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.
@Paradoxy
Batman: Under the Red Hood. It’s an amazing movie, and John DiMaggio as Joker is amazing in it ?
@Handsome “Punkle Stan” Jack
nah, good to know. Might feel like sprucing myself up a bit now that I’m hanging out here more.
@thread
WOWZERS! I just noticed the previous post to this one is that bollywood number about the internet trolls…brb
@Jack and Eli
Thanks. 🙂 And thanks Eli, I did decide to just add it on and wear it with pride. Look out for Belladonna “Toxic Hag” in the future.
BTW, Jack. Carmilla is totally fucking awesome. Thank you! Brilliant. Subversive. Awesome. I had this weird moment in the early episodes where I was feeling uncomfortable because the male characters were so stereotyped and trivialized. And I think of stuff like that through my son’s eyes and want him to not feel like crap. And then I had this moment of revelation where I realized I’ve felt trivialized and felt like nothing while reading books or watching shows about 100,000 times, and I thought maybe my son could survive it, once or twice (women are expected to survive it forever), and maybe learn a bit of empathy. I guess, on the other hand, he could turn into an Andrew. 🙁
Anyway, yeah, I had a “what about teh men” moment, but it was really worth it.
Okay I had to see that and
He’s pretty decent. Sure, he’s no Mark Hamill (DiMaggio’s performance is pretty understated and quiet in comparison) but he can do the laugh like whoa. Goddamn. Give me an MP3 of his Joker laugh A+ 11/10 want to listen again and again.
Also, Black Mask is in it! You don’t see him in anything.
@Belladonna
http://67.media.tumblr.com/0402ca3821266581affd88022743b0a4/tumblr_n97b6qWIdM1qeyb9ho1_500.gif
I don’t know how far you’re into it but the dude characters get better. 90% of the cast is all ladies tho, and I just started Season 3 so, like, who knows now?
Just finished season one. Honestly, the (non-vampire) dude character got more and more sympathetic, anyway. Dumb and shallow and bro-centric, but sweet. You really felt Carmilla’s horrible choice between him and Laura.
@Belladonna
Honestly, what got me the most was LaFontaine. That whole deal made me extremely stressed, I didn’t really pay attention to much of else when it went down.
I hope you like Mattie in Season 2. She and LaFontaine are my favorites.
@Jack
Inorite? The aspiration is flawless. It’s like he’s laughing so hard he can’t breathe, and that just makes it funnier for him, so he laughs even more. So good… ?
@Axe
As a connoisseur of evil laughs, chuckles, snicker and, of course, cackles, it was
I need to find a compilation for that laugh, TBH. For the actual dialogue, I felt he could have brought in some of his Smilin’ Jack. I kept expecting his version of the Joker to do more Scar-like movements, more prissy than flashy, if you catch my drift. That might be more of the fault of the director, however.
Also, look what I’ve stumbled upon
Okay, I found this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjIYXyURpLg&t
and I forgot how good Kevin Michael Richardson’s Joker was (def Hamill inspired, so hammy and lively). Too bad the person who voiced the Batman was so…shit. Not a…not a good voice fit.
@Jack
I was going thru some The Batman stuff recently. Muh childhood, ya know? Then my eyes drifted to the comments section and… I learned that, apparently, everyone hates KMR’s Joker. But how? He’s great!
And speaking of his laugh:
@Axe
OH MY GOD HE VOICED PANDABUBBA OF COURSE HE DID. Too bad Pandabubba was in, like, three episodes tops. That show wasted so many good side characters.
And “everyone” hates KMR’s Joker because he was the Joker after Hamill. It has nothing to do with his own talents. Also, like, compared to BTAS, The Batman doesn’t have the best writing. Really cool designs, though. Tom Kenny as the Penguin, too. Plus, like, The Batman Versus Dracula was, like, amazing.
But, like, a special mention to Joker doing fucking kick-ass kung fu shit in The Batman. Who could possibly hate that but stinky purists who have to have everything art deco and shit?
I should really just, like, binge watch all those 90s/00s superhero shows I watched as a kid. BTAS, Batman Beyond, The Batman, Static Shock, Justice League, The Tick, Freakazoid, Teen Titans, probably other stuff I’ve forgotten. All that junk.
I love you guys (not!)
Here is a collection of quotes from this “inclusive” (not), “open-minded” bunch of single-minded people on this thread:
From weirwoodtreehugger:
This from the Department of Justice in Canada (link to full article is below the quote)
http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/fl-lf/famil/stat2000/p4.html
Yes, I know the Canadian government is in on the conspiracy and these numbers are not real (laughing!)
again from weirwood (can I call you woody?)
Not sure about the USA but in Canada there is no info on the amount of court-ordered child support (by the way if you look at my posts my complaint is more about spousal and not child support. While I do think that the child support formula in Canada is a cause for concern as sometimes awards exceed 50, 60, 70, 80 and yes even 90% of a paying parent’s take-home pay I do not begrudge paying child support that is FAIR. For the record I make just over $80,000 and I pay $920 in child support per month in a shared custody situation.) but here is the government’s child support calculator if you would like to plug in some numbers for shits and giggles. Throwing a number out there without accounting for all the variables (custody arrangement, income, age and number of children, location in country, age of parties involved) is a fool’s game.
http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/fl-df/child-enfant/look-rech.asp
from Scildfreja
true in uncontested cases. Not true in contested cases – at least this is the case in Canada where the overwhelming number of contested “court-ordered” custody arrangements go the way of the mother (see the quote and the link above)
again from Scildfreja
But given that even you said that 1/4 of men just “walk away” from their responsibility (and those guys are mostly dirtbags and should be villified) that means that 3/4 do not “walk away”. This number begs the question should the 1/4 “dominate the conversation” or should we not make room for discussion on why court-ordered, contested custody cases almost always result in the mother receiving custody? Again, these are Canadian government numbers but I suspect there is a similar story in the USA
From Viscaria
again, not true in Canada (see above). also, if that is the case why are legislators in Canada so against making it the “norm” officially by changing our country’s Divorce Act (see story link below).
http://www.lawtimesnews.com/201406164024/focus-on/focus-equal-shared-parenting-bill-defeated
From woody
The strong insinuation seems to be that I am an abuser. Does anyone else like being categorized in such a horrible way with no real substance or reason? I thought not.
From Kupo
I said men’s “shelter”. This men’s “centre” while laudable does not seem to qualify as a “shelter” for men fleeing abusive relationships. keep trying though.
From EJ
Not sure what your point was. I was not on a “gender soapbox” just trying to say why don’t feminists start to welcome men to the discussion on issues. Clearly society will benefit with a healthier, inclusive dialogue.
They also confirm my point that the victims of these heinous acts are not the sole domain of females. why does the discussion of domestic abuse and sexual assault (especially in people below a certain age) need to be put into “gender” silos? If a man gets killed in a domestic assault (and they do) is that a different discussion entirely than if a woman gets killed? Please don’t tell me you believe that.
You are kidding right? Men’s associations on post-secondary campuses which are being set-up to create a dialogue on men’s issues are being banned at an alarming rate. These groups are all inclusive (sound unfamiliar?) in that they allow both genders to join and take part in discussion. read on.
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/robyn-urback-student-union-brands-mens-rights-groups-as-hateful-clubs-that-justify-sexual-assault
from Woody
Forgive me but in the absence of legal counsel and/or parents standing up an admitting that they lied about abuse to gain an edge in a custody battle I will believe the smoking gun that the Canadian Federal government provided via the analysis/guidlines in the link provided earlier (here it is again) regarding the topic of False Allegations. Funny how feminists use the “under-reporting” argument in sexual assault/domestic abuse numbers to support their argument but when another group uses it then it is just “speculation”.
http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/fl-lf/divorce/2001_4/p3.html
From HPSJ
Yes, I have and like many movements I find the extremes to be vindictive, hateful and divisive. Rather than forgiving, loving and inclusive (if the shoe fits wear it “sweetheart”)
From Kupo
Again, she chooses to earn less than half. Why is that concept so hard? Sit on you ass and earn the same amount than if you work more OR in other words work just enough to not raise red flags with the Family Court system.
From woody
Did you not read earlier that I work two jobs? Also, maybe I am a manager?
No but that should be the starting point in contested cases (Equal Shared Parenting). It would then become necessary for either side to prove that it is in the best interest of the children that ESP not be the final result.
I could go on but I have to work to feed the (spousal support) beast. Parent-teacher interviews tonight (and no, I am not sending my non-existent nanny to take my place).
Why is the troll calling me Woody?
The more this guy martyrs himself, the less I believe his tales of woe. I did like his excuse that he can troll all day because he’s a manager. If that’s the truth, he must be a terrible manager. Maybe he wouldn’t have to work 12 hour days if he did his work instead of trolling!
And that link just said there was a court order, not that the father fought for full or equal custody.
@ woody, you called me a “dolt” which is far more offensive.
So now in your opinion I am an abusive father and a bad manager. Nice.
How about this Woody? does this spell I-M-B-A-L-A-N-C-E clearly for you?
and a further read on the woeful state of the Family Court system in Canada and how it treats fathers (do you get it now?)
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/barbara-kay-fair-play-for-divorced-dads
People, I don’t know much about the US system to comment in an informed fashion. But I suspect most of you are Americans and likewise are mis/ill-informed about the Canadian system. In Canada there is clear evidence that the deck is stacked against “good” fathers (again, not the deadbeats that shirk their duties as a father). why is it so hard to believe that this is the case despite all the evidence supporting what I contend?
I don’t know much about Canada, but I seem to remember that the National Post is a somewhat problematic source, famous for hating trans people, gay people and Islamic people. Viscaria, Scildfreja, help me out here: am I misremembering?
@wwth
Ugh. Woody? He must not have bothered to notice that in other people’s comments, you get called wwth.
As usual with these guys, I can’t figure out what he wants. I read his links. I found the information interesting and didn’t disagree (well, except to vehemently disagree with the whiny, cluelessness of the nationalpost article, which as usual with MRAs, reduces incredibly complex issues to “boohoo, men can’t do nothin'”). But it also didn’t support the points he seems to be trying to make. And he can’t see how it doesn’t support those points.
Several of us have repeatedly told Andrew that we really do care about male victims of assault and so on. I even allowed that I agree that divorce court usually doesn’t favor men in custody arrangements. But he repeatedly quotes only lines that he thinks support his confirmation bias about what unreasonable vindictive bitches we are. I imagine those are the only quotes he’ll take back to his MRA buddies too, so they can all go on hating those horrible feminists.
So seriously, I’m really curious. What exactly were you hoping to hear when you came here, Andy? That of course men’s issues are more important than women’s issues, and we should totally be much more inclusive by only talking about men’s issues? We have quite a few men who participate in this forum who’ve shared personal stories of abuse and have received a lot of sympathy and support. A couple of us even expressed sympathy for your personal situation. But, whatever.
At least I got an awesome new name, but I have to say that the Andrew show has really jumped the shark, now.
Wow EJ, now the National Post, a national mainstream Canadian newspaper is racist and homophobic? Really? Do you really want to go there?
Right, so, all of those are things that might hurt, but just because they hurt don’t mean they’re wrong. I’m not going to reply to every beat of the gish gallop there; just those addressed to me, plus one more. First, mine.
No, the statistics on that don’t differentiate between contested and uncontested cases. They are an aggregate from surveys.
I do statistics for a living, sir. I do know how to read them.
The 3/4 who do not should not be villified! (though I’d suggest that the extra 1/4 who are only irregular visitors in their childrens’ lives should rearrange their priorities. Depending on circumstance of course)
This doesn’t change the fact that 25% of men abandon their kids after a separation, while only – was it 6%? – of women do the same. The null hypothesis is that the distributions of those groups are the same, meaning that there’s a much larger proportion of men who abandon their kids out of negligence than out of being forced away by legal activity.
Again – I don’t argue that women are considered better care-givers due to their gender. That’s sexism-at-work, it’s responsible for a number of things like the wage gap and lower employability and the like.
Again again – I am a statistician. I know how to read statistics.
Finally – the last thing. I’m going to go through your links one-by-one and explain why they aren’t worthy of consideration as evidence. In fact, most of them should be outright ignored as an appeal to emotions.
Excellent stats, high quality, well distributed, great sampling. You’re highlighting one detail of these reports without also looking at the related details or the larger trends. This is called cherry-picking colloquially.
You clearly just searched for this in the middle of the argument – there’s a google.ca/ in there from the search engine. That indicates that you copied-and-pasted from the search engine instead of from the link itself. Suggests that you included it without reading it first.
The judge blasted both parents for being shits and squandering the future of their kids. The dad’s the one that spend more money.
Do I need to tell you why that’s not good evidence?
This one comes with an anecdote – a heartbreaking one – of a court case involving a psychologist advising that a dad not be given visitation rights. And that case? Yeah, the first psychologist was wrong and both the kids and the dad suffered terribly over it. It’s miserable.
What it isn’t, though, is a trend. It’s a single case. This is also an instance of cherry picking. The article topic is an issue of councilors and professionals becoming emotionally entangled in the lives of the parents fighting for custody, and it makes no statements of a preference for mothers or fathers.
You have no causal chain.
Great resource overall, that one, though. Lots of evidence to be had there. I liked the following quotes from the same page you linked:
Also, if you had read your linked article thoroughly (that means hitting the “family law” menu and then looking for “child support” articles, you’d have answer for this:
In Canada, average child support payment for men is $450 (don’t recall the exact number, but it’s within 15 of that).
This is an anecdote. Anecdotes are generally emotional appeals, making them misleading when not accompanied by supporting evidence.
Note: I know he’s a lawyer giving a professional opinion. professional opinions aren’t data. I trust his opinion more than a random person regarding court matters, but I also know lawyers that disagree with him. The legal profession doesn’t have a way to compare these two positions to determine which is right, so we can’t take it as more than a personal opinion.
Your standards for supporting evidence are abysmally low, and you are favouring emotional appeals over broad statistics. There’s also reasonable evidence that you’re using post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning.
That is not an insult – it’s pretty much the standard way human beings search for evidence. Unfortunately, brains prefer terrible reasons that support our preconceived beliefs over good reasons that contravene them.
What you do with this information is up to you.
Unlike the above, your link to the fathersforlife website does seem to have some weight behind it. However, it only provides aggregate graphs without evidence. It does provide a single reference, though:
Pulkingham, Jane. “Private Troubles, Private Solutions: Poverty Among Divorced Women and the Politics of Support Enforcement and Child Custody Determination.” Canadian journal of Law and Society 9.02 (1994): 73-97.
I had to dig to actually pull that up, because the citation wasn’t in a professional format – this suggests that it’s very likely the actual results have been misinterpreted. As is obvious, people who are unfamiliar with statistics can get them wrong very, very easily, and take from them things which they don’t imply.
(I’ve spotted errors elsewhere on that website, which is why I can’t just take a couple graphs and a sentence at face value.)
The abstract is here:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/canadian-journal-of-law-and-society-la-revue-canadienne-droit-et-societe/article/private-troubles-private-solutions-poverty-among-divorced-women-and-the-politics-of-support-enforcement-and-child-custody-determination/4C3D675199E593CE12373245A6827AD6
I don’t have access to that journal, but will look it up, because that’s going to be the primary source, and will provide clues as to whether it says what your website implies. I’ll keep digging.
Hmm… Who here was around at the time of Woody-the-troll? What were his tells? (I have tried reading old Woody threads, but he was basically NyQuil in moron form.)
“Mainstream” and “Racist and homophobic [and sexist and transphobic and ableist and…]” are effectively synonymous, so I’m not sure what your point is here.
Nope, I read about this case months ago and while the judge blasted both sides it was the mother who took the brunt of his judgement – she was ordered to pay almost $200K of her ex’s legal costs who also was granted sole custody.
show me that evidence I would love to read it. I found nothing through Stats Can. This will not change the fact that this number is still a “fool’s” number IMO, as the number of moving parts in determining child support are many. You say you read stats for a living? Then you know that average amount – even if accurate – does not give a real assessment of whether the Spousal Support Advisory Guidelines (SSAG) and the Divorce Act manages the issue of support in a fair and balanced way. For me – as someone who is paying $1200 aggregate per month, and being told by my ex and her lawyer that it should be $1800 per month – the answer to the question of fairness and balance in the system is an emphatic NO!
There are reforms required to child support guidelines IMO but first and foremost judges in provincial courts in Canada need to understand that SSAG, as the name implies, are only guidelines. They need to use critical thinking and rational thought before they hand down spousal support orders (and in some cases child support orders) which are not sustainable. There is ample evidence in Canada to support that the “Deadbeat Dad” registry is inaccurate for two reasons:
1/ The government has people registered who are not indeed “deadbeat” by the fact that any of the following applies – they are the parental custodian; are current and up-to-date with payments; are dead (yes, there is a percentage on the list who are no longer with us and this inflates the numbers)
2/ The system creates so-called “deadbeats” with orders that are unsustainable (see the link. anecdotal or not it is still true according to court documentation)
http://www.fact.on.ca/news/news0003/oc000327.htm
I am just trying to open some eyes on this issue. Just like the spousal abuse issue , when are we going to wake up and see that human lives are being needlessly lost because the system is letting men and women down.
Andrew is like a less entertaining version of NWO Slave. He would always whine about how the feminist state made him slave away. All he did was work. Yet he still found time to troll constantly.
And $1800 dollars a month to an extent wife who only has the kids for two days a week really, really doesn’t add up. Not unless Andrew is very wealthy.
So… I hope the other trolls who showed up while I was gone weren’t as tedious and boring as this one.