Completely ignoring that the guys in the movies were adults, and had senses of humor beyond the latest internet memes, I started to become obsessed with these indie romantic comedies that furthered my belief that one day, if I was quirky enough and shy enough, some girl would throw herself into my arms and I would live happily ever after. Adventureland<\/i>, Ruby Sparks<\/i>, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind<\/i>, and anything Michael Cera got within a hundred yards of; these were my rocket fuel against the loveless, sexless future I was doomed to live in. <\/span><\/p>\n This is all starting to sound a little disconcerting, right? Like the person thinking these things is not only vastly misreading these films, but he could become a true d-bag if something doesn\u2019t intervene?<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s an uncomfortable truth that a lot of the people involved in Men\u2019s Rights activism<\/a>, often shortened to Meninism, started out this way, around the age when adolescence is really ramping up. If you\u2019re unfamiliar with Meninism, it\u2019s a group of men who believe that feminism is toxic to gender relations in the modern world, and that victories for women take away the social benefits of being a man, fearing a world where men are second-class citizens. It often festers when a man feels personally victimized by a woman in a relationship sense, because without feminism and female autonomy, they would be much more willing to \u201cgive him a shot\u201d and go out on a date with him. According to Meninism, female autonomy in relationships = the discrimination of men, especially not traditionally attractive men.<\/span><\/p>\n As my worldview started to go down this path of self-pity, I was trying to get my hands on any twee romantic comedies I could find. One day, I found it. A little film with a charming, dorky dude and a beautiful girl on the cover. The film was called (500) Days of Summer<\/i>, and I rented it from my local library, loved it, and immediately bought a copy of my own. I saw myself in Tom, the romantic goofball whose heart gets stomped on by a wishy-washy woman who friend-zones him. Summer\u2019s mixed signals hurt to watch, and seeing Tom\u2019s visions of the future crumble brought me to tears multiple times. Seventeen times, as a matter of fact. With every viewing, my opinion grew stronger, and the effect it had on my real-world perception did too.<\/span><\/p>\n I got angrier and more vindictive; I took pride in my loneliness, and I thank every single one of my lucky stars that I wasn\u2019t as active on Twitter then as I am now. I would have been as difficult online as I was in my own head, and made a lot of enemies.<\/span><\/p>\n Here\u2019s the thing though: over the course of one year, I watched (500) Days of Summer<\/i> 18 times. The eighteenth time, I had just gotten rejected by a close friend I asked out. I was devastated and I needed to watch something that would validate the short-sighted pain of a child. Ironically enough, the child in the film pulled me out of my haze. Tom\u2019s sister has a line early in the film: \u201cJust because some girl likes the same bizarro crap you do, doesn\u2019t mean she\u2019s your soul mate.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The entire meaning of the film fell into place. Tom wasn\u2019t the befallen hero, he was a fool who was trying his best to put this girl into a box, hoping she would solve his problems. His ending, where he meets a girl named Autumn, isn\u2019t a happy one, it\u2019s tragic. It\u2019s all going to happen again. This is all going to happen to me again, isn\u2019t it? Tom was wrong, so that means\u2026that means that I was wrong too.<\/span><\/p>\n This film that I had rested my entire worldview on had truly revealed itself to me, and once that eighteenth viewing was over, I cried for a long time. I couldn\u2019t handle being this wrong, this foolish, this beholden to a philosophy that wasn\u2019t true. I got quieter after that, less angry, more willing to listen. Long story short, I became a far better person. Those seeds of anger that lead to the Meninist philosophy were torn out from my head, all because of the film that I thought was on my side the whole time.<\/span><\/p>\n We\u2019ve all seen these people on Twitter, these obnoxiously angry guys who get dunked on with a thousand quippy quote-Tweets. I\u2019m not saying these people shouldn\u2019t be pushed back against, or sometimes mocked. But sometimes, just sometimes, they need a piece of art to show them the light. If someone you know starts saying things like \u201cfeminism is sexist against men,\u201d \u201cI\u2019ve been friend-zoned again,\u201d or god forbid, \u201cit\u2019s actually about ethics in game journalism,\u201d just show him (500) Days of Summer<\/i>. And then strap him to a chair Clockwork Orange<\/i>-style and show it to him seventeen more times. It worked for me. Like most self-absorbed teenage boys, my perspective on love in 2012 was complicated, to say the least. I was unattractive […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":526,"featured_media":11393,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1381,1399],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies","category-looking-back"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/526"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/crookedc.png\")
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