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.
Okay. Susan the liberal isn’t at all bothered by the reproductive coercion of being forced to choose abortion or poverty. So impressed by those progressive.
Susan, I thought you wanted a debate? You aren’t engaging any of our points. You’re just restating your original opinion. Don’t whine about how no one wants an honest debate and then refuse to engage those who are willing to talk about the issues. It’s very dare I say, trollish?
What makes you think it’s extremely rare for a man to just walk away from fatherhood? I’ve seen it happen quite a bit.
It’s extremely rare for men to not be involved with their children?
I mean, anecdotally, perhaps you haven’t seen it much, but it’s something between 1/4 and 1/3 of all families in America.
https://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/hh-fam/cps2011.html
Table C3.
Note, that statistic combines all cases of single-mother families, and doesn’t specify reasons for why. Still – that’s a huge swath of the population. There’s no grounds to assume that it’s rare.
(There is a lot of information in that table, by the way. If you want to get depressed, go take a read :s )
@msexceptiontotherule: “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?”
I don’t personally know any men who’ve talked with me about a child of theirs being aborted or put up for adoption with or without their knowledge or consent. It’s possible that I know many men who’ve had this done to them, but if they don’t know about it, how could I?
The point I was making was that legally, a pregnant woman has the option to decide whether to continue with the pregnancy, and if she continues but decides that she doesn’t want or isn’t able to raise the baby herself — and for some reason, doesn’t want to give the father the option of raising the baby — she can legally, anonymously, leave the baby at a location designated as a safe haven. Even if no women ever do any of these things, they are legal options for them.
“…why didn’t they take their own precaution against pregnancy if they didn’t want to be a father…”
Awesome point. I’m afraid that most men, and indeed most women, would find my own personal philosophy of life rather constricting. Since I’ve always known that there was such a thing as birth control failure, I opted to delay having penile-vaginal sex until such time as I was ready to be a mother and in a relationship with a man ready to be a father.
And a while back, I had an interesting conversation with a man a few years older than me who’d lived his entire life with a similar philosophy. He said there were so many ways for both people to be totally satisfied without having the kind of sex that could result in a baby, so he just used those other options till he was ready to be a dad.
Not everyone decides to follow that philosophy, even though it makes perfect sense to me (and to that one man who shared his story with me), but rather than throwing those other folks under the bus — especially since we (at least those of us in the West) currently live in a society where it’s legal to terminate a pregnancy, and where there are so many couples desperately wanting to adopt a baby, why not give both man and woman the option of walking away while the baby is still young enough to bond with a new family?
“…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?”
Hopefully most couples try to sit down and work these things out. As for the ones who don’t, there may be many different reasons why.
The odor of toe is strong.
Just meltdown and be done with it.
@Axecalibur: Middle Name Danger: “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…”
I agree with you that some people, especially LGBT people, face very unfair obstacles to adoption in many cases. And even people who meet with conventional approval often find adoption a long, trying, and expensive process. One reason it’s so hard is that there are so many couples dealing with infertility these days, so there are more people lining up to adopt newborns than there are newborns available for adoption.
So yes, it’s very hard for people wanting to adopt a newborn. But from the vantage point of a couple with a pregnancy that they don’t feel ready for, from everything I’ve heard, it is not at all hard to find infertile couples who’d consider it to be a great gift to be able to adopt that baby. I do personally know a few women who had babies that they gave up for adoption, and seriously, they were able to pick and choose and none of them had a hard time finding a family for their child.
Regarding your question about children of color: Do you know any women pregnant with children of color who couldn’t find anyone suitable willing to adopt their newborn?
@That_Susan
Ordinarily I wouldn’t bother with your nonsense at all, but what the hell:
Why would you consider this a meaningful question? I don’t know anybody who’s pregnant at all, but that doesn’t change the fact that kids who aren’t healthy, white, and male get adopted at much lower rates. “I know this one person who…” is not a valid argument, or evidence of anything in particular. It is very common in right wing arguments against infrastructure and human rights, though; e.g. ‘I know a person who’s faking disability, so we should get rid of disablity payments’ or ‘I saw one of those welfare queens buying champagne and caviar with food stamps.’
@weirwoodtreehugger: communist bonobo: “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?”
The child’s right to be cared for most certainly trumps the rights of both biological parents. If one parent opts out of being a parent and the other parent looks carefully at their living situation and support system and concludes that they’re not in a position to adequately take care of the child without a partner, even if they want to, and the woman doesn’t want to abort, the loving thing is to put the child’s rights ahead of their own rights and look for a couple or individual who is amply able and willing to adopt and raise their child.
It’s easier for the baby and everyone if the transition can be made soon after birth. Obviously, in this case, there’d be no need to sneak around and do the safe haven option, because the other parent is totally willing to sign over their rights. This gives the parent placing the child for adoption the ability to get to know prospective parents and make a choice they can really feel good about.
So, if a woman has sex before she is certain that she can be a single mom, she’s just shit out of luck and so is her kids. But don’t worry. She can just have the baby and give it up for adoption. Because going through pregnancy and labor is no big deal and it in no way affects you to give up a baby. Such amazing liberal opinions!
I see Susan is still ignoring my point about the rights of children to not live in poverty. This is very disappointing from someone who claims to want a good faith debate.
What is with trolls ignoring me today?
@WWTH:
You’re being unfair to them, what with all your evidence and reason and so on. They can’t compete with that.
Oh. She finally answered. And the answer was predictably horrible. If I’m to understand the rights hierarchy is fathers > affluent couples who want to adopt > mothers. If a mother is poor, she doesn’t deserve to keep her children. It’s better to take children from their mothers than it is to inconvenience fathers by asking them to contribute financially to the human they helped create.
Fuck you, troll. You’re a terrible person.
Men can also leave babies at those same safe havens if they don’t’ want to take care of the baby, too, ya know. It’s not like there’s a police force at work that can locate missing children or anything if the parent wants them.
But, like, again, that’s not reproduction, it’s parental.
No, don’t need to. Black kids cost less to adopt than white kids. And it takes less time to go thru the process. Why? Cos, people don’t wanna adopt them. Supply and demand. Black kids are considered a lesser value commodity. That’s real and systemic whether I personally know someone in that situation or not
And, btw, being responsible via a safe haven is not ‘sneaking around’. Fuck. Right. Off!
@Brony, Social Justice Cenobite:
I certainly don’t feel that anyone but the woman herself has the right to determine whether or not to end a pregnancy. I already said that upthread somewhere, but I know this is a really fast-moving discussion so I can understand if you missed it.
My current views about abortion rights are similar to the views JudgyBitch expressed a while back (though I’m not sure whether they are still her views, as she has said that her thinking is evolving in this matter). She suggested something similar to the law in France, where abortion is completely free (paid for by the state), legal, and easy to obtain in the first trimester, up to (I think) whatever point it is that scientists have determined that there’s a functioning brain, at which point many people feel that the embryo becomes a sentient being.
Making abortions free and easy to obtain early on will solve the problem that many women currently face in countries like the U.S. where a woman may have to save up money to pay for the abortion, and can’t get one until she’s much further along.
If a country can get to the place where abortion is free and accessible early on, once they are at that place, I feel that abortions occurring after a brain has developed should only be performed for medical reasons.
I see we are not going to get the interesting discussion promised by you That_Susan,
I don’t see any of that, just ignoring many salient points raised and doubling down on what is a frustratingly narrow perspective. Maybe you’re busy and we’ve overwhelmed you, Idk.
I want to raise something else as to your first post, and the OP topic, if I may:
The thing is, it was very obvious to both feminists and MRAs quite some time ago where her enquiries were likely to lead, it hasn’t been “an open hand” for a long time, and that’s exactly why feminists backed away and MRAs donated in excess of what she needed.
I myself wrote to her about a year ago after an MRA introduced us, he thought she might like to hear another perspective as they had been conversing for some time. I was keen to see a bipartisan view of men’s rights issues, so I made it clear I was supportive of her work but that I had some concerns about her depth of understanding, particularly her conflation of the term the Red Pill with only MRA issues like suicide, DV, child custody. I asked if she understood the Red Pill is a much more far reaching ideology than that and offered to discuss. She never responded. I tried again, sent her some very soft reading, and nothing.
Feminists and non-MRAs didn’t reject or ignore her, nor hang her out to dry, it was the other way around. She indicated her bias in her trailer, and she confirmed it absolutely when she ignored and rejected those of us who reached out to offer the support you imply wasn’t forthcoming. Yet she continued (and still does) to hear out and engage MRAs.
There she is in that interview posted earlier saying Futrelle is a troll who attacked her. His interaction with her is recorded on this site, look for yourself. I see him trying to genuinely engage with her, and yeah he has his bias too, but unfortunately her “open hand” and principle of charity did not seem to apply to anyone but MRAs.
And there she is confirming my concerns saying that she has rejected feminism because it has an (optional) ideology, and yet she has shown no understanding that the Red Pill is an ideology too, nor what it stands for. Nor does she display in that interview here that she has any depth of understanding of feminist perspectives on men’s rights.
This isn’t a story about poor Cassie Jaye misunderstood by feminists, nor harassment by them, nor censorship. She actively censored other perspectives from her “unbiased” work and now that she’s had her say, others are getting a chance to have theirs.
I’d think as a libertarian you’d support that, but the narrative you seem to be pushing is from the MRA playbook where she is a victim of mean feminists and MRAs are the guiding light or something.
There are two sides to every coin, try seeing what’s on the other side.
Happy to discuss further,
Sigh
(I need to come up with a better name, but every time I come in here it’s the overwhelming reaction I experience lol)
@Paradoxical Intention – Mobile: “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.”
So are you saying that most men go around making “pinkie promise(s)” that they respect women when they really don’t? Men who disrespect women are rare, which is why so many women and men, including male athletes, are disgusted with the suggestion that Trump’s behavior is typical locker room or red-blooded male behavior. This isn’t how normal men act.
Also, we all take precautions when dealing with people we don’t know very well. It doesn’t hurt my feelings if other people take precautions with me and, for example, don’t give me a lot of personal information until such time as they feel like they know me well enough. Nor do I know any men who get their feelings hurt if they’re not immediately ushered into others’ inner circles. So your post itself seemed rather negative towards men. If you think “demonization” is too strong a word, maybe “negativity’ is more your speed.
Do you think there’s something dangerous about men that makes it necessary for women to take more precautions with men than vice-versa?
Another example of negative assumptions about men would be the general idea that a pregnant woman who decides that she’s not in a position to be a mother or to support a child financially is seen as someone willing to put her child first by relinquishing her rights (and yes, I see her that way, too), whereas the man who inadvertently helped create that pregnancy and realizes that he’s not ready to take on the moral, physical, or financial responsibility of raising a child is seen as a jerk who can’t be allowed to “get away with it” (he should be seen no differently or less sympathetically than the pregnant woman who feels the same way).
Yet another example is the idea that it’s somehow insulting to a woman who says she was raped for people who don’t know her all that well to reserve judgement rather than assuming that she’s telling the truth and the man she’s accusing must be guilty. Yes, I used the terms “woman” and “man” even though I realize that both rape victims and rapists can be of any gender.
This is because of one of *my own* negative assumptions about third wave feminists — at least I’m upfront about it: I just have a hunch that the people who say that we should automatically, without question, believe anyone who says they were a rape victim, will look at the matter differently if a man says he was raped by a woman.
I think these people will take the time to ask a few questions and look at things closer before crucifying the accused woman in the court of public opinion. So yes, I’m saying that many of the feminists who post here will crucify a male accused rapist in the court of public opinion faster than they would a woman accused of the same crime.
Am I unfairly demonizing the feminists who post here? Please realize that I’m not saying that you don’t believe women can rape men: I know you do believe it — but I just think you’ll want more information and be slower to toss the accused woman into the roasting oven.
For the record, I don’t think either should be tossed into the roasting oven. I believe in a fair trial and due process for everyone.
Additionally, I strongly disagree with your statement that men suffer no genuine repercussions for the negative assumptions made about them. At least, it seemed like your dismissal of men’s feelings was due to your belief that they were making a mountain out of a molehill. Men feel emotional pain, too. Their issues and perspectives are every bit as valid as women’s.
Must be nice to be so privileged that racists and misogynists can’t really touch you. Certainly would be nice if everyone could be that privileged … wonder what could make that happen …
So far this is a purely informed trait. You keep saying this about yourself, but almost all of the opinions you’ve expressed have been other than liberal-leaning. It takes more to convince me that you lean liberal than just repeating over and over that you totes do, in between expressing extraordinarily conservative opinions.
eta:
LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL yes
Man pain is the only real pain. Except for maybe white pain. White pain is definitely real, and man pain is the realest of real pain, definitely on par with systemic discrimination.
@Susan
Okay you’re not even làm tình trying. Yes because all of a sudden you’re for pro abortion rights, unless when the father’s involved than it’s the priority of the father above all else. Or how you are so liberal that it is people’s free speech to say racist shit to asians like me is completely fine. Or how you’re conveniently ignoring when people are pointing out that non white, female and disabled children have a much lower tendency to get adopted.
Bien di.
@Policy of Madness: “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.”
Regarding reproductive rights, if that term is limited to decisions about conception, pregnancy, and birth, it’s simply a natural reality that the woman does and should have more decision-making power because the pregnancy is occurring in her body. Both certainly have equal power to decide whether or not to have sex and whether or not to use contraception, but if contraception fails, the woman and the woman alone has the right to decide whether or not to stay pregnant and carry to term.
Regarding parental rights, in cases where the woman decides to continue with the pregnancy, I’m just saying that, in societies where there are huge numbers of people wanting to adopt babies, both parents should have the freedom to relinquish their parenting duties. In cases where one parent wants to raise the child but the other doesn’t, and also doesn’t want to pay support, the parent who wants the child will have to make whatever choice they feel is best for the child, in view of the fact that there will be no help or support coming from the other parent.
Some here have suggested (or at least one here has suggested) that it’s difficult for biological parents of female, non-white, or disabled children to find adoptive homes for those newborns. If it can be established that genuine attempts were made to find adoptive homes and there were no suitable people willing to adopt the infant, then this sounds like a case where BOTH bio-parents are just going to have to step up and equally share the responsibilities for raising the child, whether they want the child or not, because nobody else does.
Susan has parroted every single MRA talking point and talked about JudgyBitch admiringly. Are we really supposed to believe this isn’t an MRA? I think the only one we haven’t heard yet is “men can’t get laid anytime but women can, therefore men are oppressed.”
Men have more power than women in society in general.
I’m gonna need more than a hunch for this one.
Right now there are 1,600 children in foster care in Kentucky who entered the system at less than 1 year of age.
That’s actually 20% of the children currently in foster care.
I want you to sit on that for a while. 20% of Kentucky’s foster children were newborns or infants when they entered foster care, because adoptive parents weren’t lining up for them the way you seem to think adoptive parents invariably are.
You need to reexamine your assumptions about the world, because they don’t match reality on any scale.
And in your world, what rights do the children have? And why does the opt-out parent’s rights trump the opt-in parent’s rights, and the child’s rights, and society’s right to not have to fucking support a child with a living, able parent who just can’t be fucked to care? That’s a lot of rights to shove to the side just so some dude doesn’t have to face his responsibilities.
Twenty percent of Kentucky’s foster children were less than 1 year of age when they entered foster care.
Twenty percent.
Apologies, I spoke too soon as a few replies were forthcoming from T_S as I typed.
Judgy bitch changes her opinion on abortion more often than I change my knickers. She does that because of that pesky hierarchy of rights issue I brought up that all rights aren’t equal.
Those MRAs like JB get all in a tangle because abortion is wrong, but single motherhood is wrong, and then supposedly there are the millions of dad’s screwed out of being fathers whilst simultaneously millions are being forced into it.
In the end it starts to sound like the “problem” is simply women, and whatever the argument, even contradictory ones, the answer is “the woman is/women are always to blame”.
Men can only be inconvenienced if there is no other option and the already overburdened family court system takes extraordinary and expensive measures to find him an out. Anything else would be misandry!
Last I checked, Trump still had the majority of men. Particularly white men. He’s far behind in the polls because women are overwhelmingly against him. Many men (like my dad and brother) are disgusted with Trump but even more men plan on voting for him.
@That_Susan
Oh the good people of CPS JUST AREN’T TRYING HARD ENOUGH TO FIND GOOD HOMES FOR THESE KIDS.