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.
@ weirwoodtreehugger, as the saying goes people like you are part of the problem and not the solution. Undermining fathers’ roles in raising their children by making generalizatons which are sexist (yes, I said it) is part of that zero sum game of which I spoke earlier. Why is it so hard to believe men can be the victims if discrimination? Saying that men are usually the ones who discriminate makes it no less unjust when discrimination cuts the other way.
I always find it weird that dudes come in here going up and down about how they’re getting shafted by the system when all my papa (grandpa, I should say) did was ask for custody of my mother and her sisters and he got them. Back in the 60s. You’d think women would be even more favorable to get full custody then because there wasn’t much else otherwise for a lady to do but alas.
Also @Andrew, you can just put all your responses in one post, you know. No rules saying you need to address everyone with their own little box or nothin’.
I suuuuper didn’t attack you. I didn’t attack you at all, despite the fact that you brought up some very personal pain and anger. I didn’t base my suspicions on so-called stereotypes — that women do the majority of unpaid labour in this country is not a stereotype but a statistic — but on your own stated working hours. I made a point of saying that it isn’t a bad thing if your work means less physical time with your kids. I also made a point of saying you didn’t owe me any particular response. I recognize that your emotions are a bit raw on this issue but if you read that as an attack I don’t know how you can even try to engage with anyone about this.
I’m done with you, in any case. I wish all the best for your children.
@Andrew
I can’t exactly make a judgement until I see both sides of the story here. Because I have the sinking feeling that there are things left unsaid.
Except for, fuck, I just fully read your reply to Scildfreja, and jeezus.
CN child abuse, IPV
“Routinely?” That is very fucking definitely not “routine.” Are you kidding me?
Our approach to credible child abuse allegations is to remove children from the potentially dangerous situation while the allegations are investigated. This system has some definite flaws: for one, First Nations children are removed from the home at a far greater rate than any other Canadian child. For another, it is potentially vulnerable to malicious allegations. But those can come from any party, not just mothers. And it’s not like social services doesn’t then follow up on these allegations.
On a personal note, I have, thoughout my life, known several women who escaped abusive spouses and those spouses were still allowed to see their children. One man had only hit his ex wife, which the court does not consider to be an indicator that he might be dangerous to his children. One scared his child through threats of suicide so that the child would claim that no violence was happening in the household. Kangaroo court my fucking ass. I’m about 1000% more invested in protecting kids than in protecting your persecution complex.
I’m side eyeing this quite a bit. Anytime a man starts acting like false accusations of abuse (or rape) are something that women are constantly doing, it’s a giant red flag.
Citation very much needed. On everything you’ve asserted. Not just this paragraph.
And BTW, I’m not saying that father can’t or shouldn’t do half the domestic work. I’m saying that statistically speaking, they don’t. Fathers are way more involved than they used to be though. You have feminism to thank for that.
@Viscaria, again saying that there are real cases of abuse reported by women who should fear for their own or their chilldren’s safety does not mean there are not women who dupe the system to gain an edge. Again, I encounter this “Virgin Mary” type of thinking – that women are somehow above lying – all the time. I also hear that there are dads who abandon their kids or don’t pay support. So what? They are fucking douche bags and should be treated as thus. What does this have to do with women who are abusive, who lie to gain an advantage in custody or support battles. What I seem to be hearing on this thread is what a like to call “protecting the sisterhood”. Women who defend women who behave badly. Again, zero sum game and not a real path to any harmony.
Hi Andrew.
I believe that your statement above can be rephrased as:
“There is A. There is also B. So what? You shouldn’t mention A, because I’m talking about B.”
This is not an unjust position to take, if the two are different in degree. If I broke a nail and you broke your leg, it would be tasteless for me to interrupt you with my petty problems when yours are more serious.
Let’s take the example of domestic abuse. I am told – I do not have the statistics in front of me – that 6% of heterosexual domestic abuse cases are committed by a woman. This means that 94% are committed by a man – almost seventeen times as many.
In your mind, is it worth ignoring the 94% and concentrating on the 6%? Would we not be better off asking “what do men being abused have to do with the real issue, which is women being abused?” The statistics would seem to indicate so.
If you have better stats than I do, or you have numbers regarding some of the other issues you touched upon – for example, how frequently people of either gender are found to lie during divorce hearings – then by all means let’s discuss those stats.
Until then, however, be aware that you’re acting kind of like an asshole – and since we share a gender, I object to you claiming to speak for that gender in this manner.
Andrew,
Your original position wasn’t that women who lie about abuse and/or are abusers themselves exist. They do exist and no one here says otherwise. Your position was that women and their attorneys routinely falsely accuse men of abuse in order to deny him custody of his kids.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Nobody is going to take your word for this and trying to distract us by claiming we’re big meanies who think women are all perfect angels is not going to work. Your tactic of saying a shitty thing and then trying to guilt trip us for calling out is manipulative.
Manipulative behavior is a classic abuser sign. With each post, it’s looking more and more like you’re projecting.
@ Weirwoodtreehugger OK, here come the statistics. I am sure you will say somehow the CDC is being influenced by the MRAs? Keep that head buried in the sand. You don’t want equality for all – just your gender.
http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/nisvs_report2010-a.pdf
Also, in 2010 Statistics Canada reported that there are 627 battered women shelters in Canada (again, I am not saying this is not a good thing). Despite growing evidence that there is a need for some of the same for men (sometimes with children) fleeing abusive relationships guess how many shelters for abused men there are in Canada’s largest city, Toronto? ZERO!
@ EJ you state “In your mind, is it worth ignoring the 94% and concentrating on the 6%? ” I never said that, not once. How about acknowledging the 6% (or 2% or 10% or 20% or whatever percentage of men who may be impacted by an issue)? How about stopping the nonsense of making an issue a “gender” issue when there clearly are men impacted as well as women (think of studies that show close to 1/3 of boys under 10 suffer from body image issues yet the discussion seems to exclude them. Think of the discussion on domestic violence which indicate that while women are three times more likely in Canada to be killed by their spouse men are still being killed by their female spouses).
Again, you are all playing a zero sum game of which society is already seeing the impact in the form of a 3:1 male to female suicide rate; a male drop-out rate that is double that of their female counterparts and a growing raft of numbers that support that boys are being marginalized in institutions such as schools (this is a whole other conversation but if you want a starting point read the book Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys).
Wake up and get off your gender soap box and make discussions on issues more inclusive. Both sides shouting at the other gender and laying blame at their feet is never going to lead to any real resolution which will benefit society as a whole.
@ Laugher at Bigots you state
I don’t feel the need to hide behind a handle. I think a real open discussion on issues should begin with transparency. You think otherwise.
@ Weirwoodtreehugger, nice generalization
Not once have I been accused of any type of abuse in my relationship. I can count the times I have struck either of my children on one finger (a hard whack on the butt for my son over four years ago). My kids are the most important part of my world and I treat them with respect and compassion. You insinuating otherwise is one of the deepest insults you can level against me.
Again, you are the part of the problem on the issue of gender equity. You are barely worth acknowledgement.
I’ll have a bigger reply later, Andrew – I’m in meetings all day at work.
For now though: You do realize that we advocate for equality for men here, right? Like, we don’t want you to have any undue burdens here. Read what we’ve said again – we’ve said that statistically men don’t pursue custody and stuff. Nowhere have we said that men shouldn’t have access to their kids, or be made to pay an unjust amount of money. We oppose these things. We also support things like men’s shelters and domestic abuse support for men. We talk about these things pretty frequently in the comments actually!
So what’s the deal, man? Why do you think we’re against these things?
Will reply to your posts later.
@Andrew
Please provide a source to your claim that women are routinely advised to make false abuse allegations in order to gain custody.
I can’t open a pdf right now but will check it this evening when I get home. What am I checking for though? I’m confused. How does something from a US agency prove that Canadian family law attorneys conspire with female clients to steal kids from their fathers? Or are you referencing something else? I’m not scared to look at CDC data but since you’ve started to Gish gallop, you’ll have to tell us what specific point you refer to.
Do I need need to reiterate that no one said abused men don’t exist? My issue is with your claim that there’s a systemic bias in family courts and especially with your claim about the false accusation conspiracy.
I’ve also noticed that Andrew is doing that typical MRA thing where male abuse victims go unacknowledged if the abuser is another man.
Also, I’m pretty sure that the claim that there are no men’s shelters in Toronto has been debunked before but I don’t have time to look that up until later and am not sure I need to until Andrew sources his claim better.
@WWTH
It’s a claim that comes from CAFE, and we all know how credible they are. Oh, hey, what’s this? A men’s center in Toronto?
Did… did Andrew just put down his own argument? I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before.
@Andrew re handles:
I and several others feel the need to “hide behind handles” because we share some sensitive stuff here. There are several accounts of sexual assault on here, and I don’t blame any victims for not wanting to divulge their real names.
Also, there are several million Andrews, so it’s not actually very transparent.
By the way: those statistics that Andrew quoted are excellent ones AFAIK. Large sample, well controlled, well normalised, all of that good stuff. They confirm that domestic abuse, rape, stalking, and other forms of violence and harassment are primarily experienced by women.
Andrew, I’m not a hundred percent sure what your point was in linking those stats, since they don’t support your position. Yes, domestic abuse is something that affects all genders; but it affects women more often than men, it affects them worse, and as such this is where we need to concentrate.
I’m still waiting for your statistics on people lying in divorce hearings, by the way. You wouldn’t make a claim like that without statistics, would you?
(Oh, and: when you get around to establishing a men’s shelter, I promise you that I will make donations to it. The reason why women have more shelters is that they actually help one another instead of just whining on the internet. Men refusing to help one another is a legitimate issue that our gender has and one that we need to do something about – but I don’t see you, or any MRA, doing it.)
Yeah, the MRM would much rather demand that feminists build men’s shelters than build those shelters themselves. Doing your own work is misandry!
I have never seen feminists try to stop anyone from building a men’s shelters. Ever. Also, workers at women’s shelters don’t scream “get thee gone, evil man!” at male victims and toss them out on the street. They give hotel vouchers and provide them with other help and resources.
I’m unwilling to actually read what Andrew has written, but based on the responses I feel like I should clarify: at no point did I suggest that men are never abused. In relating anecdotes of actually abused women whose ex-husbands retained access to their children, I was countering the claim that a woman claiming abuse (child or spousal) is sufficient to lead to a man losing all such access.
Which makes me wonder if they’re all Mark.
I just looked at your post. Plenty of generalizations and suppositions. That is what angers many modern fathers.
Not a single part of this applies to me. No nanny. I usually am the one who stays home with the kids when they are sick. I spend by my estimate about 10-15 hours per week managing my son’s hockey schedule (my ex does manage my daughter’s synchro schedule which is significant).I am there for almost all significant events for both my children. I offer to take the kids when my wife is not able to take them (she does the same for me). I have watched as my ex has used my children as pawns, a meal ticket to squeeze more money from me – even though I am every bit as present and involved in their lives. The notion that spousal support should be as long or longer than a marriage (in my case 10 years) makes no sense. Feel free to argue otherwise but if the goal is self sufficiency of both parties how is this achieved through court ordered support that gives a recipient little motivation to “stand on their feet” financially.
For those of you who say there is an implied starting point of shared custody that is utter BS. Equal Shared Parenting legislation has still not been adopted in Canada due in large part to feminist pressure. Even the newly adopted universal childcare benefit in Canada automatically goes to “the woman in the household” (think about that for a moment I said “woman” and not “mother”. Biological fathers who are primary caregivers are required to get consent from the common law wife and/or the biological mother before the government will address these payments to them).
I have been fighting with the CRA for months over my claim that I should be entitled to an eligible dependent deduction for one of my children. What is disqualifying me? I pay child support (huh?). Non tax-exempt to me – tax free to my ex – child support. You can say this is not gender specific tax law and you would be right but when over 90% of all support paid in Canada is paid by men we may have an issue.
In terms of the “routine” false allegations of abuse in family courts I guess the Canadian Department of Justice thought it was a “routine” and not isolated practice enough to make that body commission a study into the cause and impact.
I don’t think I will ever get people like weirwood to take their heads out of their nether regions and understand that men are impacted by issues as well. You can quote statistics but men who fight an often uphill battle in Family Court and children (just like mine) who are regularly negatively impacted by a gender-biased system have names, faces, hopes and feelings just like everyone else.
If anyone cares, Andrew’s last post migrated way up the page. He only said that I have head up my ass because men’s anecdotes matter more than statistics. So nobody is missing much.
I guess we shouldn’t hold our breath on that evidence that attorneys are telling women to lie about abuse.