Taking its name from The Matrix metaphor commonly used in men’s rights circles – where ‘choosing the red pill’ is used to describe the moment someone accepts as truth the idea that society is structured to advantage women over men – The Red Pill was released on YouTube in March 2017. By May, it was the top-selling movie on the platform.

It also spawned a slew of opinion pieces, a few of which praised Jaye for her sensitive portrayal of the men’s rights movement and how she flagged feminism’s fallibility, but most of which criticised her for the same, some particularly harshly because she is a woman, and well, what woman turns her back on feminism in favour of men’s rights?

Jaye didn’t respond to my request for comment for this article, but one of the women she interviewed for The Red Pill did. Well-known Canadian anti-feminist Karen Straughan, AKA YouTuber Girl Writes What, is one of the men’s rights movement’s most vocal advocates. Formerly an erotic fiction writer, Straughan says that, ironically, it was through frequenting “feminist-leaning” online forums for writers and reviewers that she was first switched on to men’s rights.

“One day, someone [posted] a link to a men’s [issues] website with the message, ‘Let’s all go make fun of these losers,’ or something like that,” she tells me over email. “I went over and read the article. Granted, it was a trivial complaint. Something about hard science fiction – the type men like best (on average) – is dying because of ‘feminization.’”

The response, Straughan writes, was a barrage on the comments section in which “feminists [flung] around gendered slurs” such as “man-babies, losers who can’t get laid [and] micropenised whiners.” All of which she thought “seemed a bit… hypocritical.”

What got her engaged in the men’s rights movement, however, was something altogether more personal.