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.
@Scildfreja Unnýðnes: “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.)”
I’ve already modified my worldview on the “both parents should be able to walk away”-option and posted about that. The only posts I’ve tried to skip merrily past are those without much content such as folks giving me the finger or telling me I’m an awful person.
But just because I haven’t directly responded to each and every post with actual content, this doesn’t mean I skipped past them. There are some posts that I don’t have a response for at the moment.
If I wanted to always feel right, I’d stay off discussion boards and go write Hallmark cards or post puppy videos or do some other thing that no one would ever have a reason to disagree with.
Can we ban the spambot soon?
Susan, you’re a liar and a fan of a rapist who tries to incite the terrorism of women.
Go back to the shithole from wence you came.
It was just a test? Really? Because it seemed to me like she was mocking affirmative consent.
I suppose her assertion that women shouldn’t be allowed to vote is satire? And so is her anti-immigration/refugee stance?
All along JB has been has been a secret feminist! Wow!
Um, Susan, what about your claim on JB’s blog that Cassie Jaye was being trashed here?
Here’s JB spewing rape apologia, homophobic slurs, and racist bile with a bonus assassination threat. This is from just a few months ago
https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2016/08/25/judgybitch-on-marital-rape-killing-trudeau-and-why-she-thinks-white-skin-is-gold/
How can anyone think is claiming JB is reasonable would work here?
http://orig12.deviantart.net/b1ce/f/2013/006/0/0/fluttershy_skips_by_eeglfethr-d5qpka8.gif
Good!
The ones you have no answer to are the important ones. They are an indication that there’s something wrong with your perspective, so digging in on the things you do have an answer to is counter-productive. They distract you from the hard questions and are often an indication that you’re undertaking motivated reasoning.
Source: I study cognitive psychology professionally.
Nevermind the things you have an answer to. Confront the things you don’t have an answer to, and be hard on yourself.
Best of luck!
@LindsayIrene: “Um, Susan, what about your claim on JB’s blog that Cassie Jaye was being trashed here?”
This was and is my opinion. You and I may have different opinions of what it means to trash someone. And I’m not even saying that people should not be *allowed* to trash other people. Just that those who disagree also have a right to respond to it.
@Scildfreja Unnýðnes: “Confront the things you don’t have an answer to, and be hard on yourself.”
Great advice for me and everyone.
Now you’re just weaseling because you got caught. Reporting the facts is not trashing.
@That_Susan, so, the second part of my tldr:
You’ve made several comments now about how the only 100% effective contraception is abstinence. I’m glad it worked out for you, but,
You do realise that this is not actually true, because abstinence, like consent, is a two way street, right?
That intention to be abstinent is no match for being raped?
That purity pledges make a teenager more rather than less likely fall pregnant, and more rather than less likely to submit to or indulge in sex, compared to factual sex education?
The reason I ask you these questions is that you, like many American church organisations, seem on one hand to advocate everyone just keeping it in their pants.
But on the other hand you seem to wish for horny uneducated teens or other economically disadvantaged people to keep knocking each other up, so that decent God-fearing infertile congregation couples have a ready supply of similarly coloured babies from decent, Christian, suitably guilt ridden stock to adopt.
You’ve railed against the injustice to your friend of never having access to the fruit of the womb of a woman to whom her son was never married. This is a bit sad for her, but even grandparents whose input has been more than biological do not automatically deserve unfettered access to the children of people who do not want them in their life. I’d love to hear the perspective of the mother of the child. Would you?
All your comments on the subject of adoption have looked to me like declarations of the right of the Godly to rummage through a pile of children, take the ones they like, and leave the rest (even more rumpled than they found them).
That’s even more disturbing to me than your casual assumption that some women’s reproductive choices should boil down to “have it, and swear it will never cost me anything in taxes” or “have it, and hand it over to any rich churchgoer who wants to buy it”.
You are treating poor women as factories for producing babies for the wealthy infertile. You are promoting conditions where they cannot help producing children and cannot hope to support them. And then you are demonising them if they don’t manufacture children to your specifications and sell them to you cheaply.
@Susan
You call dismissing racism and using it as a way for propping up your parenting credentials a fucking liberal litmus test? Fuck. You. I just mentioned that as a random question, just to see what would happen, not to just get you just saying it was all “identity politics.” Fuck your nonapology. A damn article that specifies about racism that gets frequently ignored has dick to do with your parenting skills and family life. If you regret calling yourself a liberal, maybe you should stop spouting right wing rhetoric and praising JudgyBitch of all people.
“Many ways to interpret, that’s why I chose to interpret we shouldn’t restrict the rights of bigots to say bigoted shit, that would be restricting their freedom to learn.”
@Arctic Ape
I forgot about that! I guess the image macros of Fluttershy giving people the “middle finger” when in flutterrage have some justification. Also this the fan videos dubbing swearing over the episodes. My sense of humor is a little juvenile.
http://i.imgur.com/il8wHKV.png
@LindsayIrene: “Now you’re just weaseling because you got caught.”
If I were concerned about “getting caught” as you put it, I wouldn’t have logged in here with the same user name. I like being the same person everywhere I go.
“Reporting the facts is not trashing.”
Of course it’s not. And I get the fact that you and many others here see it as “fact” that Jaye has “(hit) a new low.”
People certainly have a right to stay stuff like that, and other people who don’t see what Jaye is learning and doing as “hitting a low” have a right to disagree. I’ve been very interested to see her video about how this recent project of hers has transformed her relationship with her boyfriend of 5 1/2 years in a very positive way.
I think some people will find her current work interesting as I do, and some others will undoubtedly attempt to shame them for their interest. All of this is within everyone’s free speech rights.
http://orig01.deviantart.net/6fcc/f/2014/032/d/4/ponies_of_science___medicine_by_dm29-d74n458.png
Unfortunately, most people don’t really know what “confront the things you don’t have an answer to, and be hard on yourself” means. A great many people confuse abduction for induction/deduction, which is, well. It’s disastrous, and a major reason why people disagree. They don’t know the difference between abduction and actual reasoning, so don’t know how to handle evidence or opinion.
Abduction’s when you see a fact or state (e.g. you see men who have been mistreated by the court system, and you see feminists talking about male privilege) and from that you “reason” a supporting conclusion (e.g. feminists oppose equal rights for men). This is wrong, and will get you the wrong conclusions every time.
The way you’re supposed to do it is by deduction or induction. By deduction, your conclusion and its supporting evidence are all observed. By induction, your observations show a clear pattern, which you can then apply to a new situation which is unobserved, but shows similar features to the original set of observations.
I’ve yet to see any MRA or anti-feminist do this. It’s always abduction – it’s always rationalization based on disconnected observations. It’s always fallback to personal observations as evidence for universals, and then an assumption that everyone’s doing the same.
Truth ain’t easy to follow. It requires being vicious to yourself and generous to people who oppose you. It’s soul-crushing. Good luck.
No opinions on Cassie Jaye using Matt Forney for publicity, then, Susan? Matt Forney> Have you read about him? Or just read his tweets?
Because Matt Forney is a known White Supremacist misogynist, Susan.
And hanging with White Supremacists when one previously did not might be considered hitting a new low.
Really, this should a logical leap to make, if one is into logic at all.
@Croquembouche of patriarchy: I actually support teens receiving secular, comprehensive sex education and free and easy access to condoms.
My post about my own decision to refrain from potentially-procreative sex, and my male friend’s similar decision, was in response to a poster pointing out that men have a choice about whether or not to have sex. No one can dispute the fact that both men and women have that choice — except, as you pointed out, if someone takes that choice away by raping them.
About adoption, I never said that people wanting to adopt, “Godly” or not, had the right to rummage through a pile of children and take the ones they wanted. And I’ve modified my views on either parent being able to just sign away their responsibilities, based on what I’ve learned about people not being willing to adopt certain newborns.
And of course, this whole discussion on reproductive and parental rights only came about because someone here asked me to point out areas where I felt men had fewer rights than women. And I believe (just my opinion) this question probably stemmed from the idea that MRAs should never have a public platform or be taken seriously.
@Ooglyboggles: What would have been a proper response to an article about Asian American Studies interjected into a discussion on Cassie Jaye? So you were just being random when you asked me what I thought about the article; you just wanted to see what would happen? I’ve responded, and now you seem angry that I didn’t give you whatever response you were looking for, even though all you were looking for was to see what would happen.
@Scildfreja
It’s a significant challenge! It’s also energizing. And it makes it easier for me to face myself in the mirror.
But if Fluttershy can be rigorously honest with herself, then so can I. (I hART Fluttershy.)
@That_Susan:
Um, have you read what they say? Not what they say when they’ve put on their company manners, but what they say when they’re just chit chatting?
Have a video that they made, then thought was hilarious enough to put online.
Or, literally, any of the other entries on this site. On any site! Just go and read their thoughts, and don’t give them the benefit of the doubt. When they say they hate women, they are saying what they are saying.
Does this mean that I don’t think men have problems? Nope. I think that there are many things that are stacked against them. I hate seeing them being told that it’s weak to cry, or show any emotion. It’s not, it’s human. But are the MRAs doing anything?
Frankly MRA is a really poisoned name. It would need a major rebranding effort to make it anything other than the name of an awful, misogynistic, racist, ablelist, transphobic movement.
Men deserve better is what i’m saying.
Amen.
Too many public MRAs focus on tearing women down when they should be working on building men up – real work, addressing the real problems men face.
There’s some measure of truth in a lot of the complaints of MRAs, but it’s not due to women pulling strings or a secret matriarchy or some stupid gynocracy. It’s society telling men that they have to conform to certain tight boundaries. Telling them that the only strong feelings they’re allowed to express are angry ones. That their worth is based on how well they control others.
It’s toxic masculinity. It’s men – and women – enforcing social rules to force men into those roles. They’re bullshit. That fact is a foundation of feminism.
Conversely, what does the Men’s Rights Movement claim as the foundational reason for men’s pain? Women, apparently. As if “women” were a monolith with coordinated plans. A flawed perspective from the outset, and it only gets worse.
Men deserve better than the Men’s Rights Movement. Men deserve real help, not a scapegoat target to make them feel superior – to reinforce the very toxic structures that wound them. Men deserve freedom, and acknowledgement of their deep and inherent worth.
This is one of the reasons why I am pleased and proud to be a feminist, and why I am happy to oppose the intentions of the MRM. The MRM tighten the shackles around men and women both. We try to break them free.
See now why my name is Sigh :/ ? It used to be Venomous Rage, but I found that exceedingly unproductive.
That is an extremely disingenuous comment to make. And your ongoing justifications of it are disingenuous too.
I overlooked many “trashing” comments by you. You made an assumption everyone here was a feminist and therefore would not apply what is actually basic human decency to male rape victims.
That should have been a step too far and I wholeheartedly apologise to the forum here that I did not speak up and denounce shit like that. My admiration and appreciation for those who did.
That_Susan, I had hope for a deeper analysis of the claims you made, the open rational discourse you promised, but without any introspection evident on your part, nor apologies forthcoming for your needless and misguided “trashing” of the members of this forum, nor any consideration nor acknowledgement of many salient comments made, we are done here.
It seems perfectly clear you have indeed picked a side. Maybe you fight to gain trust because frankly as you’ve proven here you are untrustworthy?
Sigh :/
On another note: Scildfreja, it’s strange, as a lurker I feel I know you so well but I appreciate you don’t know me. Just want to give you a shout out for your incredible character, I’ve admired it for a long time now, and learnt a lot from your insight. Your comments here about truth, bravo 🙂
Just catching up here, someone mentioned a crappy Taboola ad. Not sure how that one got through as I’ve blocked all ads with the word “sexiest” in it. I added “chest” to the blocklist so hopefully that will help.
Baw, thank you Sigh. I do my best. I often don’t succeed, but I’m getting better.
Your name change is interesting to me, too! It’s pretty close to some changes I’ve made in my own screen name. I went by Scildfreja here, but I added Unnýðnes, which is “freedom from anger”. So it seems like your own nick is migrating in a similar direction as mine. Neat! I’ve found that using those sorts of mental cues is helpful in keeping me on the tracks I want to be on. It’s what Fluttershy is about after all!
My twitter handle is Ambithera, which is a similar idea – it means “servant”. A bit of a reminder that I shouldn’t pursue my own goals at the expense of others.
I hope you keep commenting here, you’re quite welcome 🙂