“Red Pill” director Cassie Jaye has responded to what she calls my “slanderous claims” about her. You can find her video on the subject, and a transcript of it, on her Kickstarter page. (The posts that offended her can be found here, here and here.) It would be quite an effective takedown of me, if what she wrote were actually true.
I was going to write out a detailed response but instead let me give you the tl;dr version as it played out on Twitter last night:
After her video went up, a small squad of her supporters headed here to share their lovely opinions with me. Their comments went straight into the trash, but, what the heck, I thought I’d fish out a couple of them to share with you all now.
I guess these are the heroes of truth and objectivity who are funding her documentary.
EDITED TO ADD:
But wait! There’s more! Jaye’s fans on Twitter also have some things to say.(Mildly NSFW.)
The attacks on me by @Cassie_Jaye 's fans on Twitter are reaching new heights of sophistication. pic.twitter.com/0lMglv0lz3
— David Futrelle (@DavidFutrelle) November 4, 2015
And here's another @Cassie_Jaye fan resorting to Argumentum ad David is Fattum. pic.twitter.com/WJhWhDzpMs
— David Futrelle (@DavidFutrelle) November 4, 2015
Best part of that video posted by John Pavlich:
Angry white boy addressing Zoe Quinn directly: “YOU THINK YOU’RE FUCKING IMPORTANT. AND. YOU. AREN’T!!!”
So many layers to that.
@dhag85 When does that happen? Tried watching but then quickly discovered than I didn’t want to trawl through 15 minutes of mansplaining
The funny thing is, Zoe Quinn wouldn’t have gotten any Hollywood attention if these guys hadn’t organized a harassment campaign against her. If they can’t stop harassing feminists out of human decency, maybe they’ll stop because the harassment is a bad strategic move.
I know. I know. I’m dreaming here.
@weirwoodtreehugger: I’m half-convinced the only way they’d stop is if they were gripped with the mass suspicion that they’re being controlled by a core group of “false flags”.
OMG, that video. The neckbeard is literally strong with that…and it’s the only strong thing about it. Bwahahahahahahaha.
OMG, he goes on in that vein for 15 minutes? He shot his wad in the first 1:05. Literally his whole point is “Zoe Quinn had sex, that dirty slut.”
And just think, this is the calibre of intellects Cassie Jaye intends to mine for our edification. I can hardly fucking wait.
@Bina: I had to stop at claiming the harassment was simply calling the journalistic integrity into question. It reminds me of that guy (I can’t recall the name now, pretentious Greek(or roman name) of (some place)) in an interview claiming that gamergate can’t be blamed for any of the harassment because gamergate is made up of individuals each individually responsible for their own actions and has nothing to do with gamergate itself.
Besides, what does she have to do with journalistic integrity? Shouldn’t their focus be on the men they claim she slept with? They were the journalists! They should have better resisted her copulins and kept their “integrity.”
Oh sure. And what about the individuals who kept whipping this feeding frenzy up, and whipping it up, and whipping it up until there was nothing left to whip or feed off? Are THEY ever going to be held responsible by these oh-so-responsible individualists all taking responsibility for THEIR actions?
(Yeah, I know. Pigs will fly before THAT ever happens.)
Yup. Can’t have a “whore” without johns, fellas. Without johns, there is no sex industry. No market, no product. Plain old factual demand-side economics.
Also, who prostitutes themselves for mere “exposure” of a vaguely positive kind? Nobody! All real prostitutes demand cash up front, you neck-bearded, Cheeto-dusted moron.
(And this is not even touching the fact that there is no proof that they gave her good reviews and green lights in exchange for a bit of boingy-boingy, either. This is all just literally secondhand butthurt over poor widdle Eron Gjoni being dumped.)
So, effectively, it’s the Streisand Effect in action.
They want people to stop caring about Zoe Quinn, and they keep talking about how “not important” she is, and they keep attempting to silence her through harassment and fear tactics, and people see that and go “Uh, maybe she is that important if GG’s so hellbent on silencing her”.
@Paradoxy
That’s one layer. I was going to comment more on that one line from the video, but there SO much hidden in there I didn’t know where to start. The level of rage they’ve worked themselves up to, over someone whose name not many people would recognize were it not for their obsession with her. And, maybe most of all, the blind fury over the fact that a woman dared to have sex with people who weren’t them. They just keep getting more and more upset over things that have less and less to do with actual reality. Can we cryogenically freeze them until we find a way to cure perpetual rage?
When I stumbled onto that video, I was SHOCKED to learn that this whole “Zoe Quinn slept her way to the top by sexing a handful of Dudes in exchange for favorable game reviews and coverage” narrative is STILL even a thing! First of all, I’ve found TWO, that’s right, TWO references to Depression Quest in gaming articles. What’s more, they weren’t even featured reviews or anything, just a passing mention.
Second, if for the sake of argument, we believe she DID sleep her way to the top (the top of WHAT, exactly?) and she has no discernible skills or talents (like say, the ability to produce a video game from fucking scratch) besides her apparently magical vagina, what then? Are we also meant to swallow the notion that she’s STILL just banging people left and right to advance her career? Are these Dudes trying to tell us she slept with someone at the UN to get a seat and speaking time? Do they think she had sex with Amy Pascal so her book would be adapted to film?
This one Dude, in particular wants us all to know just how insignificant Zoe Quinn is and yet, he can’t shut the fuck up about her. He even addresses that and claims he has to keep talking about Zoe and Anita and all the rest or they’ll rise to power or some shit. He truly thinks he’s “fighting the good fight”, making the world safe for puppies and Christmas when all his screaming has accomplished literally nothing. She went to the UN, Dude! Her story will be told on the silver screen! Nobody is buying your absurd conspiracy theory BS! You’ve lost! Get over it!
Is that all his channel consists of, pissing and moaning about things that, by his own admission don’t matter and aren’t worth discussing? News flash, dip-shit: They don’t spend millions of dollars to make Biopics about people who aren’t important. My favorite part is where he complains that Depression Quest is not only a bad game but isn’t even a game at all. These are the kinds of “Gamers” that give gaming a bad name because they have such a narrow, suffocating and creatively stagnant idea of what a video game can and should be but they claim to “love” gaming. I’m sorry ONE GAME in a sea of thousands isn’t YET AGAIN “Brown People Target Practice #327”. How ever will you go on?
Furthermore, he acts as though he’s being forced to play these “awful” games or see these “creatively bankrupt” movies, the irony being that a Hollywood picture about Zoe Quinn and her experiences with Gamergate IS an original idea! Seriously, go jerk off again to 300* (I bet he skips the part where Lena Heady puts that one guy in his place. You know, the best part of the whole film). Why are you even pitching such a fit at the mere existence of these games/books/films? Stop choking down all those Sour Grapes. They’re clearly bad for you.
*I enjoyed 300, just to clarify. 🙂
Two passing mentions, eh? Wow. Zoe’s magic vaginal goo must really be working! (Bonus points if any lurking GamerGits can actually link said articles to any guy Zoe has allegedly boffed.)
As far as I know, they’re still hung up on those “five guys”. Because only MEN are supposed to have more than one sex partner, ever!
And I can hardly wait for the conspiracy creepers to move on to the UN appearance, too…and claim she did it with Ban Ki-Moon or someone. With all their usual standards of journalistic integrity, of course.
My takeaway from what little I was able to watch of it is that he’s incredibly fucking bitter that Hollywood hasn’t offered HIM any starring roles or anything. And little wonder, too, with his wooden delivery and his palpable aura of entitlement and general lack of brains and talent. But I guess he figures that mere possession of a penis should entitle him to all the power in Tinseltown, or wherever it is he expects to make a mark. And so it’s kind of a no-duh that he would assume that Zoe got everything she did just by boinking people, and disregard all the actual, non-sexual things she’s done (eg. Crash Override). Maybe he’s also bitter that she’d never boink him? Or that women, in general, find him ludicrous and repulsive?
Meanwhile, the irony of him complaining that Zoe doesn’t deserve to be recognized isn’t lost on anyone. And yup, great job there, bearded beanie dude, of proving she hasn’t been harassed or oppressed…by harassing and oppressing her even more. At this rate, she’ll never have to say boo, because all these guys just keep own-goaling themselves and making her points for her!
Yup, I noticed that, too. A woman game developer, being harassed for being a woman and a game developer (and for having sex with someone other than her by-then-ex-boyfriend)? Original story!
And maybe the games he plays wouldn’t be so awful if he didn’t keep expecting all those bang-bang guns and jiggly boobs and objectified women to be their main themes. I don’t suppose this wanker has ever considered that.
Bina:
At least one woman didn’t, at least once. The guy has a kid. That’s right, this Dude has custody of a young, impressionable mind.
I’m scared, too. 🙁
Wow. That’s one mangry dude.
xD
Gosh, tim, you mean when you meet people in person and they’re suddenly bound by the social contract and interpersonal empathy, they might suddenly seem like they’re acting like better people?
Gosh, you mean it never occurred to you that maybe the version of people you meet in person *IS* the fake propaganda version? That maybe the hateful pieces of shit they become behind the safety and anonymity of a computer screen might be who they *REALLY* are?
Gosh!!
The quotations below are from this essay:
Characteristics of Demagoguery
Patricia Roberts-Miller
University of Texas at Austin
Roberts-Miller has made a career-long study of rhetoric, particularly the kind of rhetoric deployed when people divide each other into ingroups and outgroups. “Characteristics of Demagoguery” was not written to describe the rhetoric that MRAs and anti-MRAs hurl at each other, but it might as well have been. Everyone here will instantly be able to see Paul Elam’s rhetorical style reflected in Roberts-Miller’s descriptions. But he’s far from the only one doing it.
Roberts-Miller on Rejecting Complicated Thinking
“Demagoguery imagines public deliberation as a place in which people with accurate perception point out the Real Truth to others who, if they are also capable of unmediated perception, will instantly see it…
“Demagoguery is always polarizing, and always relies on binaries…
“Because naïve realists deny that they are looking at the world in a way that is from a particular perspective (let alone mediated) they see no need to learn to perspective-shift (in fact, they often believe they can see all perspectives from their position)…
“Many people believe that it is both possible and desirable to perceive the world exactly as it is, with no mediation; the most ‘objective’ interpretation is the one with the least interpretation, a mental state to which one can will oneself largely by rejecting complicated thinking about the situation.”
Example of rejecting complicated thinking:
Hurling the epithet “misogynist!” at all who disagree. The only thing that matters is whether someone is a “misogynist” deep in their heart of hearts. This thought-stopping cliche ends all need to consider anything else. And of course, everyone already knows that every single person in the MRM, without exception, is a misogynist in their soul. Go ahead, just name one person in the MRM who is not already in weirwood’s Official Registry of Verified Misogynists (or who will not instantly be placed there once named).
And since they are all misogynists, there is no need to “perspective-shift.” Why would anyone even attempt to try to understand the perspectives of the individuals in the men’s rights movement? That attempt alone is enough to condemn Cassie Jaye for listening to MRAs — and especially for hearing something from them that she found interesting enough to pursue further.
Roberts-Miller on Bad Behavior
“Members of the ingroup (by virtue of being essentially “better” people) are held to lower standards, and can behave worse. Bad behavior on the part of ingroup members is explained externally (they made a mistake, they were forced into it) and is dismissed as meaningless; bad behavior on the part of outgroup members, however, signifies their true identity.”
Example of downplaying bad behavior:
YouTuber Laughing Witch, who led a campaign to use very serious false allegations of criminal behavior to get Thunderfoot (Phil Mason) fired from his job and in trouble with the police, was simply “wrong.” She only made a regrettable “mistake.” But Thunderfoot, by contrast, is a villain for striking back against the unprovoked aggression. According to David Futrelle’s headline, Thunderfoot led a “hate mob,” while Laughing Witch is merely “a woman who made this charge” that he led a hate mob. In the article, the gang that launched the original baseless attack on Thunderfoot is not labeled a “hate mob,” but rather merely “a number of feminist Youtubers.”
According to We Hunted The Mammoth, Thunderfoot is an obsessive with a “hate-crush” on Anita Sarkeesian, and has “without a doubt contributed mightily to the harassment directed against her.” (It is of course considered axiomatic that Thunderfoot is responsible for his alleged “followers,” but David Futrelle is not responsible for his.) In David’s article, the Yelp mob’s actions against Laughing Witch are described in great detail, over several paragraphs. However, the uncontested fact that the original aggressors wrote extremely detailed letters to Thunderfoot’s local Police Department, helpfully (and falsely) describing the very specific criminal statutes that he allegedly violated, goes completely unmentioned in David’s article.
Roberts-Miller says that “members of the ingroup (by virtue of being essentially “better” people) are held to lower standards, and can behave worse.” I believe that not even mentioning obviously relevant bad behavior qualifies as a “lower standard.” To put it mildly.
A lower standard also prevails when evaluating intention versus result. When it comes to the clueless MRM, it doesn’t matter if they are failing completely — what matters is what they intend to do. But when it comes to Laughing Witch and the rest of her gang, all that matters is whether they succeeded in producing the harm that they organized to produce. Paradoxical Intention: “Nothing happened to Thunderf00t. He didn’t get arrested. He’s obviously not in prison. Your point is moot.”
Roberts-Miller on Firm Belief in Hyberbolic Claims
“Naïve realism privileges simple explanations (since they are most likely to correspond to direct perception), and increases the tendency toward confirmation bias (since people tend to perceive more easily and quickly any information that confirms their current beliefs). Thus, paradoxically, the belief that one is the sort of person who always sees the world exactly as it is increases the likelihood not just of being wrong, but of being wrong in the same ways and about the same things over and over…
“Demagoguery has to square the circle of inspiring fear while not looking fearful (since fearfulness is being paired with thinking and deliberating) — there are often claims of extraordinary courage in the face of a terrible situation, or a representation of one’s self as calm and reasonable while making apocalyptic predictions, and the odd insistence of the sheer rationality of hyperbolic claims (I will admit, this is one aspect of demagoguery that often makes me laugh).”
Example of a hyperbolic claim made with a straight face:
The MRM advocates on no issues and has no ideology. Paradoxical Intention: “What issues? What ideology?” PI again: “The Red Pill ‘ideology’ all boils down to ‘women are vile, evil creatures incapable of loving men and feminists are all out to emasculate us and punish us for being men,’ and their issues are ‘women won’t sleep with me,’ ‘women have rights to their bodies,’ and ‘why can’t women just be my second mommy?'”
Bina: “All their ‘issues and ideology,’ as our troll keeps saying (without expanding one iota on the subject), are ‘women are bitches,’ ‘we hate women (because bitches),’ ‘women have too many rights (and that means we have too few, waaaaa!),’ ‘Bash a Violent Bitch Month,’ and ‘Amanda Marcotte’s pussy stinks.'”
isidore13: “Why are you talking about activists, Tim? No one in the MRM is an activist. […] I challenge you to point out any concrete steps anyone in the MRM has made to achieve their goals – which will be very difficult since neither you nor they can actually elucidate what the goals of the MRM are beyond ‘females should be declared property again.’”
According to many here, members of the MRM don’t care about male suicide, male victims of domestic abuse, circumcision, the drugging of boys, Selective Service registration, the Equal Rights Amendment or men’s reproductive rights. The MRM doesn’t even think about or talk about its own ideology.
As Roberts-Miller says: “This is one aspect of demagoguery that often makes me laugh.” Sometimes you laugh because you just have to. Despite easily accessible evidence that members of the MRM constantly advocate on a wide range of issues, it is actually believed by many commenters here that they don’t do this thing that they constantly do. And David is happy to assist with this confirmation bias and assure you that his selective portrait of a community is “who they really are.”
Roberts-Miller on Demonization
“Demagoguery associates metaphors of vermin, disease, taint, queerness (that is, transgressive behavior), monstrosity (that is, hybridity), disorder, lack of control (licentiousness), and demonic possession with the outgroup.”
Example of demonization:
We Hunted The Mammoth. How often does the comic character known as the “Red Piller” make an appearance here on this blog? He practically lives here. Google shows 1,480 results. The Red Piller (and his equally comic companion “MGTOW“) is just some anonymous dude, almost always of low status, even within the outgroup, who said something preposterously dumb on the internet. Yet he is used by David Futrelle to represent the outgroup. When someone prominent in the MRM says something dumb, of course David immediately writes about that dumb thing, too. But when things are slow, there is always the Red Piller. The goal is to always associate the outgroup with bad behavior and ideas, and to never associate the outgroup with anything neutral or good.
So the men’s rights movement ends up being characterized as a bunch of stupid and bitter and dangerous men with absolutely nothing of value to say on any subject. They are creepy douchebags and entitled babies and 12-year-olds with an empathy deficit, who engage in harassment and crackpottery and who should not ever be with women ever.
They must be this reductive caricature, because the stories that David publishes fit that narrative. All of the links in the previous paragraph are categories of manospherians that David created at this site to tell you, as he puts it, “who they really are.”
Hey Tim G, how about ponying up and actually giving us a name for an MRM activist who isn’t a walking shitstain? One who hasn’t engaged in misogynistic behavior or said nasty vile things about women? Can you do that or is all you can do is prevaricate on and on about how David has smeared the good name of the poor benighted MRAs and MGTOWs?
Give us actual solid actions we can look at that they have done offline instead of just going on about the shit they have said online. Words mean nothing when not backed by actions. And the actions of the MRM and MRA and MGTOWs runs counter to the things they say online.
Many here have personally witnessed the fucked up shit they have done and said. Many here know intimately just how fucked up and vile the MRA movement is. How about you stop trying to gaslight our experiences and give us an example of a decent MRA or MGTOW instead?
Its like you can’t even actual read to comprehend what we are saying and are just on some tear to try and restore your good name towards people who think you’re an asshat by downplaying as much as possible the nasty shit done and said by your compatriots within the movement. Oh hey, would you look at that, Tim G’s latest post is just another example of MRAs massive ability to project.
This.
(Also Arawhon: You have the best nym of all time. This is a fact.)
Seriously. No amount of words devoted to how we behave is going to have any affect on whether we think they do anything worthwhile without proof they do anything worthwhile. Not talk about, do, they can talk until they are blue, so do people who believe in aliens, doesn’t make aliens real.
Oh and Tim, you never did answer me. Do you, or do you not, also go by +? Cuz if so, I’m that ex who goes by Argenti and you are beginning to piss me off enough for me to explain your MRM obsession. If not, I strongly recommend saying as much, just takes a copy paste and the word “no”.
Oh jeez EJ, I cant take credit for it. I got it from a post on Pharyngula or possibly here a long while ago though I have forgotten exactly where.
Tell us a story, auntie Argenti.
Tim seems to be indulging heavily in the idea of a ‘golden mean’, that the MRAs and the feminists/mammothers are both equally wrong, and that the TRUE right answer is somewhere in between. (But of course, the feminists/mammothers are MORE equally wrong, because Tim must come into our community to expound at length the error of our ways, while the MRAs are spared his extensive verbiage. But hey, Tim, you can prove me wrong! Be the prefect arbiter and go onto one of the MRA boards and tell them how much they engage in demagoguery and just need to talk to feminists about all the good things they do. Oh and link the thread so I can read it and eat popcorn.)
Also, no. A compromise is not always the best solution. If someone wants to cut off both of my legs and I want them not to do that, then cutting off just ONE of my legs is not a better solution than them not cutting of any part of my body. I don’t need to listen to the KKKs best arguments to know they’re hateful assholes. I don’t need to listen to Daesh’s (ISIS) best arguments to know that they’re hateful assholes. And if someone is virulently and obviously bigoted, you can bet your ass I’m going to side-eye their other beliefs too, even if they are seemingly unrelated.
Also, you continue to assume that we ONLY rely on WHTM for our outlook on MRAs and have not explored their ideology beyond this blog, which is both incredibly presumptive of you, and erroneous.
Shit, I only found WHTM in the first place because I was ranting to Google about how awful MRAs are and how infuriating it was to see every comment section on every site about every topic devolve into screechy misogyny. And no, Tim, that doesn’t mean David must own a time machine.
How long have you been reading this site? How often have you seen an article in which the MRA is dismissed as “misogynist” with no further criticism?
The tagline may only go as far as “tracked and mocked”, but the articles (and often comments) on WHTM expand on that, showing not just that the people being mocked do indeed hate women, but that they are relying on false equivalences, hypocrisy, and shit they made up.