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.
@Everyone involved in the Susan ‘debate’
Notice this person still didn’t address anything but one point. I think this person is that Mrs/Chad/othersocks again, I agree with that idea.
I love how they go ‘I’m going to be done for today’ when they haven’t done anything but concern troll and ignore everyone!
@Nobodi
Well, your name certainly fits!
By the way, have you got anything to say? Any of our arguments to refute? Any reasons why cat avatars are bad?
I know you can’t refute anything said on this website, but if it makes you feel better- that’s a little bit pathetic.
Pitshade
Sorry for my late reply, I think I’m allergic to the dandruff of cats. My eyes would get all red, puffy and watery and my nose itches and I start to sneeze.
When I was younger I had a Manx and it didn’t bother me. I read that females and light colored cats are less likely to produce certain allergens and kittens are pretty good too. So maybe that’s why Misty doesn’t bother me that much because she’s still a kitten? I don’t know.
Rhuu
Aww can I have one? Btw I like your avatar it’s adorable.
I feel compelled to point out that my avatar is a Hound of Tindalos.
@Skiriki
That’s quite a lovely Hound of Tindalos. 🙂 Who’s a cute little timetravelling unrelenting hunter? Is it you? Yes, yes it is. (I’m talking to the avatar, obviously.)
@Fruitloopsie:
Some breeds are less allergenic (their saliva has less/none of that pesky stuff which gets transferred to dandruff and fur), which was one of the major reasons why I got myself a Bengal, especially when the breeder confirmed that people haven’t gotten any major allergic reactions from his kitties.
I got two cat allergic friends, and one can keep her problem at bay with antihistamin, no probs, and the other one gets some light sniffling, but that’s all.
So, good luck! I hope your kitty won’t cause problems on that front!
@Monzach:
😀
Are you ascending/descending to “You’re a
kittypuppy!” level now?@Skiriki
I’m pretty sure that “You’re a kitty/puppy!” is pretty much my resting level of spoken intelligence. 😀 I’m not a good talker-to-other-beings, is what I’m saying. ô.Ô In other news, the Hounds of Tindalos are my “favorite” enemies in the Call of Cthulhu RPG. Enemies that can actually be defeated that is. 😉
Y’all sparked the urge, I’m loading up the new expansions to Don’t Starve now. Still “Always Wolfgang” tho because I’m try-hard.
Shiriki
I read about that too and thanks.
An allergic friend of mine tells me her allergies literally vary by individual cat (unfortunately my cat is not one of the ones that doesn’t bother her, but she can cope with a weekend here if she takes her drugs).
Ah, so many comments I didn’t see before my last comments should have refreshed the page from looking last night.
So Susan is a commenter on manohdear sites, figures. I did see that one coming, but perhaps this would be a web of socks too complex for Chad.
So much ignorance, but I think you’ve all set them straight.
@ Dalillama
EVIL! EVIL! E- I mean, er, that’s a shame. I- BLASPHEMER!!!! BLASPHEMER!!!- oops, what a difficult situation.
I imagine more cat gifs (of which I have none myself) would help. Anyone?
@ All
I love how nobodi seemed to think he’d be scary to us, somehow, only to be greeted by mocking and jokes.
@Brony, Social Justice Cenobite: “@That_Susan
You need to do some explaining about what “opt out” looks like for the people providing sperm. No one gets to control another person’s body through physical or social force. Otherwise there is room in this for things that are just as bad as what the religious right does for reproductive rights.”
I completely agree. As I’ve already mentioned, only the woman has the right to decide whether or not to continue the pregnancy. The man should simply have the option to “opt in” — either completely, with equal parental rights and responsibilities with the mother, or partially by only paying child support, or to “opt out” completely — by signing away all parental rights and responsibilities, including financial responsibilities.
One or two other posters here have mentioned that men already can opt out of all the other rights and responsibilities besides the financial, and I’m just saying that they should be able to opt out of that, too, just as a woman can if she chooses to terminate the pregnancy or give up the child for adoption (even by anonymously leaving the baby at a safe haven if she wants to bypass the father’s right to have a say in the adoption). This is how I define equal reproductive rights.
Somebody else here mentioned that men have a choice about whether or not to have sex, and, of course, that statement is true about both men and women. Both have a choice about whether to have sex and whether to use contraception. In the event of a contraception failure and unplanned pregnancy, both should also have the option to walk away, give up the rights to their child, and be free of any responsibility.
I wouldn’t say this if we were still living in a time when abortion was illegal, and/or when giving a child up meant abandoning him or her to life in an orphanage. But now that there are so many couples eager to adopt a baby, the birth parents can indeed walk away without having abandoned their child.
How many men do you personally know, @That Susan, who have been denied a say in a woman pregnant with *their* child deciding to have an abortion/give the baby up for adoption AND who wanted or didn’t want the child? And if you’ve known any such individuals, why didn’t they take their own precaution against pregnancy if they didn’t want to be a father, or attempt to work out something with the mother if she didn’t want the responsibility of caring for or providing financially for a child and they were willing to do so as a single father?
@Suzie Q
Shut up, shut up, shut up!
Today, ya mean? Especially involving children of color? You have no idea what you’re talking about, do you?
People are legally restricted from adopting children in this country due to their choice of life partner, and, even where it’s not illegal, it’s made incredibly difficult. It’s like you’re deliberately ignor… Oh…
That_Susan,
What about the child’s rights to be cared for. They can’t care for themselves, you know. If the father won’t take care of the child and the mother can’t, who pays? Or do you think poor kids should just die in the streets?
TW: Serious talk about what men’s rights activists have talked about when it comes to pregnancy.
@That_Susan
I agree with them. People who make sperm already have the right to opt out. But let’s not ignore the issue they are emphasizing and just edge yours in, no one has the right to coerce a person to give birth or prevent someone from performing an abortion. Do you agree?
You are concerned about sperm providing people becoming parents when they did not want to. Don’t pretend that “both men and women have the right to end a pregnancy” in the same way. I did paraphrase you right there because you appear to have little knowledge of how that right actually looks on both “sides”.
Simple question. What do you do with the men’s rights nightmare example? The one where someone puts holes in the condom, or uses a disposed one. If any person’s answer amounts to “make them have an abortion” I would consider them a bad person for it.
Forcing abortion is about as evil as preventing it to me. The implications of men’s rights topics on the issue of children and abandonment are equally as disturbing.
Not to mention that white, male, able-bodied babies are way more likely to be adopted by prospective parents than other demographics, thus leaving babies who don’t match all those criteria to be shuffled about and grow up in the system unless they get really damn lucky.
It’s almost like people who give birth to non-white, female, disabled babies have less options to ensure their child can have a good life thanks to institutionalized racism, sexism, and ableism!
But I guess that’s less important than a father’s right to not give a shit, I suppose.
Oh, speaking of Susan, you still haven’t told us how men are “demonized” by society and why it’s so unfair, despite the fact that they suffer no negative repercussions for it beyond their hurt feelings that women take precautions when dealing with men, and we don’t let our guard down just for them because they pinkie promise they “respect” women.
@Paradoxy
I mentioned brown kids, but I forgot girls and disabled children. Good catch 🙂
But yeah, having babies is (or can be anyway) a direct result of having sex. If you do the latter and get the former, you don’t get to just dip. In a perfect world of communal nurseries, maybe that’s OK. Not in the real world. This is no different to Paulbots saying that charity will magically fix all our social ills, so we have no need for welfare. Not a real solution. What’s the solution, Susan?
Your definition contains a non-trivial amount of bullshit, as well as a perspective filter that is not unimportant!
First, the bullshit: as others have pointed out repeatedly, and you have repeatedly ignored, what you’re referring to here is parental, not reproductive. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that you keep ignoring this, because once we recognize that you’re talking about parental rights and responsibilities, we have to think about the woman’s rights and responsibilities and try to balance against those. What you’re doing here is trying to balance a woman’s reproductive rights with a man’s parental rights, and there is no actual mystery in why those don’t balance, because they are completely different spheres. If you balance reproductive to reproductive and parental to parental, you’ll find a much closer match. Is it a total accident that you’re making this mistake over and over, despite people going out of their way to point it out to you? Only you can answer that.
The perspective filter is also very important. Someone who is actually concerned with equity would note the very inequitable burden that nature places on people with wombs during the gestation of a fetus and the early infancy of a child, and want to redress that as soon as possible. People who contribute sperm ought to take over the major burden of caring for a child from about age 1 until about age 3, to make childbearing more equitable.
Nothing could make it completely equitable, but at least that would be closer to it, and people who actually care about equity should want the people that MRAs label as “fathers” (because they don’t recognize trans men as men and trans women as women) to be pretty much the sole caregivers during that period. For some reason MRAs aren’t very hip to that, instead whining incessantly about the fact that they have to contribute even a single cent toward child support, let alone contributing actual parenting.
So this is the perspective filter you’re wearing, the one that keeps you from actually talking about equity in this area, and instead keeps your thumb on the scale while you’re trying to make measurements.
My experience with adoption here in the San Francisco Bay Area is that almost all of the ‘eager prospective parents’ that some people refer to will only consider healthy white infants who will never have contact with their birth parents.
My husband and I have two sons, who were both five years old and in the foster care system. Black and mixed-race boys older than two or three are MUCH less likely to be adopted. I will say that stories of affluent couples spending tens of thousands of dollars on surrogacy or international adoptions make me grit my teeth a bit.
Thiiis. Where I am, both gay couples and single people are banned from adopting (God knows I’ve tried).
“Welfare of the child” my ass; even if we lived in a universe where TEH GAY was catchable, wouldn’t that still be preferable to letting them starve and die in government “Care”?
*sulks* ._.
I’d be more on board with opting out of parental rights and responsibilities for men if they and their partner signed a contract before sex. If a man says he wants to opt out after the pregnancy already occurred, it’s effectively coercing her into an abortion she may not want.
I suspect MRAs would not like this option because it might impede their ability to get laid. They aren’t fans of informed consent if it means getting turned down for sex
@Sigh: “My question becomes, well, where’ve you been then? Why have you only come here now? And only with what appears closed beliefs gained from the MRM?”
Thanks for your kind words about my other posts. There is another feminist site that I periodically drop in to. Also, being a predominantly liberal-leaning person (to my critics, this is not any sort of credentials, just a description — notice I didn’t use the phrase “As a..” :)), most of the people I interact with in my daily life are also more liberal-leaning. We’re part of a Unitarian Universalist church, for example, at which most of the people are liberal and vote liberal.
On most Sunday mornings, I enjoy hanging out in the church coffee area at a table with a bunch of guys with various political perspectives; my closest friend at that table is a man I got to know better when we were both campaigning for Bernie. Again — not credentials, just an explanation that I get to communicate a lot with liberals in real life. But I’ll try to drop by here more, because one limitation of face-to-face conversations is that we have to be open to interruptions and to having the conversation take off in different directions, which tends to prevent discussions from going as in-depth as they can online.
Also, one positive thing about written discussion threads is that if some people get so offended by each others’ opinions that they start hurling insults and accusations and calling names (which certainly happens in both the masculine and feminine “spheres” of the Internet) , people who want to respectfully discuss and debate the issues can skip over the insulting posts and continue on, whereas this would totally unravel a face-to-face conversation because the people who really wanted to talk would literally have to shout over those intent on shutting them up. This is probably why most of us express our opinions a bit less intensely in real life.
As far as your impression that I have “closed beliefs,” I try to keep an open mind on everything, but I’m sure I’m not immune to becoming set in my ways. With regard specifically to your comment about how equal reproductive rights for men would play out in real life, I think you’re right that there would be relatively few men opting out of parenthood, even in cases where the pregnancy was unplanned.
That’s because if the legal presumption is that two unmarried parents will automatically get shared custody except in cases where one parent is deemed unfit, most men are excited about taking part in and investing in the life of a child that they can be “Daddy” to. Also, if each parent has the child half the time and is providing for the child’s resources during that time, the legal presumption would be that neither parent has to pay anything to the other, except in special cases that would be evaluated by the court.
In those extremely rare cases where the man decides to just walk away, I think he should be required to make that decision and sign it all away quite early on, soon after the woman has informed him of the pregnancy. This gives her plenty of time to weigh out her different options and figure out the best course of action for both her own life and the life of her child.
Oh geeze. The creep from the Jezebel article I posted is from my area. He’s from Edina, a very wealthy suburb. I hope this doesn’t mean he’ll get a slap on the wrist.
@Big Suze
None taken…