The story of Cassie Jaye and her Red Pill documentary gets curiouser and curiouser. In an interview with Tracy Clark-Flory of Vocativ she admits that she’s actually a bit scared of the MRAs whose cause she now seems to be championing.
As Clark-Flory puts it:
It turns out Jaye understands fear of MRAs. “I luckily moved recently,” she said toward the end of our nearly three-hour-long conversation, explaining that some of the men she interviewed had her home address. “I was really glad to move.”
Indeed, Jaye told Clark-Flory that during the course of her interviews one of her subjects evidently became smitten with her, and, in classic MRA style, treated her to numerous late-night phone calls of an apparently amorous nature.
On nearly a dozen occasions, she received calls in the middle of the night from one of her MRA subjects. (There were multiple emails, too.) Jaye implied that her repeat caller had on the mind what one might charitably call romance … .
She acknowledges to Clark-Flory that with her film “kind of being funded by men’s rights advocates,” she worries a little bit about what they might do if her final product is not to their liking.
“I think any bad seeds would probably want to see the film first before taking me down,” she said with a laugh. What if they do see the film and view it as unfavorable, though? “I guess I could go into hiding,” Jaye said.
But she apparently isn’t too worried that her new MRA fans and financial backers won’t like her film.
“Do I want to have any kind of allegiance to them to make sure I’m not harmed in the end?” She paused, the question lingering, and then explained that her video diaries show her reacting negatively to the MRAs, but that those clips were part of her early “evolution” on the subject. “I think that protects me from people wanting to attack what I said then,” she said.
The implication seemingly being that the position she ultimately came to would not make MRAs angry with her. “I think it’ll be OK,” she said.
You can read the full piece here, and I really suggest that you do. Because WTF.
In related news, the Red Pill lawyer and juice salesman who apparently bought himself an Associate Producer credit for The Red Pill with a $10,000 donation is bragging that he “cuckolded” Seth Rogan … on Twitter. By which I mean not that he’s boasting about this on Twitter, but that he thinks he actually did the cuckolding on Twitter.
Honestly, I think she’s going to have problems even if she is totally complimentary to her subjects. The Manosphere is notoriously fractious, as David has documented on many occasions. Hell, even Elam and the RedPill subreddit despise one another. And these folks often take the attitude that the friend of my enemy is my enemy. If she comes off as too fawning over AVfM, I fully expect the Reddit scum to go after her, and vice versa.
@AAAtheist
My thoughts exactly.
The other thing that occurs to me is how good of a journalist/documentarian can she be if she’s not checking what she’s been told against readily available information? It’s one thing for a random naive fair-minded feminist to be flimflammed by these people. But Cassie is supposed to know what she’s doing and expect someone to TRY to trick her, then practice due diligence to catch them if they do. And it makes a great doco too.
That is weird. If i didn’t know better I’d think she was in on a con. But I couldn’t find anything implying Cassie is anything else than what she claims to be. Assuming she’s on the level, my guess is that she’s being set up. But no end game I can extrapolate makes sense. Can’t do MRA “logic”.
Except in this case CJ doesn’t appear to be aware she needs an expert and with Brietbart funding, she very unlikely to do it even if it does occur to her.
i hope she doesn’t turn out to be a Tea Party Zombie Sleeper…..that what her “I was a feminist too, but now i see the light” story sounded like at first.
Ugh. My last post looks like I bulldozed right over Autosoma, who showed up in distress while I was still composing. Sorry about that. Hope you’re okay over there. If you want to talk, I’m listening!
hey ej, bina & verily
I’ve been having a Barney with my wife over some difficult issues, money, drinkm her narcissistic abusive parents and she crashed me by accusing me of gaslighting. I’ve made many many mistakes in my time, I’ve always held myself accountable, but when the gas light thing popped up, I found myself thinking of all the MTGOW things that gave been talked about here, and for one small moment I thought “yeh!” why not.
sibce I wrote it I’ve throttled back and thought “Auto don’t be like that”
The fact that women live longer than men has nothing to do with society or any imagined misandry. Females live longer than males in many species: it’s biology.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-women-live-longer/
(It’s funny to me how manospherians, eager to claim male–and therefor personal–superiority, tell each other men are the stronger sex because muscle strength but ignore other markers, like the fact that women survive extreme emotional and physical stress in greater numbers than men, and live longer overall.)
Anyway. It sounds like Jaye’s just a shallow thinker. She sure doesn’t know how to evaluate evidence.
I’m honestly quite worried about Jaye. She’s waded too far and too deep into this pool and now she’s trying to write off the glimpses of the hordes of piranhas she’s seeing around her as totally harmless fish of some other kind, no, really, they’re totally fine. Everything’s going to be fine.
I don’t think that the MRAs are actually capable of being 100% satisfied with whatever she’s going to produce; the manosphere has a lot of hatred between factions and portraying one favorably will make enemies of the others. And if she somehow manages to avoid that, just showing one of the interview subjects stating one of the manosphere’s more repugnant beliefs (which is most of them, really) will end up making them look bad in front of the world and they will of course blame Jaye for daring to publish it instead of the dude who actually said and believed it. She is going to REALLY need an exit strategy for when this all blows up in her face.
I think her best option right now would probably be to bail ASAP and hope the manosphere gets distracted by another chew toy soon.
When this documentary comes out we should watch it with a morse code book open.
That way we can check to see if she’s blinking for help.
“I found myself thinking of all the MTGOW things that gave been talked about here, and for one small moment I thought “yeh!” why not.”
Maybe you need some time alone to sort things out? That doesn’t have to mean “All women are poopyheads and I’m retiring to the hills to kvetch endlessly online with my fellow Oppressed Brethren.” 🙂
Take care. I hope things work out for the best.
mrs autosoma has a pretty bad alcohol problem and it manifests itself with those kind of “perception” issues that go along with drinking too much. Now I’m not a brilliant fella by any strech of the imagination but we had one of those weirf arguments where I ended up thinking “OMG what am I like”
Well, that’s a relief. I was worried there.
And yeah. Sadly, people with drinking problems do have a funny way of blaming others/projecting onto others what they are doing themselves. I know, because I had a boyfriend like that. And my sister divorced a guy like that, too. When the booze is talking, the person has some very “off” perceptions of others, especially those who are trying to help them get a grip on their drinking problem. Sadly, they won’t acknowledge the problem until they hit bottom. And any attempt to intervene will be read as “you’re all against me!”
How dubious she FORCES herself to sound is ridiculous. It’s like everything published about her is a click bait headline.
No woman with her head more or less in place would ever be impressed by an argument such as “so what that we rule the world? Women live slightly longer”. My guess is, and I place all my bets on that, she is a *DUN-DUN-DUUUUUUUN* con-artist, who is ripping them off, while trying to get some out of feminists too, by remaining ambiguous. But a REAL con artist, not one like *DUN DUN DUUUUUN* Sarkeesian “is”.
Not sure how accurate that Vocativ piece is, but Cassie Jaye sure does come off as gullible and none too bright.
So I didn’t know about this at all. Looked into it and… I’m legitimately afraid for her.
This will end very, very badly. If she’s overly-fawning of one MRA faction, she’ll get harassed by all the other factions. If she backs out entirely, she’ll be harassed. If they sniff a hint of criticism, she’ll be harassed.
Really, no one should be making a documentary of these people. It’s dangerous.
I really really hope it turns out okay for her… but I’m not expecting it to…
Oh dear this is bad…
@autosama – Internet hugs if you want them.
@weirwoodtreehugger
This abstract goes into the connection between sex chromosomes and lifespan a bit:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2688912/
In short, it looks like having two of the same sex chromosomes (like, say, XX) leads to a longer life than having two different sex chromosomes.
@autosoma
I hope things get better for you and the missus. Sounds like things are going pretty bad right now, but I’m sure they will get better in a little while. It can’t be easy for either one of you. I’d just urge you to remember the things about your wife that made you fall in love with her. She’s still that person underneath the alcohol talking. I’m sorry to hear that you’re going through a rough patch, I really am. I’d be more than happy to lend a sympathetic male ear, if you need one.
@The OP
It’s really sounding to me like Cassie Jaye has bitten off more than she can chew, as it were. I’m sure that her intentions were good when she started this project, but she has gone too deep, too fast. I just hope that whatever her project turns out to be, that she’s safe and in a good place. I’d also hope that she’s proud of the work that she’s done for the film, as it can’t have been an easy task, all in all.
re: sex differences in lifespan: Isn’t there also something about testosterone being generally hard on the body?
^ Not a biologist
@autosoma – That sucks about her drinking issues.
Haven’t you said something about having had moved yourself away from drinking, etc?
Maybe she’s panicking a bit. Like, you’re bettering yourself, extricating yourself from toxic behaviors, and she sees herself stuck in old patterns.
I can imagine that might be scary – the thought of potentially loosing someone you love as they move forward while you’re standing still.
If that’s the case, might be why she’s lashing out. That doesn’t make her actions any more right, constructive, or healthy, but I know it’d be easier for me to feel compassion for someone who’s acting from a place of love (even if that love’s being warped by pain and fear, twisted into a posture of protection) than someone who’s just acting out of bald malice.
Either way, take care.
If you feel better hashing it out with a bloke, there seem to be a good bunch of guys here offering an ear.
I read the original article and it really stood out to me where she said that men live a shorter lifespan so it’s reasonable that they be paid more. This is interesting because the retirement age is the same for both sexes, so really that means that women need the money earned during their career to last 7 years longer than men. So working with that logic women should earn more than men, not less.
Also ethnic men (and women) tend to live a shorter life and earn less than their white counterparts, is this fair? Is the men’s rights movement championing the plight of the black man? Cos i’m pretty sure that the feminist movement is.
I agree with a lot of (some of) their causes, the problem is that they’re all things that the feminist movement already stands for in a more inclusive fashion. The MRA is really just a twisted form of feminism, filtering out the bits that don’t specifically help them personally.
@mockingbird – testosterone is a steroid, it’s why men are larger and stronger and why they die earlier. Actually studies have found that Eunuchs live an average of 14 years longer than non-castrated men (I got that last bit from Wikipedia so take with a pinch of salt).
thanks kestrel and monzach. I don’t really know how to say a lot of the things I think I want to. I read about the behaviours if the MGTOW and the MRA-ers and I can so easily see myself becoming one. I don’t know how to express the frustration resentment and bitterness that I end up feeling by living with an alcoholic and I feel bad about saying that. I grew up with alcoholic parents and I see so many of their behaviours with my wife drinking.
I don’t know what to do it even where to start, I went though therapy to try to come to terms with my feelings about it all and then there is an evening like this that makes me feel like shit for being angry that she’s pissed up looking after the girls. I wish I knew how to stop these feelings. One would be separation and that scares me because I really think in my isolation I would go MGTOW, which is quite abhorrent. Also, I really do love my wife and daughters, but days like today when the drinks inside her and she speaks to her parents, its like being with Mr. Hyde, a horrible drunken vindictive selfish monster appears and I don’t know how to cope with her or myself and I end up hating myself more.
Thanks again Mammothers for being there for me and stopping me going my own way and just listening.
@Autosoma
Oh,damn,me and my boyfriend have been going through something alike, and I am the problematic one. It’s been a year or so that I digged myself into depression and PTSD… I so often act bad with him, fight with him over small disagreements, and am not there when he needs me, emotionally or physically. We slowly changed into a dynamic of caregiver / caretaker instead of couples. He also began having very MRA ideas which, uh, only worsened my ways with him and my depression. I also accused him of Gaslight, which made complete sense in my mind, but maybe I am not thinking logically, maybe I really AM exaggerating and being too harsh on him. It’s very difficult. I was perfectly sane until a while ago, and now I have no idea what is real or not…
From the other side of the fence, that is, the side of the problematic or even abusive partner, carry on. She is probably very sorry for what she’s doing with you all, she probably misses the person she used to be very much too, and she probably is lost with no idea how to come back. She needs you more than ever, especially if her family is not there. I wish you lots of hope, lots of patience, emotional strength and, more than anything, love. You will need to love her a real huge lot, and remember how and why to love her very often.
Make sure she is seeking help. From a person with lots of alcohol problems in the family, my wishes are with your entire family.
And of course, this all is only valid until she endangers you and your kids.
chiomara. Thank you for that, really thank you. A lot of what you said regarding yourself is exactly what my wife says when she’s not “altered”. That’s she’s lost, doesn’t know who she is anymore. So thank you for reminding me that she is in a lot of distress.
but I don’t know how to cope your right that the relationship gas altered to that of me being a caregiver/caretaker and I spend so much time worrying about being a control freak. Then I get confronted with a changed reality, which emotionally batters me and brings out a horrible reaction. it’s made worse when she drinks and speaks to her parents.
I don’t know what to do about it as I end up feeling that she’s avoiding responsibility, avoiding the truth if the situations and it makes me question my own memory and what actually happened.
I feel trapped as I earn the money to support the family, I’d prefer to be the stay at home carer of the children as I just don’t trust her to be sober to look after them. Throw into the mix that I hate my career as a software engineer and that so many of the blokes I work with can’t be arsed spending time with their families or are up front about their shitty attitudes to women.
I dunno what to do, it stressed me and makes me scared, which is an perfect way to become an abuser. Followed on by the fact that I rant when she’s got pissed and rung her parents, I just don’t know how to cope. I’m unhappy she’s unhappy, the kids are unhappy.
It’s nearly three in the morning and I can’t sleep, I’ve got a shitty day to look forward to at work, because the code I’d written was fucked by two of my work colleagues in the afternoon because they don’t do source control properly and we have a delivery tomorrow and I left work shortly after 6pm because my wife rsng ne pissed ip and I had to get home for the kids.
I’d just like her to be a little bit accountable for some of this mess, and exercise a little self control over the drinking. And here comes the MGTOW bit, I;d just like to be listened to by her and things go my way. Meh! I’m gonna call the Samaritans , I need to chat with someone who will go there, there, there… it’ll be alright one day
Seriously, the amount of time and projection Cernovich is putting into that one tweet is pathetic.
@autosoma I am so sorry. I am truly sorry. I wish I could give you a hug. I wish I could watch your kids a bit. From over the Internet and hundreds of kilometers away, have a heartfelt hug and my shoulder.
Has she seeked professional help? DO make sure she seeks it. I don’t know how you are money-wise, or how things are in the US about this, but seek an alcoholics group and seek, if possible, a therapist. A behavioural therapist. I do think she needs some. I mean, aside from chemical dependence, there may be an emotional reason she drinks. She needs to solve that and to enter a different mindset. Let us know if you can’t afford it, maybe we can help.
And a few, uh, tips that will probably sound a bit crazy, but it’s how some people in my family did it: where is she getting the alcohol? If it’s home, grab her bottles, pour some out, and fill with water instead, or water mixed with dissolvable juice if it’s wine or liquor. Every week you increase the water/alcohol ratio. This may lead to an ugly fight when she finds out, but it will help with the chemical dependence. People in my family have used this method with everything, from alcohol to sleeping pills to cocaine. This way, once she seeks help, she will be half way through quitting.