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.
It’s just pretty sad that are so anti-equality and shove a fist in the vagina of reasoned debate. Generally I’ll start with 2 or 3 fingers you know, it’s not all about receiving pleasure!, and have fun with it. You are just like “f*ck reasoned debate! f*ck equality” then ignore all logic and critical thinking (see point on Hillary’s well know 30 years of actively fighting against gay rights above), get your fist, flipper, gnarly-fecal-stump, whatever, and ram it into that vagina without so much as a bit of spit or lubricant.
I guess the idea that I’m trying to express is: you are an unpleasant human being, by choice. You seem to make bad choices in life. 🙂
@Yor
Fascinating. I guess I’ll give you a try and see if there is any strength to you. Lets revisit your first comment. It is an argument that you did no work to substantiate.
1) Where is the problematic bias?
2) What would be the problem with a radical feminist site?
Bias is an accusation as the word is used socially. If you do not provide your specific examples of irrational and/or illogical bias I will consider you a coward since all you did was name-call a community.
What is the significance radical feminism here? As stated it asserts that radical feminism is “biased” as if this is a bad thing. Please explain.
Additionally WWTH is one of our more socially aggressive posters. Social aggression is a neutral and there are patterns to how that structures social interactions. I find your lack of relevant responses to them craven. You seem very poor at handling social aggression. Perhaps you should avoid being socially aggressive yourself.
What does this even mean?!
It’s Trump-speak for “She’s fat and on her period!”
Did we ever have a troll named Roy?
Because Yor isn’t very clever.
Oh, Yor? Fuck off.
Oh my god you’re right.
That’s cute.
Personally, Yor [possibly named in tribute to our lamentations about how these new trolls are dim reflections of the trolls of yore?] reminds me most of Miggy, with the florid insults toned slightly down. Maybe it’s the menstruphobia.
Maybe it’s because they are all such collections of cliches.
By the way, Yor, manatees, like almost all mammals, don’t menstruate.
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150420-why-do-women-have-periods
http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/9743/yorthehunterfromthefutu.jpg
I think I’m going to have to change my name. I’ll see you all tomorrow or whenever I get out of moderation.
Half of the necrotrolls on this post: Cassie Jaye just wants to give a voice to men’s rights activists, who are a human rights group like any other. The MRM is not misogynistic. It’s not misogynistic to care about men and men’s issues.
The other half of the necrotrolls on this post: Fat women who menstruate are gross and bad!
@ oogly, don’t worry I know I am a man but unlike what gets portrayed as the typical male in society I can:
a) operate a stove which allows me to cook rather than ordering takeout
b) operate a washer and dryer meaning I don’t have to beg for help to wash and dry my kids clothes from the smarter/stronger gender
c) drive an automobile allowing me to get my kids to their extra-curricular activities AND most importantly
d) communicate with my kids beyond just one syllable words and grunts which allows me to express compassion and empathy for my children
I know you believe men who don’t agree with your point of view are troglodytes by the nature of their opinions but some of us actually have mastered the ability to walk on our hind legs thank you very much.
Andrew (December 11, 2016 at 1:22 am), when replying to a comment two pages back, it helps to quote it. It also helps if your response relates in some way to it.
Shorter Andrew: “Shitty mid-’90s sitcoms are MISANDRY, I can do anything and everything and am practically perfect in every way, and I’ll prove it to you puppy-eating feminazis right now. *immediately fails miserably at using a blog comment thread properly*”
Was there ever a “lol men can’t drive” stereotype floating around? I thought that was an (incorrect) stereotype about women, not men.
Sigh.
@Andrew, if you wish to complain about the misandry of
as being incapable of cooking food and laundering clothes, you should direct those complaints to those who actually promulgate those stereotypes.
Which is not the people (including many men) here. Take it up with the patriarchy, and those who support it.
Is that what you thought
Ooglyboggles
meant, in their most recent comment on this thread?
Has it taken you three weeks to read that remark? How much longer will it take you to comprehend it?
PS Andrew, stop replying directly from your email notifications if you want your reply to appear in the right part of the thread, not page bottom
SFHC wins the internet. We can all go home now.
@Brony,
That was truly weak. I can show “problematic” bias throughout this site after perusing it a bit. In fact, there is barely anything but bias, hate and racism (“straight white male!” associated with all sorts of toxic language seems to be the biggest insult, which is dictionary definition racism, imagine people characterized black people in the same way; yeah, bias is putting it lightly …).
Radical feminism is as much of a problem as radical Men’s rights advocacy. Neither cares about equality. They are just angry worthless humans that make the world a worse place for all of us.
What community? I came on, talked openly and honestly and got abuse etc. That’s some “community”. More like a bag of gibbering nonsensical penises soaked in bleach than a “community”, I would suggest.
“craven” / “coward”. Love it, just hurl those turdlets out there with not even a hint of reasoning behind them. Sorry, you just came across as a 16 year old that did a gender studies course there, bit lame … I love it, I came here, got immediately insulted, and then I gave it back, but yeah, I’m craven and a coward for daring to stand up to stand up for myself. So bullying=good, so long as it’s a woman that’s the bully. Riiiiiiight, gotcha snowflake, you don’t really get this whole “logic” / “equality” thing much huh.
Radical feminists are “empty, hate-filled, human enemas” to use the technical definition (and I think we have ample evidence of that above). “Social aggression is a neutral”. Wow, I really do believe that you think you come across as intellectual. And you completely ignore the point about Hillary Clinton’s 30 years of opposition to gay rights? All above do, how craven and cowardly is that I wonder. Could it have anything to do with her being a woman, and hence, by definition she cannot be criticized for her bigotry, because “Patriarchy!”, “toxic masculinity!” bla bla? Or about how this “open letter” actively is simply a way to shut down all debate (the last sentence is explicit).
You really have nothing there. “Bias is an accusation as the word is used socially.” This is meant to be impressive right? I mean, that’s just empty gibbering. You don’t address points, you just want to stand on a soapbox and vagsplaingibber about how you are “a strong and powerful woman” and how the evil bad man is a “craven coward”! (yeah, that’s him told!! slow-clap for Brony lol!). Uh, yeah, right, brilliant Brony, come back when you can string a rational argument together. Start by addressing actual points made (lots above, from how the last sentence of this ridiculous article was simply about shutting down all debate, and the reason that I made the point about Hillary Clinton etc).
Looking forward to the explication of how an enema can be simultaneously empty and full of something [hate].
Will it invoke Schrödinger, Heisenberg, or both?
Much detached logic from the seeker of open honest discussion.
@Yor
What?
Nobody is interested in your no-doubt-imaginary sex life.
“It’s not all about receiving pleasure” — for whom? Nobody — nobody! — is interested in your rapey, with-any-luck-imaginary sex life.
Wait, wait, wait — are you accusing us of being rapists?
And using vile, sexist language to do so?
It’s very clear who’s being rapey here.
So you don’t think the rapey language got your point across? Now you’re going to use vague language? Who is this unpleasant human being?
Who does? And how do you know this? And how could you possibly have room to talk, Mister Rape Culture Enabler?
Visualize a frowny face here.
I’d say there’s approximately a 100% likelihood that Yor is a serial rapist. Can we ban him now?
@Kat: you were boring, I give you an F for trolling, I was hoping for more, it was dull, sorry. Only a moron could describe what I said as “rapey”. oh wait … “Mister Rape Culture Enabler”. yep, kafkatrolling/trapping attempt huh. Dull http://www.thedailybell.com/editorials/wendy-mcelroy-beware-of-kafkatrapping/ Boring.
Anyway, I’m not the one fisting logic and reason with a fecal stump now am I. Oh, and don’t try to sheepishly hide that fecal stump, we can all see that you have one of your own!
@PatriarchyDouche: Exactly, radical feminists are pitifully self-contradictory (by the way, Physics Masters degree here, so good luck with the lame Physics reference “Don’t be a mansplainer or indeed any kind of ‘splainer. That is, don’t lecture anyone on something they know better than you, particularly if that thing is their lived experience.” yea, so by the site rules you are in breach hahaha). Plus, radfems wear unwashed underwear, have obesity issues, and smell bad.
@ImagineIfIHadABrain Petal: Excellent troll work (for this site), I give you a D-. Good work. Keep it up.
Sigh. Yor just isn’t much good at coherence or comprehension or rebuttal.
Probably has as fine a grasp of physics as of manatee or human physiology.
That’s a critique, BTW, Yor. Not a ‘splain.
@IP
I vote yes.
To critique my views of Physics would require you a) to know about Physics, and b) to know my position on Physics, so no, that’s not a critique. Please learn English.