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An Open Letter to Cassie Jaye, director of The Red Pill

Paul Elam: Subject of, and fundraiser for, Cassie Jaye's The Red Pill, in a shot from a preview of the film
Paul Elam: Subject of, and fundraiser for, Cassie Jaye’s The Red Pill, in a shot from a preview of the documentary

UPDATE 10/25/16: If you’ve come here after reading about a petition to cancel screenings of The Red Pill, I ask you to NOT sign any such petitions. It’s just free publicity for them. Read more of my thoughts on the matter here

Dear Cassie Jaye,

Congratulations. You surpassed your Kickstarter fundraising goal yesterday, more than two weeks before the Kickstarter campaign was scheduled to come to a close. You’ve funded the postproduction work on your long-delayed documentary on Men’s Rights activists, and then some.

But I’m not sure that the person I should be congratulating is you. Last night Paul Elam of A Voice for Men – the central subject of your film – was doing his own victory lap online. And no wonder, because he seems to be the real victor here.

In a post on his site that managed to be giddy and vindictive at once, he offered his congratulations to you, then, well, to himself. “Even though the victory goes to Ms. Jaye,” he wrote, in an awkward attempt at modesty, “I have the need to offer up some thanks.”

And then he spelled out why he thinks your “victory” is really a victory for him.

For the past six years AVFM has had mud kicked in its face by a corrupt, left-wing media. Bottom feeders like Adam Serwer, Jeff Sharlet and Mariah Blake have performed endless unscrupulous acts, directly lying to their readers in order to attack AVFM, this movement and me personally.

Their work was not just to harm me, or to damage a website but to make sure if they could that the message we carry never found its way to the larger public. Their intent was and is to paint an indelible stain on all of us so hideous that we would never be taken seriously by enough people to matter.

They have failed, and I can now predict that they have failed miserably.

In other words, Paul Elam thinks he and his friends in what he ludicrously calls the “Men’s Human Rights Movement” have bought and paid for a feature-length advertisement for them.

And it’s not hard to see why Elam – and the other manospherians who’ve rallied around your film in recent days — think this. After all, they are the ones who have rescued your film from oblivion by pouring tens of thousands of dollars into your Kickstarter.

And all it took for you to unleash this torrent of money was an interview with one of the sleaziest figures in right-wing journalism, Milo Yiannopoulos of Breitbart.

In the interview, posted on Monday, you complained that “I won’t be getting support from feminists. They want a hit piece and I won’t do that.”

There was more than a little bit of irony in the fact that you were saying this to a man infamous for his many hit pieces on so-called “Social Justice Warriors.”

You also complained about an intern on your film who, you said, “had a lot of crying attacks and emotional experiences. She claimed everything I was showing her was triggering her.”

A young feminist “triggered” and crying. This is red meat to the Breitbart crowd, and I have to assume you knew this when you told Milo this story.

To an outside observer like me, this shameful pandering looks a lot like a Hail Mary play on your part. Having failed to convince most potential funders of the film that you would present anything close to an accurate picture of the Men’s Rights movement, you told Breitbart what its readers – and the broader manosphere – wanted to hear.

And it worked. Men’s Rights activists, self-professed “Red Pillers” and other assorted antifeminists rallied around your film, and the money started flowing.

On Reddit, the moderators of the Men’s Rights subreddit “stickied” an appeal to donate to your Kickstarter to the top of their front page, urging MRAs to open their wallets in order to show skeptics that “we can take part in some actual activism and not just post stuff in here.”

Even the regulars in the violently misogynistic Red Pill subreddit agreed to help bankroll your film.

And it wasn’t just Men’s Rights and “Red Pill” Redditors who organized support for your film. One right-wing Red Pill blogger, notorious for his harassment of ideological enemies, pledged to match donations up to $10,000, describing your documentary as “the Movie SJWs Do Not Want You to See.”

Meanwhile, on her blog, AVFM’s “social media director” Andrea Hardie (an internet bully better known under her pseudonyms Janet Bloomfield and “Judgy Bitch”) not only rallied her readers around your Kickstarter but also set up a gofundme of her own, raising money in hopes that it would buy Breitbart’s Yiannopoulos a producer credit in your film. (I hope that is out of the question, even if she raises more than the paltry amount she’s raised for this purpose so far.)

And then there was Elam himself, on Twitter, calling on his followers to, in his words, “Help fund #RedPillMovie because fuck feminists!”

https://twitter.com/AVoiceForMen/status/658700057311506432

Accepting money from these people would seem to be a pretty clear violation of the principles you set forth in your own Kickstarter video, in which you declared that

in order to keep this film non-partisan, and respectfully show all sides to this debate, we won’t accept funding from organizations that inevitably have biased agendas.

Instead, you have chosen to take money from people who see your film as a chance to say “fuck you” to feminists. You have chosen to take money from the actual subjects of your film.

You are making a film about Men’s Rights Activists, funded to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars by Men’s Rights Activists. You are making a film about A Voice for Men funded in part by A Voice for Men.

Does that not trouble you at all? It should. In your interview with Breitbart, you noted that “films that support one side and act as propaganda do better than those that try to have an honest look.”

You said this, presumably, to set yourself apart from such propagandists. Now you seem to have cast your lot in with them.

Which I suppose makes sense, since the clips of your film that you’ve posted online so far look a lot more like propaganda than they do like any sort of honest look at the Men’s Rights movement,

I felt uneasy about your project from the start, concerned that you had been pulled in by the soothing but misleading rhetoric that MRAs spout when they are trying to sound more respectable than they really are, rather than on what MRAs actually say and do when the cameras are off of them.

But I knew you had a good reputation as a filmmaker, and heard good things from several feminists who knew you better than I did. So I held my tongue and tried my best to give you the benefit of the doubt, even when you posted clips from your film that portrayed AVFMers as heroic underdogs rather than the misogynists and malicious harassers that they really are.

When I wrote you a little over a week ago with some of my concerns, you assured me in the phone call that followed that the clips you had posted were only part of the story, that you were well aware that the MRAs you had interviewed were on their best behavior when talking to you, and that the real story of the Men’s Rights movement is far less rosy-hued. Against my better judgement, I continued to hold on to some kind of hope that you would live up to your reputation in the end.

And now, frankly, I feel like I’ve been played.

Unfortunately, it looks like you have been played too, much more spectacularly than I have. I suspect you are doing far more damage to your reputation than you even know.

One thing I have learned in five years of watching, and writing about, and dealing with, the Men’s Rights movement, is that if Paul Elam is happy about something, that thing is almost certainly terrible.

I suspect, sadly, that you will ultimately learn this lesson yourself, the hard way.

PS: In our phone conversation, you suggested that if you were able to fund your film, you might be able to finally film the interview with me that we originally had planned to do, but which fell through due to financial and other practical obstacles during the original filming of The Red Pill. At this point, I am sorry to say, that is completely out of the question.

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Miss Andry
9 years ago

I figured this would just be a bigger budget Sarkeesian Effect. Looks like I was right.

magnesiumcookie
magnesiumcookie
9 years ago

Making a documentary fully funded by your subject is just a promotional piece, though, isn’t it? I mean this’ll ruin her as a true doc director, but I guess she’ll make a good infomercial director. Lots of places need a good propagandist.

On the other hand, she might be planning to make an honest doc about how awful the MRM is with all their money. That would be funny.

Miss Andry
9 years ago

Oh also lol at Milo promoting this. It’s all so very ETHICAL.

gelar
gelar
9 years ago

You also complained about an intern on your film who, you said, “had a lot of crying attacks and emotional experiences. She claimed everything I was showing her was triggering her.”

If she was suddenly exposed to this stuff en masse… well, I’m not surprised.

Karl
Karl
9 years ago

@magnesiumcookie

On the other hand, she might be planning to make an honest doc about how awful the MRM is with all their money. That would be funny.

It would be funny, but exceedingly dishonest. The comment about “feminists want a hit piece” doesn’t fill me with hope. Feminists want the truth, not a hit piece. It would only look like a hit piece to MRAs because it’s the truth.

House Mouse Queen
9 years ago

This is the $100,000 dollar version of shit. Gee, who woulda thunk it? I knew she was playing people right from the start. When I saw the 8 minute preview I posted that it was bullshit. There’s no way to make the MRM look good.

Sorry she tried taking you in. This was a money scheme right from the start.

The Blair Bitch Project was the most accurate portrayal ever of the MRM. All you need is Paul Elam staring like a wife batterer into a camera and some beer.

It’s about ethics in…

Scented Fucking Hard Chairs
Scented Fucking Hard Chairs
9 years ago

1. For all the bleating about being “Nonpartisan,” the sheer fact that she was willing to take their bribes donations indicates that this was planned to be a pro-MRA advertisement/anti-feminist hit piece since its conception.

2. “Organizations that inevitably have biased agendas.” Huh? Are there any specifically anti-MRA organisations? Or does she mean, like, general pro-equality, anti-harassment and human rights groups? If so, shouldn’t it say something that every pro-equality, anti-harassment and human rights group is “Biased” against MRAs?

3. For any first-time lurkers wondering why it’s such a bad thing to look for an “Unbiased” middle ground between MRAs and feminists: It’s like looking for an “Unbiased” middle ground between the KKK and civil rights groups, or between Nazis* and Jewish people. It’s using the golden mean fallacy in the deceitful defense of bigotry, and any middle ground is still going to result in oppression. Sure, it might be slightly less oppression, but any oppression is too much.

*Not a Godwin, because many MRAs genuinely want genocide (the “Beta uprising,” as they call it) and damn near all MRAs are literal neo-Nazis as well.

magnesium
magnesium
9 years ago

Aha, used the wrong username again. Whoops.

Also: Imagine the men’s shelter they could have started with that money. Seriously, they rally together $100,000 and don’t manage to help a single men. MRA’s.

Bazia
Bazia
9 years ago

Ms. Jaye, please suspend your work for a time and review your material on Mr. Elam. He is a cyberstalker who has gone after individual women for years who said things he did not like.

Dodom
Dodom
9 years ago

I kinda feel bad for her. There’s not enough flattery in the world to keep all these sponsors happy. They’re as likely to turn on her as not.

Falconer
9 years ago

@Bazia: Like she’s going to say anything that Elam doesn’t like.

weirwoodtreehugger
9 years ago

Since when are documentaries not allowed to have a point of view? If she wanted to make a film sympathetic to MRAs, why not just say so? It just makes you look like a liar to say a film is unbiased when it isn’t.

Oh well. Maybe she can get a job at Fox News.

Binjabreel
Binjabreel
9 years ago

I agree with that one- these guys are gonna feel like they own this project now, and experience says that anything that isn’t them being expressly fellated is going to be received as a hit piece.

This woman is very likely going to have this blow up in her face.

EJ (The Other One)
EJ (The Other One)
9 years ago

Huh. I didn’t know that that was Bloomfield’s real name.

Fnoicby
Fnoicby
9 years ago

Every time the MRM is mentioned in mainstream media, it is with a snicker and a dose of side eye. These people are generally considered a joke and if this doc attempts to portray them sympathetically, it will be too. And the fact that it’s heavily funded by the MRM will only add to that.

Catalpa
Catalpa
9 years ago

Congrats, Jaye. May your documentary be just as high quality, well-regarded, and popular as the last documentary that came out of the manosphere.

painteyelash
painteyelash
9 years ago

@Magnesium

Good point. They do a lot of whining about how oppressed Teh Menz are, but they spend about zero time doing actual activism and more time and apparently money on projects that will boost their own ego. Men’s rights movement! AVFM is nothing more than an antifeminist group.

Cyberwulf
Cyberwulf
9 years ago

ETHICS IN JOURNALISM

Lovin_Nola
Lovin_Nola
9 years ago

Well, it’s easy to see how she would become so desperate to fund her project that she would sell herself to the MRAs after spending more than two years of her life and resources on the film. However, with the film being largely MRA funded, I certainly don’t see it being non-partisan and non-biased. If they are not pleased with the outcome of her film she will have hell to pay. If she’s done her research well then she knows how ugly they are toward people who don’t tow their line. They’ll make it their mission to ruin her life – even more so than usual because they trusted her enough to PAY her to make them look good. These are some nasty folks she’s aligned herself with. She apparently does not realize that the reason people don’t want to be associated with her film is not because they don’t care about suicide and other issues that affect men. It’s because they don’t want to be associated with these poor characters who spend their lives online calling women cunts, whores, and bitches and blaming them for all their personal problems. Who knows? Maybe she is willing to be honest about what they do and is prepared to become targeted by them and have her character assassinated for the next several years of her life but I sincerely doubt it. If the film wasn’t already pro-MRA before, she should be scrambling now to make sure they will be pleased with her portrayal of them.

davidknewton
davidknewton
9 years ago

I can’t wait to laugh at this! Is that picture of him staring utterly shocked to camera right as if Dean Esmay has just exposed himself a genuine frame from the production?

painteyelash
painteyelash
9 years ago

Thanks for posting this, David. I was not even aware of this. I was thinking..I wonder if that young feminist intern of hers even was crying and being “triggered”. For some reason I don’t think it ever happened.

Also, have any of you noticed that AVFM regularly post links to Breitbart on their facebook page? Not shocking since they think the “left-wing media” is out go get them. Much ethics, yep yep.

Catalpa
Catalpa
9 years ago

Considering that Ms. Jaye is female, I almost hope that the film will be nothing but an absolutely glowing endorsement of the MRM. Because if there’s even the tiniest smidgen of criticism in the documentary, I’d bet dollars to donuts that she will be subjected to a never-ending torrent of abuse and harassment. And as much as people who lie down with dogs should expect to wake up with fleas, no one deserves to go through that.

Ace
Ace
9 years ago

@magnesium Well, they are helping themselves, so they imagine. They are technically men so…

@catalpa It’s not going to be hard to beat that documentary. My niece has already filmed better, at the age of eleven with her mother’s phone.

I have to agree with others that this will probably blow up in Jaye’s face. It might not, if they are funding her so completely and she is willing to promote them, they might be able to rein in any hatred- they see it as their big chance to finally convince people that they are The True Equality Team (can’t do that little tm thing!) and that everything feminists have said is lies.

They can be remarkably polite to people they both need and who have agreed to cast them as the ‘underdogs’ I’d guess. As long as she just acts as the mouthpiece they want her to be, there shouldn’t be a problem.

I actually have my fingers crossed for Jaye. What she’s doing is, well, gross, but if it does blow up in her face… I don’t care about her career but nobody should have to deal with the doxxing and death/rape threats that will flood from the manosphere.

sunnysombrera
sunnysombrera
9 years ago

This is going to be a glorious failure, but I can’t help feeling sorry for Jaye for jumping on a ship that sunk long ago (even though its crew hasn’t realised yet).

Ace
Ace
9 years ago

ninja’d by catalpa!

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