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.
Also, the stats I linked to show that homicide is a much bigger issue for First Nations people (both men and women) than non-aboriginal people. I don’t believe Andy made a single note about First Nations victims specifically. He seems to be mostly concerned with middle and upper class white dudes having to pay child support. Shocking, I know.
I guess this is the Canadian version of USian MRA’s tendency to talk about carcerality and then ignore what a racial issue this is in order to reframe the high incarceration rates of men of color – particularly black men – as misandry.
Shapman:
Thank you for telling me the amount of swearing that is acceptable. I shall eagerly endeavour to conform the this new information, so I don’t offend your sensibilities in the future.
/s, obviously.
It’s uh… interesting how frequently a conversation with a manospherian will wind up with them fantasizing about beating women. Especially ironic when it’s one who is simultaneously claiming that women are just as violent to men as men are to women.
The closest thing I ever do to that kind of thing is when I joke about how my fingernails are naturally long and thick and this means that if a man ever tries to rape and/or kill me or succeeds at it, there will be DNA evidence under my nails. But that’s not me fantasizing about clawing at men I don’t like. That’s me engaging in gallows humor about my actual self defense plan in case I’m ever attacked.
MRA’s on the other hand, like to publicly wank about beating women and try to frame it as the right to self defense. Even though they are almost always describing violence far above and beyond what would qualify as self defense and often they are – like Shappy here – “defending” themselves against sarcasm, nagging or name calling.
I should hope Andy doesn’t ever follow through with his fantasy about hitting a woman who talks back to him. Getting an assault record is a real good way to lose custody of your kids.
Say, Andy! I thought you were so incensed that we told you that you were using abuser rhetoric? Now that you’ve doubled down on that rhetoric, you’ve kind of lost whatever high ground you thought that gave you.
@WWTH
I also remember a time someone included sexualized commentary, to you I believe, in added insults. That was so clearly analogous to rape as social dominance that I was shocked I never saw it that way before. I’m continually grateful for places like this.
shudder
Ugh, this conversation.
Yes, WWTH, there’s a huge problem with First Nations people being the target of racism and generally ignored up here. It’s a problem that trails back a very, very long ways, well before the incorporation of the country. Domestic violence is a problem for the First Nations, what with them being crushed under a regime they disagree with and with few ways out and all that. The rest of society tends to ignore it, and many develop an attitude of “that’s just how they are”.
(Kinda like googlebro arguing that women are biologically wired to be worse at coding, etc, etc. Making biological statements about socially distinguished groups is fraught with bias)
My heart breaks when I think about the First Nations up here. I want to put them in charge of the country, take on their customs, give them their land back. I’d be okay living in Amiskwaciwâskahikan or Otoskwunee, changing holidays, adopting new laws and customs. That would be totally fine by me.
As for the rest of this nonsense convo, blergh. @Shapman, little hint – when you see a piece of evidence that uses “The Feminists” to refer to a group of people (as if there were a monolithic group of them), you’re being peddled bullshit. Actual statistics and studies don’t talk about Feminists (or MRAs!) as an identifiable group – because they aren’t one.
@ John
One thing I always find ironic is that it’s feminists on this site that actually do care about “men’s issues” more than most men I know; and certainly more than any MRA group.
I am however someone who thinks there’s a world of difference between M-F violence and F-M violence. So here’s one of my favourite examples of Edwardian misandry. 🙂
http://ejmas.com/jnc/Husband-Tamer_sm.jpg
@Scildfreja
So, maybe it’s different up there, but that seems hella appropriative. In the worst way. Or, at the very least, that slope is damn near frictionless. There are tribes down here that literally prohibit non indigenous people from practicing their customs. It’s a pretty big deal. And, like, there’s a fine line between ‘BREAKING: Canada recognizes X holiday’ and ‘NEXT AT 11: local, white woman performs bizarre rain dance’. And I know you know the difference. But the wording there was suspect…
@Axe, I recognize that problem! I don’t really know how to approach it, which is why I don’t often talk about it. We’ve imposed and forced outside customs on the First Nations here for so long, I want to invert that. I wouldn’t want to take their culture, I’d want them to share what they want to share – in the context of a broad culture that wants it. It’s a daydream, but it’s one I like. I hope that clarifies what I mean!
I’ve thought about how lucky I am to have been able to afford current dental x-rays, and that my teeth are not super straight. If my body is ever discovered and I’m unidentifiable by my face, at least my teeth are pretty distinct.
(glad I didn’t get braces!)
I also am a little sad that my short hair means that if I’m being poisoned, there is less evidence that they can use to figure out when it started.
I’ve told my mother about a thing I’ll do if I’m ever kidnapped and forced to write a letter saying that I’m fine, so they’ll know that I’m definitely not fine. I need to tell my father as well, I just realised haha.
If I’m in a group of people, and someone is skeeving me or any of us out, we have an agreed upon code for ‘let’s all get the hell out of here’.
Is this something that cis-men think about/have thought about/prepared for?
@Axe and Scild: I’d be really happy if we had more place names that had both the Western and the First Nations names on our maps. I’d also like to see where tribes traditionally lived marked off, though I recognise that those kind of things probably shifted around a bunch as well.
Basically I want the Western culture to recognise and give time to all the different First Nations cultures that existed here first.
But you’re right, it is really hard to know how to properly interact with that. F’r instance, I know I have some First Nations history. I think my great or great-great-grandmother? I’d be interested to find out more, but like… It’s not like I’m connected to any Métis or First Nations groups culturally, being raised super white.
But I’m still interested in that part of my history. :/
I just don’t want to downplay the difficulties that First Nations people face. I just watched the Highway of Tears documentary on Netflix and I was trying really hard to not cry as I worked.
@ Alan
you are making my point. So there were over 200 domestic homicides where men were the victims. Is it not reasonable to bring this into the discussion on domestic violence? By most counts men account for anywhere between 25-40% of domestic assault victims in Canada (and there is plenty of evidence which suggests that due to social stigma that men are indeed less likely to report). Does it not make sense to have a more inclusive discussion on domestic assault? The idea that the men who are victims of domestic assault are insignificant in numbers has been debunked time and again yet feminists seem to continue to “genderize” the debate. Why?
Not to simplify the debate but last time I checked dead is dead, right? Also, there is significant evidence from police reports that women are far more likely to use a weapon in a domestic abuse case then their male counterparts. You can theorise about why that is all you like but it is a fact.
I have two kids – one male and one female – and I do not give them mixed messages on gender violence. I tell them if you strike another individual YOU MAY encounter someone who strikes back. I tell them this may not be the right response by that person but you should have that in your mind before you strike anyone. The message I seem to be getting today is that because men are physically stronger in general that they should just take the slap, punch or whack with an object from any female. With the whole empowerment of women we have forgotten about common sense and prevention.
@ Woody
I assume you are referring to my comment that said if anyone made some of the comments they made to my face they would be “wearing their ass as a hat”. Do you notice I said “anyone” I know you must have missed this but I do not discriminate based on gender when it comes to assholes.
For everyone who is so upset at my mocking comments on “safe spaces” to clarify I am referring to the ideological safe spaces which are popping up on campuses across North America. Are you going to defend these too? If so, you really do not believe in a free speech society.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/safe-spaces-college-intolerant_us_58d957a6e4b02a2eaab66ccf
@ rhuu
I don’t want to sound unduly gruesome, and hopefully no-one will ever come close to needing this, but if anyone is ever in a hopeless situation see if you can covertly swallow something that will identify the perpetrator. Ideally a note. At least then the pathologist will find it.
Why do we need to discuss domestic violence here at all? You keep moving goalposts, switching topics at the drop of a hat. And saying something proves your point, when it doesn’t really, is disingenuous at bst.
Anyhow, domestic violence has always included the idea that men are also victims. I’m sorry you can’t see that because you want to keep discussing over and over how men are the real victims, when the point is, both women and men are victims. It’s also true that most victims of DV are women.
But again, what does any of that have to do with whatever we were discussing before?
Your mocking is weak. Your threats are pathetic. Your points are either entirely wrong, correct but not cogent, or born of essential misunderstandings that you are unwilling to correct.
Shapman tldr
“what about the menzzz!!!!”
“females used to know their place”
@ John
Unfortunately it is to over simplify if you don’t consider how someone ends up dead.
This is an area of particular interest to me. Not least because it was the central issue in the only case I’ve ever done in the House of Lords (as it was then). This one in the unlikely event anyone is interested:
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld199900/ldjudgmt/jd000727/smith-1.htm
But you need to consider both the factual nexus of domestic homicides and the legal implications. I won’t go into it in detail here. No-one is interested and it involved 11 lever arch files worth of material to cover in the case.
But some key points are that, generally (and I accept, not universally), men kill out of anger, and women kill out of desperation.
Also, for all sorts of reasons, men tend to kill ‘instantly’ and with whatever is immediately to hand, whereas women may have a build up period as they finally break down and also use weapons.
Unfortunately in law that used to translate to ‘lack of intent’ = manslaughter versus ‘pre-meditation’ = murder.
One common factor in both M-F and F-M domestic homicides is a history of domestic abuse, but in both cases that’s usually the man perpetrating it on the woman.
Now I appreciate that could be seen as victim blaming when it’s a male victim so I should perhaps emphasise this is just my personal view and also that (for all sorts of reasons I won’t bore you with) I don’t call myself a feminist; so you can’t blame feminists for this. I think most if not all the feminists here would very much say both situations are equally bad.
@Alan: Haha, in the context of what I was saying, not gruesome at all. I’ll keep that in mind, and pass it on the next time a discussion like this comes up IRL.
Alan, you quoted Shapman.
They do tend to sound alike when they repeat the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over under multiple names.
waiting to see whether he’s gonna debate the lawyer on this one
I didn’t know you had a case int he House of Lords, Alan! Very cool. Far too long for me to read right now, unfortunately!
@ scildfreja
It was an interesting case. Although it just involved a rather unfortunate stabbing it raised an issue “of particular public importance” (that’s the test to get a case before the HoL), especially in relation to domestic homicides. Women Against Rape provided a load of research. That’s where I got my favourite murder fact that in 60% of murders it’s the murderer who calls the police.
They hand down the actual decision in the chamber of the House. The acoustics there are terrible, so they give it you in advance. But I’d only ever done appeals where we were the ones appealing. So when I read “This appeal is dismissed” I immediately rang the solicitor (who was also on the phone to the client) to give him the bad news.
Then the prosecution barrister came over and said “This is our appeal remember; that means you’ve won.”
Oops. That’s the sort of top notch representation you get when you instruct me.
If I say that I like pizza, it does not mean that I dislike Penang curry. It just means I like pizza. There’s no reason to tell me that I should eat Penang curry too because the statement that I like pizza does not preclude me from liking Penang curry.
Same principle applies here. Feminists discuss IPV because it is a major threat to women. If a woman is murdered, chances are high that the murderer was her husband or boyfriend or ex partner. One in three women in the US experience partner violence at some point and one in five are sexually assaulted and often by a partner or date. Feminism focuses on female victims because feminism is a social justice movement that focuses on helping women to gain equality. That does not mean feminists do not know that male victims exist, it doesn’t mean they oppose helping male victims. It does mean their conversations just aren’t likely to revolve around men.
Now, if an IPV victim’s advocacy organization or government agency that works on providing assistance to IPV victims or education about the issue completely excluded men, it would be entirely valid to bring up male victims. Not only would it be completely legit, feminists would very likely agree with you. They might even help you. They definitely wouldn’t attempt to stop you. But even though feminists typically care about IPV, feminism is not an anti-IPV advocacy group. It’s feminism. This particular site isn’t even an advocacy site for feminist issues. It’s a site for mocking misogynists and/or the alt-right.
This isn’t that hard to understand. I suspect that you do understand this perfectly well and this is merely a derailing tactic meant to prevent discussion of male on female partner violence.
If you truly didn’t know this, now you do. I suggest that if you want to discuss the issue of men being the victims of partner violence, you go to a forum for discussing these issues. If you believe there aren’t enough resources in your area for male victims, take it up with local elected officials and mobilize your friends and neighbors to do the same. Don’t march onto an old blog thread discussing a documentary that was funded by misogynists and demand that we all discuss your pet issues.
Yet the commenters you’re the most upset with for being rude to you have been women. Try to weasel out of it all you like, the implication is pretty clear. That you would like us to mouth off to your face so that you can hit us.
How are universities providing a safe space for students that need them a threat to free speech? It’s not like entire campuses are safe spaces. Students who do not need or want a safe space are not required to use the spaces. So why does it bother you so much? How does it harm you? You think I’m so mean. I would never mock someone for having an anxiety disorder or being a trauma survivor.
What if one of the male partner violence survivors you claim to be concerned with was taking a psychology course and there was a unit dealing with domestic violence. Do you think he should just get over it? Or do you think he should be able to have content notes on the material so that he can choose how to cope with something that will bring back painful memories and access to a safe space to discuss these issues with students in similar situations?
I know you hate to hear this, but once again I’m left feeling bad for your kids. I hate to think of what would happen if one of them experienced a traumatic event and was having trouble coping. If they hear you mocking safe spaces and trigger warnings, they sure are getting the message that you will be of no help and might even make fun of them. I’m feeling very grateful to have the father that I do. I’ve never heard him be derisive towards people in need of help before.
I have this irrational fear that I’m going to find a dead body, call the police, and then be accused of murdering the person.
It flashed through my mind last week when I was walking Bailey by the creek and saw a swarm of blow flies. I didn’t see or smell anything so it was probably the corpse of a very small animal that didn’t have much meat left on it. But it did cross my mind.
Also just loving the part where someone (I think Alan or Scild but at work so not looking back for it) clarified how many of those 200 men were men on men violence but you ignored that part. You came here in bad faith bro and you are trying to engage people in the “reasonable” discussion of whether or not they have rights and then calling for your fainting couch when people are personally offended. You are pretty much the worst. Not to mention like the other trolls it’s hard to remember where you started? It was this ONE judge who you believed to have a bias that your lawyer caught right? That was the root of you if I am not mistaken?
@ JS, you are clueless.
There is no right and wrong in this debate. My point is that men are killed by their female (and male) partners (care to debate this?) and that men are assaulted by their female (and male) partners (care to debate this?). My original contention is that the debate surrounding domestic violence centres almost solely on women (you can argue this all you want but the lack of public/private funding for domestic abuse shelters which allow men is pathetic). Is there a concern that making the debate whole will take away from the same old crap being spewed by feminists (men bad – women good). The truth is the vast majority of men are not abusers and never would be. The other truth is that men are marginalised (yes, I said it) in this discussion and many have nowhere to turn to in order to seek help (surely, not nearly the resources afforded to women in similar situations).
@ Alan
Maybe so, but I am sure each case is different. I am sure that some women who kill their husband because he is leaving her for another woman as an act of “desperation”. There is an undertone in society when you say “desperation”. It becomes synonymous with “abuse” and I am sure that is not always the case.
(could you provide supporting data or do I just need to take your word for it like all the lap dogs on this site?)
or in some cases the woman using the battered wife syndrome as a defence (I am sure that every women who leans on the battered wife defence has been abused just like every woman who claims sexual assault has been raped, right? wait here comes the figurative knives again because I dared make a claim that some women lie about abuse just as some men who are abusive lie that they are not).
yes, it can be.
I used to do work for one of those drop in legal clinics. One day the police turned up.
“One of your clients has been found murdered. It appears you were the last person to see him alive.”
“I can assure you that if he’s been murdered there’s at least one other person who saw him.”
(They were nice enough to say “Oh, we didn’t mean it like that”)
Nope, I know exactly what you are. You may not have figured it out yet.
You keep telling us what we’re debating, while we keep telling you this isn’t a good place to have such a debate, and also telling you how you’re wrong about many of the things you say. Some of what you say is certainly true, but taken as a whole and put forward here, it doesn’t have much meaning.
None of this IPV (or domestic violence) “debate” you think you’re having with us has anything to do with Cassie Jaye and The Red Pill.
Of course domestic violence is a problem for both sexes. Of course there’s not enough support for everyone who’s been violated. Going on and on and on and on and on, about how we’re just not accepting what you say we have to accept, when we’ve actually accepted most of it? Now that’s clueless.
It’s clear that any source of data showing women are more frequent victims than men that we provide for you will be insufficient evidence, and you will continue this “debate” until the cows come home. Now that’s clueless.
@Alan Robertshaw
Paul Elam:
He will now have a resource where he can come and post your name, your picture, your work telephone number, your address, perhaps even your route you take to get to work
Cassie Jaye:
“this all seems completely reasonable.”
That’s not fair. He didn’t say that when Cassie interviewed him, as I expect you know. The words of hers you quote were in response to something else. Do you normally try to deceive?
For the record, I don’t approve of ‘name and shame’ sites.