(Alternate Title: We Can See Through Your Disguise: “The Mask You Live In”)

Most of the time, feminists insist they care about men’s issues only when they’re accused of not caring about men’s issues, even if the #feminism tag on their blog belies their claim. There’s a question I and others like to ask feminists who claim feminism helps with men’s issues; name one significant feminist initiative that was primarily or equally about men.

They tend to get rather upset at this point. A perfectly natural response, to attack the person who caused the cognitive dissonance.

Well, their Great White Hope has finally come; an upcoming documentary called “The Mask You Live In”, by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, apparently about men’s gender role, and how men are compelled not to talk about their problems.

I first learned about this via a tumblr post promoting it. Someone had said that some people might think it’s not feminism’s baliwick, and it totally was, guys! Tumblrfems fell all over themselves to go “look at how much we care about men’s issues!” In fact, the posts I saw had them talking more about how much they and feminism cared than actual men’s issues. Which is ironic, in light of many feminists’ insistence that male feminist allies don’t receive any reward for doing what “any decent human” should be doing in the first place.

Though it’s not out yet as I queue this - if Anita Sarkeesian’s production speed is any indication - I feel confident making some predictions.

For example, Jackson Katz is involved. Katz is a male feminist, a self-proclaimed authority on something called “Toxic Masculinity” (IE “Any issues men have are the men’s fault, and they’re still less serious than women’s problems”), professional misandrist con man, and once said, basically, that his problem with the term “gendered violence” was that it didn’t blame men clearly enough. Also consulted is male feminist Michael Kimmel, also a professional misandrist, who wrote a book called Guyland, and was the spokesman for the male pro-feminist organization NOMAS, which pushed for misandric custody laws in California. Both men are PhDs.

Mr. Katz and Mr. Kimmel have a history of being sexist. They also seem to have very little idea of what life is like for most men. There’s something ironic about two well-educated and probably well-off white men talking about the problems of men in general*, especially when they’re the exact demographic normally despised by SJWs for not knowing what life is like for people who aren’t privileged. Mr. Katz has been known to say that men’s emotions are restricted, as well as to say that men should let women speak because women need to be heard - in other words, it’s okay for men to talk about their issues as long as they don’t inconvenience women. Kimmel has expressed similar views, according to that Guyland review.

The documentary is feminist-supported, feminist-created, and views masculinity through a feminist lens, which, as we all know, tends to be more than a little…subjective. It looks suspiciously like a serial numbers filed-off version of Toxic Masculinity, which is itself a serial numbers filed-off version of Patriarchy Theory*. The title is a clue; Mr. Kimmel and Mr. Katz have had as a recurring theme how masculinity compels men into roles they don’t want. This is true, but they focus on the what they believe the parts of men’s gender roles are which harm women. Unless they’re talking about Toxic Masculinity. But that’s another post.

If you look at the track record of the experts listed, three of the five of them are feminists or feminist-sympathetic. Kimmel and Katz, obviously, and Esta Soler is the president of an organization intended to end violence against women and children, which makes her an odd choice for a documentary ostensibly intended to address men’s problems. Niobe Way’s article “Why are boys so violent” doesn’t mention women perpetuating the norms of masculinity she refers to at all. In fact, all of her articles on HuffPo are curiously neutral on that, though I suspect I’m being overly cynical here*. William Pollack’s Wikipedia page for “Real Boys” mentions “toxic conceptions of masculinity”, but he’s worked with Warren Farrell, and his book is recommended by Christina Hoff Summers, and what samples I can find talk about how that women perpetuate gender norms too.

The best part is that the documentary claims to be trying to “[spark] a national conversation around masculinity”. The odd thing is that people who aren’t feminists have been having those conversations for a while now, internationally, and feminism has been doing its best to shout ‘em down and silence them. To the point of actively trying (and sometimes succeeding) to get them censored, and protesting them in real life. In fact, feminists have literally broken the law to try and stop those people being listened to, even when they weren’t MRAs. There is an entire website, Manboobz, dedicated mainly to mocking and misrepresenting MRAs. Either Siebel is really poorly informed, or actively ignoring them, which is odd when her expert Kimmel specifically refers to several of those other folks in Guyland, albeit in a disparing manner. Maybe he just…forgot.

Funny thing; one of the tumblrfems in the tumblr thread made the same mistake of thinking feminism is the only game in town. It’s almost as if she didn’t know a single thing about who’s discussing men’s issues.

If you really want men to talk about their feelings openly to you, feminists, you’re going to have to shut down Manboobz, call out that Lindy West Jezebel article, stop opposing things like the SFU Men’s center, and stop telling men to “man up" yourselves, and that’s just for starters. You’re going to have to stand against the feminists in your own movement who are doing their best to put men in a little box and nail the lid shut. And if the box happens to be a coffin, like Earl Silverman, then it’d really be nice if you admitted that maybe, just maybe, your control over the domestic violence industry might have had something to do with Silverman beating his head against a brick wall for years and eventually having to close the one men’s shelter in Canada down. In short, you have a long way to go before you convince men feminism’s even neutral, much less that you actually want to listen to them.

So, I’m highly certain that the project, at best, is flawed. In fact, if you look at the trailer, all the voices enforcing men’s gender role are male. Strangely enough, Siebel starts the trailer saying she wants to change who her son becomes. She literally says she wants to influence the role he takes, yet implies that men are solely responsible for Toxic Masculinity.

It is certainly odd how feminists seldom discuss the positive aspects of masculinity; even "male privileges” are supposedly things men secured for themselves. It’s odd that so many feminists claim to have changed men’s gender role for the better, but the negative aspects are solely the fault of men. It’s odd how the first initiative to discuss men’s issues feminists widely supported is by feminists, for feminists, and says nothing in the trailer about whether women or feminism are involved in shaping men’s gender role at all, or whether men have any systemic disadvantages compared to women.

But that’s all secondary. My main point is that feminists finally are doing something, however inept, to really address men’s problems.

Oh, what’s that?

Sorry, they’re addressing problems with masculinity, not men. My mistake. I just get the two mixed up sometimes. So, after decades of advocacy, feminism is finally addressing what they say is the toxic male gender role (which is perpetuated, based on implications of the trailer, entirely by men).

Once.

Just once.

I can’t help but wonder how many feminists supported TMYLI largely so they could say that they care about men’s issues. Was this, for them, the equivalent of a businessman giving to charity for tax purposes? Or someone having a Black Best Friend just to say “I’m not racist, my best friend is black!”

Of course, if Anita Sarkeesian is any indication, the documentary will be dissected and exposed for a load of humbug by both feminists and non-feminists in short order. Some folks at Reddit, below, have already taken issue. And, like Anita, its backers - financial or spiritual - won’t care*. Most of the copies, if it ever actually makes it to DVD (Sarkeesian, indication, etc.), will be sold to gender studies departments, feminists, and pretty much no one else.

And, oh, yes, Jennifer never needed the money in the first place.

She lives in a 2.5 million house. Her husband is Gavin Newsom, the Lt. Governor of California, and a businessman worth an estimated, oh, 5 Million bucks. He’s friends and a frequent business partner with billionaire Gordon Getty. He could probably cover the entire film out of his suit budget. And, gosh, she didn’t need a Kickstarter for her previous film, Miss Representation. It’s almost as if the Kickstarter was more about publicity than money.

Feminists, you’ve been Sarkeesianed. Again.

TL:DR; I believe “The Mask You Live” in will almost certainly be an attempt by people with a twisted view of masculinity to sell their beliefs to other people with a twisted view of masculinity. It will be problematic and logically flawed, at best, but nonetheless supported by its, er, supporters. And many feminists will use it as evidence the movement really, truly cares about men’s issues, while completely failing to consider what it says about feminism that it took all this time just to have any initiative mainly about men’s issues, or whether it’s likely they got it right out of the gate.

Place your bets.

PS: Oh, and Michael Kimmel is going to run a $300,000 “Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities” at Stonybrook U. Given what I said about Kimmel earlier, and the press release forgetting or being unaware of other people discussing men’s issues, I’m not holding my breath. Nonetheless, it does count as a second initiative about helping men, and both within the same year, which makes me wonder what’s lit a fire under feminism.

Oddly enough, Earl Silverman managed to get all of a few hundred bucks from the Canadian gov’t over the years he tried and failed to keep his men’s shelter open, while other centers dealing with women had no problem, including a million dollar one. Which means that feminists and allies have no problem talking about men’s issues (on their terms), but actually helping is a lot more rare.

1^ In fairness, you could say the same thing about Dr. Warren Farrell. However, he never got a TED talk where he spent fifteen minutes talking about how men are violent (against women), with no mention whatsoever of how men are also the primary victims of violence as well, despite mentioning that most people who hurt men are also men. He listens and talks to men, he doesn’t set himself on high as an authority and preach down to them from a bully pulpit.

2^ Notably, TM largely ignores or talks around any sort of institutionalized oppression, claiming that men would stop being erased as rape and abuse victims if more men would just speak up, in a stunning example of confusing cause and effect. Similarly, boys failing performance in school is blamed on some sort of imaginary stigma against boys being smart, when the real problem is programs created to prioritize girl’s learning. I mean, I assume the president did his research when he called this sort of thing a “great accomplishment” in Newsweek.

3^ Then again, Anita spent a lot of effort stigmatizing her critics, leading her supporters to dismiss them out of hand. TMYLI seems to have ommitted that step. Mostly by talking only to feminists.

4^ After all, there’s no reason Jennifer can’t just ignore someone if they have a more nuanced viewpoint.

Elsewhere: http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1iai6e/a_new_documentary_entitled_the_mask_you_live_in/

http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1i39pq/the_mask_you_live_in_by_jennifer_siebel_newsom/

Previously:

http://siryouarebeingmocked.tumblr.com/post/55699757913/mynameisianandimaminorthreat-fivetail

http://siryouarebeingmocked.tumblr.com/post/58242323378/permutationofninjas-atomic-blonde

http://permutationofninjas.org/post/58181975652/atomic-blonde-permutationofninjas