The speaker, a documentary filmmaker, decided to confront her preconceived notions about the men's rights movement. She spent a year traveling North America, interviewing followers of the movement, and filming 44 individuals. However, during the interviews, she realized she was not fully listening, but rather anticipating the statements that confirmed her biases.
After reviewing the footage, she began to reconsider her initial reactions to certain statements, realizing that her knee-jerk reactions were not justified. She also discovered that many of the men's rights activists she interviewed were expressing valid points that were being misunderstood or misinterpreted. For example, she misunderstood a statement about men's rights activists not wanting to defund women's shelters, and another about men's rights activists not dismissing men falsely accused of rape as a "big deal."
She also found herself changing her approach from countering the men's rights activists' statements with her own interpretations to acknowledging the issues they raised but insisting they were women's issues. However, after researching and fact-checking the men's rights activists' claims, she realized there were many human rights issues that disproportionately affected men.
The speaker initially faced backlash for her film, The Red Pill, and was targeted in a smear campaign. She learned that when one starts to humanize their enemy, they may be dehumanized by their community. However, she found that the greatest challenge she faced was peeling back the layers of her own bias.
She now supports women's rights and cares about men's rights as well. She believes that for an honest discussion on gender equality, all voices should be invited to the table. However, she criticizes the systematic silencing of men's rights groups and falsely referring to them as hate groups. She advises society to stop expecting to be offended and start truly, openly, and sincerely listening.
Here are the key facts from the text:
1. The author is a documentary filmmaker who decided to meet with men's rights activists in 2013.
2. The author was 27 years old at the time and had previously worked on documentaries about women's issues.
3. The author spent a year traveling North America, meeting with leaders and followers of the men's rights movement.
4. The author interviewed 44 people associated with the men's rights movement.
5. The author did not interrupt their interviewees, following a rule in documentary filmmaking.
6. The author initially had preconceptions about the men's rights movement, viewing it as a misogynistic hate group.
7. The author transcribed 100 hours of footage from their interviews, which helped them to re-evaluate their initial reactions.
8. The author realized that they had been adding their own spin to the statements of men's rights activists, assuming they were sexist or anti-woman.
9. The author began to see that men's rights activists were not trying to defund women's shelters, but rather to highlight the issue of domestic violence against men.
10. The author learned about various issues that disproportionately affect men, including paternity fraud, workplace deaths, war deaths, and suicide.
11. The author's film, The Red Pill, was released in 2016 and sparked a smear campaign against them.
12. The author experienced a backlash from the media and their community, who viewed them as having humanized their "enemy."
13. The author no longer calls themselves a feminist, but clarifies that they are not anti-feminist and not a men's rights activist.
14. The author believes that both men's and women's rights are important and that all voices should be invited to the table for an honest discussion of gender equality.