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.
John Devalle, you were told to use the tags on this site to read up on Cassie Jaye; I suggest you do so.
ELAM WAS IN THE MOVIE YOU’RE WAXING POETIC ON! JFC!
But remember, no woman has ever completed that math class thing. Checkmate, feminists!
I am dying of laughter here.
Why does the fuckwit asswaffle tonsil-chewing broflake troll think we have to educate him?
lol, femsplain.
also lol, he don’t know what poutine is even when there’s a picture. I’ll give him a pass on the other words, Quebecois french is an odd duck.
Ready for your neuroscience?
The research on the SDN does not in any way contradict the findings of Dr Joel. The function of the SDN relates to sexuality expression. The fact that the SDN varies in behaviour by the relative concentration of estrogen or testosterone does not make it different between males and females. Even its varying size and shape by sex doesn’t mean that men and women have different brains. That concurs with the findings of Dr Joel. If you had read her paper, you wouldn’t have brought up the SDN at all.
You don’t know how to read a white paper, do you?
And you’re still not going to accept those findings, are you? You, with no experience or knowledge in the field, consider your opinion more reliable than that of the international community of neuroscientists. It’s not just Dr Joel that’s saying it – there’s a large number of others.
I mean heck, there is room for discussion on this point. But not for you. There’s room for educated neuroscientists to debate whether it’s true. It’s recent work, after all, part of the leading edge of neuroscience. You’re not part of that edge. You have zero platform for contesting her findings. Frankly, until I see some positive evidence that you’re the engineer you say you are, you have zero platform for contesting any scientist or engineer on anything. Let’s see some tensor calc or something, huh? I’ll happily write some BBNs for you if it’ll get you to put up some proof.
The intellectually honest position to take is to say “I don’t know what’s true, so I’ll have to trust the people who study it diligently.” To do otherwise is hubris.
Let’s see some hubris, then.
@WWTH
He’s white, male, and from an upper middle class background. That’s the qualification that’s really being looked for; a degree is just a proxy. If he’d been a different race and/or gender, you best believe they’d have checked thoroughly.
@John,
I agree with you! You aren’t responsible for their actions. However, you’re standing by them by supporting the MRM. You need to educate yourself about your movement, and when you encounter things you find reprehensible you need to distance yourself from them when they are associated with you. Otherwise, you lend them silent support.
We do this with some of the worst expressions of Feminism when they show up. You need to learn the bad actors in your own movement and do the same. Otherwise, we’re more than justified in casting you in with them, just as we’re justified in saying that in the US Federal Election, a vote for anyone but Clinton was a vote for Trump. Because that’s how associations work.
I sincerely hope you can do that! Spend a little time digging through the site and reading some of the things Elam et. al. have said from a perspective that isn’t your own, and try to digest it. I won’t hold my breath for a change, but I hope you’re able to.
Galileo didn’t reach his conclusions through his own observations alone. He studied other scientific works and compared his own observations, reaching the same conclusions. The first known records of heliocentrism were from Aristarchus of Samos in 300 BC. It wasn’t until the 16th century that Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo expanded on it with their own models and observations. But their observations were not “just-so” stories taking what they believe and assuming it’s natural law; they noticed that the models were incorrect, researched other plausible explanations, and gathered evidence to test their theories. Did Google guy do any of that? Also, I like the implied comparison between being fired for creating a hostile work environment and being tried by the motherfucking Inquisition.
On the subject of the oppressed having to be nice: No. Fuck you.
Here’s a good general rule: If you want nice [oppressed group], you should be nice to [oppressed group].
If you want nice queer folk, you should be nice to the queer folk. Lest you have to face the asshole cockroaches who have managed to live through the cishet bullshit, and their descendants who are also asshole cockroaches who are angry on their behalf, as well as the behalf of their siblings.
You make this bed with all your pleas for us to be nice and quiet and out of the way where you can’t see us or hear us while people kill us and demand our rights taken away. Now fucking lie in it.
http://p.fod4.com/p/media/877ebc4f55/xVugkXbxS0OTwjaxDf4G_Channing%20Tatum%20FU.gif
(Gif is relevant because Channing Tatum is bisexual. :D)
And this also applies to any other form of bigotry.
If you want nice, quiet PoC, you should be nice to PoC. You should listen to them when they talk about racism. You should pay attention when they march and organize, and not clutch your damn pearls about how they’re doing it.
If you want nice, quiet, women you should be nice to women. Listen when women talk about being harassed and victimized and told how vapid and stupid they are when they so very clearly are not, rather than trying to talk over them and insist that “Man Knows Best”.
I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point.
The guy who called date rape exciting? The guy who compared paying for a woman’s drinks and not getting laid as compensation to rape? The guy who put a picture of a woman’s butt on the newer edition of Myth of Male Power because men are oppressed by women looking sexy? The guy who said that sexual abuse wasn’t all that traumatizing? That Warren Farrell? Reasonable?
Okay, bro.
Yet another troll fails the find a non-misogynist MRA test.
You are responsible for defending them though. I would expect to be held responsible if I defended a shitty feminist. If I defended a TERF, I would expect to be called out. The difference between you and me is that I don’t defend shitty people though.
Re: Comparison with Galileo…
http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/353/279/e31.jpg
@John
Here are some quotes from Warren Farrell. Which of these seem “reasonable” to you?
On affirmative consent:
On date rape:
On dating in general:
On raising children:
@John: I missed you saying that Warren Farrell seemed reasonable.
@John
Congratulations! You decided to nitpick my language instead of understanding the point I was trying to make. I understand you don’t have any real rebuttal of the rest of it.
You continue to prove my points by responding to them with inanity.
This quote captures the essence of why I (and I am sure others who have come on this site to provide an opposing “opinion) think most of you are not part of any reasonable outcome on gender issues. You start by saying others are “wrong” and insult anyone by calling them an “idiot” for not sharing your “opinions”. That is a great way to have a dialogue and/or enact change.
and guess what, the vitriol some of you spew is easy to do from behind the anonymity of a computer. If you said some of the personal crap I have endured to my face you would be wearing your ass as a hat (oh sorry, did I threaten you? am I not allowed to do that because you are a woman and you have a blank cheque due to the real oppression previous generations of women have endured? Trigger warning? Run for your safe space!).
This from an article in of all places The Huffington Post sums up how I feel about the current state of the discussion on gender issues (the link to the entire article is below). Most of you on this site clearly don’t understand or choose to ignore the idea that most issues do not fall under a gender label but are human issues.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/what-about-men_us_5975c292e4b06b511b02c4b7
Oh, yay. Dandy Andy is back.
How’s your blog going?
Poor Shapman. Are we spending too much time as feminists focusing on how women are impacted by the toxic beliefs in our society? Would it make you feel better if feminists focus on men? And maybe accept assertions we’ve proven time and again to be factually wrong? Would that be better?
@Shapman
I’m not sure I’m understanding your point. A person (or people) come on here to argue and debate points that have little or nothing to do with Cassie Jaye and The Red Pill. They prove over time, repeatedly, that they’re not here to listen. Nor are they here for rational debate (there have been a few “yeah, I’m trolling” sorts of admissions from both of them).
So yeah, some of us have been less than civil with them, because they were never actually here to learn, and have repeatedly shown that they don’t really want to.
There have been literally pages and pages of goalpost moving, strawman arguments, purposeful misunderstanding, Gish Galloping, and other trolling methods.
Their main purpose appears to be to get some of us here mad enough so you can have a nice quote to use to tell us we’re mean. (We’re not really being mean, but you don’t want to see that.)
And calling someone an asshat isn’t a threat, but I see you also go for purposeful misunderstanding.
What’s your actual point? Do you have one?
From the contributer opinion piece Dandy linked to:
Lmfao. It’s November 19th, same as it has been every fucking year since 1992.
Now, I wonder why a mere woman with the faulty ladybrain would know that, when these brave (keyboard) warriors don’t?
Is the troll trying to be scary?
@Hippodameia
If they are, they’re not doing a good job.
kupo, you did it again. You forgot the /s tag.
You have only yourself to blame if the entirely utterly predictable happens in response. (I might have said you should hope that the likely responder would be tired of this by now – but 32!! pages of this interminable merry go round forbids it.)
Ha!
Shapman thinks that is “where they started”. As if there was nothing before.
https://youtu.be/TKTIfXTd32M
Cry some more. This white male finds you pathetic and of no use whatever in any social problems I face.
You wilt before tone and have been shit or absent on content. If tone is what it takes to draw your attention all you do is admit a flaw.
“I’d beat you up!” Because of tone you would be the one to take the social conflict physical. Craven. You can’t control yourself and show more of how you are part of the problem. Tone is information child.
@Ooglyboggles
Yeah – kind of hard to be scared by someone who goes to pieces so easily – and who was so effectively destroyed several pages back.
JS, Shapman made his debut post on page 8. He came in hostile and complaining about the straw feminists from the get-go. He is, at best, a monumental hypocrite.
He received what he put out. And he doesn’t like that.