“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
A mission statement isn’t an accomplishment or a concrete step. I tell myself I’m going to look for a better job all the damn time. It’s totally my mission. Yet I put it off all the time. I haven’t done any job searching in months. It would be a lie if I said I was actively searching for a job. See how that works?
Has AVFM set up a suicide hotline or opened a men’s shelter? No. Do they even do fundraising for those things? No. Do they do anything to create a culture of consent, since they profess to be concerned about male rape victims? No. They hate the concept of affirmative consent.
I love how for Timmy here, feminists are expected to do things for men’s issues. But MRAs aren’t expected to do jack shit other than have a mission statement.
http://media.tumblr.com/5e49352ce74e6bd6841f425bfb32c37c/tumblr_inline_mm4xl34fCT1qz4rgp.gif
Also, all of their volunteer positions are about either editing rhetoric or creating more rhetoric, nothing about setting up shelters or defending wrongly accused men in the real world or anything that would actually do anything real.
And, Tim, you’re ignoring the fact that Paul Elam has already said he doesn’t consider his responsibility – or anyone in the MRM’s responsibility – to actually do any activism.
Fuck this, I’m calling it — shut up Woody!
Talk about “shifting goalposts”!
The claim I was responding to was that the MRM has no stated goals beyond “females should be declared property again.” It actually seems to. (Also, I couldn’t find anywhere in the AVFM Mission Statement where it said that women should be property.)
There go those goalposts again!
I was asked to name “any concrete steps anyone in the MRM has made.” Now apparently it has to be a specific organization that took a specific step.
It really is kind of amazing that the same commenters who say that they know all about the MRM also say that it has no stated goals and doesn’t do anything. Even though the orgs have mission statements as well as pages where you can sign up to volunteer.
Maybe you can’t learn everything you need to know about the MRM on We Hunted The Mammoth?
Except you didn’t name any concrete steps? Asking for volunteers to say more words isn’t actually a concrete step in any sense. Do you know what the phrase ‘concrete step’ means?
I already reported to the mods and PI I’m so sorry hugs coming your way.
If Tim wants to talk about AVFM’s “Activism,” what about this? Elam hosted a call to shoot up courthouses on his “Activism” page, his fans shot up some courthouses in response, genuine real-world change!
… That was sarcasm, Tim. You’re defending murderers and you are scum.
Tim,
I never said the MRM didn’t have stated goals. I happen to think they’re a smokescreen and they’re really reactionaries who don’t want to lose male privilege. But I never said they didn’t at least pretend to care about issues.
You still haven’t told us what your point is though.
Are you saying AVFM isn’t misogynistic? Simple question. Yes or no?
Tim thinks we’re shifting the goalposts, but in reality, they’re only getting smaller because he’s running the fuck away from them as fast as he can.
No, of course the setting is not crucial to understanding a written argument. However, there is a substantial difference between the approach that David Futrelle takes here on this blog and the approach that Cassie Jaye took in making her doc.
Here are the two approaches:
1. On a daily basis, David Futrelle goes out looking for the MRM’s worst arguments.
2. Cassie Jaye, by her own account, went looking for the MRM’s best arguments.
With the first approach, you get We Hunted The Mammoth. A collection of articles about stupid people saying stupid things. Sure, you already would have guessed that a Red Piller on Reddit said something stupid today, but We Hunted The Mammoth makes sure you know exactly what that stupid thing was that somebody stupid typed out onto the internet today.
With the second approach, you get Cassie Jaye’s doc. We don’t know exactly what arguments it contains, but I am guessing that it will include arguments that I have not encountered on We Hunted The Mammoth, and/or more complete or better versions of the arguments that I have encountered here. Because Jaye took a different approach. She wasn’t looking for the worst. She was looking for the best.
I personally feel there is more value in the second approach. If I want to know whether a certain social movement has anything going for it, I want to hear their best arguments, not their worst ones. I want to know about The Feminine Mystique (best feminist book ever written), not the SCUM Manifesto (funny, not actually representative of feminism).
But the first approach does have some value. David’s site is nothing if not entertaining. Stupidity can be strangely fascinating, and David often displays wit as he rips apart the simpletons. And he selects well. David doesn’t choose all the worst (because there is surely too much worst) — he chooses the most entertaining worst. If you want to know who was being the most entertainingly stupid bro in the manosphere today, this is the go-to site for that fix. And, truth be told, I kinda do want to know who was being the most entertainingly stupid bro in the manosphere today. It’s fun to watch the train wrecks.
But it can be a problem to believe that the first approach is actually giving you a meaningful understanding of a community or a movement. Because when has that ever happened? When has anyone ever created a compilation of the worst behavior and speech that could be found within a group and that compilation truly stands for the group? There are sites that do this with feminists. Especially since the advent of Twitter, these sites have no shortage of material. But it would be a huge mistake to believe that you understand feminism from reading these sites.
And yet, it’s an easy mistake to commit. Because you notice patterns. You develop stereotypes. You notice that this feminist said a dumb thing that is similar to the dumb thing that another feminist said. Or this MRA said a dumb thing that another MRA also said. So that must be what they all believe.
Actually, it’s probably not. There’s probably more to the story.
So why haven’t you been able to name one MRA who isn’t a misogynist yet? This is now the fourth or fifth time I’ve asked you and you haven’t been able to do it. You keep insisting that David is cherry picking, that we’re stereotyping. So tell me. Who is this MRA who isn’t a misogynist.
You also didn’t answer my question. Is AVFM a misogynist site? Yes or no?
You post teal deer after teal deer but you’ve yet to actually say much of anything. If you don’t want to actually respond to what we’re saying to you, why do you keep coming back and posting?
@Tim G
Good job, you got the point of the site.
Now, what has the MRM actual done? Can you name an issue in which an admitted MRA has actually done anything for? Started donations? A charity? Shelters? Campaigns? Because feminism has, in fact, done that and more, but what has any outspoken MRA done to help men?
Words can be powerful but action more so and all I’ve seen is a bunch of talk from the MRM.
“1. On a daily basis, David Futrelle goes out looking for the MRM’s worst arguments.”
Huh, that isn’t hard to do when the MRM is full of people talking about how women are b-words, and men are beta-bux-cuck-chumps, and etc.
And you know that David is only finding the “worst” and Jaye is only finding the “best” how?
This is a pretty grand assumption on your part, considering one, you haven’t been here that long and you’ve made it abundantly clear that you haven’t read any of the articles, and two, Jaye hasn’t even put out her film yet.
Weren’t you getting on to us for “attacking” Jaye’s film before it’s released and saying we should put off anything we have to say until after it’s released?
And we also have articles about mass shootings, murders of women who identified as feminist, and articles where people advocate for rape to be legalized on private property. Quite frankly, the “somebody said something stupid and sexist on Reddit today threads” are a nice treat, considering the severity of some of the stuff we deal with, both here and in the Meatspace, where we women don’t have the luxury of ignoring it.
Again, Tim: Lurk more, talk less, read to understand, not to respond.
Again with the assumptions. Shame on you Tim for passing judgment on Jaye’s documentary before it’s released!
Obviously, if we’re not allowed to say anything negative about her documentary before it’s released, you’re not allowed to say anything positive either! So, do us all a favor, and disable your keyboard for a bit.
Ever noticed that finding their worst arguments takes slightly less effort than remembering to breathe, while asking for their best arguments only – and always – results on a whole lot of mealy-mouthed rationalising, goalpost shifting, panicked flailing, insult throwing, “Look! There’s Elvis!” misdirecting, ignoring, outright bold-faced lying and zero actual arguments?
There’s a reason for that, Timmy Boy. And the reason is neither “Nobody’s looking hard enough” nor “It’s a gynolluminati conspiracy.”
Tim G sez:
Where making propaganda in defense of horrible people is concerned, sure, that’s way more valuable. Just like the more valuable documentaries about Nazis are the ones that concentrate on the “best arguments” the Nazis had, like how smoking is really bad for your health and the government should regulate its use in public and restrict advertising, while hand waving away the whole master-race-murder-the-jews “worse arguments” bits, no matter how that was tied into their anti-smoking policies.
Nice false equivalence between feminism and the MRM. No one’s fooled, though. Feminism is a whole collection of women’s rights and equality movements and the MRM is an anti-woman hate non-movement that, when it accomplishes anything, harms people—including men.
Any honest documentary isn’t going to prove otherwise because this is an established fact. Just like no amount of “best arguments of the Nazis” documentaries could prove the Nazis were really swell people with a valuable ideology because the contrary is also an established fact.
FFS, actually doing something could be as simple as volunteering for a suicide hotline, donating to food banks/homeless shelters that house men, or simply managing to organize enough people to have a productive discussion on what activism to do! They can’t manage to fill a clown car! If I, right now, said there would be food, drinks, and open discussion of toxic masculinity, as well as other specific intersectional issues, bring your pets if you like, we’d have more people than any MRM group has mustered! (Note, I can’t afford to do that, but make it New England and I’ll try to bring Darwin)
For the record Tim, I just named more things that are activist ways to help men than AVFM has. At least two of which feminists do.
I’m still baffled as to why MRAs according to Tim don’t use their best arguments on their websites or in their youtube videos, but only reveal them in private conversation.
@dhag85
I agree. Why should these brilliant arguments be kept a secret from those of us who don’t have conversations with MRAs?
Perhaps the MRAs are too modest?
Please enlighten us with your best arguments, MRAs.
@Kat
And I’ve actually had conversations with MRAs online many times, but I’ve never heard these mythical “best arguments” either. Maybe it ony works face-to-face? Or maybe it only works when it’s part of a PR move worth $170k?
@dhag85
The MRAs are so, so excited about this Cassie Jaye movie. But I do believe that the Zoe Quinn book and movie, announced yesterday, are already making their heads explode. If MRAs weren’t such awful people, I’d actually feel sorry for them.
@Kat
I’m sure MRAs won’t say a thing about Zoe Quinn until the book comes out since they don’t know what’s going to be in it yet. You know, just like we shouldn’t say a thing about Cassie Jaye until her movie comes out. 😉
@dhag85
If only…. Fucking UGH!!!
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xloz3nYAo_g&w=560&h=315%5D
Shhhh! Can you hear that, in the distance? It’s the sound of four thousand misogynists wailing and tearing their hair all at once. It’s the anguish of the internet trolls as they realise just how little anyone sides with them. It’s the painful snap of suddenly shifting worldviews as they come to comprehend that far from being the righteous crusaders, they’re just a nuisance standing in the way of the rest of humanity. It’s the sound of people who’ve been spoon-fed narcissism all their lives suddenly being placed into a Total Perspective Vortex.
This schadenfreude is delicious. Grab a fork and dig in. It’s going to be a wonderful winter.