeting.
4. We conduct the entire meeting in English. All participants should have at least moderate English-conversation skills and be able to articulate your ideas for each discussion question.
5. We welcome newcomers and other guests to attend the meetings and join the discussion freely for twice (including on-site and online meetings). After that, we hope you will consider becoming a YoYo English Club member. We charge a NT$1500 lifetime membership fee.

[Julian]

Excerpts from The Red Pill documentary:

Patriarchy's number 1 privilege:
Combat deaths: 99.9%
Work deaths: 94%
Homicides: 76%
Suicides: 75%

The majority of work place fatalities are man, about 4 of 5 suicides are man
men are dropping out of higher education at very alarming rates
male suicide, male abuses, male unemployment male homelessness, male failure & education
men are sentenced 63% of more prison time for the same crime as women
===================================================================
One police officer in US said to the male victim of domestic violence "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". Most people think of feminism as being the fight for gender equality, but never heard about the father's rights and the injustices going on in family court in the US.

The director's journey started from the question- "If the woman haters are so wrong, why they could still have so many followers?" Does men have all the right? Do they had all the power?

Shortly began the director filming the men's right activists, she realized her own views were being challenged. She has experiences to relate the feminism issues but little experience to understand the issues the men's right movement had talked about.

-- leading an assault on our traditional thinking about men -- in Warren Farrell's book "the myth of male power"

He wrote the 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 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 and work as fire fighters, as workers on oil rings and so on coal miners, and indirectly therefore disposable as dads.

When went on a cruise, they save the women and children first into the life boat which's not because you're a man so you should be able to swim across halfway the ocean, but because you are disposable.

Female could argue that maybe they don't want to be confined to just being a homemaker or secretary, spend my life raising children and you don't force me into that role against my will. But the traditional sex role that demands men to provide and protect their family at any cost.

Flexibility of role is where we should be all headed. Any men's rights activists

"In the past, the female responsibility was the reproduce sphere and male's responsibility was in productive sphere. You have to reproduce to continue the species and produce to feed people so they can reproduce. It's like they work together."

-Imagine what it takes to be a successful politician, how much of your personal life that you give up, how much you work, how much privacy, how much freedom in your day-to-day life that you sacrifice, There're more men willing to do those things then there are women.

-A deep rabbit hole while delving into father's right.
According to the video, "Trying to understand the Men's right movement is like trying to understand a snow drift 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 rights issues for non-biological fathers.

-A News happened in US: A Man may be jailed for not paying child support for son who isn't his. This is because the mom wrote his name down because she needed to name someone in order to get welfare benefits.

-A lot of times people wonder about MRAS/Men's right activists, why are you guys so angry? The answer is that people aren't angry because they don't see men as human beings. What's your take on it?

A member from Honey badger brigade, an organisation women advocate for men's rights, says there's a lack of fairness for men in the court systems when police officers would show up to domestic violence case, it was often men were just taken away without asking what even happened, it's just presumed that men are the criminals.

One police officer said to the male victim of domestic violence "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".

"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"

"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".

In US there are over 2000 domestic violence shelters at the time being(2016), all of them they serve female victims and nearly all of them turn away male victims. There's only a domestic violence shelter for men in US.

In the United Starts, 1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men will be victims of physical violence by an intimate partner in their life time. There's a slight majority of female victims but how can that excuse denying men help? Couldn't this be considered gender discrimination?

The founder of the first women's shelter & A Voice for Men editor-at-large Erin Pizzey "What I knew from the beginning most domestic violence is consensual both are involved. Sometimes ones are perpetrated 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." She hasn't been allowed to speak in public because she's completely barred from all conferences, such as she's not allowed to walk up the step of her own refuge she opened, which she actually bought the building. The reason she's hated and heavily against by feminists is because she said that "women could be equally advanced as men, that was from the beginning."

Feminists the film director has met have an entirely different take on domestic violence.

Men's right activists claim that they don't want to question the number of female domestic violence cases but calling attention to the high number of male victims that are being dismissed. So why aren't men's right activists and feminists working together? Michael Kimmel 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?

Erin Pizzey "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 the enemy in the 60s and 70s and it was the radical feminists in America they moved the goalposts. They said no it's no longer capitalism it's the enemy, the enemy is patriarchy or men, and that's how the women movement began and it was enormously successful. The new mood in the refuges was going to be that no men could work in refuges, and they can't sit on the boards, and boys over nine or 12 can't go into refuges/shelters. Their mothers have to make other arrangements for them which I find it shocking, and also in ring-fenced money.

Duluth power and control
cited by a speaker: "A bunch of crazy women up in Duluth Minnesota figure out they have the solution to domestic violence and it was all about patriarchy and it's all about men and it's the Duluth power of control wheel. The entire domestic violence industry was founded on that. I think it's still 37 or 32 states in the US that by law they have to use the Duluth model for battery intervention programs and it's all shame blaming guild 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 discussion there's no possibility that you could be falsely accused the criminal justice system could have made a mistake. None whatsoever you are in a stay denial and you will complete that quarter that you're going to jail. You will be re-engineered..Frightening? I think it's terrifying."

Erin Pizzey- "All I had to say is just say Yes you're right, men are the enemy, no problem. But I couldn't, I absolutely couldn't.

Film director- "Just getting overwhelm, 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's right. The truth is somewhere in the middle 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 men's right 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 on a women's group; Welcome to our "Women on your power" workshop. Only four percent of the fortune 500 companies are led by women. Women only hold about 14% of corporate executive positions and less than 20% of our governmental physicians"

"I made video diaries complaining about how I had to change what I wore to walk alone at night, how much 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 right rallies, I repeated women's issues 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 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
=No to violence that's why we're here for to say no more to violence in any forms especially against women and girls.
=whenever I hear the MRS's point of view about how difficult it is for them, I immediately go to" well, what about us? what is it 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 why 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 Strohn late one night in a noisy bar, she became well known for her YouTube videos talking about male disposability and other men's right issues. And she's a honey badger

"Part of what I do and what I research and what I think about is that 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 will make them not see things that are right in front of their face. Look at Bokoharam, hundreds of young girls felt asleep in their beds are awakened by the sound of gunfire. Armed attacker have stormed their boarding school and set fire to dozen of buildings. Nearly 300 of them are dragged from their dorm loaded onto trucks and carried away deep into the forest.

From New York to London rallied yesterday demanding that the terrorist group Bokoharam bring back our girls, you just get 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. You must heard of that, that's being spun as a fundamentalist Islamic group that is so determined to be misogynistic and oppressed girls they want to deny girls in 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 were over a hundred men killed and one woman killed and the victims were described as "People's right and villagers", and in the previous attacks on schools they actually let the girls go, they separated out the
boys and girls and they let the girls go, and they tell the girls "Go home, get married and renounce your sins and live a righteous life under Allah. And 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 no it no nothing until the girls were kidnapped and look at it this way, because we played right into their hands, because they want attention and they weren't getting any attention from the western media when they were just slaughtering boys. They want attention and
what do they do they kidnap girls and sell them into marriage or slavery and everybody, the UN, Michelle Obama, Barack Obama, the UK 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 something needs to be done.

Well maybe if we did something then all of these girls would be safe in their dorms right now. But we didn't. And the reason they kidnapped these girls is because we didn't do anything. We didn't pay attention, they want attention, and they know attacking girls or women is going to get the potential attention. So what are we gonna do? starting a campaign bring back our boys oh wait, they're dead, never mind. The people in Bokoharam they're chivalrous, if those girls were boys they wouldn't be getting education or sold into slavery with them they'll be dead."

One of the most important things the men's movement is doing is being able to say men needs 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 no body listens no body cares.

It's one thing when you look at what happens to women and you feel normal healthy outrage about it and it should happen, but when you can look at what's happening in our court to men in our medical establishment to men in our school 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 it is happening to men everyday 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.

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 Fiamange attempted to give a lecture that questioned the feminist:
narrative (*#&$^.... 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.