You would probably never have heard of The Red Pill if a small group of feminists hadn't protested its screening at a Melbourne cinema.

The documentary, made by American film maker Cassie Jaye, tracks her journey "down the rabbit hole" into the world of Men's Rights Activists (MRAs).

The film opens with Cassie's reasons for calling herself a feminist. She's been objectified and typecast in the film industry, she says. Life is harder for her because she's a woman, she says. But after learning about the struggles men face in America, the film closes with her renouncing the title. She's seen the struggles that men face. "I no longer call myself a feminist," she says.

The film has courted controversy, some from those who haven't seen it but object to the MRAs it features. Then there are questions about the Kickstarter campaign Cassie Jaye used to fund the film when her own money dried up. Paul Elam, a prominent and controversial MRA featured in the film, helped promote the Kickstarter, calling on MRAs to donate. "Because fuck feminists," he tweeted. Cassie maintains her independence was "not at all" compromised by her donors. She told Hack she accepted cash from MRAs, feminists and people who don't identify as either.

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In August, David Williams, the founder of Men's Rights Melbourne, a closed Facebook group with 15 members, decided to arrange a screening of the film. A fellow MRA had donated $1,000 to Cassie's Kickstarter campaign and in return was given the right to show it here. David arranged a private screening at the Palace Kino Cinema in Melbourne, and sold 60 tickets.

An online petition quickly followed, attracting more than 2,000 signatures. It called Paul Elam a pro-rape racist and said that "in a country where one in three women are victims of gender-based violence, it is repulsive to legitimise and promote this behaviour".

"Dozens" of phone calls to Kino cinema followed and the booking was pulled.

Benjamin Zeccola, the executive director of Palace Cinemas, told Hack some Kino customers reacted as if the film had been a programming choice, rather than a private booking.

"It's clear they weren't informing themselves of the facts, there was a personal disappointment towards the cinema," he said.

"It's not about what the film was, it's about what the customers perceived it to be."

David Williams, from Men's Rights Melbourne, told Hack the film's cancellation was a "blessing in disguise". He's sold out a new venue, with 100 more seats. He's tight lipped on which venue for now, after the experience at Kino, but says he's hiring security for the screening. He's also talking to other MRAs about showing The Red Pill in Sydney and elsewhere.

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What are men's rights?

"You'd get a hundred different answers depending on who you ask but I like to look at it as advocating for the rights that men and boys face all around the world," David Williams told Hack.

The movement is most prominent in North America and Britain but David claims there are "at least 1,000" Men's Rights Activists in Australia.

He blames powerful feminists for dominating the debate about gender equality, leading to men being "shut down" if they try to talk about men's issues.

In The Red Pill, one MRA describes those issues: "men are routinely ground up in a family court system that is misandrist and biased against them. They are the majority of the homeless, they are the majority of suicides, they are the majority of the drug addicted, they are the majority of the unemployed, they are the majority of those in prison."

In Australia, many of these claims are true. Males make up more than half of our homeless. Three quarters of those who die by suicide are males. Men are more likely to use drugs and are significantly more likely to be locked up - there were 31,200 male prisoners in 2014, compared with 2,591 females.

According to the Young and Well Cooperative Research Centre at the University of Sydney, men die five years younger than women on average, live in worse health, and carry the greater burden of chronic disease.

Cassie Jaye says it's assumed that men's issues are men's fault.

"What I found was that a lot of Men's Rights Activists - why they became an MRA - was because of all the different issues that men face that go overlooked and unexplored and if they are talked about they are immediately shut down, usually by feminist-minded people who believe we live in a patriarchy and that any issues that men do have is the fault of patriarchy - therefore it's their own fault," she told Hack.

In feminist theory, the patriarchy is a social system that is controlled by men, where they use their power to their own advantage. In Australia, men dominate business and government. According to the Australian Institute of Company Directors, women make up just 23.4 per cent of ASX 200 board members and a total of 20 of those boards still do not have any women. In politics, the situation is not much better: 32 per cent of federal parliamentarians are women.

Violence against men

In The Red Pill, Cassie Jaye says that one in three women and one in four men in the United States will be victims of domestic violence. She's citing statistics from the 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey. She questions why, given these figures, the majority of America's 2,000 shelters do not cater to men.

In Australia, the Australian Bureau of Statistics personal safety survey, which was last conducted in 2012, shows that one in six women and one in 20 men have been victims of domestic violence since the age of 15. Of the total number of victims, 77 per cent are women. Women are also far more likely to be killed by their partner or ex-partner.

Moo Baulch, the CEO of Domestic Violence New South Wales, says while there are some services in Australia that cater specifically to women and their children, there are also homelessness services male victims of domestic violence can access.

"The reason we have had refuges primarily for women and children is because overwhelmingly they are the ones that need support. But there are a whole range of other ways in which we work with [male] victims of domestic violence as well," she told Hack.

"That might be giving the support to go through the court process, giving them counselling or giving them private rental subsidies."

'The Oppression Olympics'

In her interview with Hack, Cassie Jaye said her film was not about showing men were more oppressed than women - but just that men have issues too.

Hack host Tom Tilley: When [the MRAs in the film] raise the point with you that similar amounts of men are victims of domestic violence, why didn't you raise the point that way more women die because of that violence?

Cassie Jaye: The point in my film in the domestic violence chapter is talking about the dismissiveness of male victims. In terms of the severity of abuse women do have a higher rate of being more severely harmed by a male counterpart.

Tom Tilley: But you don't raise that point in the film.

Cassie Jaye: I don't think the Oppression Olympics is what I was trying to say in this film about who has it worse. I think the point of this film is that men have issues too that are being laughed at and mocked and dismissed and it wasn't about trying to say who has it worse.

In The Red Pill, as Cassie falls further down the rabbit hole, she weighs up the experiences of men and women and decides she's privileged to be a woman.

"Thank God I wasn't born a guy," she says.

"Because I don't think the expectations on men is good or healthy. I mean they have so much pressure to succeed and to be strong and to stand up and protect others and to put their lives on the line. I don't think I would want that responsibility. But, 50 years ago, no I wouldn't have wanted to be a woman."