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, not here. I’m living proof that my sexual assault was treated with compassion and understanding by the regulars here.
And here we find the issue. It’s always 1st principles. If you think everything’s hunky dorey, of course us saying it’s not is going to go in 1 ear/eye and out the other. Or MRA trolling. Either works
Eat shit!
Awww, ain’t that cute? She couldn’t be more wrong, but it’s cute…
@Oogly
*google translate*
…
I see… Ha! ?
@policy of Madness
It’s almost like she’s just parroting assertions with no backing to reality.
@Robert Walker-Smith: “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.”
Congratulations on your beautiful family!
I understand that it’s more difficult to find people open to adopting older children, which is why it’s so crucial for expectant parents who don’t want or feel able to raise a child to be willing to transition their infant into an adoptive home soon after birth. This does nothing to address the problems faced by those older children who are truly suffering through no fault of their own, I know that, but since we’re talking about *pregnancy,* the problem of finding a home for a two or three-year-old child doesn’t need to come into the picture.
I also realize that a lot of people want a child who looks like he or she could be their biological child. However, in my big Midwestern U.S. city, there are a lot of parents adopting children of other races. I think an expectant parent looking for someone to adopt their non-white infant *at birth* could check out the cities or regions where cross-racial adoptions are already quite common, and the fact that their child is still an infant would give them an advantage.
Don’t Starve update:
I staretd a new game with Wigfrid and died by spiders on the 28th day. BUT I started a new game with Wendy AND I unlocked Webber on, like, the third day, and almost got killed by spiders again, so I know who I’m gonna play with after Wendy eventually dies at, like, day six or something.
You’re the one who keeps bringing up the fact that people that can get pregnant can just give up the baby without the impregnator’s input as some reproductive right rather than parental right, so…
Twenty percent of Kentucky’s foster children entered the system at less than one year of age, because adoptive parents weren’t as thick on the ground as you assume without facts to be the case.
Anyone else think that Susan is just really keen on eugenics? Poor people are undesirables who shouldn’t have children. Therefore, our government should do everything possible to coerce them into abortion. Failing that, the father is encouraged to abandon the kids while the mother is coerced into giving them to rich people who can overcome their icky poor genes with a proper wealthy white upbringing. If the rich people won’t take them, they’re just out of luck.
@That_Susan
La Di Da~
Places like Kentucky don’t exist
La Di Da~
@WWTH
I was trying to avoid that line of thought, but it always comes back to race, gender and class discrimination.
@weirwoodtreehugger: communist bonobo: “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.”
Hmm. This is as disingenuous as saying that an unemployed father has to choose between risking jail by robbing a liquor store in order to pay his child support, or risking jail for not paying his child support.
Neither situation is ideal or necessarily fair, and both people are worthy of compassion for the difficult fix they’re in. But of course, the choice in the first case is usually abortion, *adoption,* or poverty. And the choice in the second may include legal options like panhandling until employment is found.
“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?”
Who’s whining? I think I’ve encountered at least a few people here who want an honest debate so I’m glad to be here, and I’m trying to engage as many points as I can, and that I haven’t already engaged in previous posts, before going downstairs to fix dinner. But thanks for your “concern,” anyway! 🙂
@LindsayIrene: “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.”
I guess we’re surrounded by different kinds of men, because I haven’t.
Child support is based on income so if they don’t have a job, they don’t pay, or if the primary caregiver makes more money they don’t need to pay so, like, what are you talking about?
Twenty percent of Kentucky’s foster children entered the system before age 1, because adoptive parents mysteriously weren’t found for them the way you think always happens.
Omg @That_Susan, have you ever heard of ‘show, don’t tell?’
This is why you saying ‘i’m a liberal leaning person’ isn’t working. We judge you by more than your ascribed character traits, and the fact that you are just doubling down on everything means that we don’t really find you terribly liberal.
Perhaps you are liberal… in your area? Maybe you are in a highly conservative area. But here, an actual liberal site, you are not coming off as such.
People have shown you that your whole ‘all bbs can be adopted, so the father can totally stop supporting no harm no foul!’ Is wrong. Very wrong.
Also, the ‘do you have to be afraid of men thing?’ Please see the response of those vr developpers to the fact that someone was groped in their game, and how the very idea never came up. Or how about last saturday when my room mate and i were going home at about midnight after a wonderful day full of d&d, when two fellows asked us if we were going to the club with them (we were not) and then swore at us when i ignored them and my room mate said ‘no’.
Or how about when people yell at me out of their cars when they pass?
Etc.
Etc.
Etc.
For anyone who is for some reason interested in where I’m getting my info about Kentucky foster care:
http://chfs.ky.gov/dcbs/diqi/datafactsheets.htm
Data are broken down by region (do visit the page and lol at the hilarious names we give our regions) and there are statewide totals on every sheet and also on a dedicated sheet at the end of the list.
@PoM
To add, I’m pretty sure there’s over half a million children and infants in the foster care system country wide. It fluctuates, but it’s usually between 400,000 and 600,000.
Sweet sassy molasses, this is tiring.
http://iambrony.steeph.tp-radio.de/mlp/gif/115195__UNOPT__safe_fluttershy_animated_putting-your-hoof-down.gif
@Susan,
Every time we’ve talked about rape on this board, of any circumstance, we do two things:
1) we don’t disbelieve the victim, and
2) we castigate anyone who calls them into question.
This has been true of men and women, boys and girls, people of *any* stripe. We do this because we are not a court of law and choose compassion first. We do this because we understand how rare false rape accusations are, and how heart-witheringly common rape is. We don’t call for heads on spikes generally (despite what the people in MRA-land have told you). Our desires are to help and heal, and do our best to see proper judgement done.
So, yeah. That whole thing about us not believing male rape victims? Would you like to take that back? You’re very welcome to.
At the same time, maybe listen to us when we say things? We’ve shown you a few ways in which your instincts and guesses have been deeply wrong (You seem to have sidestepped most of those, though). If you acknowledge these things, we can probably have a meaningful discussion here. You do have meaningful points in there, they’re just cluttered with the crufty misinformation of MRA talking points.
If you continue to sidestep, though, then I think we’re all safe in assuming you’re just here to teach them mean old feminists a lesson, and I can go back to rolling my eyes at this thread.
Reasonable?
EDIT: lovely datums, PoM. Thank you.
Well, lovely along certain dimensions.
@PoM
Piggybacking off you (did some research to deal with Suzie’s bullshit), turns out there are more than enough couples to adopt every kid. Way more than enough. Unfortunately, parent’s don’t want every kid. Again, white, uberhealthy, infant boys are so disproportionately sought that it creates backlogs. Picky prospects wait for months and months, years even, to get their perfect baby. Years that mean, children of color age out of their best time for being adopted, further hurting their chances. Then, if that weren’t enough, agencies are notoriously picky about parents. No gays, no perfectly capable singles, etc. It’s a total crapshoot, but apparently it’s cos the system just isn’t trying hard enough. Couldn’t be societal discrimination at play
That’s nationwide. Don’t know how that applies to Kentucky specifically. Just dropping the knowledge generally 🙂
First of all, robbing a liquor store is not the only way to obtain money for child support. There’s also these things called jobs. If the father cannot find work or is unable to work, the courts will work with him to adjust the payment. Jail for non-payment of child support happens only when the non-custodial parent is given chance after chance to work with the courts and refuses to do so.
If you are who you say you are and not an MRA troll/sockpuppet, than you clearly live a very privileged and sheltered existence. You are obviously clueless about the issues you are attempting to discuss.
@Handsome Jack
I don’t know a fast and easy way to get numbers nationwide, but I can get Kentucky CHFS numbers extremely easily. If you have a good source for current numbers, I’m sure they’d be super-edifying for Susan, who would promptly ignore them.
And that number would increase by quite a bit if Susan got her way and fathers didn’t have to pay child support and poor mothers were coerced into signing their kids over to the system.
@Scildfreja Unnýðnes: Regarding uninvolved fathers: you’re right that I haven’t seen it much. In the post where I was responding to another poster who said it was rare, I was agreeing with their observation because it jelled with my own observation. But you’re right that anecdotal observations can’t compete with statistics.
However, I don’t know whether all the uninvolved fathers in that study are uninvolved by choice. I personally know of at least one case where a divorced father had to keep going to court to hang onto the shared parenting arrangement that he and the mother had had at the time of their divorce.
After she’d remarried, it was like she wanted her new husband to be “Daddy” and didn’t want the complications of visitation and the realities of children going back and forth between two different homes. I also think she felt like remarrying gave her the resources to take time off from work to go to court and arrange things to her convenience, and she expected her ex to find it all too much of a hassle and just give up.
Paying his lawyer was expensive, but he managed by living with his mom and just focusing on being a dad rather than trying to make a new life for himself, as his ex had.
So some men may really want to be involved but just not have the support or resources to fight in those kinds of cases, or may even think it’s easier on the kids for them not to make waves.
Whaaa? You mean not everyone shares my weird laser-like focus on Kentucky?
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.
I’m not sure it’s extremely rare, however we should act on the presumption men want to raise their children, because the majority do, rather than act on the opposing presumption.
So, that said, a couple of questions.
What if he changes his mind later on? Presumably, he would need to decide well before 12 weeks, so she has enough time to know whether abortion is necessary and be able to arrange it legally. Most women don’t know they’re pregnant for many weeks, so are we expecting too great a decision from men in too short a time? Can we have faith that process will cause more good than harm to men long term?
You say the mother can choose to raise a child without input from a partner at his choice, so back to children’s rights not to be raised in poverty. You suggest that women should place the child’s right to be raised by two biologically unrelated parents who have the financial means to raise the child better. So do you believe that the child’s right to be financially supported trumps the child’s right to be raised by an otherwise willing, capable, biological parent?
Do you not believe in welfare? If you believe in welfare, does the fathers right not to contribute trump societies right not to pay needlessly for other people’s children?
You’ve given an argument where a man has not the financial means to contribute to a child’s upbringing. So, do you believe there should be limitations on which men can opt out perhaps? A means testing system, to see if he can in fact not afford to pay for a child he sired? We means test single mothers on welfare, how about we do that to men?
Oh wait, perhaps we already do? Since we are only talking about financial support, isn’t that the real issue here? Men have every right not to physically raise their children. If there are some who, as you say, simply can’t afford it, shouldn’t we be focussing on that men’s right issue?
@PoM
Boom, childwelfare.org.
I have no idea where to start however. I’m not…I’m not a graph reader.
EDIT: The link I put is for adoption only, here’s a link to all the statistic thingies they’ve got.
@PoM
Kentucky: South or Midwest. Can’t pick both. Go!