The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War

by Jeff Sharlet

A red-pill moment, explained one men’s rights activist (MRA), “is the day you decide nothing looks the same.” It’s what the movement calls the born-again experience of opening your eyes to women’s Matrix-like control of the modern world.2 For a young MRA named Max von Holtzendorff, the red-pill moment was being accused of sexual harassment by a coworker to whom he proposed sex, “being blunt and forthright, because it seemed the best way to ensure consent.” For Jim Strohmeyer, a former professor, it was “six months in a box” after what he said was a false accusation of domestic violence. For Gunther Schadow, an MD/PhD, it was a “meta-study” on domestic violence that inspired him to seed a foundation with half a million dollars with which he hoped to overturn the Violence Against Women Act. For Dan Moore, whose MRA name was “Factory,” the red pill was a revelation in stages. First, he said, his wife cheated on him. Then she wanted him to know it. “She’d laugh at me.” His low point: lying on the floor in a fetal curl while she stood over him, mocking him. He said she had a butcher knife in her hand. (She denied this. All of it.)