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.
My favorite is when they make claims and expect us to accept them with nothing to back them up because… they come from a penis and so therefore have all the authority they need already, I guess? I mean, that last one was just a list of unproved “facts” with nothing to back it up. Nailed it!
Neat! Female what? Panthers? I hope it’s panthers. I want to work in the workplace with the mostly female population of panthers.
@ Kupo
You are obviously an exception to the rule (just kidding)
Women tend to work hard and be very competitive up to the early 30’s then something statistically happens…Work life balance, babies, the famous (self imposed) glass ceiling kicks in. They ask themselves whats my plan? why am I doing this? My reproductive clock is ticking. Why am I wasting my time crawling up the slippery corporate pole, 80 hrs pw, when my partner can be doing this crap, Ive got to get to the IVF clinic.
@ chief manatee
I got the 80% off a female marketing manager, she explained that men were much harder to sell to than women as they wernt brand conscious and wouldn’t pay for names…You could make them drink more beer but not your beer…Females though would pay double for a pink half size razor (the famous pink tax) silly prices for cosmetics and plastic surgery, you just had to make the feel guilty if they didn’t have something or wernt keeping up with the Jones’s. Were as men would buy the cheapest functional thing to do the job. She was paying people at the time to spread on social media that the beard craze was over as it was affecting sales of razors…I don’t think it worked… But it was an insight into how cynical it all is.
When our secret plan to install a matriarchal dictatorship finally reaches its final stages, all workplaces will have a majority female praying mantis staff
I’m reading about the evolution of the basal ganglia with respect to figuring out how it relates to the skeleton of human social programming that leads to insult impulses in others with Tourette’s Syndrome. I know a little something about how evolution and behavior have been studied.
If they wish to get specific about a line of research that they think supports their assumptions I’ll be happy to look. I would not want to miss the chance to see if this one is also desperately grabbing at stories told l to shore up the social power of only some of us.
Do men not need to balance their work and their lives, Jerry? That’s interesting. Do they not have much to do when they get home?
Do men not have babies? I actually know several men who claim to be parents. Do they not have to spend time with their kids, Jerry? Is someone else taking care of the babies? Are the panthers doing the childcare, Jerry??
So Jerry, your evidence that men are disadvantaged in every possible way is that women are still pressured into being the one to make sacrifices for the children, not men and that women are pressured into paying more for gendered products?
You misogynists fall into the same trap again and again. You want to argue that men are oppressed. You also want to argue that men are superior and make smarter choices so therefore you are wealthier and more powerful. You can’t have it both ways. If you want to argue that men are disadvantaged, you can’t simultaneously argue that women are disadvantaged but it’s all their own fault.
Since you’re back, I’m also going to have once more bring up that you opened your trolling career here by whining about anti-feminists and white nationalists/Trump supporters being conflated and then used white nationalist and Trump supporter Lauren Southern as an example of an attractive anti-feminist.
It’s like you don’t even know what you’re arguing or why. You just know that feminists are mean and women are bad (unless they’re pretty blonde reactionaries).
Feeeeeeeemaaaaaaaales!!!!!
Citation needed.
Work life balance happens? In what way does it happen? Please do tell.
Babies just like appear or something? And only to women? Shit, I got this whol reproductive thing all wrong. Back to the Biology textbooks…
What literature can you point me to with regard to this self-imposed glass ceiling? I mean, silly me, I’ve only read social anthropology texts on it and how it’s imposed by a patriarchal system. I must be looking in the wrong places!
Thanks for letting me know what I, as a woman, think! I wouldn’t have figured that out without your help. Man, I’m just soooo lost in my own brain!
Weird, I didn’t come equipped with one of those. Is it like Data’s internal chronometer? Did I turn it off and forget it existed? Can you help me learn more about it, since you’re clearly an expert? Please share some texts on that, too!
Got that part right.
In most of my relationships I’ve been the primary breadwinner. I’ve never been unemployed for more than a couple of days. Please explain to me how it’s possible that I’m expecting my partner to do all that for me? Also, I had no idea that all women go to IVF clinics. I guess I’m doing that wrong, too. Do I need to even though I’m not currently planning a pregnancy? Do I take the IVF medications and then use two condoms to cancel it out? I’m so confused. What about men, do they never need to go to fertility treatments? Do they not start to desire children in their lives? Why are they left out of this equation?
Edit: I also love that he ignored that another guy was hired instead of me for the role that would have been a promotion, that guy worked <40 hours per week, and another guy on my team got a promotion for putting in the same work as me, but somehow my lack of promotion was because of my own lack of work ethic.
@Alan Robertshaw
I’m not ignoring you, that is very relevant. That reminds me of an old WW2 instructional book my father had. I’m just in hunting mode and wanted to think about how it relates a bit. I want to call it a “dispositional conflict”. Mode of thought wierdness. The conflict makes sense always, but I’m a little “short circuit-y” and a bit careful about communication at the moment.
I’m going to just remind everyone of Jerry’s first post
Here is arguing that men are disadvantaged. He seems to be implying that it’s women’s fault. We suck in the social security while the men work hard for us!
When it was pointed out how women are actually disadvantaged, he switched his argument to how women don’t receive equal wages and promotions but it’s all our self imposed. It’s due to our own failings. All of a sudden, oppression is caused by not working hard and not resisting socialized gender roles.
So, by Jerry’s logic, men are homeless because they didn’t bother to go to college, get a STEM degree and obtain a high paying job that would keep them able to pay the rent. Men are behind in education because they are too lazy to study hard and their brains maybe just aren’t wired for the rigors of academia. Men commit suicide because they listened to the marketing messages about how men are supposed to be tough and strong. Maybe if they were more independent, they would ignore those messages and seek treatment for their depression. It’s men’s fault when they get injured on the job. They have been smart like women are and taken a cushy HR position. Men live shorter and less healthy lives because they are too weak willed to give up smoking, drinking and junk food.
Because the trolls here are painfully literal, I will stress that I do not personally believe any of that. I am merely pointing out the hypocrisy of saying that women are to blame for our problems, but men are not to blame for theirs. How we managed to crush men under our gynocratic Nancy Sinatra boots when we are the lazy and weak gender remains a mystery.
@Hog
No men don’t have babies, something to do with the physiology I believe (no uterus) to quote monty pythons ” what are we supposed to do carry it around in a box for 9 months”. We also cant breast feed, and I believe theres some scientific evidence that women are better at changing nappies (if there isn’t I’ll invent some) and multi tasking generally.
I come from an old patrician Victorian family that doesn’t even acknowledge the existence of the children till they reach voting age when we offer them a partnership in the family business. Children should be seen but not heard (and preferably not seen).
@ chief manatee
Im not saying that women don’t have their problems, birth pains, stretch marks, periods, PMS, hot flushes at menopause (sorry person-o-pause) and hysterectomies (sorry hersterectomies) Its just that men suffer alone but women like to share…but lets face it, your just much better at complaining than we are. if it was an Olympic sport you would win all 3 medals, and because the only voice you hear complaining is yours, you think you are the only ones with problems.
Trump is another example of a broken system, I think many people could see he was put up as the unelectable candidate but to stuff the establishment they threw the Molotov and voted for him anyway.
There it is.
@ Kupo
re Nappies
Definitely 100% don’t expect a citation on that one, I must have heard it down the pub off a fellow misogynist.
Twenty pages worth of male trolls whining and complaining about how men have it so bad and how dare we be so mean as to criticize a puff piece about angry misogynists.
Jerry adds his whining to the mix.
Two pages of he and his buddies John and Phillip whinging.
Jerry looks at the thread, sits back and proclaims that men, unlike women, never complain!
I wonder if, since Jerry thinks that only the woman parent should actively child rear, he would tell his fellow MRAs to stop
complainingmaking manly and wise proclamations about the injustice of mothers being more likely to have physical custody of the children after a divorce. After all, according to Jerry, only women are capable of child care. Fathers can’t really do anything besides maybe play catch their sons on the weekends. Right Jerry?Looks like I was right about Jerry making shit up.
Also, I would just like to point out that every single “women’s problem” that he mentioned is physiological. No mention of social or cultural issues. Nope. A woman’s problems can all be tied to her uterus.
Jerry is giving me Pell vibes with that blue blood Victorian Patrician comment. Except he didn’t melt down fast enough. Maybe he’s Pell’s laid back identical cousin from Australia. The Patty to Pell’s Cathy.
They look alike
They talk alike
Sometimes they even troll alike
You could lose your mind
When cousins are two of whine!
So… at this point, Jerry at least is finally admitting that every claim he makes is pulled right out of his own ass. Self realization ftw?
This is a mockery site, you dense egg! You come here spouting off manuresphere talking points, you’re going to get mocked!
WWTH:
Very Pell-like.
Jerry, how is Uncle Monty?
Jerry’s some flavour of chanlord come here to ‘ave a giggle, either from an MRA site or he’s just got alerts set up for changes to this page. Maybe from a chan board.
I mean, he still believes all the shit he’s spouted off, and he’s still wrong on it, but he has no more ways to justify himself. He’s been run out of justifications, so now he’s flingin’ shit so that he can say he was the winner based solely on how “easy it is to wind up you SJWs”. The classic edgelord escape strategy, to keep from having to face the places they’re wrong.
I’m pretty comfortable calling that one a loss for our guest. Bye, Jerry!
That’s what happens when you troll with a throw everything to the wall and see what sticks approach. Jerry’s inconsistent and unfocused arguments allowed us to easily back him into a corner. There are no avenues of rhetorical retreat open. So his only option left is to turn to cheap lulz trolling.
It was laughably easy to get him to break down.
BTW, I just saw that he actually first posted here in February but nobody noticed. He’s been waiting 6 months for the thread to reactivate so he could jump back in. I’d pity him for that if he weren’t such an asshat. It’s especially sad that he didn’t realize that if he wanted attention from us so badly, he could’ve just started posting in current threads.
Jerry, if you do believe that men have nothing to do with their children, I’m sad for you. You are missing out on a potentially wonderful relationship, and you are also withholding a relationship your (hypothetical) children expect to have with you from them.
Have you played Dream Daddy? You should play Dream Daddy. The relationship that the player character has with his daughter is really nice. (In the good ending, which is the only one I’ve played.)
I mean, I’m sure that you’re here just to wind people up. That’s not fine, and I’m not going to pretend like it is, but it is what you are doing. For some reason you feel like you need a win on an anonymous messaging board on the internet, in a post that has been necroed again and again. Maybe you should try reading what people are saying to you, and think on how your ‘for the lulz’ opinions actually affect real people.
Women (not females) have life goals besides reproducing. Men have life goals that sometimes involve reproducing. The world is made up of all types of people, and you would be a richer person if you could see that.
I mean, I’m not holding my breath here. But good luck getting over your edgelord-ness anyway.
Oh, @Brony, so you know – I got your post! Mulling it over.
@Scildfrega
I put too much crap in. That “when”~”where” for example. I’m still trying to get a handle on my disorganized areas relative to everyone else.