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.
@autosoma
Take care of yourself. I’ve been there, feeling stuck in a relationship I knew was abusive but didn’t know how to get out of, and had myself convinced it wasn’t that bad most of the time (and most of the time it wasn’t bad, but the bad parts were bad).
On the gaslighting, I don’t know the situation at all, but I know when my husband goes into problem-solving mode he’ll say things that sound to me like he’s denying or trying to erase the problem, when he’s really just trying to help. I’ve taught him to just be empathetic instead of trying to solve things, and I haven’t felt gaslighted from him since. Again, I don’t know what the actual issues are that caused her to make that accusation, so this advice may be way off, but if you’re trying to resolve issues, just know that most of the time people just want others to hear and understand their problems, not help solving them. And if you really feel like you need to help solve, state that up front after acknowledging the problem. (i.e. “That really sucks, I’m sorry you’re going through that. Do you want my advice?”)
Anyway, that might not be helpful at all, but it sounded like it could possibly help.
oh Chiomara, thank you for your kind thoughts, Mrs Autosoma has an initial alcohol rehab group meeting tomorrow, the fourth one in three years. Sadly one of them taught her better ways to hid her boozing. In many respects I find myself being a toxic enabler by saying OK when she “asks” my permission to get booze (I learnt along time ago to “enable” as the fall out emotionally was worse by saying no).
I hate the drinking so much, tonight I entered an alternate reality from the past, where if she hadn’t of lost that job she would have sorted her debt problems out by taking out more debt and it was my fault for finding out.
I had a good long chat with the Samaritans, I don’t feel better for it as I already knew all, the options they were suggesting but it;s good to hear another Human voice at times.
Do you know what’s scary about all this, is that I feel I’m the one to blame. Because I was ranting at her about drinking, my youngest daughter self harmed by sticking a thumbtack in her chest. This is because I’m angry about my wife being drunk in charge of the children, spinning up alternate realities and gaslighting me and being in denial about her “issues”. Y’ just can’t win, dammed if you do dammed if you don’t. I don’t know how to stop this destructiveness.
kupo, the gaslighting came about not from problems-solving more like problem denial and me then stupidly correcting the statement.
I have noticed that the gaslighting increases massively when she’s been in contact with her father (a child psychologist and social worker). He’s an evil destructive man and I think he’s out to punish me for not paying off the £5000 she borrowed of him.
Another day, another racist moron not knowing what cuckolding actually is…
Oh my good lord 🙁 Send her to therapy too. Maybe it helps her realize what she is doing. Try being firm with her. Like a father or a figure of authority. It’s outrageous how her father, a psychologist, will drive her further away from the only person who is helping her, and make reason out of her vices. How old are your children? Can’t you put them in full-time schools? If it becomes too bad, which in my honest outsider opinion, it has, maybe take her to a detox in an institution, and while that, if needed, the loud, unhelpful great parents take care of the kids. Is that an option?
However it goes, try pouring water in the drinks. It always worked for the women in my family.
autosoma – My husband will only drink a beer now and then (if I can get 2 in him his Carolina accent comes out 😀 😀 😀 ) but he has a history with substance use (back in his early 20s) and we both have looooong family histories of destructive levels of alcoholism.
Something I told him before we were married: “I know that it’s not an issue now, but if you develop a serious problem with a substance while the children are minors we will not stay. They will not be around that. I will still love you, I won’t seek a divorce, and I’ll do everything that I can to help you – while living seperately with the children. I expect the same from you.”
I’m not about to try to tell you what to do – your situation is your situation and only YOU can read it – but you’ve said that your children are being harmed.
That would not stand with me.
Autosoma, I’m so sorry for your situation.
I don’t really have any good advice… but hugs and internet shoulder if you need one.
Autosoma:
I don’t know if they’re in your country, but an Al-Anon group might help. Basically they’re a support group for families of alcoholics, with some chapters geared towards younger folk (Al-Teen). Even if they don’t have a chapter in your area/country, they may have information on their website that might be of use for you, even though they’re based out of the US. Can’t hurt to look them up, anyway.
Good luck in getting yourself and the kids through this mess. And hopefully your wife will become healthy again.
@autosoma — My friend, what chiomara has suggested is spot on. I’m married to a social worker who specializes in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and who focuses on family and children therapy. A 12-step program is definitely a good thing for your wife to join. It would allow her to talk through her problems in a setting where there is no guilting or shaming and therefore no need to lash out or self-destruct to hide from these harmful consequences.
My own spouse has borderline personality disorder and the MRAs and MGTOWs in the crowd will tell you over and over again that the best solution to a woman with BPD is to turn 180º and run like hell, but I’ve found that patience, a little counseling, and managing her symptoms with the lowest adult dose of sertraline and trazodone have helped her get to a better place where she is level, functional, and is starting to build a real personality instead of hiding behind what she thinks everyone else expects of her.
While my spouse has never ever been an alcoholic, I can tell you I do genuinely resonate with the sudden, irrational outbursts of rage and fury. Little did I know when I stood at the altar and said “I do” that I was marrying a Valkyrie. Yet as the first couple of years of our marriage wore on, it started to get to where just about every time we were going to or from church she’d get this cold, silent, stone-wall atmosphere about her where it felt like she was a thousand miles away and unapproachable. (And before someone jumps on religion as the culprit, that wasn’t it, and our church isn’t patriarchal or spouse-abusive; we have a black female pastor and we regularly talk about gender, race, and social justice issues from the pulpit and in small groups. Not all Christians are draconian ne’er-do-wells. Check yoself.)
I was always raised by my parents to be the sort of man who doesn’t just ignore problems but who seizes the bull by the horns, tries to make an effort to extend an olive branch, find out what’s going on, and get back to being friends with people, so I applied that to my marriage. Yikes. I’d draw back an emotional bloody stump. So then I’d try just waiting it out, but she could go on like that for 8, 10, 12 hours and it’s excruciating to be around someone your entire day off from work who is supposed to love you and resonate on the same wavelength as you but who suddenly has the personality of a nailbat.
Anyway, it would go like that until finally she talked it out with me, had a big emotional outburst, would start sobbing–at which point I would think something approximately like “OH GOD THIS IS TERRIBLE WHAT DID I DO WHY WON’T SHE STOP CRYING QUICK DO SOMETHING FUNNY TO MAKE HER FEEL BETTER”–and then would *finally* share with me what was actually eating at her, and invariably it was something that seemed so incredibly mundane to me like she had said something 4 days ago and someone had reacted badly to it and now she was 5million percent certain that person hated her, or something like that. It’s part of BPD and anxiety disorder.
Anyway, I had always assumed that she was just sorting out ‘who she was’ because she had been raised in a family that was pretty WASPy (you know, smiling and chatting chirpily while sliding the knife between your ribs, that sort of thing), but after some years of this and things looking not better but actually WORSE (we had a major death in our family that didn’t help things at all), we finally went to a counselor who then referred her to a psychiatrist for evaluation. That’s when the BPD and anxiety were diagnosed, and I’m telling you, within 48 hours of going on a course of the aforementioned medicine, she was able to be who she intended to be but who the anxiety typically kept her from being.
So there is hope for a spouse who is antagonistic to turn around. Presumably she loves you or wouldn’t have married you. Presumably she does not want to destroy her marriage or her family, and will therefore be willing to seek some form of help. Be gentle, but be firm in telling her that you will no longer help enable her habit. If you’re unfamiliar with the “Love and Logic” system, you might want to check it out on YouTube. It’s typically used for parenting, but if an adult is being particularly irresponsible, it is a form of civil disobedience that doesn’t FORCE her to stop drinking, but does force her to own the consequences of her alcoholism which will perhaps help her realize how bad her problem is and lead her to seek help.
For what it’s worth, I’ll pray for the situation, or send you positive vibrations or whatever format you’d prefer to think of me wishing you the very best in. I truly hope all shall be well for you and that you will find your peace and joy at the end of your journey, my friend.
Warmly,
DS
Autosoma,
I’m so sorry. Not sure what more I can say, but I hope you all get through this okay.
Chiomara,
” 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.”
How would you dilute someone’s pills?
@autosoma
I’m really sorry that you and your family are having a rough time of it. Alcohol is quite a wild card.
I like what redsilkphoenix had to say about Al-Anon.
Also appreciated: Mockingbird’s comment about the boundaries she put up with her husband.
Try to get some sleep. You need your rest–seriously. Things will look different in the morning.
We’re here if you need to talk.
I must agree with a previous commenter who observed that Jaye comes across as naive and not very bright — IOW, a perfect material for a new MRA recruit. She sounds like someone who’s just awakened to reality, and has not time yet to process much of it in any way.
For example, she seems shocked, shocked by finding out about the higher suicide rates and workplace deaths among men. One wonders if she’s lived on Earth, and if so, what stopped her from having her eyes opened? Or doing some basic research on the subject before delving into the world of hate-driven, but honey-smeared distortions that predictably messed up her inexperienced mind?
And did she really not know about “the tendency to not take male victims of sexual assault as seriously and the ways that men are discouraged from being caretakers”? Really? Feminists have been pounding on those issues for long decades.
She also apparently cannot reason through some basic facts of life, as many noted here wrt gender life and earning discrepancies, nor can she put them in a larger context and understand their meaning.
After watching the trailer, which looks like a Viagra commercial, and reading this interview, I have zero hope that this documentary could be objective.
But I do feel sorry for her. She is going to have a tough lesson to learn from this experience, and it is probably not one that she would ever expect. It is astounding that she cannot grasp what she’s dealing with, even as she acknowledges that she may have to go into hiding as a result of making this movie.
@autosoma:
Sorry to hear about your troubles. Stay strong, man.
@Orion
Well,it’s very easily done with those jelly pills with powder inside, you just open it, empty, and close again. If the compressed powder pills inside a jar, you change some of them for some lookalikes. With my mom it was a little bit harder though, my dad was addicted to sleeping pills that came in a popping sheet. She’d very carefully open it with a sharp knife and replace them one by one with vitamins, closed again, and prayed a lot, haha. Damn, was he mad when he found out. They were expensive pills. But he didn’t even need detox, before he knew, he was no longer taking them, and he was never abusive again. It’s been twenty years ^^ That’s why I say, it’s an excellent strategy.
I am sorry, I don’t know if I made myself understood. I hope you all understand what I mean by “jelly pill with powder inside”, “compressed powder pill” and “popping sheet”. Also, excuse the typos and grammar mistakes. I’m not a native speaker and I am kind of dyslexic.
well after a sleepless night and a long chat with the Samaritans and a short bitter conversation with my wife I’ve decided to move out into a hotel for a short while. To get my head together. I’m sorry that I co-opted this thread and I hope to be back soon. I very highly strung and worried about my children and I so don’t want for this to turn me into something David would write about. I’m so unhappy right now.
Auto, best of luck. Maybe a couple days’ll help you both figure some stuff out.
Are there any friends who can help your wife watch the kidlets?
I dropped a letter into the next door neighbours, in going to try to contact my rabbi and shul… I dunno what the gell to do. it’s my fault for being argumentative and wanting certain things regarding parenting that she can’t do for me.
Best of luck, Autosoma. I know your family’s in a tough spot right now, but I’m hoping things will get better for you. Internet hugs for the moment though, and if it helps, I found a funny thing.
It’s only slightly relevant, but still hilarious.
thanks paradoxical that did make me smile a little bit
@autosoma:
My parents relationship was quite similar to what you’ve described yours and Mrs autosoma’s relationship as being like. I don’t like to talk about it but you said a lot of things that resonate for me.
From the sounds of it you’re being an excellent father, caring for your children no matter what. Burning yourself out for them isn’t a good idea though: my father also found it very easy to self-sacrifice, far easier than actually sorting out the issues.
All my best wishes and please let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.
I see a lot of people assuming that Seth Rogan’s wife’s tweet is a typo. That’s possible, of course, but isn’t it more likely to be photoshop or a sockpuppet?
@autosoma: Hugs. You’re in a very difficult situation; you’re allowed to be merely human about it.
All the hugs.
@autosoma
I do hope that putting a bit of distance between yourself and your wife helps. I can’t imagine what you’re going through. Just stay strong and remember that this too will pass.
Wish there was more I could say and do, but do have some internet hugs from me as well, if you want them. 🙂
I’ll have another go at the picture:
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/02/11/article-0-11AA3F21000005DC-685_964x674.jpg
To add:
It’s not your fault for being argumentative. By the sounds of it you have every right to protest about what’s going on. Confrontation in this situation is the right thing to do, even if there were no children involved. If she’s trying to reframe the situation so that your reasonable concerns are dismissed as just being argumentative, then that’s gaslighting.
You are an intelligent and caring human being. You are not just a machine for looking after other people. Trust yourself and look to your own feelings as well. From the interactions I’ve had with you on here, you’ve come across as a genuinely kind and thoughtful guy who has a strong moral streak. Never let her tell you anything else.
@Autosoma:
EJ beat me to it, but I just wanted to chime in that this is not your fault.
Definitely stay in touch with whatever support systems are available to you, and focus on taking care of yourself and your kids. I think it is super honorable that you want to help her, and I sincerely hope that she will cooperate in seeking help for her addiction. But she is an adult with her own free will, so you can’t hold yourself responsible for whether or not she decides she needs to change—or even the fact that she began abusing alcohol in the first place. Some of it’s on her, some of it’s on the addiction, but it’s not within your power to *make* her make good decisions, so it can’t be your fault.
Wishing you all the best.