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.
I warned you Yor. The vast majority of regulars on this site are interested in a one-way dialogue. They will hurl shitty insults at you and stoop to bully school yard name calling. My bet is none of them would have the balls (or ovaries) to do so in person. They are rather pathetic as you have discovered I am sure.
Why do I get the feeling that Yor has typed every comment here one handed?
Maybe if he used both he’d be able to reach his “b” key.
Apart from this being totally incorrect, you could do the same thing and type in GWW YouTube into Google. She’s the third entry. Try it. You’ll be amazed.
Stupid, little fabrications like these are why you need to go along you merry way, Yor.
Fuck off.
Don’t worry Woody speaking my mind to a person’s face has never been an issue. You keep hiding behind the anonymity of your computer and hurling the personal insults if that makes you feel more empowered.
Have you gone to MRA sites to argue for feminism, Andrew?
Why would he do that, when feminsits are all such big mean meanies? /s
So, you’re confirming you’re an asshole both on and off line? Cool.
I see you don’t expect your own side to be civil and keep a nice tone the way you expect feminists (particularly the women) to. You may fancy yourself to be honest and forthright, but you are certainly a hypocrite.
I’m also not sure why you’re still here. If we’re so evil and mean it’s impossible to debate with us, why are you obsessively monitoring the thread so you can jump in and whine about how horrible we are? What is even the point? How does white knighting for a troll who calls us fat, ugly and crazy but in much more vulgar terms help dads get better custody arrangements? Would you show this thread to a family court judge as evidence of your dedicated father’s rights activism? Is defending an obvious misogynist lulz troll really something you’re proud of? Would you show your kids Yor’s posts to model their own behavior after?
I’m not sure why Yor thinks everyone wants to have sex with them. No one does. Interacting with you does not mean that someone wants to have sex.
Especially after reading their comments. *shudders*
Like, it’s kind of creepy. When they don’t have anything to say back to a person, they seem to default to some sort of creepy come on. Do they do this in real life, I wonder? Maybe that’s why they’re so angry with women?
Also very angry at the term ‘mansplaining‘. Have you actually looked up what it means, Yor? It’s not ‘a man explaining something’. That is called ‘a man explaining something’. It refers to a rather specific habit that many women (and female presenting! I think this is pretty all inclusive, unfortunately) are familiar with. It’s when someone (a man) explains something to you that you ALREADY KNOW.
He has no reason to think you wouldn’t know it, perhaps it’s something very simple. Perhaps it’s something complicated that you nevertheless do as part of your day-to-day employment. Perhaps it is something that you taught him.
I enjoyed a story my room mate told about a friend (a dude) complaining about the term. He then proceeded to explain to my room mate (a woman) what it meant.
She listened for a moment, and then when it was polite, asked him if he was mansplaining the concept of ‘mansplaining’ to her.
Everyone else laughed, and I think he finally understood the concept.
This also works in other contexts, which is why you’ll see ‘splaining attached to other things. I see it as a good way to remind someone that you are attempting to explain something to someone that they already well know, as it is part of their pool of knowledge. Sometimes it is through no fault of your own that this happens. Sometimes it is because you assume that they (whoever they are) know less than you (whoever you are.)
Sometimes it is because patriarchy has told the dudes that they have to know everything and educate everyone, and doesn’t give them the space to say ‘I don’t know’. They have to know! Make something up!
9__6
I stumbled upon this site researching The Red Pill. Have a defended women’s rights? Absolutely. Do I find some feminists deny many facts or just trot out the patriarchy argument to explain why men are discriminated against in some instances? Yes indeed. Do I find some MRAs toxic and unwilling to have an open dialogue? Uh-huh. Do I find some feminists toxic and unwilling to have an open dialogue (Woody, I am looking at you)? You bet. For these radical beliefs I get called every school yard grade school name possible and labelled a misogynist and a possible serial abuser. Yes, you are all soooooo reasonable.
I doubt it, too, dslucia.
It’s easier to claim meanyhead victimization than to admit he was never here in good faith in the first place.
And seriously, this thread needs to die a dignified death already.
I would like to know what sites those are so I can see your words. See their answers to you, Andrew.
Give us links.
This shouldn’t be hard.
I think that it’s because misogynists divide women into three very objectifying categories. Whore, virgin, and mommy. If a woman demonstrates that she’s not the virgin archetype (sweet, compliant, no strong opinions) or the mommy archetype (nurturing and supportive to men no matter how they act, self sacrificing) than we must be whores. Therefore any interaction boils down to are we fuckable and are we willing to fuck them. Nothing else matters.
Andrew, you haven’t answered a single question I posed to you in my last post. I only name called you in the first question. The rest of them were serious questions. All you did was reiterate how mean I am. Pretty much all you’ve done this entire thread is do that. You keep saying we aren’t willing to have an open dialogue but you keep ignoring questions people ask you in favor of tone police. You have not shown that you are open to a discussion free of tone trolling and willful obtuseness. That is why you are being treated as a troll. We have discussions here and disagree with each all the time. If everyone here is reacting poorly to you, maybe the problem isn’t us, maybe it’s you? Just a thought.
I manage to get along just fine with people most of the time. Really. It’s only the internet trolls who accuse me of being mean and aggressive.
Yaw, once again you (wilfully?) misunderstand me.
Of course you should not. Doing a doctorate is in no way shameful, and even if it was, the shame would be his, not yours.
I’m not suggesting that you should be ashamed you are a less qualified practitioner of physics than your brother. I’m suggesting that you may be an embarrassment to him.
Whether you are or aren’t, his opinion of you would be more interesting to me than your self evaluation, since he is clearly by your standards the superior mind.
@Rhu: Yeah, I know what mansplaining is. And I’m not angry about it. You can see what I think about it in long post to WeirdStump on last page. Yeah, that shudder, it’s call a frisson … HAHAHAHA don’t worry, you are only human :). Don’t worry there sweetpea, people will be attracted to you to at some point. This will happen for you. The Patriarchy will make it happen.
Yeah, that story didn’t happen. Funny how I’ve heard that same story so many times. “… and then they all laughed themselves silly and the man apologised for Patriarchy and lived happily ever after”. Yeah, didn’t happen. However, you or your friend may have imagined it while smoking crystal meth?
“Sometimes it is because patriarchy has told the dudes that they have to know everything and educate everyone, and doesn’t give them the space to say ‘I don’t know’. They have to know! Make something up!”
yeah, Patriarchy is to blame for everything isn’t it … gee … yeah, and I like how “patriarchy” is anthropomorphized in this particular fable, it’s literally telling the dudes what to do. Presumably it’s telling all men to go out and “rape women!” as well … yeah, and if you can’t see the parallels to religion in this, well, that’s pretty frightening.
An earlier comment of mind went into moderation. I think I may have used ableist language, so I apologize in advance.
Or if I missed something on another thread that is the reason I ended up back in moderation, could someone please point me there.
Oh my gosh, this is the thread that just keeps on giving!
Yor, EJ is a lettered astrophysicist, working in the field. He was asking you to put your money where your mouth is when he was asking you to talk physics, and true to form, you decided to evade the request, as expected.
Further, I’ve never, ever encountered a Masters holder in any field who doesn’t have a least legible writing. They’ve all mastered the mysteries of the paragraph and the punctuation mark along with their field of study. It’s a requirement of actually completing your thesis, after all. I’ve edited the white papers of non English-speaking Masters students who could barely form a sentence and were still more coherent than that garglemess you up-ended into the comments above.
Given these points, I revoke your claim of being a physicst, and will require more concrete evidence before believing it. Until such point, you’re just a guy who’s watched some science documentaries on the youtubes and has pretensions of grandeur.
I will accept properly formatted submissions for correction of your record for consideration.
Thank you for your submission.
– Scildfreja Heáhsceáwere
@PatriarchyDouche “I’m suggesting that you may be an embarrassment to him.” oh, that’s nice. Good for you. Yeah, that’s so cool, we should all high-five at how cool that is. I’m trying to work out if that’s the worst troll I’ve seen on here, or the worst in the entire history of the internet. Either way, it’s pretty full on dull.
@PeeWeeHerman: “Apart from this being totally incorrect, you could do the same thing and type in GWW YouTube into Google. She’s the third entry. Try it. You’ll be amazed. Stupid, little fabrications like these are why you need to go along you merry way, Yor. Fuck off.”
Yeah, so I did that, you can see the hits below. “Stupid, little fabrications like these”. So, I guess since I can prove that this is not a fabrication (I can even send you screenshots of all this! I went through 3 pages and still have no idea what GWW you are referring to, you say here it’s a woman? The 3rd entry I have is “W.W. Grainger, Inc.”) that you are going to apologise and recant, having been proved completely wrong and looking pretty dumb about now? Like, let’s all pretend like you are a normal person that is actually capable of ethical behaviour shall we? lol, not like that’s going to happen now is it … 🙂
Duurzaam GWW
http://www.duurzaamgww.nl/
Guild Wars Wiki
https://wiki.guildwars.com/
GWW : Summary for W.W. Grainger, Inc. Common Stoc – Yahoo Finance https://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=GWW
GWW Stock Quote – W.W. Grainger Inc. Stock Price Today (GWW …
http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/gww
Grond Weg Waterbouw
http://www.gww-bouw.nl/
Aanpak Duurzaam GWW: De aanpak
http://www.aanpakduurzaamgww.nl/
W.W. Grainger, Inc. (GWW) Pre-Market Trading – View free premarket stock trades at NASDAQ.com.
$GWW W.W. Grainger, Inc. stock and investing information on …
stocktwits.com/symbol/GWW
@PeeVee,
Like Yor, I tire of the fact that you are unable/unwilling to interpret the written word. Did I say I visited any MRA sites? No. Have I defended women’s rights? Yes. Do I have to write feminists a “blank cheque” for my undying support? Nope. Do I find some MRAs and feminists equal in the asshole department? Yes. I used a term. – defending the sisterhood – much earlier to describe what goes on in this site. Despite what much of what Woody spews and the way she delivers it would be deemed objectionable by most reasonable people (regardless of gender) not one person on this site has called her out. Funny how that works.
“Troll” doesn’t mean “Insult,” dude. I get that you’re supernaturally stupid, but come on, even you can Google words you don’t understand.
Like this whole thread is a shitshow that I don’t really care to participate in, but I’m just going to chime in that Google tailors search results both by region, and by your browsing/search history. So it’s wholly plausible that two people won’t get the same 3rd result for a moderately ambiguous search like “gww youtube”.
Though I find it highly implausible that it’d be possible to get through 3 pages without finding a single result for GirlWritesWhat and/or Karen Straughan, so I still call shenanigans on Yor. But like, by all means, post some screenshots – I can’t say it’s fully impossible.
@SillyFreyaDumass Hi Freya, I hereby accept your invitation to dox myself. I have absolutely no problem in doing this, but as you will appreciate, I’m just a little wary of doing that with all the unethical people on the internet as you can probably imagine! So obviously there would have to be some fair exchange of information. So, if you could kindly just post up here:
– your and EJ’s full home addresses
– your and EJ’s full phone numbers (both mobile and home)
– your pets names (no need if cats, I hate cats, but I love doggies! dogs are just the best pets aren’t they? So friendly and nice).
– your full CV and all qualifications and all places that you have worked since the age of 8 years old.
Thanks for that ! Upon receipt of all your doxxing information, I will undoubtedly and indubitably reciprocate !!!
Many happy returns,
Yorminus P. Trimonireps QED, STI, BSc, MSc.