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.
As it happens, I am educated in physics. I do it for a living. Black hole formation is something I know a little bit about, although it’s not my speciality. If you would like me to tell you about it then I’d be happy to.
However, I suspect that my ink would be wasted. If you scroll up, you’ll see that Viscaria has made a real effort to educate you, giving you some leads for your reading on feminism and gender theory. This was your opportunity to show some intellectual curiosity and humility, approaching a subject you aren’t an expert on. Instead, you wasted that opportunity, opting to revel in your own continued ignorance. I’m glad you didn’t go into science; with that attitude I doubt you would have brought us much.
So no, I don’t want to have a drink and talk physics with you. I judge a person by the company they keep, and from what I’ve seen, your company isn’t something worth keeping.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to sit and read what WWTH is saying, because I have the opportunity to learn from her, and that’s an opportunity I want to seize.
I dunno, maybe he has at least one point.
As far as feminists go, you guys here are all pretty radical.
http://pre15.deviantart.net/2ffc/th/pre/i/2012/136/5/8/time_skip_mlp__discord_by_ss2sonic-d500xc8.jpg
@kupo:
I also love the way that he congratulated himself for knowing more maths and science than the female-identified people here, then instantly claimed (when confronted with a male-identified person) that he had made no such claim.
Boys can’t consistent.
(I’m glad he didn’t also claim to be a better programmer than you, because that would have gone poorly for him.)
@Brony:
Please never change.
@Scildfreja:
No apologies necessary. It’s a fair criticism. *sigh*
Okay, just FYI, spit doesn’t do shit. In porn and fan fic and bad romance novels, yes, but in real life it’s not gonna do anything. It doesn’t even do it for masterbating unless you can produce ounces and ounces of thick loogies at a time.
So, like, don’t think spit makes anything smoother because it doesn’t.
sigh!<
… well, that was odd. It ate all of my comment!
I just said that I totally get it, EJ – I work in a field just like it, in which most of the doods think “Hey, brains is like big computers! So of course we’ll all be uploading ourselves. Who needs psychology! I’m super rational because (linked list)” or something. Blergh.
@EJ
I appreciate your characteristically generous interpretation of my actions XD. “Made a real effort to educate you” sounds much better than “vented her contempt at you for your willful ignorance.”
@ Woody,
Hardly true. I would not make such sweeping judgements on someone’s character just because they do not agree with me. I will say you don’t sound like a person with whom I would like to share any time with. Labelling me an asshole, a misogynist, a serial abuser, and someone whom my daughter should feel sorry to have as a father makes you (and some of the others who took part in the baseless characterizations of me) truly mean-spirited. Care to disagree?
So why are you here, Andrew? Of all the places on the internet where you can go to disagree with people, you’ve chosen this one.
There are forums where people claim that Black people aren’t human. There are forums where people say that the only problem with the Holocaust is that there were survivors. There are forums where people discuss ways to prevent their children from gaining any education except the Bible, forums where people discuss ways to get away with rape, and forums where people claim that Guardians of the Galaxy was a good movie.
You, however, are not posting on any of those places to disagree with the consensus. You are here. Evidently, you think that women daring to speak up for themselves is a greater problem than any of the ones listed above, and more deserving of your time.
Tell me, Andrew. Why do you feel that this is not evidence of misogyny on your part? And if not, what other reason do you have?
@TurdSandwich: “Annnnd … Yor backs out of EJ’s challenge.” This is EJ’s challenge??? Serisouly? “Tell me about physics, Yor. I would love to hear you talk to me about physics.” I mean, ffs, what is that. Could that be any more “talk dirty to me Yor, I would love it if you talked dirty to me. Tell me about Physics it makes me horny as hell!!”. Errr, no thanks EJ! I’m not your personal dildo! I at least expect a nice meal and a bit of foreplay before I will talk dirty to you (and let’s face it, you are a radfem, so it’s probably not going to work – I just am more attracted to nice relaxed women that have a laugh, not knife-wielding loons chasing me up and down the street). Oh, I see that EJ did in fact ask me a question, so just for you Ms. Sandwich, I will answer her.
@EJ Bizarre that you would ask about white dwarfs … Did you study Astronomy? Final 2 years we did some Stellar Physics but of course that is really not part of Pure Physics (in the UK at least), it’s really more of an elective. I did enjoy some Astrophysics courses, and I do take an interest in it, but as anyone that *actually* studied Physics would know, Pure Physics is more about Electromagnetism, Quantum Mechanics, Standard Model, Classical Mechanics, Thermodynamics, Semiconductor Physics (and my final main project was doing some sensor stuff for the LHC), etc so it’s kind of weird that you would ask that, as if you had done Physics or Astronomy, you’d certainly know how the divisions break down in what is studied and what is not in these courses, so hmm, you are looking like a bit of a phony right about now …
@SillyFreyaDumass “Andrew’s the reasonable one of the two of you, anyways; that one was more directed at him than you.” Aw, diddums that’s so sweet, sorry I hurt your feelings there, I promise I’ll go back and read your stuff sometime, honest! Here’s hoping that Andrew reads your stuff, he did tell me that he quite likes you, I think he might have a crush on you ! 🙂
@WierdStump: Sure, privilege, bla bla, Patriarchy, bla bla. This is your dogma, this is your religion. Think about it. EVERYTHING can be explained through the filter of this mythology can’t it. All the wrongs of society = Patriarchy / privilege. Take the parallel. Christianity. Anything that can’t be properly explained … “well, God did it!”. You have become so infantilised by these concepts, and like “God”, they do not serve you well. They obfuscate and turn your brains into fondue. You CANNOT explain anything with these nothing concepts. Just as GOD explains nothing, Patriarchy and rape culture, EXPLAIN nothing, they are just noodling fantasies. To take it a step further in this infantile ideology, take “mansplaining”. All Feminists take this to be the pinnacle of Truth, right? A man talking down to a woman, “how dare he!!!” etc. But you miss the point so hard it hurts. Which is just, equality, men SHOULD be able to talk down/up/left/right to women, and women SHOULD be able to talk down/up/left/right to men too. i.e. in equality, there is no dividing people up along racial or gender lines, there are just people, discussing ideas. Except that “Feminism” wants to shut all of that down. “Mainsplaining!” as a concept is just a way to silence dissent, nothing more, to shut up people that dare to disagree with you. i.e. it’s infantile and pathetic. Don’t get me wrong, I know you can never change, like Christians, this dogma and myths you’ve built up are no so ingrained in you, that you CANNOT give them up, because that would be like saying that a large part of what you consider “TRUE” is then exposed for the bullshit that it is. Christians seldom make that step, because it’s about self-analysis that they are not prepared to do. So you can’t do it. Even though all of that Patriarchy and rape culture malarkey is total bullshit, you just MUST cling to it and pretend that it’s true. The term mansplaining IS sexist. Saying “fuck straight white males!” IS racist, and sexist and just all sorts of bigotry. You have normalised bigotry and racism and sexism as if they are ok. It’s a religion. This is why normal people reject you. Less than 10% of women identify as Feminists as they see that Feminism has BECOME toxic (Feminists of the past were some incredibly smart people, but you lot have just become like a parody of that, harping on about Patriarchy and rape culture, you sound daft, but fortunately, we’ve seen that most people just reject you, they just can’t be bothered with it).
I love it when you say “Fuck off”. It’s funny cos, that’s what 90+% of women are saying to you WeirdStump, they are telling you to fuck off, and rejecting Patriarchy and all that pish cos it’s so obviously bullshit. Seriously, all the best with your religion. You people are like morons that build a house, from the inside with no doors. You just shut yourselves off from the entire world in your arrogance and you’d rather just die of starvation in there than talk / debate / listen / understand / engage with people on the outside of that house that might talk to you. “Fuck off” indeed, it’s all you have. Hatred, self-loathing, ranting, racism, sexism and bigotry. You really are like an experiment where someone tried to construct the most perverse and twisted version of Feminism that they probably could “I know, we’ll invent lots of completely imaginary things like Patriarchy and rape culture so that we have an excuse to blame men for everything!”.
“Do not interpret my post as evidence that you’ve stirred the pot and turned us against each other.”
I’d never interpret it that way. Reason and logic with Feminists is like trying to push water up a hill with a rake, or herding cats. I guess I should listen to Mark Twain more on this subject, but once or twice a year, I try to reason with Feminists, and then I remember the Patriarchy and rape culture and original sin, and toxic masculinity and the holy trinity, and mansplaining and all that religious based silliness that you cling to. It’s all complete bonkers. You look like my sisters dog chasing it’s tail. Don’t get me wrong, it’s funny as all hell, but that dog never really achieves much …
Look at the shit you say, it doesn’t even pass a basic sense test, it’s just sort of loopy “Men are not oppressed because of their gender. At all. They are privileged because of it. I’m not going to pretend otherwise to appease a couple of trolls who think we’re man haters”, Just empty pointless anger and nonsense.
“But not of all us believe that men and women suffer equally under patriarchy. In fact, that’s a claim that pisses me the fuck off”.
It’s ironic that you say “Fuck off” a lot WeirdFuck, cos seriously, MOST women are telling YOU to “fuck off”. Hilarious, isn’t it? 🙂
http://www.etonline.com/media/video/2014/07/24094699/et_chrispratt_hulu.jpg
This is how I envision you lot 🙂 WeirdStump is Beaker.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9VDIYRXSjA
Merry RadFemMas !! 🙂
Andrew,
I don’t recall asking to spend any time with you. I don’t actually care.
To expand on EJs point, we have Yor here being far more insulting and vulgar than anyone here has been. Why aren’t you taking him to task for being uncivil if civil debate is so important to you? He’s representing your side and he’s making it look pretty bad. If civility matters, this should apply to both sides and you should be willing to call him out. And before you say we’re an echo chamber, we call each other out all the time. You should do the same.
I notice that Androy hasn’t
responded to meused me as a springboard for an unrelated paragraph-free rant yet. At all. I wonder, did I embarrass him under a different sock and now he’s scared of me?I hope so. *grins*
Yor,
I’m sure your insults would’ve devastated me but unfortunately, I don’t read walls of text. Was your physics school too macho and manly to teach paragraph breaks?
Better luck next time.
ETA: I have to remember to change my name on my phone too
LOL Oh, Yor. You probably don’t know any more about physics than I do, and I’m a janitor. That little sex fantasy deflection isn’t fooling anyone.
@ Scented, why would I be “scared” of you? I tend to shut out those that refuse to engage in a real open dialogue which may challenge their dogmatic approach to an issue.
@EJ, there is that catch-all “m” word which is right up there with “bully”, “racist” and “sexist” as one of the most misused/overused words in society. Let’s just cut the crap, most of you believe that anyone who disagrees with their position on the issue of gender equity is a misogynist, right?
Hmmm, are you monitoring all my on-line activity? Is this a version of George Orwell’s 1984? Are you a member of the thought police?
P.S. my kids and I loved Guardians of the Galaxy does this mean they are misogynists as well? They may be upset when I break the news.
I like how Yor came in here ranting about how gosh darn bigoted this website is, and then had the gall to claim that the commenters here insulted him first.
Common troll tactic. Come in here with a hostile but not too hostile first post and then get all upset when people don’t fall all over themselves to welcome them. Then they feel justified in their hatred of women/feminism/social justice.
@WeirdStump “To expand on EJs point, we have Yor here being far more insulting and vulgar than anyone here has been.”
Point of order, I was very polite to you, until you decided to insult me. It’s that simple. I don’t appreciate bullies, never have, never will. You don’t get to hide behind your fantasy Patriarchy for being a bad person WeirdStump. If you are a nasty person that tries to bully people, don’t be surprised if they retaliate. YOU are the uncivil person. YOU are the person that initiates the insults. Go check your privilege ffs 🙂
Yor’s immediate meltdown is a clear sign that he was not here in good faith in the first place. He was looking for an excuse to get nasty and insulting. Of course, that completely takes the sting out of it. How could any of us possibly take his insults seriously when it’s so obvious that he had already planned to use them in advance?
Andrew is being a little more subtle, but he’s doing the same thing. Since he arrived with his “equality is a two way street” schtick, the whole thread has become all about him for pages and pages. How wonderful he is and how everyone from the Mammotheers to the Canadian govrrnment to the feminist movement is out to get him. Equality is a two way street really means only Andrew and his priorities are important and anyone who disagrees is a big meanie. It’s hard to imagine a response we could have given Andrew other than worshipful lockstep agreement that would not aggrieve him.
And that was my trollnalysis for the day. Brony is better at it, but I have fun doing it too.
Oh really?
We can go back and look at your previous posts, dipshit.
Gaslighting doesn’t work on a comments section.
The bitch had it coming, right? That’s what MRAs always say. It’s why you’re called the abusers lobby. And no, I don’t believe you when you say you aren’t one.
@LindsayIrene oh, stop it with the sexy janitor bit, no, I’m not going to fall for it. No no, I don’t want to hear your tall tales about you in your janitor outfit and your wet mop sloshing up the milk that was spilled on the corridor floor. Just stop it !!! 🙂
Trolls never used to fixate on me very much. But lately they have been. I wonder why that is?
Our chief manatee is clearly a nasty woman. That’s why we love her.