“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
Have an Oscar*
*The Oscar Meyer’s award for excellence in achievement. It’s baloney on a ribbon.
I do enjoy the blog more when Dave is a little more detached–more of a cultural observer/interpreter–than when he gets caught up in this kind of thing or covers arcane manosphere spats. But I do understand getting drawn into the ridiculousness from time to time.
Judging from the video mentioned, It seems that she has been coached by owen in the meantime on how to read aloud a text you have alredy written while sitting in front of a camera.
O/T (and I haven’t read it yet, but it looks good):
http://www.wired.com/2015/10/how-silicon-valley-can-solve-online-diversity-and-harassment/?mbid=synd_moz_newsgen
Commence with the feminist lemurs parade! (superfamily Lemuroidea; clade of strepsirrhine primates…just leave out the aye-ayes, they’re too creepy.)
@Nagib
No internet diagnoses please. If you haven’t done so yet, read the comments policy here https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/comments-policy/, particularly the “Notes on CRAZY” section.
@DS
Don’t call the MRAs “nuts”, please. That goes against the comments policy.
@DS
I agree with you on this. By engaging in this back and forth with Jaye, David is playing right into the hands of the MRM. Now they can construct a narrative saying Jaye is being attacked by feminists, which they can use to drive up donations. Why do you think Jaye responded to David’s post about her award being less than legit?
The right thing to do is ignore Jaye until the film comes out, and then we’ll all know if she’s a shyster, an apologist, a dupe or someone very foolish who thinks she’s being clever.
As it stands, journalistically WHTM is at risk of becoming the story.
@sn0rkmaiden
You do realize they were already saying this even before anybody even knew about Cassie Jaye?
@snorkmaiden
I’ve been around long enough to recognize you and I respect your opinions. Frankly, though, what you just said reeks of the bullshit silencing tactics that are too often leveled against critics of bad behaviour.
“it’s not that bad, just let it go”
“stop making waves”
Screw.That.Noise.
@sn0rkmaiden:
My grandfather (who died in February) was a journalist by trade, and like all journalists he had a deep affection for H L Mencken. In such situations, he would quote Mencken’s warning to “never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the gallon.”
David is a muckraking journalist by trade. He muckrakes very well. He’s documented every humiliating pratfall and every embarrassing utterance that the manosphere has come out with. Picking a fight with him is the very worst thing that anyone could do – all it does it guarantees that everything they say in the heat of the moment will end up documented forever and held up for all to see. Shouting at him won’t make him shut up, it’ll just give him more ammunition. He isn’t a feminist activist or a political movement leader – smearing him is a largely meaningless activity.
I hope that Jaye’s documentary is excellent and that it provides a meaningful and accessible look inside the MRA movement regardless of what the director’s political views are. However, if she wants to come out of this process with some dignity, then her reaction to shoot back was perhaps the wrong one.
(David, this is not intended as an insult – as someone coming from a journalistic family I have a deep respect for muckraking and believe that it’s a vital part of any healthy political system.)
@sn0rkmaiden:
When have MRAs ever waited for something factual to discuss before making something their “story” in the first place?
Half of the things they’re primarily concerned about (at least) are formulated by their own fears and projection rather than anything based in the real world. Even if this hadn’t been getting coverage, they would still be saying “feminists” are out to get them, because that’s what they always say.
As far as I’m concerned, Cassie is now a part of the Manosphere and as such, requires no special consideration. This blog is for tracking and mocking Manosphere antics.
Hmmm. I do feel a little that publicly challenging Cassie Jaye on the legitimacy of her award is more likely to have the result of personally humiliating her, than actually casting any valuable light onto The Manosphere.
It *is* worth calling into question the fact that her documentary is funded significantly by MRAs and that she seems to be biasing herself in their favour.
But I dunno, directly challenging her, knocking her award against a wall for everyone to hear the cheap hollow plastic sound feels just a little bit low.
I mean, ok she has questionable integrity and used a phony award to pad out her resume, but I think David would be wise to avoid making this his main Beef with her, and perhaps he should instead focus on the content of her documentary.
I know the MRA defense responses are on the usual gutter level, but the most graceful way to handle this is probably to keep it as impersonal as possible…
Just my 2 cents, but I guess it’s already become personal by virtue of her Kickstarter response.
Oof. Concern trolling out in force. (Which is not an reference to snorkmaiden)
I see why people consider what David has written to be an attack. They consider saying something negative about other people to be an attack. I don’t really agree but I don’t think it matters if he made a rhetorical attack or not.
Jaye was making news inside the wheelhouse that David has been reporting on for some time. She was getting support from a lot of the same people who supported Tubboy and Professor Skull. David’s reports on them didn’t seem to have any major effect.
@snorkmaiden I see David report on lots of people doing and saying awful things. I can see that until now Jaye hadnt said many awful things herself. She just aligned herself with people doing awful things. Still, she made a number of noises legitimizing the manosphere.
How is she different from other people he reports on? Sorry, if I missed an earlier explanation.
@ Leftwingfox – Excellent. 🙂 +1 Internet to you.
EJ – you say you are not insulting David but it is hard not to read that post as such. David doesn’t just muckrake, and I am pretty sure there are muckier things in the Manureosphere that David does not write about.
And in this instance there isn’t really any muck to rake anyway. CJ has been a bit dishonest (Cannes), and a bit naive (large donations from MRA’s and yet claims impartiality), and it is no big deal to comment on this.
Second wave? When was the first wave? I must have missed it.
Let’s make one thing clear. The first I read about The Red Pill documentary here on the blog was David’s “open letter” on Oct 28. Two days earlier, Oct 26, Manchild Yianno wrote about the documentary on Breitbart. These are some of the things he wrote before most of us were aware this movie existed:
“There is a documentary film on gender currently running a Kickstarter campaign that feminism would prefer never sees the light of day.”
“she has come to sympathise with the men’s movement and jettisoned a lot of received feminist wisdom. As a result, Jaye has seen her funding dry up.”
“One observer told Breitbart that grants and funding have been withdrawn and institutional support revoked.”
The story also contains many quotes from Jaye herself, which are equally damning. This is quite obviously the narrative they have been going with all along. Let’s not pretend like this is something David Futrelle or any other feminist friendly person caused.
I honestly don’t see the difference between posting about Jaye and posting about any other MRA.
The “It’s the documentary that feminists don’t want you to see!” party line? Happened with The Sarkeesian Effect too and nobody had a problem with David updating us on that, and like Dhag said, they came up with it before any of us had even heard of her. The fact that she was bribed into joining them? Also true of half of #GamerGate and the entirety of Fox News. The idea that her scammy “Award” is irrelevant or a low blow? That’s actually the most damning part of it all to me, because it proves that she’s not simply naive, she just couldn’t give less a shit about the truth.
So what’s the difference? I genuinely don’t get it.
Absolutely what dhag wrote. It can’t be stated any more clearly: Cassie has aligned herself with the MRM 100%, and she did so before David posted his open letter.
What I do think will be interesting to see is what she does with all of her beliefs from before having “seen the light”, and if she is truly able to make the full conversion. Any sympathies she had for any women’s (and girls’) issues — she’s going to have to leave all of them behind.
I have a hard time believing Cassie Jaye has spent any time around the forums that form the backbone of the MRM. It’s one thing to take what your interview subjects are saying at face value, and not do any digging; it’s another thing entirely to do the digging, to read what goes on in The Red Pill subreddit and at the A Voice for Men forums, to read what Paul Elam has written about how, if on a jury, he would vote to acquit a man accused of raping a woman, regardless of the evidence, and come away thinking, “these poor men are just misunderstood, and I’m going to be their champion.” But then again, perhaps thinking her naive, or lacking the diligence to do the research necessary for a proper documentary, is giving her too much credit, and she really is that bad of a person.
Regardless, I do think she might want to delete her tweets of joy about the Supreme Court’s gay marriage ruling (among others), or at the very least never speak of them again (except to say: “I was very confused back then”). Something tells me they might not go over too well with her new friend Milo.
@SFHC – from David’s first open letter, I got the impression and was willing to believe that Jaye was just perhaps some misguided White Feminist with sincere intentions, and that she might even be cynically willing to take funding from MRAs for the sake of filming her documentary, and still come to her own conclusions.
That’s looking less and less like an accurate assessment of her character the more I read about her.
I still think it’s not as productive for David to make a big thing about the award, and it’s kind of predictable that Manurespherians would Tweet abuse back in her “defense”.
But I’m sure her Kickstarter video contains some real insight into her stance, and she seems to be parroting the Red Pill rhetorical style. I’d be totally fine with David picking that apart. The fact that Breitbart’s Milo seems to be willing to praise her is significant, and would be quote-worthy.
I just… something about tweeting her directly about the fake award business seems a shade too personal. Like, face-to-face Twitter beef isn’t really what this blog is about, and this particular episode doesn’t seem worth a post of its own, as written, and next to the previous Cassie Jaye posts, it just comes off as a tad petty.
It’s David’s editorial choice, but I’d like to have something meatier to form an opinion on than these particular tweets.
Like, it’s fine with Dean or Elam – we already know enough about them that they’re total scrotes, but I feel like we haven’t got a definitive picture of Cassie Jaye, so it seems too early to mock her in quite the same way…
I don’t know if I’m getting that across properly, it’s mostly just a tummy-feeling of “hey, I’m not sure yet if this is the right tone to be taking with this particular individual”. But then, I’d be less inclined to hold back on criticism, if I caught her being reprehensible and emulating Judgy B, or whatever.
@ Littleknown
This. I don’t yet know if she’s sympethetic to the MRM at face value, and this has been enough for Milo to consider her an ally to TRP, or if she really has done the relevant research, and is still willing to support them. I also don’t yet know if she’s smart enough to pretend to be sympathetic to her subjects whilst it’s convenient, and then destroy all possible favourable interpretation of them in the editing room.
It’s not looking good for her, but I’d like some solid evidence of her being terrible before I writer her off as Just Another MRA.
@littleknown:
I may be wrong but I won’t be giving her the benefit of the doubt anymore. someone who says she is a feminist who wants to make an “unbiased” documentary about the mrm but:
– is “impressed” by someone telling her about more men dying from suicide than women, male victims of rape not being taken seriously and men dying earlier? anyone who has spent any time identifying as a feminist online has probably heard those things from someone who tried to sell her the whole “actually women are so privileged”-deal. those pseudo-arguments aren’t new.
– complains in an interview about her colleague being triggered (seriously, wtf? no decent person would do this)
– thinks feminists not throwing money at her is “censorship” and people who do fund her have to be completely unbiased “free speech enthusiasts”.
At this point I think she is a cynical opportunists and the whole “I was a feminist but those mra-arguments are just so damn convincing!”-thing is just a clever narrative to sell her film.
I’m curious if she will just not mention Elams gory “bash a violent bitch”-fantasies in the “documentary” or if she will take their “oh those humorless feminist harpies just don’t know what irony is”-alibi.
just leave out the aye-ayes, they’re too creepy.
NO.
http://d.ibtimes.co.uk/en/full/1391572/aye-aye-baby.jpg