I was surprised to learn about a “Red Pill” group that inhabits a corner of  cyberspace with a loose ideology akin to the misogynist ideologies of the manosphere and beliefs consistent with toxic masculinity.  According to Wikipedia, “the red pill and blue pill is a meme representing a choice between taking either a “red pill” that reveals an unpleasant truth, or taking a “blue pill” to remain in blissful ignorance. The terms are directly derived from a scene in the 1999 film The Matrix.”

The Red Pill grinds away at the real and imagined confusions about masculinity that younger  men in particular are experiencing.  Red Pillers are responding to what they consider as the unpleasant truth that contemporary women have financial and sexual power over their own lives and bodies.  In addition, they believe another unpleasant truth about female power that was expressed in Briffault’s law.

“The female, not the male, determines all the conditions of the animal family. Where the female can derive no benefit from association with the male, no such association takes place.” (Robert Briffault, The Mothers. The matriarchal Theory of social origins, p21)

Red Pillers and their fellow travelers are unable to cope with the duel reality of modern feminism and the matriarchal perspective. Unfortunately, they respond in the deep shadows of masculinity.  Their ranting on line about how women have rejected them, ignored them and used them for financial gain is their justification for objectifying women and rationalizing their own failures in life. In addition to their self inflicted misery Red Pillers play into the hands of the extremists in the feminist movement who assume all men are Red Pillers at heart and that only through feminization of men can women truly achieve equality.  

Masculinity in the light, the framework with which most men embrace, accepts and champions those aspects of equality – equal pay, freedom from harassment, eliminating any form of gender discrimination – but maintains a masculine identity that embraces the positive aspects and differences between masculine and feminine energy.  Men do not have to be more like women and women do not have to be more like men in order to achieve a gender equal society.