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.
The hockey cost is probably the most believable part. School fees aren’t too bad but when you get into private clubs it gets pricey. It still does not prove much because Canadians mostly all know about hockey. It’s OK for me to stereotype because MN is the same way.
My parents were married when I was growing up so they weren’t doing the child care alone and they would have never had time to troll the internet all day. 80s and early 90s pop culture references are completely lost on them except for a few TV shows. There’s just no way that a busy parent with two jobs is going to be able to spend two straight days trolling.
@Belladonna @SFHC
Fair points. I only notice it myself because I was skimming and it stood out as something I’ve been bothering them about.
Like, for some reason, the fact that courts have methods to prosecute people for slander in court is reason enough to believe women are told to lie about abuse is, like, just fantastical leaps in logic.
I hope they’re not their own lawyer.
@Jack
That was pretty much my whole dumbfounded reading of it. Plus, where in the world did the “underreporting” statement come from? What did I miss? Was he saying men who are falsely accused of abuse don’t say so? That they just helplessly shrug their shoulders and say, yeah, I did. I abused my children? Because that seems a little far-fetched. The only thing I could think of is that he thinks “underreporting” has something to do with not receiving enough news coverage or something.
@Andrew
I wasn’t going to bother with you, but I wanted to point out for anyone lurking who might actually need the info, if you go to that men’s center website I linked they actually do work with shelters in the area. If you or someone you know is being abused, please contact them.
@Belladonna
“Am I biased? No, it must be the statistics that are wrong.”
@Andrew
You have yet to prove that your situation is commonplace.
somehow that was actually written a) as if shed read it and b) as if she wasnt totally sympathic and has openly sworn off feminism. tastes pretty salty. i think what you dont like is that everyone doesnt always agree with you. that something exists in the media other than intensely biased hit material produced by establishment feminists. and that it irks you actually communicates fear, fear that the ideas you dislike will get an open and fair hearing. what i like about that is the niavity. the middle class world over is waking up and rejecting identity politics. all whilst fearing mras, the long silent everyday person has just gotten overly tired of your shit, and being told how to think. think europe, britain, the us. the vote is slowly coming in, the pushback growing likeva tidal wave, whilst the priviledged professional, academic white middle class pc brigade keep preaching as if that was helping their cause.
http://i380.photobucket.com/albums/oo244/milo_05/HeadDesk.gif
This thread will truly never die, will it? Did all the trolls get together and agree on shifts or something? Because as soon as one leaves, another appears.
I just don’t even know if I can address the same old “you’re just afraid of dissent!” bullshit again.
And again
And again
And again.
http://24.media.tumblr.com/d6fc3206df1daf5baa1fe49d716a73bc/tumblr_msba0nKpQM1qm6sfao1_500.gif
Ugh.
Erin, Erin, Erin. Looks familiar. Didn’t you comment on here before?
Anyway, like WWTH said, we’ve done that whole song and dance before. Just go back a few pages to read it, cupcake.
@Erin
For the sake of all that’s good in this world, throw a line break in there
The irony, I can taste it
I’m… 2 of those things, but none of the important ones
OK, with that and the “white” bit in the other quote, are… are you meant to be some kinda womanist? That’d be marginally interesting!
Is there a way to lock this thread? Also, for some reason, Andrew’s comment on November 17th has been moving down, down, down.
Why would a womanist speak about “rejecting identity politics”? Why would a womanist think David is just salty about Red Pillers “disagreeing” with feminism? Why would they be against people who are “PC”? That don’t make sense. Of course, I’m not a womanist, so I dunno. Like, maybe they’re not white but I think that’s about as close to womanist as they’d get. Maybe.
@Laugher at Bigots
Eh, it’ll stop when we get enough comments to fill make it to the next page. It’s a bug.
@Jack
People are different, ideologies are squishy, identification is personal. I’ve long given up tryna make sense outta any of it. I’m just curious if they identify that way
@Axe
You’re right. It’s just, like, I never met or read about any womanist who uses the word “PC” and “identity politics” as if they’re taking such phrases seriously.
http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/130/999/88b.png
I’m baaaaaaack!
For those of you with an open mind read the article in the attached link where a family lawyer with far more knowledge and real life experience through family court on the subject of allegations of violence against fathers than any of us pokes so many holes in the study that the analysis by the author resembles a piece of swiss cheese.
the link to the article is below.
https://lawdiva.wordpress.com/2015/06/02/no-gender-bias-in-family-courts-say-irish-academics/#comment-16555
This is the best quote IMO from Lang.
Seriously Andrew. What are you trying to accomplish here? Nobody here is trying to keep fathers from their children. Even of you were capable of proving systemic bias against men, what good is necroing a thread on a mocking misogyny site going to do to change it?
Whining that feminists aren’t doing your work for you will get you nowhere.
At least comment in more current threads for fuck’s sake!
@ good ole’ Woody, the person who thinks it is OK for her to provide anecdotal evidence
but if anyone on the other side of the discussion provides same they are misogynist MRAs.
The discussion on how gender biased the family court system has become (at least in Canada) won’t go away no matter how many times you say the word misogyny!
Get a grip!
I think you’re missing something here: WWTH has not said that anecdotal evidence makes you a misogynist or an MRA. She has not said that misogyny causes anecdotal evidence, either. The two are unrelated. It is possible to be an MRA and quote accurate, statistically robust data. It is also possible to not be an MRA and rely on anecdotal evidence.
Based on your behaviour in this thread, you come across very strongly as a misogynist. You also happen to rely on anecdotal evidence and other bad data during your Gish Gallops. The fact that WWTH has quoted an anecdote does not make you not a misogynist.
You also come across as a pretty shitty person and someone with whom I’m ashamed to share a gender, but that’s nothing to do with the anecdotal nature of anyone’s arguments.
@ EJ
really, because I am saying gender equity is a discussion which should involve both genders and because I make a fairly common claim (not just by MRAs but by some people in the legal profession, politicians and family lawyers) that there is a systemic bias against men in the family court system that makes me a misogynist? why is that certain jurisdictions not only in NA but around the world are moving to reform family law in cases of both custody and support to recognize changing family dynamics? I live in one of the apparent hold-out countries which is still stuck in the 50s with a system that does not treat fathers with the same respect before the courts as it treats mothers (you can say this is not systemic but the fact that Equal Shared Parenting legislation is still being fought for by fathers in this country will tell us otherwise).
why? You don’t know me. You making this type of caustic characterization is “shitty” (no, I am not saying you are a shitty person. I don’t know you well enough to make that type of assessment). While I do not agree with much of what you say (and some of the other people on this thread) I have been at worse a little sarcastic but have not stooped to personal attacks (look in the mirror EJ). That comment gets filed among the ones where people have said they “feel sorry for my daughter”; my comments sound like that of an “abusive parent”; I am a woman hating “misogynist” for no other reason than having an opinion (one that is not “out there” like the world is flat) which differs from those on this thread.
Most of you have zeroed in on my comment regarding “false accusations” of abuse in custody proceedings (something I still believe happens but is very difficult to quantify with statistics. Again, in Canada just an allegation can (and has) lead to a parent – mostly fathers – parental rights being stripped) and have ignored/dismissed much of what I am proposing. That being that gender issues (including but not limited to Family Court) should not a battle ground between men and women. They should be an open forum where all opinions are welcome and both sides are heard E-Q-U-A-L-L-Y. Yes, some issues require more focus on one gender than the other as that gender may be impacted more but that does not mean that society does not lose as a whole if we continue to have this argument which is about one side winning over the other.
Andrew, dear. Since you refuse to provide any statistical evidence that there is a systemic bias against men in family courts or when you do the stats don’t say what you claim they do, it’s kind of hard to discuss evidence that’s not anecdotal.
Since you made the claim, you need to back it up. I don’t need to disprove your claim. If you don’t have evidence backing your claim and there are many anecdotes to counter your anecdotes, your claim looks a bit suspect now doesn’t it.
You still haven’t said why you’re here and what you hope to accomplish by necro trolling an old thread.
Oh, boo fucking hoo. You made an extremely outlandish claim. That family law attorneys routinely instruct women to make false abuse allegations in order to steal kids from dads. Since you are accusing a large swath of people of not just unethical but criminal behavior, you need to back it up. Or at least say you were wrong to make the claim and apologize. Don’t act all offended that you’re expected to back up your claim and don’t act all offended that these blatant abuse apologetics make people wonder about you. Although I when I called your behavior a red flag, I was thinking of intimate partner abuse. Not child abuse.
But yeah, when you show more concern for people accused of abuse (who statistically speaking are probably guilty) than people who are abuse victims, that doesn’t say anything good about you.
I’m definitely white, but I barely squeaked through high school and have a blue collar job. I work full time while also being primary caregiver to a family member who has been disabled by a stroke. How does that fit into your stereotype of us as ivory-tower dwellers, Erin?
(I’ll be waiting a long time for an answer, I’ll bet.)
http://i.imgur.com/4Jt1ww3.png
=P
I’m thankful for trolls for the entertainment they provide.
‘cept the boring and tedious ones. Can we replace Andrew with a funnier model at least for Thanksgiving ?