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.
From JB’s blog:
You bloody liar. Nobody here has trashed Cassie Jaye at all, you dishonest fuck.
Fuck you. Just Fuck You!
@Sigh :/: “Your original point was about dissenting views on the film being akin to the censorship of ideas, no?”
No, not at all. I think I confused matters by thinking and writing about the criticism of Jaye at the same time as I was thinking and writing about what I’d recently learned about a college student ripping down posters advertising a talk being given by Christina Hoff Sommers on her campus, as well as students doing this and other things to prevent certain discussions from taking place.
Hey, fuckhead, hate to tell you this but the police officer that shot him didn’t fucking know he was behind in child support payments. He was pulled over because his fucking break lights were broken. The child support thing was used as a theory for the reason he started running. He wasn’t fucking shot because he was behind in payment, so don’t you fucking throw Walter Scott into your corner when he was the victim of racial injustice and police brutality.
Fun fact: Equines do in fact have a giant middle finger. That’s what they walk on.
@Ooglyboggles: Regarding the article by the Asian American teacher, I’m correct in thinking that you’re the one who sent me the link, right?
I took the time to read it because you (or whoever posted it) wanted to know what I thought. It seemed sort of like a break from the discussion at-hand. But one connecting-thread for me was what someone else had pointed out to me about my own tendency to fret that “young people today,” and especially my own children, just can’t be trusted to develop their own worldviews or do life right.
Reading the article reminded me that I just need to be glad that my kids still like talking to me and sometimes even listen to what I say. 🙂 And then I need to trust them to use their own minds. This doesn’t mean that I think that’s what her entire article was about, and I’m sure others will draw many different themes and applications from it.
That was the theme and application that rang true to me, at that particular moment in time. At this point I can’t help thinking that if you’re the one who sent me the link, it was a test of sorts to see if I gave the correct liberal party-line. I regret calling myself a liberal here, even though that’s still predominantly how I see myself, because my personal “identity politics” isn’t really relevant to the discussion.
Suzie is a disengenuous, passive aggressive shit, who will not or cannot actually engage with anyone honestly, hasn’t had a good idea yet, condescends like a muffuga, gaslights for funzies, and is willing to deny the experience of 2 rape survivors (1 male, 1 girlflux) so long as that rigid, vacuous mind doesn’t hafta be changed about anything. And then has the bleedin gall to act like we’re the unreasonable ones. In short, we’ve banned sooner and for less
@ PeeVee the (Noice) Sarcastic
OFFS!
@ PI
*Applause!* Marvelous
“Hay, I’m just here for honest discussion and civil discourse, so let me gather up a bunch of my MRA peeps to smear up the archives while I keep them distracted.”
or possibly
“Hay, I’m just here for honest and rational discussion, unbiased, let’s agree to disagree. You don’t mind if I talk shit about you behind your back on JudgyBitch’s blog, do you?”
Push off, Susan. We’ve fed you enough statistics to choke a spark cluster and you’re still all “well, my opinions don’t trump yours, but yours don’t trump mine, so we’ll have to agree to disagree!” No, we don’t have to agree to disagree.
Y’see, we don’t want to fight, but by Toutatis if we do, we’ve got the stats, we’ve got the maths, and we’ve got the druid, too!
I’m one of two unreasonable ones here, but only because fuck anyone who fucking throws a dead man under the bus I am done with rolling my eyes and being flippant.
@Policy of Madness: You had quoted what I said about enjoying chatting with some guys at my church who had varying political views, and then under that said it must be nice to be so privileged that racism and sexism could never touch me. I didn’t get the connection, and still don’t — but I apologize for connecting that fact that you’d said something that made no sense to me, to your user name here.
Shorter Susan: I’m sorry about that awful thing that happened to you, but your “opinions” (despite being backed by thousands of other women and statistics) aren’t the same as mine sweaty, so let’s just agree to disagree. : )
So, am I still “demonizing” or being unfairly “negative” about men because I haven’t been fortunate enough to have the luxury of unquestionably trusting every man I meet, Suzie?
And am I required to constantly take men’s feelings into account while making assessments for my own safety?
Don’t worry, I’ll wait for you to consult the commentariat at JB’s blog before you address my questions.
@Rhuu: “What if the parents don’t live in the same city? The same province? The same country? 50/50 custody with parents only providing while the child is with them is not the ultimate answer that will fix everything.”
That would be a special situation which would have to be decided on an individual basis, as I already said in the same post that you’re responding to.
Obviously, a black man would never panic and run from police if he wasn’t risking an arrest for something jailable. And certainly the police would never shoot a black man who’s not running. OTOH, if someone tries to run, you know they’re trying to evade something, probably semi serious like a drug arrest, then the proper procedure is to shoot them dead.
(/sarcasm)
Susan,
What did you think about Judgybitch’s Thought Catalog piece where she proudly and gleefully declares that she’s a serial rapist of men?
You have an evidence free hunch that we treat male rape victims poorly, yet you’re a fan of someone who openly mocks consent, including the consent of men? Hypocrisy much?
@WWTH: Ah, but remember? Susan is only here to see different points of view! That way, they have plausible deniability that they support anything!
So they can be a disingenuous, presumptuous shit to everyone!
“So, am I still ‘demonizing’ or being unfairly ‘negative’ about men because I haven’t been fortunate enough to have the luxury of unquestionably trusting every man I meet, Suzie?”
If your experience has been that most men are untrustworthy, then no, you’re not being unfair because how could anyone expect you to think any differently? This just hasn’t been my own experience of the majority of men. Though I wouldn’t exactly say that I unquestioningly trust every man — or woman — I meet.
“And am I required to constantly take men’s feelings into account while making assessments for my own safety?”
No.
I find it hard to believe that Susan is a regular JB commenter and doesn’t encounter men who don’t respect women very often. A popular topic over there is that women shouldn’t have the right to vote after all.
@Arctic Ape
I swear if Susan ever goddamn addresses me against I am going to rant incoherently at the screen, punctuated by the occasional discernable grunt of “fuck” and “shitheel” because I have NO PATIENCE for such bullshit. Ever.
E v e r
I will likely just slam on the keyboard to show my anger via post.
Fucking one of the first threads I ever commented on this site was about poor Walter Scott and it was derailed by some fucking asshole who tried to use him as a cudgeon against child support payment shit so, like, I have an extra fucking hate for anyone who does that.
“Susan,
“What did you think about Judgybitch’s Thought Catalog piece where she proudly and gleefully declares that she’s a serial rapist of men?
“You have an evidence free hunch that we treat male rape victims poorly, yet you’re a fan of someone who openly mocks consent, including the consent of men? Hypocrisy much?”
JudgyBitch was testing to see if people would perceive the story differently if they’d assumed it was a man writing and then found out it was a woman. She was actually surprised to learn that most of us — male and female — saw it as just as bad for a woman to behave that way. One thing I love about JB is that she’s open to ongoing learning.
Wow, you mean, people think people should rape people?
Who the fuck would have thought.
@Handsome “Punkle Stan” Jack: Quoting me: “‘JudgyBitch was testing to see if people would perceive the story differently if they’d assumed it was a man writing and then found out it was a woman. She was actually surprised to learn that most of us — male and female — saw it as just as bad for a woman to behave that way. One thing I love about JB is that she’s open to ongoing learning.’
“Wow, you mean, people think people should rape people?”
No, I don’t see how you got that. My point was that most of JB’s readers saw her story as just as awful when they realized that the narrator was a woman.
One of the unfortunate things about the forum format is that it’s very easy for someone to glide past points that they aren’t interested in replying to – things they can’t defend or know will lead them into admitting their mistakes.
I’ve got replies to her comments cooking in my head but I know that she’s just going to skip merrily past anything that confronts her worldview. So what’s the point?
You aren’t interested in learning, @Susan. You’re interested in confronting and feeling right. (You’re not interested in being right, I’d point out. That requires a very different attitude than the one you’re displaying now.)
So go confront someone else, and go feel right elsewhere.
Oh, fuck, I meant shouldn’t rape people.
My bad. I wrote that on the fly and didn’t reread what I wrote. I apologize to you this one time Susan.
Only this time.
@: Handsome “Punkle Stan” Jack: No worries. 🙂
David, there’s a Taboola ad titled “20 Sexiest Celebrities Who Are Blessed in the Chest”
If you could deal with that, I’d appreciate it.
But for now, I’m off to work. Toodles all! I shall return in eight and a half hours. (Lunch breaks are clocked out.)