Wednesday, November 15, 2017

The Red Pill And The Genius Of The Catholic Church

Yesterday, on the excellent Andrew Klavan Show, he interviewed Cassie Jaye, the filmmaker behind the movie The Red Pill.


I watched it last night and thought it was superb. Cassie was a documentarian of impeccable feminist and progressive credentials when she decided to investigate the men's rights movement. She went into the project thinking she'd find hate and misogyny and came out the other end having thrown away feminism. It's well-made movie that documents her journey as much as it does the subject.

The one thing that jumped out to me as a Catholic and an instructor in the Church's marriage preparation classes was the genius of the Church. We're not mentioned in any way in the movie and the film is not religious in the slightest. Instead, it's a description of the antagonistic relationship between men and women, feminists and men in particular. The problem arises when you see us as separate creatures rather than cooperative ones that complete each other.

In marriage, we say that the two become one. It is no longer me, but we. Feminists vs. men is nothing if not an atomization of that bond. Further, Saint John Paul II's Theology of the Body brilliantly lays out how men and women are complementary. It's not about individual rights, it's about how we serve each other in different ways, based on our sex. Yes, there are areas of overlap, but the key is how we meld into one to make a greater whole, not how we compete for the same things.

If that was what we were striving for as a culture instead of who gets which jobs and who gets paid what, we'd be a lot better off because we'd be working with nature instead of against it. Oh well.

Having said all that, the movie is still well-worth watching. It's available on Amazon and is free to Prime members.

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