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.
… and looks like they’re talking about it still/again:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/aug/09/brexit-political-party-james-chapman-david-davis
(not to downplay how many streets ahead of the vile Rethuglicans your Democrats are, usanian friends, but considering how the US democrats are roughly as right-wing as our wet to medium-dry tories, I am side-eyeing the fact that the proposed name for this hypothetical new UK party is “Democrats”. )
Woah, can’t spend a single night without waking up to two more pages, huh ?
@ JS
One (possible) advantage to new parties here is that, whilst the rules on donations aren’t that strict, there are very strict rules on spending during an election. Also TV advertising is generally prohibited. But parties get a certain allowance of ‘Party Election Broadcasts’ on all the major TV channels. As to the rules on allocation:
You also get a PEB if you have at least one MP and “a substantial level of past and present support”.
As you might imagine that’s proved not without controversy. At the last election the Greens complained, perhaps not unjustly, that UKIP got a PEB but they didn’t.
(Everyone still calls them ‘Party Political Broadcasts’ btw, because that’s the original name)
I just unfollowed someone on Tumblr who I’d followed for Doctor Who, but over the course of some months they turned into a highly conservative Catholic. The first warning sign was a long post they reblogged defending the Catholic Church’s actions towards Galileo. Then they demonstrated repeatedly that they were anti-choice.
I decided not to feel guilty about unfollowing people after people started blatantly lying about Jodie Whitaker as Doctor Who and fairly transparently positioning Chris Chibnall as the Great White Hope.
I didn’t have time to make any long and well thought posts last night, so sorry for my lateness. There’s a few more problems with John’s comparison of Hillary Clinton to civil rights activists that I’m sure he’ll carefully ignore. But here goes.
1. Activists and politicians aren’t the same thing. An activist can become a politician. Example: John Lewis. They’re different parts of a political process though. Politicians have to actually get elected. If they want to stay in office, they have to get reelected. For all but the small and local elected positions, this means they need lots of money. They need the support of their party and the campaign infrastructure major parties bring. They need the media to treat them as legitimate. Once in office, they have to work with other politicians to get anything accomplished. All of this means that they can’t stay 100% pure all of the time. In a perfect world politicians would be perfectly progressive at all times. We don’t live in such a world.
This is why we have activists. They are there to convince the politicians to listen to the voice of the people. A politician does not have to be perfectly progressive to be swayed by progressive activism. Some of Clinton’s positions became more progressive over time. This indicates that had she won the presidency, she could be further moved by progressive activism. Trump? Not so much. There is no chance in Hell that activism will do anything more than stop the worst of right wing policy during his administration. This is why staying home, writing in Bernie, voting Jill Stein etc. was effectively a vote not only Trump but against progressivism.
Even if John’s claim hadn’t been falsified, the premise itself was bad. POM is right in calling John a child. He does not appear to have the slightest understanding of how the real world works. I think laziness is what really drives these purity testers as well as immaturity though. They embrace the fantasy of purely progressive and uncompromised politicians because that means they don’t have to stay alert. Don’t have to hold politicians accountable. It’s a nice fantasy, but it’s never going to come true. Grow up and deal with it.
2. If civil rights are so pure and Clinton so evil, you would expect civil rights figures to speak out against her. Oh hey, speaking of John Lewis; he endorsed her and campaigned for her.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/316881-john-lewis-says-he-would-back-hillary-clinton-presidential-bid
3. Since John admires the civil rights movement as an example of progressivism done right, one would expect that he likes Martin Luther King Jr. My fellow white people usually do. Not because we’re such great champions of civil rights, but because the believe the popular revisionist mythology of King as someone who did his activism without ever making the privilege uncomfortable. People just love to bring him up while tone policing.
But wait! Look what he wrote in his famous letter from a Birmingham jailhttps://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html
Since John demands that Hillary Clinton be held to the standards of the civil rights activists, it’s only fair that he holds himself to the same standard. He must concede that it isn’t up to the marginalized group to tiptoe around the privileged group. As a man, he should not demand that women/feminists speak respectfully to him at all times in order for their points to be treated as legitimate. By spending several pages refusing to engage with us because we were sarcastic, John does not live up to the standards set by the civil rights movement. By John’s logic, this means he is an unacceptable progressive. So why should we take him seriously?
It’s funny how MLK has been ‘sanitised’ so he’s the safe cuddly acceptable icon; and the Panthers have been demonised as beret wearing “kill whitey” extremists; when the reality of course was nothing like that. We love our simple narratives I guess. Political history with all the complexity of a Michael Bay movie.
I was only away from here for less than 24 hours. (Had to go to the lawyers and sign my name repeatedly for all the paperwork guff associated with Mum’s estate. Then to sis’s place for a few more hours sorting out yet more of the stuffsplosion involved in sorting out trash-sell-donate-keep-givetothekids of Mum’s bits and pieces. 92 years of her own life plus all the stuff she inherited from dad, his family, her parents, cousins and friends. It adds up. Had to have a snooze for a couple of hours as well when I got home.)
And I come back to yet more of this. Think I’d rather go back and keep reading all Mum’s little notes about various items of looks-like-junk jewellery and other stuff.
Just this once, I’m skipping the pages I missed.
@mildlymagnificent
You made a wise choice.
You’re actually missing nothing that way.
Except, I think there was Scild’s digression into set theory (it was fun)? Or was that another thread… they’ve all run together.
That was here. I was sad it got run over by the troll brigade :C I spent a long time jamming in all that unicode!
Oh please, please, please pass those rules over here in the US. I’m tired of 10 different “PACs” all deciding to run robo calls asking me to vote for candidate “Y”. I’m on the official “Do Not Call” list that direct marketers have to abide by, but political calls are exempt from that rule.
@mildlymagnificent – fuerza! :-s I have been there and done that, and it ain’t easy.
I was out sick last night (still recovering), and I did read. Scild had good info on set theory and a couple of others had good info on civil rights history. The troll(s) just repeated the same unsupported assertions over and over while shifting goal posts.
Me I just wanna know what “putaine” means. It sounds like a mix between poutine and my most-used-any-day swear word. Jerry should know better than to use it as an interjection on a board where the majority of commenters are anglophones and are not used to hearing it as such. Wouldn’t want anyone to take it personally and think they’ve been called something…
@Ooglyboggles
Hmmm voting for someone who isn’t the popularly elected candidate and taking away votes from the Democratic Candidate reduces the amount of votes Trump needs to win?
Bernie was in with a chance of getting the candidacy. And the popular choices, in America as elsewhere, are the ones who created the opportunity for Trump and other extremists.
@Axelcibur
This is why I don’t care to entertain assholes who throw out ‘the banksters’ to defend their shit. Beyond the antisemitic dogwhistle nature of the whole thing,
That’s pathetic.
@John Devalle
Yeah you really don’t understand a damn thing about US politics. This isn’t the UK, it’s a two party system designed to make it virtually impossible for anything resembling a third party candidate to ever be President. How many times do we have to explain that Clinton got more popular votes both in the primary & and the presidential election?
No, being willfully ignorant of how anti banker has been used time and again to push antisemitic agendas is pathetic.
@WWTH
I think John has stumbled into a time anomaly and is posting from Jan 2016. He doesn’t seem to have grasped that even the primary has happened yet.
Anyone but me noticing how neither of our concern trolls have called out Jerry’s posts yet?
John is pretending to be the king of progressivism and yet doesn’t seem to mind that Jerry has been spouting right wing nonsense for days now.
I haven’t been reading Jerry’s posts.
@Devalle
He really wasn’t…
Not noice
I know, right? Antisemitic conspiracists are, indeed, rather pathetic
(^Anyone else getting Hairt flashbacks?)
@Axecalibur: Middle Name Danger
Well he isn’t trying to get people to read his blog atm.
EDIT: Sometimes when I refresh the page/click on a post of Latest Comments the site sometimes goes back to the previous page of the thread. Why does that happen?
I mean, I agree that antisemitism is pathetic… Was that your whole point?
Ninjaed and then some! Silly me.
@John Devalle
Bernie having a chance was true during the primary season, but once the candidates were chosen for each party, a vote for Bernie meant “I’m OK with Trump winning”. That big “election 2016” in November was way past the time when a vote for Bernie was just a vote for Bernie.
I’ve pointed out some of the differences that prevent the “Third Party Of Some People” from really having much chance here in the US. From previous US election experience, the most viable 3rd party candidates generally get less than 20% of the popular vote, and little to no votes in the electoral college. UK candidates have a First-past-the-post system. The US President has to win “First-past-the-post” either 2, or 3, times depending on whether you count the primaries as a contest.
And “I hate bankers” has been code for anti-semitism since Nazi days, even if you were arguing in good faith. From evidence of your prior posts, you’re not. You’re just here to troll us.
Afraid to know what you’ve aligned yourself with? Or is that you do know what you’ve aligned yourself and know you can’t defend it?
There are seven years of posts chronicling the virulent misogyny and the accompanying racism, classism, homophobia and transphobia in the red pill and MRA subcultures. There are seven years of posts showing them enmeshing themselves more and more with the alt-right.
Cassie Jaye and her movie are defending them. You’re defending them.
You think you have any progressive creds when you defend people who are stand for everything that progessivism is supposed to be against?
Read Jerry’s posts. Read them and deal with who you’ve climbed into bed with.
Don’t be such a coward. Have a little integrity.
@Ooglyboggles: When I click on the comment in the ‘recent comments’ thing on the side of the page it takes me to the last page now. I think the commenting feature is just having problems dealing with so many.
Also I laughed so hard at your fibbin’ nazi sequence drawing. XD XD XD