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.
@Iris
“She started making the film using money from feminists.” That’s not what she says in the interview, it looks like it was self-financed since she couldn’t secure grants. The thing is, it’s not easy to get people to invest in a documentary since it’s almost always a terrible way to invest your money. In the end it’s a personal interest in the subject matter that draws in potential investors especially when the filmmakers earlier documentaries weren’t profitable. The fact that she might found a few presumably pro-gay rights investors for her doc on same sex marriage and couldn’t find anybody interested in a doc on MRAs isn’t surprising. There’s no feminist conspiracy at work, Jaye was just a another director/producer who had trouble funding her fringe doc.
Like obtaining funding, getting people, particularly public figures, to agree to be interviewed for a doc isn’t easy and people can turn you down for all sorts of reasons. For instance, if you read and comprehend what David actually wrote, you’ll see he’s now turning down any invitation to appear in the film because Jaye gave a pandering anti-feminist interview to Breitbart nuisance Milo Yiannopoulos and that bit of pub has lead to the MRAs featured in the film and their fans to actively fundraise and/or donate money to her film’s Kickstarter. Whether you agree with him or not, that’s called conflict of interest and it’s not a demand for ideological purity. If you read the post you’d see that Jaye herself has claimed to refuse to receive “funding from organizations that inevitably have biased agendas”, which, arguably, should include AVFM and r/TeRPville.
That what passes for “actual activism” to them?
Why is it so obviously offensive that men have their own POV about this having nothing to do with feminism? I heard feminism recently described as analyzing human intersexual relations solely via the lens of women and I think that’s about right. What I don’t get is why MRAs want to engage with feminists at all? They are never going to change their views. None of what’s being learned in this movie is new, but there is no place to discuss any of these issues in a society where women have vast privileges. The funniest thought on earth is that western white women are oppressed, I mean you have to be delusional to buy that for a moment.
Most likely the latter. Honestly, if she didn’t try to stir up trouble on her own (remember those fake Sarkeesian tweets?), nobody would even pay attention to the silly, silly fool.
And now that I know how to find her, I also know how to avoid her. I’ll be doing the latter, rest assured — because who’d want to be within spitting distance of THAT drama llama?
If they end up with a feature-length documentary about MRAs on Netflix, I’d say that is some pretty effective activism.
The most appalling part to me is how she threw her intern under the bus. You know, there are some minimum standards I expect of an ethical employer, and one of them is not saying anything to the media that might cause a bunch of terrorists to think I was a juicy target.
oh I do hope Kevin Logan does a remix of this movie when it comes out, a lá his remix of The Sarkeesian Effect. Hopefully with less C-words though.
@ColeYote It’s actually more than they have been doing so far, so points for them, I guess? I mean, it’s so hard to do actual activism (and this is actually true, I don’t have the spoons for it, but I also don’t advertise as an entity that should be doing it) and it is so much easier to just throw money and hope that solves things.
@Iris. I don’t see anyone accusing her of a crime? I mean, people are understandably weirded out that she is being funded by the very people she is making a doc about, because that generally biases you in their direction. Really, what i see on here is people actually wishing her the best, because if anything even remotely hints at the MRA not being awesome, her life can go to hell in a handbasket really fast.
Am I weird for wanting it to be a hit piece on feminists? It wouldn’t effect the vast majority of people’s views on feminism (would it? hopefully not?) but it would make sure that the MRA leaves her be, at least until the next time she says something they disagree with.
What, a movie about all the nothing they do? Activism is either starting organizations that provide services directly (shelters, scholarships, support groups, lectures), or help people use existing infrastructure (legal aid, professional networking, collective bargaining, getting universities to sponsor conventions), or lobbying judges and lawmakers to act on your issues.
Educating the public about your issues could, arguably, count as activism. If the “MRA”‘s were donating to a documentary about male homelessness or male suicide or family court or testicular cancer or, heck, even the difficulties men have dating in the 21st century, that might count as men’s activism. Donating to documentary about themselves doesn’t count.
“Crime”? No, mistake.
And it is a mistake, because if she doesn’t suck up to them hard enough and in precisely the right ways, they will eviscerate her. As they do ALL women who make the mistake of making their acquaintance and thinking they’re okay guys. Just ask The Wooly Bumblebee sometime.
That part really bugs me, too. The intern was upset enough to cry and say she was triggered? I don’t know by what, but if it’s bad enough to do that to even one person, I’d be heeding that person and treading more cautiously. Women often get accused of being overly sensitive, but in my own experience, I know that that sensitivity doesn’t come from nowhere, much less from “just being female”. Something sensitized that woman to the point where she reacts like this, and her reaction deserves respect. Just as the anaphylactic shock that follows a hornet sting does in a person who’s allergic to insect venoms.
And what do you bet Paulie, Milo, etc., are all fapping at the prospect of an intern traumatized by what they’re saying? To them, it’s just proof of their own machismo. Who cares if they’re all wrong as fuck?
This is fantastic news. The Sarkeesian Effect was the most entertaining comedy of the year so far, hopefully this will follow suit. Sadly I do fear for the filmmaker’s wellbeing after the film inevitably (and unintentionally) makes the MRM look bad.
OT:
http://bubonickitten.tumblr.com/post/132119490678/anarchacannibalism-jazzcatte-nilvoid
b>From Cassie Jaye’s AMA:
“I thought my next documentary was going to be about rape culture (I like tackling controversial topics), but then I stumbled upon AVoiceForMen.com and thought ‘these are the rape apologists I’ve been hearing about!’ I toyed with the idea of making a film about the Men’s Rights Movement as well as some other ideas, but I always came back to the MRM because it really fascinated me. I wanted to know ‘who ARE these people?’ I was absolutely terrified of the idea of meeting Paul Elam, and when I did meet him he’s like 6’5″ or something like that. It was intimidating, but my protection was having a camera with me at all times. So, I committed to making a film about the MRM but I never in my wildest dreams thought I would also become a subject in the film. That came later, when I realized I was going through a transformative journey myself.”
…
“The reason I chose this title is because early on in filming, MRAs were telling me that feminist ideology was ‘blue pill’ and that they took the ‘red pill,’ so while I was struggling to see and understand the opposing viewpoints, I used this terminology to compartmentalize the ideologies. I actually refer to red pill / blue pill often in my video diaries. When looking at the story arc and the journey I went on, the only title that made sense was ‘The Red Pill’ because it succinctly described my quest to understand the way MRAs (and anti-feminists) see the world.”
…
“As far as being surprised during my research and filming, I would say YES. Not to go into too much detail since I don’t want to give spoilers out: I was surprised to learn how much misinformation there is in mainstream and social media regarding the MRM (and I fully believed that misinformation until I started to dig deeper), and I was also very surprised by the knee jerk dismissiveness most people had to the notion of ‘men’s rights.'”
…
“Although the film will quickly address the factions of the manosphere to get the viewer up to speed (the viewers who have never heard about any of this), this film will focus on the Men’s Rights Movement. I’ve categorized the MRM into 1. issues and 2. ideology. The film will first go in depth into the men’s issues, and then the film will go into the conflicting ideologies, since that was my experience when I was trying to understand all of this.”
…
“The original goal was for me to learn and understand the MRM platform, and now that I’ve gone on that journey, the goal is to complete this film to help create a better understanding, so we can all engage in these tough conversations. Some people will probably refuse to watch this film (one feminist told me she doesn’t want to cloud her brain with those thoughts, thoughts being the MRA POV). I think the biggest deep-rooted fear that anyone can have is the fear that they could possibly be changed. That is a scary thought.”
From the Kickstarter page Q&A:
“This film is an explorative documentary. The viewer is led down the rabbit hole of gender politics by a young feminist who is curious about the Men’s Rights Movement and is willing to listen and wants to understand everything they have to say. Nothing filmed was scripted. Every interview and every ‘video diary’ that the filmmaker made was authentic, unscripted, and organic. The purpose of the filmmaker’s video diaries is NOT to tell the audience what to believe but to show the audience the struggle, the journey and the transformation the filmmaker went through.”
…
“You will have to wait to see the feature film to know the conclusion that the filmmaker comes to, but what we can tell you is that the filmmaker does come to a conclusion; however, it doesn’t mean that the filmmaker’s conclusion will be the viewers’ conclusion.”
…
“This sneak preview video is meant to tease, it is not meant to give away the entire story. This sneak preview video is really just scratching the surface. The feature film will go much deeper into specific gender topics while getting to know characters along the journey. Once you see the feature film, you will know who each person being interviewed is, you will know their personal stories and their involvement in Gender Politics and you will also know how they impacted the filmmaker’s journey. What we don’t show much of in this sneak preview video are the specific gender issues we explore in the film, as well as all of the drama that happens between the filmmaker, the subjects, and the subjects between themselves.”
So, Iris, in short, Cassie Jaye got sucked in. Figures!
@Bina That kool-aid can be strong. Drink cautiously, or with lots of brain bleach/ alcohol.
@Ace, no worries. I have natural brain bleach constantly on tap in the form of two purry kitties.
(Alcohol is also within reach, although I reach for it less than I do my two purr-girls.)
Bina,
I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss Jaye’s intellect.
You can see excerpts from her past work in her director’s reel on Vimeo.
She’s obviously a very good filmmaker, and she has taken on some difficult and complicated subjects. Given her experience and abilities, I don’t see it as very likely that she is a mere babe in the woods who got “sucked in.”
She may have simply discovered that MRAs are people. Which is a radical notion in some circles.
So, in short, the story of a “””feminist””” taking the red pill. Almost entirely funded by the MRM. Huh.
I honestly can’t wait to see it (or at least begin to see it, can’t promise to make it through)
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA IRIS STOP IT UR KILLING ME HAHAHAHAHHAAHAHA
And which circles might those be, pray tell?
Nobody’s denying they’re people. We’re just saying they’re shitty, rotten, good-for-nothing people.
Iris,
http://media1.policymic.com/site/article-items/7415/2_gif.gif
http://media.giphy.com/media/zid5797gBQ4sU/giphy.gif
As for the triggered intern, I’ll take it for strawfeminism, it sounds like she used the trigger meme to cover the fact that she probably said “that’s gross what the fuck I’m out of here”.
That’s the most optimistic explanation I found.
Because there is a slight chance she was actually triggered, and in that case I’d like to know what the fuck was she exposed to!
But my bet remains on meme “trigger means angry/disgusted” and Jaye wouldn’t know a trigger if it left her paralyzed and sweating on the floor -which by no means do I wish to anyone.
@luzbelitx Maybe she was triggered. Depending on what portion of the film she saw, it is actually likely that she was crying at one point. If she saw only one portion, a really triggering one, it’s likely that she was ‘crying over everything I showed her.’ Paraphrasing. MRAs do tend to say really triggering things, and this intern might have had a history that made watching abusive assholes quite a big trigger for her.
Either way, I hope that intern got herself a job that doesn’t involve MRAs, triggers, or people making fun of her triggers!
@Ace
I agree with you it’s possible she was triggered, but I find unlikely that an MRA minded person would recognize an actual trigger.
It’s way more likely that they call “triggered” anyone being upset or crying (in this case for more then legitimate reasons, I don’t watch MRA videos for that very reason).
Remember MRAs think Words Mean Things is a feminist dogma, while they believe in “a word means whatever I can bully you into accepting/giving up”.
But again, it’s possible and it’s shitty anyway to throw her under the bus. It just goes on to prove how the filmmaker belongs with her public.