“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
Who knew David was so powerful and influential!
It is funny how Cassie calls David a misogynist, while the subjects of her documentary are “all about” pacifism and glitter unicorns. They are completely not a misogynist hateful mob that abuses and harasses women, no, no.
Her stalker must have been invented by Vocativ and the “idea” that she could go into hiding if the MRAs don’t like her film is as well invented by them?
But we might ask, why somebody would even consider to go into hiding to escape such a pacifist and joyful community like the MRAs??
Is there something Cassie hides from us, the fact that she knows what the MRAs are up to, but she is so deep in this sh*t, that she must lie around in favour of them to save her poor ass?
Cassie Jaye definitely has a bright future as a Fox News “journalist.” Since she’s a cool girl, I’m sure she won’t mind that in the Faux News universe a female journalist is only supposed to be blonde, have nice legs and wear skirts, and only lob softballs at conservatives.
Another thing she’s doing that seems shady to me is that she’s kind of implying – or at least not correcting the right wing/MRA misinformation that she had funding problems because of some sort of vast feminist conspiracy. In fact, funding issues are a fact of life for all filmmakers. Even established ones. For example, Cabin in the Woods had all sorts of problems and was released a long while after filming and it had Joss Whedon’s name attached to it.
Her whole statement is cringe worthy.
do you think aurinis and Owen could get gigs with her their are very experienced documentary people after all
Cries of censorship are misplaced. David Futrelle doesn’t have the power to prevent anyone’s documentary from being made or seen. He is not a censor anywhere but this blog.
However, Cassie Jaye is most probably correct that her credibility is being attacked because her film allows MRAs to speak for themselves, and because she has indicated that she is sympathetic to at least some of their views.
If she had announced that she was planning to release a vicious takedown of MRAs, exposing their ugliness and hate, it is very hard to imagine that David Futrelle would have researched and published the Cannes Independent Film Festival article. He went after Cassie Jaye’s credibility specifically because she put herself on the wrong side of the issue.
I guess her movie was supposed to let everyone have a say, but she technically never said she had to actually listen to what was being said. Including reading what David said about her, and what the Red Pillers say about women in general. She’s made her bed of broken glass and hatred, I wonder if she’s considered that eventually she’s going to have to lie in it.
@Johanna Roberts
To be fair, It seems she’s under the perception (or pretending to be under the perception) that David thinks she can’t report on the manosphere because she’s a woman – and not because as a woman she wouldn’t be able to fully grasp a men’s movment, but because her being a woman would make her not smart., which… I think it’s plain to see that David’s mistrust comes from the views she seem to hold on the manosphere, rather than anything to do with gender.
She’s most likely trying to gain sympathy, but if she’s being honest, I think this statement says more about her than about David.
@Dreamer: Everything that came in or out of this project is pure, concentrated cringe. That can’t be hygienic!
Aren’t any of the manospherians cirticizing Cassie Jaye crying out “Misoginy!” when a man criticizes her and question her credentials (unless David isn’t a man because reasons?)? Because so far I’ve only seen “white-knighthing”
What is good for the goose apparently isn’t good for the gander.
I think it’s important that the Crusaders of Free Speech like Milo, RaphRetort, MundaneMatt and Paul Elam should get an Oscar* for their role in this fight against the RadFems who tried to censor this project by not throwing money at it.
* Not to be confused with the Academy Award of Merit with which it shares a name.
Remember, if you use free speech to criticize MRA’s, that’s CENSORSHIP!
Whelp, any suspicions I had are now confirmed: Cassie Jaye appears to be a White Feminist.
Not a feminist who happens to be white, mind, but a White Feminist.
I only hope that she does some goddamned research while making this film and doesn’t swallow the MRA’s brand of “truth” wholesale.
And still conveniently ignoring all the women who are also saying “Hey, this is a really bad looking thing!”, and “Hey, your award isn’t from the real Cannes, so why aren’t you correcting anyone who thinks it is?”
Nope. Must be because David’s a sexist man trying to keep her, a woman who is out to inform the world, down!
http://i.imgur.com/fx4xGsk.gif
She’s still running on Baby’s First Feminism, it seems.
@fruitloopsie
Interesting, I wasn’t familiar with the word gynophobia. And yeah, seriously their double standard bullshit apparently knows no boundaries. So many of them have these ridiculous notions about feminism, and seem utterly shocked to see that we don’t abide by the ‘rules’ they’ve imagined in their head (i.e. ‘feminism mean that a woman is right no matter what’). The idea that they could be wrong about anything is just impossible!
Ultimately, all Cassie Jaye seems to be doing is digging herself into a deeper hole. It’s going to take a shitload of cognitive dissonance to declare that David Futrelle is a misogynist but then be completely okay with the behavior of, well, everyone she’s making the documentary about.
My opinion of Jaye is plunging lower than shares in Blackberry handhelds. If her intent was to come off as moderate, she’s losing that battle handily.
Cassie’s a feminist?
@RosaDeLava manospherians aren’t driven by anything but hatred and resentment. Just like the “white power” movement was a crappy copy of black power, the men’s rights mveoment is nothing but an attempt to turn feminist thinking upside down while slavishly copying it.
Ideological consistency is beyond their abilities. I’ve never seen a feminist (or anyone on the left) who plays the victim card as aggressively and un-selfconsciously as aggrieved white dudes. As long as it’s someone on their side doing it, their entire response is always, “take that feminists! Who’s the misogynist now, you c**t?” Their beliefs wouldn’t survive the self-awareness required to apply those beliefs consistently. Reactionary politics aren’t beliefs, they’re just reactions.
Ps I love how Jaye called David a blogger but Milo Y a journalist. David’s written at publications Milo will never be allowed to.
I thought red pill dudes were against “white knighting”. Guess its a flexible faux pas.
When your opponent resorts to calling you fat or ugly, they’ve lost the argument and they know it. Margaret Cho summed this up well.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/margaret-cho-trolls-who-call-me-fat-and-ugly-are-admitting-defeat_5601cd1ce4b08820d91aa305
I’d say she’s no type of feminist at all. Maybe she thought feminism meant men had no problems and women had all the problems? That would account for her surprise at being “enlightened” by Paul Elam et. al.
It’s a bit cool to be feminist at the moment, which means all sorts of people want to claim the title without having any understanding of what it means or without trying to actually challenge any patriarchal ideas (wouldn’t want to make the mens uncomfortable!). I’d think she is that type of person.
It’s funny how pulling the string can cause someone to unravel like that. “This award seems fake.” Ok. If she just ignored it, I would set that aside as a minor ego thing, and generally stopped giving two shits about her until the film came out, then judge that as it came.
Instead, it’s the whole mess of sloppy thinking, false equivalences and nonsense come tumbling out as this unspools.
gabrielletpatterson, I want to move on as well; I just felt I should respond to her accusations. And then her fans showed up and I thought I might as well put them in the post too.
I respect y’all for having given Cassie Jaye the benefit of the doubt, but I was getting some seriously sketch vibes from this woman ever since that Cannes award, not to mention that embarrassing Milo interview. I still wish her the best cuz holy shit, the MRAs are fucking terrifying when a woman gets on their bad side, but I just can’t look at how she’s handling this without thinking she comes across really, really badly:
“Yes I got an award in Cannes” is the most disingenuous shit response to an entirely valid criticism and it’s even worse when David’s original post didn’t even accuse her of fraud in a hit and run, but went pretty out of its way to be fair (frankly it gave her far more of the benefit of the doubt than I would have; yeah, sorry, but no way I can buy that a documentary filmmaker–let alone a documentary filmmaker who’s made several movies now–wasn’t completely aware of what she was doing by touting her “Cannes Independent Film Festival award.”)
The majority of our support has been from middle of the road supporters of free speech and combating censorship.
Which is based on the assumption that a major award-winning director is getting denied funding because her documentary will be sympathetic to MRAs. When the reality, as the article on the “Cannes award” revealed, doesn’t have anything to do with censorship. She’s a small-name director who’s won small-name awards and is facing the same issues all small-name documentary makers get, no matter what their subject matter is.