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.
@WeirdStump “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?” I didn’t plan anything ffs. And the long part above is just my honest assessment. You are not prepared to take any critique. You insult people, then when they tell you a few things you go on the defensive and pretend a) that I’m a sockpuppet, b) that I came her deliberately to get at you (bit paranoid).
YOU start the insults, then go on the defensive when you can’t take it. Jesus, give it up, it gets old fast …
Fuck off, Yor.
I’m insulted that Yor couldn’t even be bothered to come up with a logical mock name for me. Doesn’t my ‘nym just kind of beg for some obvious mocking? Is Yor that lazy or that incompetent? Can’t decide.
Yor, EJ is a physicist. Your move, dude.
@WeirdStump “The bitch had it coming”. Can you show me where I said that dumass? See, that’s again, more kafkatrolling. You apply something to me, then pretend that I said it, or that I am that thing (in this case an MRA misogynist). That’s right, I never did say that. *Anyone* would have it coming if they hurl shitty arrogant insults at me or try to bully me. Should I let you off the hook cos you are a woman? Gee, your concept of equality really doesn’t stand up to much scrutiny if I should let you off / treat you specially different JUST COS YOU ARE A WOMAN. See, I’m not a sexist like you, so I treat all people equally, regardless of gender or skin colour. What a pathetic insinuation …
“I’m insulted that Yor couldn’t even be bothered to come up with a logical mock name for me.” awwww, I thought you’d like it ! It’s playful. Turdy. Turdwich. Ms. Sandwich. It’s nice. 🙂
“Yor, EJ is a physicist. Your move, dude.” Err, are you mental? Are you about 5 steps behind? You will see that I fully answered EJ above and pointed out WHY it was a bad question. The game was over at that point. So she’s a physicist, great, plenty of women were in my Physics courses (shock horror ! maybe to you sexists that’s a shocker not to me, I don’t judge people by gender or race, it was completely normal that lots of women were doing that degree). It was a silly question to ask me when I studied Physics ! If she’d asked something about Quantum Mechanics that would be fine. And she knows this herself as she’s a Physicist. So I pointed that out.
@BronyMyLittlePony, just cos you are so much fun, I’ll answer your little brainfart 🙂
Thing that I said that made you huffy-wuffy at me: “This seems to be a highly bigoted and biased site. Why is that? Is this a radical feminist site?”
I looked at previous comments, saw the madness and bigotry and bias, so I wondered if it was a radical feminist site. I kind of think that I was right. i.e. about Andrew: “He’s here because he’s an anti-feminist. He’s an anti-feminist because he’s a misogynist. He’s a misogynist because he’s an asshole.” Full on crazy! I pretty much agree with everything that she says here, and there is nothing misogynist about being anti-feminist.
“1) Bias (which you phrase as a negative thing)”
“2) Bigotry”
“3) That radical feminism is biased and bigoted (see below).”
“You must be willing to quote specific things if anyone is to actually assess your asserted opinion. Fuck your emotional impressions, I want the substance.”
No … nya nya nya ! 🙂
Only kidding, but seriously, see above, I posted straight up bigotry from WeirdStump. Just moving through really toxic and broken thought process to condemnation, then accusing me of saying or implying “the bitch had it coming”. That’s pretty unhinged really …
“I’m not seeing what you put in scare quotes. Post a quote coward.” Ok, my brave little warrior!! But, I did post it TWICE above you know. Two times, so does that make me brave and strong now?? Two times brave and strong?? You can see it anyway, last paragraph from the article, where the author shuts down all debate with Cassie Jaye for the crime of talking to someone they don’t like
“An echo chamber as it is defined in that link is a social space that is a neutral at the species level.” hehehe, seriously, you sound like my 7 year old nephew, he’s great, very serious on some things, and I made sure to be very serious when he is telling me important things like this!
“strategic social cohesion”. So that’s bigotry. i.e. intolerance of the views of others. That’s what bigotry is. Echo chambers are bigotry.
“So while it is true that there is bias here” Yeah, as I said …
“you have yet to demonstrate that it’s a problem.” I said it was “MENTAL” I think. Not a problem to me. A relative of mine had a nervous breakdown once. It was really sad to see. The comments here remind me of that.
“This is not about stifling speech, Cassie Jaye and the people they interviewed have free speech rights. This is about a social message about shitty people with shitty ideas.” Yes, shutting down debate. Silencing. Closing off avenues of discussion. Yeah, as I said, stifling debate. You can wrap a turd up in Christmas paper and spray perfume on it, but it’s still a turd. Social message, pfft, “yay, activism!!!”. This is not activism BronyMyLittlePony, this is just silliness.
“Arguments have already been made there and you can go find them in the post and tell me what is wrong with them.” See my above answer to WeirdStump.
“You use bias in your decision making as well.” I do indeed, we all do, it’s no problem. BUT, I am highly wary of confirmation bias and cognitive disonance. I very specifically go and test myself on those things constantly. So for example, while you will shut down some news outlets as “not reputable” (like say Breitbart or Huffington Post, I will go to both of those sites, even though I know that they are both toxic and dishonest, and I look at the information and check the sources. It’s about the sources. Your bias means that you will never even LOOK at things that are not “sanctioned by group-think”, and that IS a problem for critical thinking).
“You have not even tried to line your words up with a definition of bigotry.” See above, I just defined bigotry for you.
“Until substantiated claims of “bad bais” (to give it a name) bias and bigotry (irrational intolerance) are actually made by you insults are all you have.” See above, definition of bigotry, and explanation of confirmation bias and how it skews rational analysis. Also see long text in post to WeirdStump going through the causes and deleterious outcomes from that.
“I frankly don’t care how I come off to you. I care about what you can actually demonstrate.” Cool, I think you are very strong and brave… You don’t need to care about anyone. “Yay, fake activism!” See above, demonstrated.
Why do you even bother to pretend you aren’t an MRA (or maybe MGTOW) if you’re going to use MRA lingo. The only reason I know about “Kafka trapping” is because countless self-identified MRAs and MGTOW have used it here. I’ve never heard anyone else use the term. Not once.
You really are stupid fuck, aren’t you. I think it’s pretty clear that putting that underneath a blockquote was an indication that I was summarizing your attitude in my own words. I was clearly not falsely attributing that as a quote.
You came in here with a hostile first post and when people correctly labelled you a troll and treated you accordingly, you used that as an excuse to heap vulgar insults on every single person who replied to you. In other words, you used the abuser logic. In other words “bitch had it coming.”
Now he’s spamming a feMRA video. But he’s totally not an MRA guys and how dare we suggest otherwise!
What’s next, a GWW video?
The great physicist also apparently is incapable of spelling “dumbass”.
There’s something poetic about that, if you ask me.
EDIT: Er, I know mocking spelling is a bit of a thorn around here. I always find it a bit strange how people who angrily mock someone else’s intelligence tend to have massive issues with spelling something fairly basic, sorry if I’ve crossed a line. :END EDIT
And, of course, the meltdown has progressed into full-blown ableist gaslighting. It really didn’t take long. Why are MRAs so uniformly terrible at trolling?
oh dear, BronyMyLittlePony spelled “bias” as “bais” above!! Oh my god, and now more kafkanonsense “full blown ableist”. That’s a pitiable accusation …
You are pretty much like:
– “You have made an ableist comment!”
– “No I have not.”
– “You are denying it, so it must be true!”
In that case, you are a full blown paedophile. Can you prove it’s not true? Well then, it must be true!!
You sound like a 16th century village clown hunting witches “the old lady on the hill has cats, she must be a witch!” “it’s true, we must kill the witch!”.
BronyMyLittlePony spelled “bias” as “bais” @dslucia, Chief SS Obergruppenführer Spelling Nazi, is going to rip BronyPony apart for that crime !!!
@WeirdStump, you made the statement that being an anti-feminist is misogynist. I pointed you at a very lucid example of why that’s not the case. Above, someone told me that Feminism is very open to critique. You make it clear that you are not open to critique. You really are kind of making my point for me.
I don’t know what GWW is.
I’m not an MRA cos I’m not really into any religious clubs or cults. I just care about equality, and there are great flaws in your ideology, as you so patently show over and over. There are things in Feminism that are great, but you have lost the plot. There is almost nothing in Western society that is not legislated as equal. Sure inequality exists, and always will, but it’s not institutional or Patriarchy. There’s bias everywhere, but it’s not against YOU or women, it’s against all of us. We all have privilege in some ways and we are all oppressed in other ways. Stop being so full of it. Oooooh, it must be Patriarchy that makes me feel sad today! It’s just pixies and unicorns, it’s all never never land nonsense. So what. Get over yourself.. But then you completely ignore Islamic countries where women live under the most brutal misogynistic ideology ever invented by men (and it was invented by men, all religions were, except this one is far more toxic to women than any other). Your Feminism has nothing to say about their plight. So again, I honestly don’t think you actually care for women at all. You care for you, and how much sympathy and victimhood you can get from those around you. Victimhood is unhealthy. Go see a shrink if you need to work through personal issues like that.
Yor is still here?
Yawn.
Fuck off, Yor.
Uh.
Dude.
You’ve been running around on this very page calling people “crazy”, “unhinged”, saying that what they’re saying is “silliness”, saying that this website is full of “madness” (and all of that was just one comment up), asking people if they’re “mental”, putting words into someone’s mouth to accuse them of having a skewed view of equality, and also hilariously projected about the “you throw insults first and then can’t take when you get them back!!!!” bit.
Like
We can read. Especially when the proof of your comments is literally only a few comments up.
EDIT: And the only reason I pointed out the “dumbass” bit is because you’ve made the mistake multiple times.
Dudildo,
a) I was insulted first, simply don’t have much time for bullies, so I responded in kind. That’s fair (you can see this just above).
b) I *demonstrated* that silliness, madness etc (you can see this just above).
c) You can see yourself about 15-20 cases of people putting words into my mouth yes? I’ve done it very few times by comparison.
d) In what way is that projecting. I showed, WITH QUOTES, how I was insulted first, and that my response was a reaction to that.
It is not at all clear that you can read. All of these things happened, the insults AT me vastly outnumber my mocking and jokes in return, and this all happened, “literally only a few comments up”. If you selectively deny reality, deny that mass insults that WeirdStump has hurled (then excuses herself from being upset “cos it was snowing outside” etc) and if you actually pretend that she never said those things, then that is kind of pitiable. If you ACTUALLY deny that those comments are there, well, that’s just … wow.
P.S. I’m looking forward to you laying into BronyMyLittlePony for her DISGUSTING misspelling of the word “bias”. Outrageous huh !?!? I’m guessing that you are writing her a really stern put down, this should be great !!! Or, wait a minute, you are not a hypocrite are you ??? Oh, surely not ……….. :-s
Maybe he meant Dumas and he’s comparing us to the Three Musketeers… Oh, who am I kidding, Bootleg Conan can’t even read a two-sentence post without collapsing into a gibbering rage-heap.
I am so fucking tired of trolls arguing that they are so rational, when they spout their kindergarten-level arguments, fail to acknowledge any counter-arguments at all (except for the [already rare] occasions when they try to counter them with more kindergarten-level arguments), and then tell us that we are irrational and unreasonable.
It’s the intellectual equivalent of claiming you’ve solved the P versus NP problem because 2 + 2 = 4 and computers can solve that problem quickly, and then ignoring anyone who tells you that your argument isn’t just overly simplistic, but also displays a profound lack of understanding of the problem in the first place. And then replying to them by saying “Are you saying 2 + 2 doesn’t equal 4? You are totally irrational.
Also “feminism is not open to critique” because I made a critique that was totally stupid and lame and they told me it was stupid and lame and I’m so smart, so I know my critique wasn’t stupid and lame.
Why are physics programs apparently completely devoid of logic these days? Never mind apparently passing people who can barely read or write. /s
@wwth
Thank you for being chief manatee! I am happy to grovel at your flippers.
@PeeWeeHerman. Since you asked so nicely, I am off to bed, toodaloo. Sweet dreams fuckwit ! 🙂
Sorry Mammotheers, if you can hear a wheezing sound at the moment, it’s probably me laughing myself sick.
A person who by their own account is not even the most highly educated in physics member of their own nuclear family is lecturing a working astrophysicist on real physics.
Yor, at this point you aren’t just embarrassing Yorself. I’d rather hear from Yor brother.
Hey, Yor, where in this discussion did we even bring up women in Muslim countries? Where was the topic in the original post? Nowhere. You don’t care about women in Saudi Arabia. You’re just using them as a tool to distract from the fact that you can’t back up the nonsense that you type. You are Gish Galloping.
In one of your first posts, you said, “The author of this piece is basically instructing everyone to boycott this Director Cassie Jaye,” which is not true, and you’ve been bullshitting ever since. You are a bad faith troll and you should feel bad.
Yor is still here embarrassing himself?
Yawn.
Fuck off, Yor. You’re dull.
Yeah, so everything I said was right. I never lectured EJ, I *asked* why they would ask that question knowing how pointless it was, so I asked why they would ask that to determine if someone studied Physics or not, so no, no embarrassment to me whatsoever (but then you can’t understand why what I pointed out was correct as you just admitted here, so your lack of understanding is there for all to see).
Why should I feel embarrassed that my brother did a doctorate? This childishness started because some fuckwit made a comment about Heisenberg without having a clue what they were talking about. I pointed out that I was educated in Physics. Then much gibbering trying to suggest that I didn’t study Physics, so I simply was HONEST (any concept of that word? Truth? Honesty? Those words have any meaning in your ideology?). I don’t have a victimhood complex and I don’t have a problem that my brother did his doctorate. So what? I’m happy he did it. I don’t wail “The Patriarchy is to blame for anything that I’m not happy about in life!!” like a petulant child. Why would anyone do that? For sure, would be something to be embarrassed about … oh wait … 🙂
I also like how Trolly-Olly-Oxenfree is misgendering everyone on this website by assuming they’re all womz.
I’d point out how by his own logic, I DEMONSTRATED that he was actually the first person to start lobbing insults, but sadly I know it wouldn’t make any difference.
Gasp, shock, if you come stomping into someplace throwing a huge fit about how mean everyone in said place is, they’re not going to be excessively nice to you. More at 11.
Oh, and it’s so precious how he’s even started throwing needless insults at me, when everything I’ve said has been pretty tame. I haven’t even called him an idiot.
Which he is.
Trollius omnem aequum amittit, cum lenem ventum aspicit.
You make up arguments against things nobody argued, and declare yourself the winner?
Didn’t see that tactic coming from a million miles away.
Yawn.
Fuck off, Yor. You’re boring.
http://s.quickmeme.com/img/f4/f46a8e4240505be1304e90eeee7a7a8af1c7403ed8ec0897eb7d170733ab9800.jpg