I had hoped to avoid writing about Cassie Jaye and her strange journey into Red Pill-land again so soon.
Jaye, you may recall, is the apparently former feminist who is now directing a movie about the Men’s Rights movement that is, as she herself put it in one interview, “kind of being funded by men’s rights advocates.” A Voice for Men, the Men’s Rights garbage site at the heart of her film, actively helped her to raise money on Kickstarter for postproduction work on the film.
It’s no secret that I have some rather serious doubts that she will provide the “balanced” look at the Men’s Rights movement that she has been promising. I have written several posts here highly critical of her and the direction her Red Pill documentary seems to be going.
So I can understand that she’s not a big fan of me at the moment. Unfortunately, she’s responded to my criticisms with, well, lies.
And now she’s added a new lie to the pile, claiming in a recent interview with YouTube blabber Sargon of Akkad that I sent her “bullying” emails. After dismissing my concerns about her film as a “smear campaign,” she went on to say that
David Futrelle was also emailing me privately – two different emails since the Kickstarter – and so I made a statement video, I think a week ago, trying to just have something on record where I’m explaining the false allegations that Futrelle is reporting and so I had my say out there on record. And something maybe I should have included in that it hasn’t just been his articles and tweets; it’s also been private emails. Well, I think the word that most closely describes it is bullying.
(The interview is more than two hours long; she first brings me up about ten minutes in, and makes the comments above at around the 23 minute mark, after being asked about harassment.)
Jaye is right about one thing: I sent her two emails since the Kickstarter started. But to describe them as “bullying” is beyond bizarre.
So let’s take a look at them, shall we?
I sent the first email before she solved her funding problems by giving an interview to Breitbart, and when I still thought there was a chance Jaye might deliver something even vaguely close to a balanced view of the Men’s Rights movement in her Red Pill film, rather than the straight-up MRA propaganda that it seemed to be turning into.
In the subject line of the email, I told her I was “deeply concerned” about her film. In the email, I explained why
Cassie,
We haven’t talked since the plans for an interview with me fell through, which may have been my fault.
But I have just watched the preview for your film and looked at some of the things you’ve posted on your facebook page and I am very deeply concerned about the direction of your film, and the highly unbalanced list of people that you interviewed for it.
It looks as though you have gotten a highly distorted, one-sided view of the Men’s Rights movement, by talking to a bunch of MRAs who tamped down their anger long enough to give you a sanitized pitch about what it is they do.
It’s good that you talked to some feminists. But instead of talking to those feminists and writers who have actually dealt with MRAs on a regular basis you have talked to feminists who have only a vague connection to what is really going on with the Men’s Rights movement.
I’ve been writing about them for five years now, and trust me, the video here is a better representation of them than what I’ve seen in your preview.
I linked to the now-notorious video of Paul Elam’s crude, drunken and NSFW tirade about two feminists.
I suppose that might have been a little harsh. saying that Elam’s video was a more accurate representation of MRAs than what she’s posted from her film. Then again, it is. I continued, referencing something Elam said in in the clip of the film she posted:
Elam, I think it was, made a joke about how no feminists were harmed during the making of your film. But in fact during the several years you have been making this film, many feminists and other women have been harmed by Elam and his allies.
Though she talked to one of the more famous victims of MRA harassment, I noted that there had been “many, many others,” and suggested that
Making a video about Elam and his allies at AVFM without talking to these women would be like making a documentary about Bill Cosby without talking to any of his accusers.
I listed a number of these women, with links to relevant posts of mine about them.
I mentioned one AVFMer who, since Jaye had interviewed him, had fallen out with Elam, with each accusing the other of being a con man. I mentioned that one MRA that Jaye had “managed to get an almost reasonable-sounding quote out of” was better known for his bitter, vicious attacks on Twitter. I mentioned “Janet Bloomfield’s” troubles with the truth.
And I pointed her to a notorious post from Paul Elam in which he declared he wasn’t actually interested in doing anything to help men beyond yelling at people on the internet.
I ended with this:
You can find more information about almost all of these things on my blog, even if I haven’t provided a link. And if you need any more information or links or contact information, please feel free to contact me. And I really hope you do.
And I hope even more strongly that you contact some of the women that Elam and his allies have harmed.
I should point out that I was not writing out of the blue. She had in fact contacted me during the filming of The Red Pill, asking for information and advice and attempting to set up an interview on film, which ended up falling through for various logistical reasons. We hadn’t communicated since then.
In any case, after this note, Jaye offered to talk to me on the phone about some of these issues and, after a few brief emails back and forth to set up a time to talk, we did, for about 20 minutes, I think.
I was polite, she was polite, and I believe I offered apologies for the sometimes blunt tone of my email to her. She assured me she was aware of all the issues I was raising, and that the film would reflect many of my concerns, which she told me that she herself shared.
After this conversation, I seriously considered stepping forward to offer public support to her Kickstarter, despite my serious misgivings over the footage she had released so far, her marketing strategies, and the unbalanced roster of interviewees.
But I couldn’t overcome my doubts about her, and after reading her interview with Breitbart I realized that my gut feelings about her had been right. She had been bullshitting me, and bullshitting feminists in general. And so I wrote my Open Letter to her.
So what about that second email of mine? I wrote that after A Voice for Men accused me of threatening her, in an attempt to clarify to her what I had actually meant in my Open Letter, and to check one fact with her.
Here’s the whole thing:
She didn’t respond. Figuring that she didn’t want to talk to me, I didn’t send a followup.
I’m having trouble understanding how my saying that “hey, these MRAs giving you money are actually total jerks” counts as bullying, exactly.
Indeed, in an interview published a day after I sent that email, she made it clear that MRA harassment is something she herself worries about, jokingly telling Tracy Clark-Flory of Vocativ that she could always “go into hiding” if the MRAs partially funding her film weren’t happy with it.
Cassie, if you want to see what bullying looks like, take a look at what A Voice for Men’s “social media director” did to feminist writer Jessica Valenti on Twitter. Look at Elam offering $100 for a clear photo of one of his enemies. Look at the hate campaign Elam launched against one female college student because she attended a demonstration and made a few jokes on Twitter. Click on the “harassment”or “bullying” tags on this blog for countless more examples.
Hell, go take a look at any of the examples of women harassed by AVFM and other MRAs that I sent you in that first email of mine.
I wasn’t trying to bully you; I was doing my best to convince you to listen to the women that the apparent heroes of your documentary have bullied, and continue to bully to this day.
I know that you spoke to one of these women. I hope that you at least do her justice in your film, though at this point, admittedly, I don’t have much reason to think you will.
NOTE: For reasons of space I didn’t include all of the first email. If you are a journalist or someone else with a legitimate need to fact check this piece I can send you the entire email. As text, as a screenshot, with the gory details of the email’s passage over the internet, whatever.
Were David’s emails to Cassie Jaye blunt, as he says? Maybe. But not too blunt. He was clearly trying to help her out.
Were these emails bullying, as she says? Absurd. I would be happy to receive such a well-thought-out email from a colleague. Not only that, the email was polite.
There is no way that Cassie Jaye could make a film that is at all honest that portrays the MRM positively. If her film is a dishonest one, oh well. Perhaps viewers will flock to MRM websites. Then . . . they’ll see how MRAs talk and what they do. Ha, ha, ha!
Now, this upcoming Zoe Quinn memoir (due out in September 2016) and possible Hollywood feature film — THOSE are making MRAs’ heads explode!
Personally, I can’t wait for Cassie Jaye’s “Red Pill” to be released. Not that I’d pay money to see it, but I’m going to really, really enjoy readers’ comments about it. And maybe there will be a clip on YouTube. A girl can dream. . . .
David, I dont have money, but…
How did this witchhunt to you start and where is it heading? I am worried. Not about feminism, but about the people who are not feminists yet and will suffer from antifeminism this movie may generate and especially about you, personally.
Use this money these kind people are giving you and buy yourself plenty of chocolate and cat toys, but mostly, take care of your safety. We know they have violent followers.
I wish you the best, and thanks for everything.
That headline in The Telegraph, very much mainstream media in the UK, “The Red Pill: the movie about men that feminists didn’t want you to see”, is not only shamelessly clickbaity but from my point of view wrong. This feminist wants it to be seen. I want the MRAs to be exposed for the hatemongers they are to a wider audience. They may pick up a few more admirers from the documentary but I hope and believe that a great deal more will be made aware of and repulsed by how toxic their worldview is.
Oh, for fuck’s sake, yeah, meanie feminists everywhere need compassion lessons from self-aggrandizing AVFM cranks.
Her claims about film funding are bullshit, she keeps referring to these mythical feminist grants and investors who would gladly fund a “hit piece” on MRAs and are working to suppress a film they don’t agree with. Every small time doc director has to struggle for any funding, a frothing anti-MRA would have been equally hard to fund.
If she wants to vilify feminist filmmakers in order to shake the anti-feminist tree, no one will stop her. She has to be aware how anyone who is familiar with the long hard road of documentary filmmaking knows she’s full of shit with the “the film feminists don’t want you to see!” hokum.
@Auntie Alias
For a doc to qualify for an Oscar it has to have, at minimum, a seven day commercial run at real theater in NYC or LA, with at least one paid advertisement in a major publication. You don’t need a distributor for that, you can self-distribute and get the film booked yourself or pay a theater to show it. If you get booked you split the profits with the theater and if pay a theater to show it, it’s called four walling, you get all ticket sale profits. Either way, the required advertisement costs thousands of dollars.
Pkayden,
If anyone still thinks this movie will be anything other than MRA propaganda, that article should put that idea to rest.
Saying red pill is about supporting men, not attacking women. Claiming feminists not giving her money is silencing. Please. And the old favorite, accusations of cherry picking. Nobody has ever produced an MRA who doesn’t have misogynist views. But sure, we’re cherry picking.
Predicting some primo harassment from someone claiming to be a feminist, but who will in fact be yet another Misogynists’ “Rights” Activist pretending to be female in order to malign real feminists.
sigh ????
Ggrrrrrr! It is mighty rich of Cassie Jaye and Jack Barnes to say that you are harassing them and making false accusations, while they are the ones doing the harassing and false accusing! Especially since Jack Barnes and his ilk say they are against it. Of course it is totes ok if they are the ones doing the false accusing. It seems that Cassie Jaye is just like that. The hypocrisy and lack of self awareness of these people knows no bounds. I am sorry you have to go through this, David. The good thing is that since this is happening online, everything they say/write and everything you say/write is on record and easily accessible for reference, so you have proof that they are lying and clear evidence of their behaviour (for if you wish to pursue legal action) Lots of hugs, David and stay strong!
Cassie is grasping at straws here. She is out of her depth and this smacks of desperation.
Didn’t you forget the evil laugh at the end?
Hahaha, don’t give yourself that much credit, dear. I know, I know, antifeminism and MRA is all that goes on in your little head, so you think this is much bigger than it actually is, and a documentary by someone who can actually properly set up a camera is a huge thing, but in the great scheme of things, no one will watch a boring documentary about a movement no one even knows with a bad, one-sided director. Also, your entire movement is yet another a tiny brainfart in the history of humanity. People will laugh at this in a few years, like they laughed at the men who were against suffrage. Even harder, because your mind is 60 years late.
Feminism changed the world completely, and still does. Even when our movement is no longer necessary, our story will still go on as long as women have rights. But your movement? Your story won’t even be written. It will not die, because it was never even born.
@chiomara
Right. When I read about the MRM, I often flash back to what I learned in high school about men who were antisuffrage. They were very, very frightened indeed by the prospects of a “petticoat government.” Some of them physically attacked women marching in suffrage parades. Sometimes sympathetic men would march on the outside of a parade in order to protect them. Yay, allies!
“Suffragette” (with Meryl Streep) has hit the theaters in my city. I’m going to do my best to catch it.
All the support and a barrel of hugs for you David. Just reading through this week’s posts has been enough to give me a tension headache, I hope you’re doing ok.
When I watched the trailer for The Red Pill, a big thing that stood out for me was Cassie Jaye’s seeming naivete. Granted its only a jumble of clips lasting a few minutes, but at one point during her interview with Elam after he’s gone through those beloved MRA talking points, all she has to say is, “I … think I agree with what you say? But there’s still that unsettling doubt, and I don’t know why that is”. While Elam looks knowing and gives a sanctimonious nod.
All I could think was, really? She’s so unprepared that she couldn’t identify any points from the sheer wealth of history surrounding women’s rights violations, or recent available stats and research, or the topical issues within gender-based violence, that may be causing that feeling of dissonance? Things she surely would have come across as a feminist? Has she been on the internet before?
Maybe she does challenge him, and valuable discourse occurs, who knows? But what with the description of David’s e-mails as “bullying”, and the Cannes thing, she comes across to me as naive and woefully unready to take on this type of project. Or disengenous as fuck.
I dunno, there’s something with that whole Elam exchange that just doesn’t sit right.
There’s also a piece in the Guardian containing this quote:
The pandering she did in that two-hour interview was shameless.
@brooked
That’s very interesting about the Oscars! Thank you.
David,
I’m not great at expressing support online, but I do support you. These vicious and weird attacks of the last few weeks have got to be extremely frustrating when they’re not scary, and I’m extremely grateful that you’re carrying on with your work.
On this very limited point though, I actually don’t agree all your actions. I think you ought not to have sent the second email and there is a sense in which it could be construed as bullying. Suppose as a hypothetical that Cassie Jaye herself had said she felt threatened by you. If someone says they feel threatened, I think there’s basically never any value in trying to set the record straight. If they are actually afraid, anything you say will be scary, and if they are feigning distress, you give them more ammo.
In this case, it sounds like Cassie hadn’t said she felt threatened; AVFM was the one who considered your letter a threat. Still, Cassie hadn’t corrected them or defended you. In such a situation I would think it’s safest to assume the person didn’t want to hear from me.
You know, maybe it’s time to just cut Cassie Jaye loose. Yeah, it’s sad to see somebody get indoctrinated by MRAs, but it’s worse if they feel bullied by feminists while doing so, even if we don’t mean to bully. All things considered, I don’t think her film is going to spawn an MRA renaissance, Birth of a Nation style, it will probably be a decent but ultimately forgettable film that few outside the manosphere (and manosphere opposing feminists) will ever know about. If she feels bullied — which I feel inclined to believe, even though I don’t think the feeling is justified — it’s probably better for everyone involved to just let things be.
David mate, are you seriously that stupid?
“these people are bullies with a habit of turning on their former allies, and if you dont give them a deeply biased film that they expect they may turn on you”
(sounds a lot like many raging feminists out there- just look at the way Cassie Jaye, a feminist, is treated for expanding her view to include mens problems as a part of this supposed equality for all movement, feminism is advocating)
Do you even know why she used Kickstarter to fund her project?
No, I guess you didnt. She specically mentioned, IN HER OPENING VIDEO that the WHOLE reason she is using Kickstarter to fund her project, is because other producers/companies/people wanted to make it bias. Exactly what you’re saying is going to happen but the beauty of it is, it cant. Kickstarter is a crowd funding website, no one is obligated to donate, no one is told to and it is not specifically targeted to one group of persons. IT IS FOR EVERYONE TO SEE, and ANYONE to donate. So what if more MRA’s than feminists donated? You don’t even know that that’s even true. She even said in a video that most of her donations, including the big ones came from people of neither ‘side’ but wanted to see a documentry from both sides of the coin.
As for Cassie herself, she is a feminist, just like you. I’m sure she originally planned to shame MRA’s, but I highly doubt it because she sounds like a woman with a modecombe of intelligence (expoentially more than you, by each one of bullshit posts. Doxxing a 6 year old, how low can you go?) so she was able to put aside her personal views with the intention of making a film that shows BOTH sides.
I think everyone here, there and everywhere knows that you’re scared of this film coming out. I can tell you what it’ll consist of. MRA’s giving statistics and sources for those statistics about real mens problems which aren’t being addressed, instead put aside for superficial problems first world women apparantly suffer from, like man spreading or sweat shaming. Sure, women do get raped, but we will see in this film a feminist claim we live in a rape campus culture and cite a fucking old, vague, inaccurate piece of shoddy research which has been proven to be largely irrelevant to what it was intended to prove in the first place.
All that aside, the real hate movement going on right now is this third wave neo-feminism, trying to be disguised as real feminism. Your actions prove it, along with many other man-hating plebs. I recently saw a cartoon picture depicting 32 types of ‘anti-feminist’, and the very first one was a woman holding a sign saying “I dont hate men”. If NOT hating men, makes you an anti-feminist then you seriously need to re-evaluate your position within this movement because lets face it, by their own admission, feminists HATE you.
Cassie Jaye seems like she is desperate for a gig. I don’t mean that in an insulting way; the truth is, directing is hard to break into, and even if you do really well, it still doesn’t pay much. I have always been under the impression that she sees this as a way to get her name out there as well as make a quick buck. Which really isn’t a bad thing, in of itself.
The problem is, if she doesn’t make it exactly like the MRAs want her to, she’s not only going to get harassed, she’s going to end up having her name dragged through the mud and have all her personal information exposed. There’s a reason why we say pissing off MRAs or GamerGators is the quickest way to get a free background check – once you piss them off, they will seriously spend months trying to unearth any information about you.
I feel bad for her because essentially she’s going to have to go into hiding, or give up any and all her creative control and NEVER criticize MRAs. I had hoped up until now she would realize how awful MRAs are and stop working with them, but it’s pretty obvious now she’s in deep. Whether it’s cause she just sees them as suckers that will help pay her bills, or she hasn’t seen how terrible they can be, I don’t know.
I think Cassie Jaye will genuinely try to be fair and balanced, judging from her former work. I also don’t believe that lots of people giving her money on kickstarter means they have creative control of her work. She never promised that.
My concern is more what she means by ‘fair and balanced’. TBH, it looks like she’s accepted the MRA narrative that it’s men versus feminism. It’s not.
If they truly believed in what they say they do – the disposability of men, the poor treatment of veterans, rape of men in prison, the high suicide and injury rate etc etc – then the people to get a ‘balanced’ perspective from are the public officials and advocacy groups that deal with those issues, rather than a few feminists.
After all, if all the feminists exploded tomorrow, men would still be raped in prison, industrial accidents would still be happening, and male suicide rates would still be high.
If Jaye actually looked at what the MRAs claim they stand for, and then talked to advocates for veterans etc, she’d pretty quickly pull the mask off the MRAs. But by interviewing a few feminists here and there, she’s allowed them to frame the narrative as poor widdle men versus mean nasty feminists.
For which reason, I think the film will fail to do what it sets out to do – take a look at the MRAs, and hence will probably fail as a film.
What in the world does Sargon of Asshat have to do with The Red Pill or the Men’s Rights? Is this whole documentary just about any and all internet misogynists?
Joining chorus of de-lurkers expressing support for David, and will donate too once I’m in front of a computer to get into PayPal.
Sod her. Honestly. She knows what she’s doing, playing a manipulative “gotcha” scam based on total bollocks calculated to waste people’s time refuting her crap.
To think I ever gave Cassie the benefit of the doubt…
So Cassie is lying and spinning things to make her look good, gain more attention, and make more money off of the backs of whiny anti-feminists?
Wow, it looks like she really DID learn something from the MRA movement!
I just…don’t understand. She was literally stalked by an MRA but she’s accusing *David* of bullying her? What is her goal here? Literally what positive outcome could she realistically expect of this mess?
From that telegraph article, she apparently states:
So, just like the entire manosphere, she thinks toxic masculinity = men are toxic.
This person was at some point a feminist? How?
Dear Cassie,
‘toxic masculinity’ refers to the oppressive gendered stereotypes that men are expected to follow. Toxic masculinity is exactly what leads to men suffering after being told that their masculinity will be taken from them if they don’t adhere to some very primitive stereotypes. Feminists calling out this stereotype and how it leads to the suffering of men IS AN ACT OF COMPASSION that has done more good then the entire “Men’s Rights” movement.
Meanwhile, your buddies over at the men’s rights still follow these stereotypes. Not only are they not helping, they are reinforcing the status quo.
Signed,
The human embodiment of a facepalm
Mels,
Perhaps she’s decided that a career as a grifter is easier than a career as a serious filmmaker. I mean, it probably is. Something that – sorry, I know it’s an ableist term – is commonly described as wingnut welfare. There’s a lot of money to made off of angry reactionaries.
That Telegraph article was painful. The passage Brooked pointed out also was the one that stood out to me: