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.
@Dali
<3
@Croquembouche
Teehee! Your cat knows what’s up tho. There can be only one ?
@Axecalibur, I am receiving this look right now.
No what I find appalling? That I cannot find a single post that recognizes that the discussion of gender equality should be a two-way street. Are there issues which impact women disproportionately versus men? No question. Similarly, are there issues which impact men disproportionately? Again, no question. This zero sum game that feminists often play that they “own” an issue and that only women can experience sexism and/or discrimination is just ludicrous. You all need to go down the rabbit hole of the Family Court system for just one example of an issue where gender-biased (sanctioned and administered by our government) is perpetuated upon men. Open your eyes. Gender equality is not a one-way discussion.
Total ad-homenim arguement. Philosophy 101 says to argue the issue, not who is putting foreward the issue.
Funny how feminists say that men should fight for their own causes, but then wont allow any discussions on men’s issue. This is exactly the strategy that makes you irrelevant to people outside your bubble and gets people like Trump elected.
I have seen the Red Pill promos and am excited about seeing the whole doco here in Australia when it is screened in Sydney next month.
You cannot stop an idea whose time has come ☺
Hey Ryan, if you were wondering how many active threads there currently are, the answer is a qazillion, and this thread is not one of them.
Racism got Trump elected. Feminism sure as fuck didn’t get Donald “bragging about assaulting women is my favourite hobby other than accusing Mexicans of being rapists” Trump elected.
@Ryan
Abscond.
This thread will never die, will it?
Because men are the privileged gender, you dolt. We don’t need to fight for men’s equality because men are already treated as both the superior and the default gender.
David’s been covering MRAs for 6 years now. Do you think you’re the only one who’s ever mentioned family courts here. I think I can cover all the talking points quickly and without effort from memory.
1. Mothers have custody more often because fathers are far less likely to seek custody.
2. When fathers do seek custody, they are likely to get it.
3. Child support isn’t for the mother’s bonbons and designer purse fund. The average child support payment is $290 a month in the US. You think the custodial parent is paying less than that? They’re not. They’re paying more.
Where? Example please. Do you know what an ad hom even is?
Writing an open letter to a documentary filmmaker is not stopping discussion. And a red piller calling anyone irrelevant outside their own bubble is just about the most hilariously ironic thing I’ve seen today.
How can you possibly be seeing the documentary if evil feminists have censored it? Why, it’s almost like you’re full of crap!
Hee! Sneakers, sneaking in during the drama. How appropriate. One at a time, then!
@Andrew,
No one here would argue that. It’s a foundation of feminism that Patriarchy hurts both men and women, in various ways.
We aren’t playing a zero-sum game. We want life to be better for everyone. Including you. We want you to be free from the restrictions that society places on you just because of your gender.
You seem to be mistaking what this site’s about, though. This site is for mocking misogyny, not Feminism 101. We can get you some resources for that though, if you want!
Many of us have been through that system in various ways. For the whole “child custody” thing, though, it turns out that your numbers are correct but incomplete. It’s true that women get custody of children more than men, but that’s because men more often don’t fight for custody. When they do fight for custody, they often win that custody, since they often have more reliable employment.
Almost like there was some sort of societal force placing women in the role of caregiver or something.
Agreed! We often talk about the ways that men suffer under the gender roles forced upon them! Many of the guys here will share stories, and we all support them!
There’s not even a “but” here – just straight up, we agree. Why are you against us?
Why are so many trolls’ handles just given names? Woody, Richard, Mark, Valerie, and now Ryan and Andrew.
@Ryan,
Hee! Philosophy 101. Philosophy 101, guys! We’re in trouble! We’ve got an expert on our hands!
Let’s start with some’a that Philosophy 101, maybe. Define ad hominem
I’d actually say spell ad hominem, but you get that one as a freebie.
Guys – as in, males – you wanna let this dood know how stifled you are in discussing male issues?
As for our bubble, well. Our bubble is currently bubbling in half of the States in the USA, protesting the Garbage Dump of a president-elect. I’ll admit that those outside of our bubble tend to ignore us, but that’s only 1 in 5 people, according to vote tallies. So, I feel pretty comfortable.
Enjoy! You’re free to watch it. Freedom of speech and all that. I encourage you to watch it in the same way that I say people should have the right to eat McDonalds all day. You’re free to fill yourself with garbage if that’s what you want to do!
Likewise.
This is the post that never ends, yes it goes on and on my friend.
Some people necroed it, not knowing what it was, and they’ll continue necro-ing forever just because…
This is the post that never ends…
Im so glad you wrote this whiney visceral letter in an attempt to smear and censor this documentary, you have just given them even more publicity and i cant wait to see it
@Weirwoodtreehugger, have you ever experienced Family Court and the gender bias which exists? I have. I stood in front of a judge and had her “assume” the case in front of her was one where the mother had sole custody. I have shared custody of my two beautiful children. I also have an ex who underearns for her profession while I work two jobs and she is threatening to have the courts impute more income upon me. She is looking for 40% of my take home pay to create “balanced households” and says she cannot work more (she only works about 20 hours versus my 60+) because she has to “manage our children’s schedules” (see the fact that we have “shared” custody for why I call BS on that claim).
Yes, women don’t use support money for “bon bons” but sometimes they donate $28,000 to charity from support money of close to $90,000 while their ex is left with around $4,000 for the entire year. (Actual case in Ontario (Canada) Family Court).
In terms of the argument of men getting custody when they contest custody the numbers in Canada don’t support that. Of contested cases that result in sole custody being awarded men are granted sole custody a grand total of 6 per cent of the time.
I recognize that many jurisdictions in the USA are recognizing imbalances which impact fathers unfairly in Family Court and are moving to make changes – such as caps on the amount and duration of spousal support paid. In Canada we have waited almost 20 years and still no much-needed reform is in sight.
Needless to say you are in way over your head on the discussion of gender equity as it relates to Family Court. If it makes you feel superior you can continue to call me a dolt if you want.
@Ryan, lol, let me paint this one out for you:
The only people who are even aware of this video are either a) readers of this website, or b) already MRAs. It will convince exactly no one.
Addendum: It’s apparent when someone’s full of shit and not interested in talking when their replies don’t reference anything that’s been said to them.
Ta!
This thread is over a year old. Who keeps resurrecting it?
@Andrew, my heart goes out to you and your kids. Divorce is hard on everyone, hard on the dads and the kids and the moms and everyone. I’ve got nothing but sympathy for you there, without reservation.
And good for you for sticking with your kids. Once divorced, around half of separated dads pretty much split, visiting irregularly or never. That’s according to Statistics Canada, at least. The fact that you’ve fought to stay in your kids lives means so much to them. Good for you.
But think about that for a second. After separating, a quarter of dads just walk. A quarter more only see their kids irregularly. This is a trend line.
This is not to minimize your efforts or the difficulties you’ve had – I’ve had to work long hours only to see it all drained away from me in the past, and it’s awful. Again, good for you.
But there’s a trend there of guys walking away from their families which doesn’t exist in inverse. You aren’t in that group, but that group exists and it dominates the conversation.
You don’t deserve to be painted with the same brush as those guys. It sounds like you’re trying to be a part of their lives. That’s very important, thank you for it.
As for the statistics WWTH mentioned? She’s very, very good with this, and has a lot of evidence to back her up. I won’t speak for her, but – yes, there’s a lot of evidence to support her. Put your math hat on!
@Laugher at Bigots, the article was linked over at an MRA site, so they’ve been swarming over to this one over the past while.
They all have first-name-only nyms, and they all seem to either have not read or just not comprehended the posts they’re commenting on. And they all specialize in assfax and spurious anecdotes .
@Andrew… As a child of a Canadian divorce I’m just going to try and choke down my rage for a bit. I’m glad, at least, that you seem to give a shit about your kids. A rarity among our trolls!
You’re under no obligation to tell us the specifics of your childcare arrangements (since that’s actually some pretty personal shit) but I hope you will think to yourself what your shared custody actually looks like, and who takes on the burden of that. Because if you’re working 60+ hour weeks, you don’t have the time to be taking care of your children yourself for 3 1/2 days of the week. Now, you might be paying a nanny or some other childcare worker, in which case, yeah, you should be getting support for that. But if your children are physically with your wife a majority of the time, which is why she’s saying she needs to work part time hours, it does in fact make sense that you should be paying to support that? I’m not judging you for working, by the way. I’m just saying, someone has to be in the room with your kids.
Shared custody, by the by, has been the norm in this country for more than 20 years. If both parents are interested in custody, we award sole custody to one parent pretty much if and only if there is reasonable evidence of child abuse from the other parent. Even then, supervised visitation is often an option. That’s why the number of sole male custody awards are so low, dude. The courts think it’s good for the child to have a relationship with both parents.
You’re also coming at this from an angle where the courts make all of the decisions. The vast, vast majority of divorces never see the inside of a court room. Most arrangements are made by mutual agreement. It’s not “I want the kids!” “No I want the kids!!” It’s “We should have shared legal custody, obviously. Do you want the kids every second weekend?” “Yeah, if I’m in town, because I work fucking 90 hour weeks and am constantly travelling.” “Well, that’s alright, we can work around that.”* I’m sorry that your divorce has been a difficult one.
*This was what my parents’ “shared custody” arrangement looked like. My dad payed support, despite having equal legal custody, because of course he did. My mom was spending way more money on keeping us alive than he was.
So, we have Andrew’s anecdote and we only get his side of the story, not his ex. What he failed to provide is any evidence from a reputable source (not an MRA or FRA blog) that there is any kind of systemic bias. If a divorce is contentious enough to get to family court, I can’t imagine either side is having a good time.
It’s the systemic bias that is important here. Without evidence of that, we have nothing more than a story about a personal problem. I mean, I wanted a Nintendo Classic Mini but couldn’t get it because they sold out instantly, but I’m not going to say that misogyny prevented me from getting it.
I’m also curious as to what Andrew’s parenting role was when he and his ex were still together. Did they split child rearing duties equally? Or did she do the lion’s share of diaper changing, getting up in the night, soothing owies, driving to doctor’s appointments/school/activities, helping with homework etc. Who is usually the one to take off of work when the kids are sick or the daycare is closed because of bad weather or whatever? I don’t know about in Andrew’s case, but a lot of time the dads whining about custody and child support weren’t the ones doing the majority of the parenting work.
This
Seems to indicate my suspicions are correct though. The first scare quote indicates he doesn’t believe parenting is hard work which indicates he doesn’t do most of it and never did. The second scare quote indicates that the kids are with him less than half the time.
@Scilfreja, ever think that there is a cause and effect at play with men who walk away from their kids. There is plenty of evidence – both actual and anecdotal – to suggest that fathers are treated as nothing more than an ATM in Family Court. Many men are aware the odds are stacked against them. Again, in my case I live in fear that my ex will “steal” my children away from me. This is not just a gut fear. Her lawyer made the bold statement in court that they may want to reopen custody pending the outcome of the support. In other words, if she doesn’t get her way she is using the children as leverage.
In Canada, mothers are routinely advised by counsel to make abuse claims against fathers to secure custody. Just the existence of a complaint is often enough for Kangaroo, I mean Family Court to “steal” a father’s parental rights.
Many of you so called feminists have your heads so buried in the sand that you fail to see that inequities are experienced by both genders.
@ Scilfreja, the parenting duties were about 80/20 in the 18 months leading to our spilt. That is 80/20 in my favour. I had been downsized and my ex went back to school while I was the primary caregiver. Anything else?
@Viscaria, I have my son Sunday – Wednesday and my daughter Sunday – Tuesday. I make all their breakfasts, lunches and dinners on all those days. I get the kids to school on those days. I manage ALL of my son’s rep hockey schedule on my days as well as my ex’s days. I help coach his team and am present about 4-5 times per week during hockey season. I work 9-5 Monday to Friday. I also work a second job on Friday and Saturday evenings. Anyone else looking to attack me based on misguided societal stereotypes?