“Oppressed Majority” is a French short film aiming to illustrate the problems with everyday sexism in an effort to inspire change. It tackles this by gender-swapping society.
In a world where women and men are switched, women run
topless and pee in public, men suffer wolf-whistles and objectification.
The film is being lauded as revolutionary, with everybody suggest
how wrong it seems, and how clearly that means we must tackle this issue of
everyday sexism.
But what everyone seems to have missed is that even if the
genders were correct, this is not an accurate representation of everyday
sexism. The women in the film are without exception portrayed as sexist and
abusive, the degree of abusiveness ranging through the whole spectrum from minor
to major. The male protagonist is raped during the film, and his wife barely
reacts, only really suggesting that it’s his fault for dressing “provocatively”.
She demonstrates exactly zero care. All the marriages in this film are shown to
be abusive, and all the women are sexually aggressive and awful.
The point is to highlight these issues from a gender swapped
perspective. But what they’ve actually done is suggest that all men are guilty
of abusive, sexist behaviour, and are generally unpleasant and disgusting. It’s
ridiculous.
Obviously, there is a need for some of these issues to change, but there are not as prevalent as they've been made to appear in the video, and it's a small percentage that are guilty, not every guy you meet. Of course this will have been overplayed for the video, but even taking that into consideration, the whole thing is too ridiculous to be effective in getting across it's intended message.
Trigger warning if you’re watching the video: violent rape
occurs.
Ari Carrington