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
The last time it took a world war because we left it too late.
Now we have the lesson from history and indeed the words of Hitler himself on the only way to nip this in the bud.
@John Devalle
Get that damnable victim blaming bullshit of my face. The majority voted Clinton, the majority of minorities did too. This isn’t a debate. You’ve already seen enough for anyone but the most zealous to go “wow these people are incredibly racist/transphobic/sexist/bigoted, we should do something something about that.” It’s bad enough to hear this from a “supposed ally”, but even more so when I remember that you don’t even fucking live here.
Agreed with WWTH. Tonight’s not the time, John. Go badger someone else for awhile. Come back later.
John, fuck off. Today is not the day for this. Come back later. If you continue posting here today I will ban you.
@David Futrelle
John, fuck off. Today is not the day for this. Come back later. If you continue posting here today I will ban you
Bit surprised I haven’t been banned already. Still, I’ve seen enough. You all think any who voted for Trump is evil, while Clinton being an enthusiastic participant in mass murder is fine by all of you. You point out that some MRA’s are pure evil, and some are. But the MRA community isn’t so near universally bitter and wicked as the this one. The daft thing is you’re all doing your darnedest to get Trump re-elected, and you’re all to thick to realise it.
@Scildfreja
she wasn’t calling for a Muslim ban
No, she just kills them.
Evil? No John. Unsuitable for being a political ally? Yes. Are you saying your behaviour is inconsistent with site rules and customs?
We reject people based on behavior, bigoted behavior. Especially overt bigotry like the KKK.
And people who would look the other way and vote for a sexual assaulter, and no economic sense capable if looking at trumps ability to do economic things in Trump voters. I certainly don’t see even my family the same. I call them out on Facebook.
And John is banned.
Looks like this fuckweasel joins Shappy in wanting to be banned because he can’t win a debate with us.
What a loser.
And the banhammer arrives!
Why does Clinton and party matter when it comes to social behavior in general? Dealing with bigots is neutral to group in many ways, but we have individiual focus of attention. Elections don’t matter to what I do in here.
@David Futrelle
And it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.
Thank you, David!!
But that means I won’t get to use this gif:
http://i.imgur.com/yR6tJJR.png
I mean come on, how dense do you have to be, to compare Hillary trying to get foreign policy right (and sometimes failing terribly, because foreign policy is extremely tough), with people actually killing other people in the streets of our own country?
Also, those “average people” you keep telling us about? Who we need to build bridges with? We have. Trump’s approval rating has tanked, the average people have realized just what he represents (not them). Trump’s base, of course, still loves him, but the only way they’d vote against him is if he changed sex, or race. Those alt-right assholes who go around killing people who disagree with them? NOT AVERAGE PEOPLE.
Thank you, David. Thank you.
Since they are banned this will be a bit different. No role-playing with MLP characters, but I may use that on future trolls. I’m curious if this looks consistent to anyone. Like it’s the same kind of thing in the [] brackets in both sets of text.
The background of Shapman was more involved than I thought. Two encounters. The most recent set of exchanges started all the way over on page 21 with this directed at weirwoodtreehugger.
[]= objects/people from Shapman’s perspective, first person typer..
[brush]: metaphorical object
[Woody]: Defacement of WWTH’s name
[I]: Shapman
[house]: metaphorical object
In response to weirwoodtreehugger typing…
[]=objects/people, first person typer perspective
Summary: A non-literal “You’re wrong” to symbolically defaced WWTH. Literally nothing more.
I’ve almost got this one done. It’s connected to this one strategically, but I wanted to see if anyone noticed me missing persons or objects from Shapman or WWTH’s perspectives. The inability to get from “brush” to actual errors makes it an insult in addition to the manipulated name, the feeling of error remains unresolved.
The whole “here’s what you did wrong” speech for Shapman would actually have to be directed to his original arrival here on page 8. That one set the tone and dispositions.
I’m going to assume that I did not miss any of things in text that are objects to the person typing. If anyone thinks I missed one or if one is not I want to know. I’m still building this and I want to see if modeling the action in language is possible like this. Objects that can be worked with, followed, or otherwise acted upon like social affordances are a required first thing to define, [].
The actions are items surrounded with **. First let me post the second comment. this one is interesting because it’s paired with the first. Right after calling WWTH’s name and ability to tie people to groups is insulted they address a percieved fellow traveler, Jerry.
Edited differently than above because I think it works better.
Addressing: [Jerry]. About Jerry’s time with WHTM commentators as a group, no specific individual in text.
Quote from Jerry.
Message to Jerry.
[I] am not trolling [I] stand behind what [I] say @ [Jerry], [you] are wasting your [time] [here]. [I] had some of the [“intellectuals”] on [here] tell [me] that [they] felt “sorry” for my [daughter] that [she] had [me] as a [father] and that my [comments] led [them] believe that [I] might be a “serial [abuser]”. These [individuals] don’t want an open [dialogue] on gender [issues] unless [it] [begins] and [ends] with [everyone] understanding that the [patriarchy] is right up [there] with the [law of gravity] in terms of its irrefutable [nature]. In other [words], even if [men] do suffer from gender [discrimination] in areas such as medical [funding] for male [diseases], [funding] for male domestic abuse [victims] or the gross [imbalance] that still exists in family and criminal [court] it is the fault of the patriarchal [system].
Objects from Jerry’s text.
[I]:Jerry
[debate]: a form of communication that acts as a social challenge between individuals and groups.
[conscience]: a feeling of need to act on social norms, values, rules and there are probably other good things to put here categorically.
Object in Shapman text:
[you], [Jerry]: Jerry.
[time]: Jerry’s time.
[here]: The comment thread this was posted in.
[I], [me], [father]: Shapman
[“Intellectuals”]: Education related personal title with reversed (mockery) valance (“”).
[they], [them], [individuals]: WHTM commentators with WWTH provided as object example.
[daughter], [she], : Shapman’s daughter.
[comments]: Shapman’s comments that were objects of concern for others.
[abuser]: a person that engages in behaviors associated with the victimization of others. For example dominance behavior like bullying.
[dialogue],[it]: a form of communication.
[issues]: social objects of discussion, gender-type
[everyone]: all people.
[partiarchy]: social structures associated with patriarchs.
[there],[Law of Gravity]: a socially respected law about a directly sensible phenomena.
So again I want to let that sit to see if anyone thinks I missed anything that is an intractable object or person from the perspective of the person typing. I’m leaving out a lot, but this is the object or person that they act as if they can or have interacted with. We describe objects, we work with objects.
One last thing. Just to make it explicit I did just threaten to interact with Shapman in the form of a character from My Little Pony while criticizing them. I decided not to because I did not think it wise to role-play absent the person I was criticizing.
That has to be said because it bears thinking about. I could have done that. Should I? I can’t answer that. But I would have. I would have tried to do it as effectively and sensitively, but this still seemed worth mentioning relative to what I just posted and more generally.
It seems a genuinely good ethical concern but I score very high on the traditional man/male side when it comes to experience and personality. Thoughts?
I’m not sure where you’re going with this, but it looks interesting.
@ JS
Sorry this took a while to get back to. My blogging community had a situation that I needed to help with.
I hope that this is interesting. I think that this is an exercise in picturing social conflict from a forced first person perspective. The person typing is describing reality and what they experience in it and by focusing on the things they see and can or have interacted with it becomes possible to detect new patterns.
I have a newly refined version and I’ve included a new element.
Element one bracketing objects.
[]=An intractable or viewable person or object from the authors perspective, and a social affordance for both the author and anyone reading/communicating with the author.
Element two the author pointing.
**=The author indicating a direction, pointing, showing…
Shapman
August 4, 2017 at 10:00 am
Shapman
August 4, 2017 at 10:11 am
Andrew
November 10, 2016 at 10:50 am
Yor
December 10, 2016 at 1:48 pm
Yor
December 10, 2016 at 2:32 pm
I’m going to point out some patterns later, and eventually do another post with another new element. I want to think about this one after I have posted it too.
Don’t worry, I’m only submitting this one post. Just want to let you all know I’m doing my best to share your thoughts further afield. I’ve mentioned you, quoted from commentators here, in a number of places, like the comments sections of Youtube and the Guardian, amongst others. And I’ve started a page on FB about this blog, here,
https://www.facebook.com/The-Mammoth-Strikes-Back-171391703408485/
quoting a comment from the chief manatee, I’m sure she’ll be pleased.
Anti troll kitteh
http://livedoor.blogimg.jp/laba_q/imgs/e/3/e3764298.jpg
Ah yes. Comments section activism. The backbone of men’s rights activism.
I know I’m quaking in my boots that some dipshit is trash talking us on other sites. Feminism has had a good run, but John found a way to beat us. Time to hang up up our scented fucking candles and retire to our misandric hard chairs.
What are you all going to do with your retirement? I’m going to watch Sex and the City with my cats.
Christ on a crutch, you’re one needy, attention-seeking toddler, aren’t you, DeValle?