The Hunt

This is the film men love to use to scream about false accusations of sexualised violence. They’ve used it so often for their own purposes that one day I couldn’t take it anymore and decided to see what it was actually about. And imagine my (un)surprise when it turned out that people had watched the film and understood nothing. So let me break down what actually happened:

I’ll say right away that the girl never accused anyone of sexualised violence — contrary to what those who use the film as an argument against abuse claims like to say.

Backstory and context: A little girl gives her teacher a card and kisses him, but the teacher “rejects” her attention and doesn’t reciprocate her “love”. After she gets home, her brother’s friend shows her a clip of porn and yells something about an erect penis at her, as if it were an insult.

The girl says: “I hate Lucas… he’s stupid and ugly… and he has a willy… it sticks up like a stick” — that is literally ALL she says, without adding anything else to the story.

It all starts with the adults’ mistakes. After this statement, the preschool principal invites a psychologist who doesn’t introduce himself to the girl — which is important. The girl is obviously scared that she said something wrong and will get into trouble, so she shifts the blame onto Lucas without realising the seriousness of the situation. And the psychologist “helps” with this by suggesting versions of what happened. Even when asked direct questions, she never answers specifically — she either says “yes” (after which she sniffles, which she does unconsciously every time she lies) or nods, but never says anything on her own. Even after the teacher is dismissed, she comes to him crying and says that everyone claims he hurt her, but she doesn’t understand why and asks him to explain. Later in the film, the girl tells her mother that nothing happened — but her mother doesn’t listen and openly gaslights her.

In summary: the girl never lied to anyone about sexualised violence. She repeated an insult about an erect penis without understanding what it meant, due to her age and lack of sex education. The adults drew their own conclusions based on one phrase, without checking whether they had understood it correctly, and proceeded to destroy a man’s life.

If you ever see someone using this film as an argument that children lie about sexualised violence, know that they are manipulating — not to mention being outright stupid, using a fictional story to dismiss real cases.

I think men around the world got so outraged by this movie because it confirms their preferred fantasy — that most men are good and actual rapists or predators make up maybe 1% of the male population. They don’t want to believe that their fathers, brothers, sons or friends could be rapists or predators. And that’s without even mentioning the fact that a lot of men have very vague ideas of what rape actually is. It’s more convenient for them to fixate on one fictional story of a “false” accusation than to face thousands and thousands of real cases with real victims. They’re trying to avoid the real problem at any cost rather than admit that many men are part of it. So here we are again — fighting windmills instead of real problems.