Filmmaker Cassie Jaye seems to have developed a weird affinity for bigots.
First, she cozied up to some of the most hateful figures in the Men’s Rights movement during the filming of her documentary The Red Pill.
Then, when her funding for the film ran out, she happily accepted financial assistance not only from the actual subjects of the film but also from a motley assortment of far-right ideologues — among them a notorious quasi-journalist who was famously tossed off of Twitter after his fans barraged Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones with racist abuse, and a delusional Trump superfan who literally believes he gave Hillary Clinton the flu with his mind. (After a big donation to Jaye, he got himself an associate producer credit on her film.)
Now she’s trying her best to drum up interest in her film, which has barely drawn any notice at all outside the overlapping spheres of alt-right lady haters and MRAs since it premiered at a New York theater earlier this month.
While The Red Pill got a glowing, if rambling, “review” from new pal/volunteer fundraiser Milo Yiannopoulos at Breitbart, and a somewhat less-enthusiastic thumbs-up from Cathy Young at the right-wing internet tabloid Heat Street, the two real film reviewers who’ve bothered to give it a look have panned it.
Katie Walsh at the Los Angeles Times took issue with the film’s “uncritical, lopsided” argument, complaining that Jaye “twists herself in knots to justify the movement’s misogynist rhetoric.” The Village Voice’s Alan Scherstuhl dismissed Jaye as an inept “propagandist” and warned potential viewers that, as the headline to his piece put it, “You Can’t Unsee ‘The Red Pill,’ the Documentary About a Filmmaker Who Learns to Love MRAs.” (His review of what he described as an “agonizing” film caused much wailing and gnashing of teeth amongst the MRA crowd.)
With little hope of attracting positive attention from film critics, and apparently desperate for any publicity she could get, Jaye agreed to appear on the podcast of an internet-famous bigot who has been described by one critic, not without reason, as “THE MOST WARPED USELESS PEICE OF SH*T THAT I HAVE EVER HAD THE DISPLEASURE TO ENCOUNTER [on the] INTERNET OR ELSEWHERE.”
I am talking, of course, about the rape-excusing, abuse-encouraging, lady-hating, gay-baiting white supremacist Matt Forney — he’s the one on the left in the photo below.
https://twitter.com/basedmattforney/status/787198238575120384
She didn’t just give Forney a couple of minutes of her time; she sat down with him for roughly three-quarters of an hour for his podcast “This Alt-Right Life.” It’s a singularly unedifying discussion. At one point she mentions that she used to get into arguments with her boyfriend every month about nothing, something she now jokingly blames not on PMS but on her (former) feminism.
Badump-tsssh!
She also expressed sympathy when Forney mentioned that he himself had been the victim of a “false” rape accusation. (Imagine that, the author of a blog post titled “Why Girls Rarely Mean No When They Say No” being accused of rape!)
Not that long ago, Jaye was by all appearances a staunch opponent of pretty much everything Forney and his alt-right pals stand for.
In 2012, she released a documentary titled “The Right to Love,” which, according to its description on IMDb, is the portrait of a “Californian married gay couple and their two adopted children,” fighting against the forces of “discrimination, ignorance and hate” who would deny them their right to marry and raise children.
Now she’s appearing on the podcast of a guy who is a virtual embodiment of this ignorance and hate.
It’s not as if evidence of Forney’s despicable views is hard to find, and not just in the WHTM archives. The name of his podcast contains the phrase “alt-right.” In the list of “popular posts” highlighted in the sidebar of his blog one finds such lovely titles as “How to Crush a Girl’s Self-Esteem” and “Why Fat Girls Don’t Deserve to Be Loved.” (Neither title is meant ironically.)
And then there is the endless stream of racist, misogynist and homophobic abuse that is his Twitter account. Some highlights from the last several days:
https://twitter.com/basedmattforney/status/790064680907792386
https://twitter.com/basedmattforney/status/790364983171354625
https://twitter.com/basedmattforney/status/790367816360857601
https://twitter.com/basedmattforney/status/790050589598162944
https://twitter.com/basedmattforney/status/789976518596362240
https://twitter.com/basedmattforney/status/789633067791122432
That last tweet — a reference to Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s practice of murdering people by throwing them from helicopters — is technically a death threat, aimed at a National Review writer who has gotten many such threats from Forney’s colleagues in the alt-right, including photoshopped images of his 7-year-old daughter being gassed in a Nazi death camp.
Are these really the sorts of people Jaye wants to align herself with?
In his “review” of The Red Pill, Milo claimed, without evidence, that a virtual army of feminists was “scrambling to stop Cassie Jaye” and her film. In fact, feminists have mostly ignored The Red Pill. And the person who has done the most to damage Jaye’s credibility is, well, Jaye herself.
Well, props to you for coming back, but minus points for not actually addressing any specific poster with questions for you.
No one said it “wasn’t cool” to express your identity, it’s just that that comes off as “I’m not [flavor of bigotry here], but..” statement when you phrased it the way you did, in the context you did.
For instance, saying something like “As a lover of cheese sandwiches, I find that swiss is usually the best.” wouldn’t be a problem around here.
But to say “As a 52-year-old liberal” and then follow it up with stuff that comes off as what can only be classified as “Concern Trolling” raises suspicion.
Next time it might benefit your comments to be more specific. The way your comment was phrased sounded like you were upset about people protesting period, which is what I, and a few other commenters, took to mean that you were just coming in here to kvetch about “these kids these days”.
But people could still find out about it from other places if they were that interested? I’m sure many students get emails from their schools about events, or from professors when an event comes up that is similar to the class they teach so they can encourage their students to attend. Besides, if a student was very interested in a CHS event and wanted to attend, I’m sure she also advertised it on her own social media and such, so they could have gotten it directly from her.
No one’s stopping them from posting more posters or from advertising it through other venues. No one is completely interfering with another student’s “right” to learn when an event is, because there’s so many other avenues a student can find out about events from.
So, your point is super irrelevant, if I’m being honest. It’s also smacking of “But, but, other side!” stuff, and quite frankly, I’d like to see your responses to my previous post to you first.
Who is doing this? How are they doing this? You’re being really vague here, and I’d appreciate some clarification.
I didn’t hear about any feminists who she interviewed whose interviews made it into the film, actually. If you did see the movie, please correct me if I’m wrong, but all the reviews I’ve seen of it that aren’t manosphere-adjacent made no mention of her interviewing any feminists at all.
So, how is her going on with the project and also giving it a very pro-manosphere veneer with no feminist input her being “respectful” of the feminists who wanted to help with the project in the first place?
We’ve seen snippets of the movie ourselves, and we’ve read reviews from non-manosphere people who said it was nothing but a glowing review of the manosphere. Jaye herself has also in a way “renounced” feminism, and she is getting very buddy-buddy with the alt-right and manosphere people she interviewed in her film.
I’m going to take a guess and say “Yeah, her gratitude has prevented her from doing ethically sound work”.
Considering Jaye hasn’t been attacked by angry men’s rights activists for painting them in anything but a positive light, and they’re crowing about how this is such an “amazing” movie, I’m going to take a guess and say that she’s pretty biased.
Care to point out which groups of the manosphere you feel are being unfairly lumped together?
If you’ve seen a men’s rights blog that’s associated with the manosphere and is not misogynistic, anti-LGBTQ+, or any other flavor of bigot, please do share. I’ve yet to see one.
Judging from personal experiences here, I don’t think it’s fair of you to go “oh, all those guys are just alt-right people! The whole manosphere isn’t like that!” considering how many members of the manosphere are actually very much like that, even if they don’t rally under the “alt-right” banner.
Whelp, there goes any chance I had of taking you seriously.
However, you were right about one thing: we should judge people based on what they say, rather than their credentials. And my judgement is that you really have some serious Googling to do to learn what the fuck you’re actually talking about.
“Mansplaining” isn’t a “misandrist term”. It’s a name for a specific phenomena where a man presumes he has more knowledge over a woman on a given subject and proceeds to explain to her the concepts thereof, without her asking him any questions on the subject, or otherwise hinting she wanted an explanation from him.
This phenomena stems from the patriarchal belief that men are presumed to always be more knowledgeable than women about most subjects, especially if those subjects are STEM related, since that’s apparently “men’s work”.
This doesn’t automagically mean that men are bad people because this happens, nor does it mean that all men do it. It’s not “misandrist” because men don’t suffer any kind of negative, society-wide repercussions on the basis that they might be mansplainers. There’s no sexism against men here.
Women hating men because of society’s treatment of men doesn’t equal “sexism against men”.
A woman saying “I hate men” as a stand in for men’s general behavior towards men isn’t fucking “misandry”. And while there are several feminists who claim the title “misandrist”, that’s mostly a joke at the expense of people like you who appear to believe that women wanting rights (like the right to not be sexually assaulted) is somehow sexist towards men.
That’s it. We’re done here. I can’t deal with this level of willing ignorance.
http://i.imgur.com/9qArFCp.gif
You don’t say.
Ah, me. Well then. One at a time!
Nope – that’s not where it comes from. Or, more accurately – we don’t know where it comes from; that’s a possibility but we have no way of knowing if it’s true.
You’re doing something called abduction with this – seeing a thing and then coming up with a reason for it to be that way. It’s basically The Way To Be Wrong. It could be that a lack of trust in the masses, or fear of open expression, that causes it. Or it could be a genetic predisposition. Or it could be a higher desire to cooperate. Or dozens of other things.
If you’re proposing and then accepting reasons which happen to line up with how you already see the world, you’re almost certainly wrong.
You were who I was referring to, yes. I don’t actually think you came here to get laughs at our expense, though – I hate the term troll. We just don’t have a vocabulary for distinguishing. Mea culpa!
That’s nice.
There are multiple ways to learn about things, though – open debate with an opponent is one, but it’s often not the best one. I’d point out that your “open debate” partners write manuals on how to rape, and encourage one another to do so; they have argued in favour of beating women, they’ve scapegoated abused men, they… just look through the archives of articles here and see for yourself.
That’s not an Alt-Right infiltration, either. That’s from well before the term Alt-Right was ever around. It comes from the largest and most central forums for the MRM.
Why are you comfortable enough with that, and the other things they’ve done, to want to have “open debate” with them?
(I also note that your comments are setting up a dichotomy where we are painted as being disinterested in and afraid of information. Couldn’t be further from the truth. We just recognize that a) there are multiple ways to get information, and b) there’s little to gain and much to lose in approaching the MRM for ‘honest debate.’)
@ ooglyboggles
Heh, to be truly true to form I should be going “Well actually hair splitting machines are technically called…”
Don’t forget all the murders they’ve committed.
@Alan Robertshaw: “Firstly what ‘rights’ are there that men lack and thus require fighting for?”
I’ll focus on two right now: Equal reproductive rights as well as the right not to be demonized.
A good friend of mine has absolutely no contact with her oldest grandchild. That’s because her son was not married to the mother, and a reality I’d never heard about before was that a child born out of wedlock is the “property” of the mother, and it’s totally up to her if she wants to allow the father to be a part of “her” child’s life. My friend’s son, however, does still have to pay child support, even though his child’s mother doesn’t want him involved in any other way.
Which leads me to another issue. A woman who finds herself with an unplanned pregnancy can opt out of parenthood, whether by terminating the pregnancy or carrying the baby to term and placing the baby for adoption. Although a traditional adoption requires the consent of the father, too, the woman can bypass this and leave the baby at a place designated as a safe haven.
In contrast, a man who discovers that he’s created an unplanned pregnancy has no way to opt out of parenthood. Of course, it totally makes sense that no one but the woman herself should be able to decide whether she carries to term, and I’d never advocate for men being able to force abortions on women as used to sometimes happen prior to First Wave feminism. But I don’t understand why he can’t sign away his parental rights and responsibilities upon learning of the pregnancy, just as the woman can.
A really awful spinoff in the reproductive rights realm is with regards to statutory rape perpetrated by adult women on underage boys. If the boy opts not to report the rape before the statute of limitations in his state runs out, he may find himself without recourse when he turns 18 and gets ordered to pay child support for a child resulting from the rape.
I do realize some feminists like Gloria Steinem agree with me on equal reproductive rights for men and boys, and I’ll gladly look into any information that you or anyone can provide me demonstrating that feminists are actively fighting for equal reproductive rights for men.
Regarding my second point, men’s right not to be demonized, I’ll give the example of Erin Pizzey, who started the world’s first domestic violence shelter. Okay, she’s not a man; however, she’s been demonized for not falling in line with our society’s focus on violence against WOMEN, and for sharing views at odds with the popular doctrine of male perpetrators and female victims.
Okay, yeah, it’s Mr Al doing his Skyboomrooster persona again.
Erin Pizzey? Oh dear.
You do realize that Erin Pizzey is a contributor to AVFM, a site on which the rape-apologia and -advice is centrally located, and advocates beating women bloody for being disobedient? Are you sure you want to cite her as someone being unfairly demonized?
(Aside, there’s not a feminist here that thinks women are incapable of violence or doing horrible things. That’s a feminist position in fact- women aren’t angels or succubi. They’re human)
@ that susan
I’m having to lean out of a window to get a phone signal here so if you’ll forgive me I’ll go somewhere to do a proper response; it may take a while.
I can however address your first point very quickly. In England at least not only do grandparents have rights of access, our Government even has a website explaining how they go about that with links to the requisite court forms. So, problem solved here at least.
https://www.gov.uk/contact-grandchild-parents-divorce-separate
@That_Susan
I think you’re new here. Take a look at some other posts on this blog. Check out some of the tags underneath this one. Tell me what you think.
Here in Canada the default is 50-50 custody as well. The courts don’t take parental preferences into it at all, pretty much – they consider the well-being of the child first and foremost. A parent, man or woman, will only be denied the right to visit their child if the court believes that visitation would be a detriment to the child because of some extenuating circumstance.
Who the fuck cares about Gloria Steinem anymore? Why do asshole always reference old-ass people who have zero relevance to modern feminism? Who ya gonna mention next? The lady that tried to kill Andy Warhol next whoever the hell that was? Solarnet? There’s feminist beyond the fucking 60s and 70s. I mean, Susan is fucking 52 years old, mentioning women from before their time, they’d been fucking 18 in 1982. Should be talking about Anita Hill or the porn wars or something. IDK, that shit was also before my time and I know shit about it.
Susan is a sock and a troll and don’t know shit.
@that_susan: a) he could wear a condom. B) no, he does not get to sign away his right to see the child so he doesn’t have to pay support. Many deadbeats would do this, and who suffers? The child.
You want to see feminists campaigning for ‘equal reproductive rights’ for me?
That’s not our job. Feminists are conserned with women, primarily. That is because feminism, as a movement, is about addressing the inequalities built into our society, in favour of men. More widely, it is examining how we have overlapping privileges, coming from ethnicities and class etc, and how these things change the experiences of women.
Men frequently benefit from women saying “that is not cool, and hurts everyone.”
BUT IT IS NOT THE POINT.
MRAs should be the flip side to this. THEY should be taking actual steps to help men out, examine how the patriarchy and toxic masculinity and YES the cultural conditions that lead to mansplaining (or have you never had to stand there, nodding, as some dude tells you how to do something that you know, because of course you do, it is a basic concept of your job/life/whatever?).
But they are not. For evidence, i present to you the blog you are conveniently on.
Was just day before yesterday that David called out Mig for continuing to post despite his comments being binned without reading; someone followed up with “lol learn to sock”. Now Susan’s here? Interesting.
@That_Susan
You still didn’t answer us, you still haven’t addressed PI, why? Or Scild’s effortposts?
First off on child rights, bullshit on the case of 1) dad are more likely to not want to take core of the kids and 2) You seem to be ignoring the wishes of the “child” in question.
Oh look the dad can voluntarily, as they so often do “Imma bounce and renounce being parent.”
On your second point:
Is this what you bring up? A case that brings up pro life jurisdictions when feminists advocate for pro choice?
Also please address rape culture, alongside how apparently feminists aren’t fighting against the patriarchal society that put people in that bind, both men and women?
This cannot be more poorly constructed, if this was a dream catcher it’d be a tangle of broken sticks and yarn.
Again, make an effort to reply to the people who spent time to rebuke you, the less effort the more transparent the facade. Though at this point it’s more transparent than glass.
I was trying super, super hard to take That_Susan seriously, and it was really an effort, but I just lost it here:
“Men’s rights” “activists” are haters. Giving MRAs a platform is identical to giving haters a platform because MRAs are a subset of the larger group known as “haters.”
You’ll note the scare quotes: they are present because self-identified MRAs don’t care about men’s rights, and they are not activists. They do jack-all for men. All they do is whine on the internet. That isn’t activism. And their concern is not about some kind of missing slice of rights that non-men have that men lack, but rather to tear down women’s rights. They are anti-women’s-rights non-activists.
There are actually real activists out there who really care about men and do stuff for men. They don’t call themselves MRAs. That well is poisoned. They put other labels on themselves. Often they call themselves feminists.
If you don’t want to be called a concern troll, don’t be a concern troll. Concern trolling is a thing you did; the entire final paragraph of your first post was nothing but concern trolling. If you don’t like that label, don’t paste it onto yourself with your behavior.
Please notice how when men say nasty things about women, it’s good because men have the right to free speech; but when women say nasty things about men, it’s bad because men have the right not to be demonised.
It would be nice if women had some rights too, but I suppose their rights would get in the way of all those rights that men have.
Also: could you advise me as to which international treaty or organisation grants me the right not to be demonised? I didn’t even know that I had that right! Is that a right that only men have, or is it a right that all people have? How is “demonise” defined legally? Which nations recognise this right? Enquiring minds want to know.
Hey, Mr Al, just one quick point before I go to bed: Pizzey’s an admitted domestic abuser.
In stumping for her, you’re stumping for domestic violence against men. So, y’know. Have fun with that.
@Suzerainty
Anyone with a womb, man or woman, gets to make choices about their pregnancy. Can’t get more equal than that
The fuck even is that?
Abortion. And. Adoption. Are. Not. Opt. Outs. It’s called being responsible. Just as the father (sorry for the cisnormative terminology) is expected be responsible. Also, the implication here is that the mother doesn’t provide for the child. They do. Monetarily. Just as the father does. Again, responsibility
How!? The dates and times wouldn’t allow that. Depending on the jurisdiction, she’d hafta be under 20 and he’d hafta be exactly 17. Anything other than that, and that’s rape. The child would be proof of the offense. And how many cases of this are there that this is a huge issue. What the fuck are you talking about?
C’mon Susan the list is piling up, start finding a way to reply to everyone’s posts about you and your arguments. Going one at a time is not very efficient.
@Ooglyboggles: “That_Susan, what do you make of this article:
http://everydayfeminism.com/2016/06/racism-against-asian-americans/”
That article is very interesting, and one thing that jumped out at me was the similarity between my concerns (as pointed out by another poster here) that the younger generation is veering off-course by trying to prevent certain ideas from being expressed on their campuses, and this author’s dislike of teaching Asian American Studies due to the “problematic, frightening, and downright erroneous” opinions that some of her students express about racism.
Yes, we older folks need to guard against our tendency to try to control the way in which the younger generations accumulate and process information, and reach their own conclusions, which are bound to differ from our own due to being born in different times and immersed in entirely different life experiences.
What I’m trying to nurture within myself is the seed of trust in the younger generation, and especially in my own children. I’m happy and honored that my oldest, now 16, still likes debating with me about various issues. It’s important for me to stay humble, and remember that just as I have some insights she doesn’t because of our different vantage points, she also has insights I lack. Mutual respect begins at home.
Yeah, it’s Mig or MRAL. If they’re not one and the same.
http://66.media.tumblr.com/4190106d1dd3d57626af6c417808e218/tumblr_nmsf0xrhDK1tq4of6o1_500.gif
Fuck it, there’s so much ignorance here I can’t be quiet about this.
One, men have more rights than women when it comes to reproduction. For instance, Viagra, a popular erectile dysfunction pill that has two functions: sex and peeing, is covered by health insurance, whereas birth control for women (which has a myriad of benefits for people with vaginas) is not, and people are struggling to get government backing for it to be covered, because most conservative politicians view it as being “immoral” and they “don’t want to pay for women to have sex”.
Men also can very easily get custody of children should they want them, or opt out and sign away their rights if they want to, without a ton of social stigma.
A man who abandons his family is “just looking out for himself”, or “just wasn’t ready”, but a woman who abandons a child, for whatever reason, is practically Lucifer himself.
Secondly, no one has the “right” to not be “demonized”. That’s not a right. At all.
It’d be nice to not have it happen to people (like LGBT+ people, pagan people, and hell, even feminists), but that’s not a right anyone is inherently entitled to.
Ah, the old “friend of a friend of mine has an issue” play.
Look, even if this story is true (and I have no reason to believe you), anecdotal evidence (and one bit of it at that), does not an argument make. Solely because this happened to your friend’s son doesn’t mean that this is a society-wide pandemic.
And, as other commentators have said, grandparents have a right to fight for visitation of a child. If your friend hasn’t tried to get custody or visitation, that’s on them, not your friend’s son’s ex-wife.
Actually, men can ask to opt-out of the child’s life, or just skip out on the child support payments. It’s been very much known to happen.
I have literally never heard of this happening. Citations please.
You know what I have heard of though? Rapists suing their victims for custody of the child that resulted from the rape. [1] [2] [3]
“Reproductive rights for men” is very vague, please clarify.
Unless you mean “I want men to have the right to leave a mother and child destitute and unable to take care of themselves because he can’t be bothered or just doesn’t want to”, then which we’re going to have to really fucking disagree.
I believe that if a man helps bring a life into this world, he should help take care of it, at the very least until the mother can take care of herself and the child.
Especially if he’s like most manospherians and demonize women who have abortions or put the child up for adoption because they like to view children as little bargaining chips to force the woman to submit to their petty, childish whims.
Again, not a right. No one has the right to not be “demonized”.
She’s been “demonized” for believing that women deserve to get beaten if they don’t obey their husbands. She also supports hate sites like A Voice for Men.
Sounds like a shitty person with shitty beliefs to me.
Also, this doesn’t say shit about your point about a man’s “right” to not be demonized. You just talked about how Poor Erin Pizzey has people being mean to her because she thinks that women should be beaten but men are the real victims of domestic violence.
On that note, yes, I do think that men should have access to shelters and safehouses to get away from their abusive partners, because yes, men do experience domestic violence.
However, I have yet to see anyone in the manosphere actually fucking do anything about this beyond impersonating a charitable organization, and demanding that women’s shelters be even less funded than they already are, despite the fact that it’s one of their biggest fucking complaints. Such rights, much activism.
@ that susan
OK, apologies for the Anglo-centric nature of these responses but that’s what I’m familiar with. No doubt others here can address your points from different perspectives.
Adoption
We don’t have that no questions asked drop off thing (my mum wishes we did, and I’m in my 40s). Adoptions are controlled by the courts. The priority is the welfare of the child. However a father’s view would be taken into account. If a woman wished to give up a child and the father said he’d take care of it then (assuming there were no reasons the father was an unsuitable carer) the courts would inevitably grant him custody.
Parental responsibility
The rule here is, if you bring a child into the world you have to take responsibility for it (There are some exceptions in relation to sperm donation). It may seem unfair that the woman gets a ‘veto’ on whether the child actually is brought into the world, but that’s because she has to carry the foetus and she must have a right to what happens with her own body. When we get pregnant we can revisit the issue.
Statute of limitations
We don’t have that here. Also if a child was born as a result of forced sex then that is one of the exceptions to having to pay child support.
As for the general double standards in relation to sexual assault. Again that’s something feminists are the ones addressing (as you rightly point out).It’s the traditional masculinity view that regards an underage boy being sexually assaulted by a woman as ‘getting lucky’ and something to brag about rather than be traumatised by (cf most episodes of “The In-betweeners”)
Demonisation
There’s no right to be free from criticism; no matter how harsh that criticism might be. If there’s primary trait amongst MRAs it’s abusing people they disagree with in the most egregious ways.
(Right, I bet in the time it’s taken me to type this everyone else has already addressed your points far better)
@That_Susan
“Reproductive rights”?
Your first (visitation) is an example of “parental rights”.
Your second (abortion) is an example none of your buisness due to personal autonomy.
Your third (adoption) is an example of parental rights.
Your fourth (unplanned pregnancy) is an example of none of your buisness due to personal autonomy.
Your fifth is an example of sexual assault. I do not see the men’s rights community taking that seriously for any sex or gender configuration. I see feminists taking sexual assault seriously. Show me one example from the men’s rights movement that is socially emphasized by the same.
For your last I need a link to the demonization of Pezzy. “Demonization” needs defined.