“Red Pill” director Cassie Jaye hits a new low with her appearance on a white supremacist podcast

I have heard that some men feel a need for places where they can relax, and speak and joke around freely without having to worry about offending any women who might be listening. For the men who feel this way, isn’t their own perspective just as valid as women’s perspectives on women’s needs?

There is an enormous difference between needing a safe space to avoid soul-crushing harassment in a workspace or study environment, and wanting a place to hang out and make offensive remarks about women (or minorities).

Men – and women – can hang out and make as many off-colour, sexist, racist, or homophobic remarks as they wish in their private lives. Safe spaces in universities and similar locales exist because harassment has been documented to interfere with women’s equal right to access higher learning and professional opportunities. Once again, true equality of opportunity requires differential treatment! That_Susan,, this seems to me to be the fundamental disagreement between us, would you agree? Is there any circumstance under which you would concede that equality means treating different groups of people slightly differently, to compensate for long-term, structural inequalities?

I’m fine with men having safe spaces. Places they can relax from the strain of having to maintain the facade of macho nonsense that society requires of their role, places that they can be themselves without worrying that some dude’s gonna call them a pussy, or laugh at them for having emotions. Places they don’t have to pretend to be sex-hungry or domineering, places they don’t have to pretend to dislike the colour pink and can listen to Barbera Streisand in peace.

I’m all for that. The problem is that spaces with just guys in them tend to turn into a veritable battleground of hierarchy struggles and macho preening, where they aren’t safe or comfortable or able to relax from the tension of society. Safe spaces for men need to – need to be free from that.

Another problem is that “safe spaces” for women are actual, you know, places. Rooms and closed forums. When men complain about not having a safe space, they claim genres and activities as their own. Video Games – men have complained that video games used to be a “safe space” for men, and now women are invading that “safe space”. That’s not what a safe space is – it’s not a genre! It’s not an activity! It’s a place!

@Scildfreja

That video is very car-centric. LOL I browsed the channel to see what kind of city this is that this person is building, but realized I’d need to put a lot more time into it to find out than I really have.

This looks like an interesting … is it a game, really? It seems very relaxing to be able to plant an ash tree and have it be 50′ tall immediately. HAH Or just say, “I’m going to build a residential district today!” and not have to wait for a developer with some money to have the same brilliant idea. 😀 If I had more free time these days I might check it out, but I have to be realistic and admit that I already have too many projects going right now.

It’s Cities: Skylines, made by Colossal Order and published by Paradox Interactive (Same folks that do Crusader Kings and Europa Universalis and the like). I mentioned it because it’s basically City Planning: The Game. Car centric in that episode, certainly, but there’s a lot more to it.

It’s a big and fairly sophisticated city simulator. People move in from the regional highway, seek out places to live (and will build their own houses if there’s no vacancies, but there are vacant lots); they seek out jobs and entertainment and goods and services via the various transport options you’ve installed; they need plumbing and water and electricity. If they get all of their needs met, they will accrue standard of living, until they can renovate their houses. Businesses and industries, meanwhile, will do the same. You have a city budget, collect taxes, manage utilities, build roads and services, collect garbage and worry about landfills, etc, etc.

But you can be as casual about it as you like. It’s basically like a model railroad kit with a simulation inside of it. You can get hyper-detailed if you want and worry about taxes, budget, etc, or you can turn on unlimited money and make a pretty little coastal village, or a beach resort, or you can try to recreate your home city, etc, etc

It’s a brilliant game, extremely relaxing, and has a bajillion easily-installed mods and components. Want to put an Ikea down? Download it and plop it in your shopping district. Make sure you put a bus stop nearby or traffic will be terrible, though. Want it to look like Amsterdam? Use the European Buildings pack and download some of the unique buildings for the city. Hundreds of thousands are there, all free, all ready-to-go.

Here’s an amazing Seattle:

Here’s someone who apparently hates humans:

http://i.imgur.com/iHg2nGS.png

And here’s a very pretty mountain town:

The current paid expansions are Snowfall (adds snow and community heating systems, trams and more public transit); Stadiums (Adds six football stadiums from European FC teams); and the new one is Disasters (adds earthquakes, volcanoes, aliems and meteors and stuff).

C:S is a glorious toy. I can’t recommend it enough.

In response to the questions about Matt Forney, I hadn’t heard much about him.

Susan, did you even read the article that you’re commenting on? There are several of Forney’s tweets embedded in it. They are terrible, and they are not at all out of the ordinary for him. A headline saying that Jaye has hit a new low by palling around with him is hardly trashing her. But most of the people reading your comment claiming that we are trashing Jaye here will not bother to check out whether what you said was accurate. It will just add to the whole ‘feminists are meeeeeeaaaaaan to Cassie’ whine.

@Scildfreja

Sounds like a sophisticated SimCity. What you’re describing doesn’t really match how planning works, though. It sounds like a great vacation from the frustration that is planning. 😀

I said my job is awesome, and it is. It’s also frustrating because there are so few tools at hand to make things happen. It sounds incredibly relaxing to be able to just wish an Ikea into existence.

Louisville, for instance, has a West Louisville problem. That’s where the city put all its black people in the 50’s and 60’s when ripping up black neighborhoods in the oh-so-delightfully-named urban renewal period. West Louisville is a food desert, and there is a large parcel of vacant land in a prime location there, and Wal-Mart wants to move in with a superstore. Sounds win-win, right? Well, no. It’s been a nightmare. The entire thing is currently tied up in litigation, and I honestly can’t decide which side I support in it. I wish Wal-Mart weren’t being such dicks, but I also really want them to move in there, so I don’t know.

If only I could just … wish in a Kroger. A Kroger on every corner! And a light rail line going down Broadway connecting the west end to downtown. And I would making 9th Street a connection rather than a divider. And and and.

And now I kind of want to play this and recreate Louisville, except without all the bullshit that is currently built into the city and so difficult to cure.

@PoM,

C:S actually came out about a year after the recent Sim City flop. It does everything that Sim City did, but better and less aggravating, and it also provides way, way more options and mods. If you can play Sim City, you can play C:S.

http://i.imgur.com/17ka0Xz.png

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=417956873&searchtext=louisville

Someone’s been nice enough to take the topo map of Louisville and import it into the game already. There’s two, actually.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=753088078&searchtext=kroger

Here’s a Kroger asset for you!

http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/browse/?appid=255710&searchtext=walmart&childpublishedfileid=0&browsesort=textsearch&section=readytouseitems

And of course Walmart has a pile of things. Stores, supercentres, auto centres, and an asset to spawn Walmart trucks instead of the default trucks.

😀

Note, if you’re into the little details you’d probably want some mods for intersection and lane control – the vanilla game is pretty easy-going with the roads. Those are push-button installs though, and very easy to use. I like Traffic Manager: President Edition and Precision Engineering.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/255710/

@Axecalibur, we can put on some Samantha Bee as well I hope! I’ve been mainlining her lately.

@Axecalibur

Men’s safe spaces where we watch Funny Girl and sing along to ‘Don’t Rain on My Parade’? Sign me up!

That does sound macho.

If you lived in San Francisco, you’d be in luck. At the Castro Theater (which is in the Castro, a gay neighborhood), they have a sing-along movie a few times a year — The Sound of Music, and such.

And the theater (a movie palace!) is kickass. It was built in the early twentieth century and seats 1,400+.

http://www.castrotheatre.com/history.html

I LOVE Streisand!! Her voice is like buttah.

Her rendition of Somewhere sends shivers down my spine, it’s so beautiful.

No, what I actually said was that when someone is accused by name of being a rapist, I believe that feminists will apply more basic human decency in terms of wanting to hear both sides, and not rushing to assume that the accused is a rapist, if the accused is female than if the accused is male.

Ok, That_Disingenuous_Susan, let’s look at what you said:

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.

You take “feminists want women who are raped to be believed” and extrapolate that to mean feminists want accused men to be guilty without question.

Furthermore you extrapolate, on knowledge unknown, that feminists will not apply the same basic human decency to men who are victims of rape.

Did I misread this?

This is a total misrepresentation of feminism, to which I personally choose not to ascribe to, but I’ll fight to the death to defend it from people like you who chose to misrepresent it. Especially those who simultaneously claim to be for PEOPLE!

Showing compassion and providing care and respect to those who say they are victims of rape does not equate with throwing the accused to the wolves, lynch mobs, nor subverting principles of natural justice that are fundamental to our judicial process.

Are there some feminists, and, ya know, people, who think we should do call case closed on any woman charging a man with rape without an investigation? Possibly, I’ve not seen any myself. What I’ve seen are feminists tirelessly advocating for decades now that myths around rape victims are false, and victims of whichever gender, should not be in the first instance subjected to scrutiny on the veracity of their claim from the moment they see a doctor, the police person taking their complaint, their parents or friends, or random strangers.

Testing or proving whether they are telling the truth should not come at the expense of showing human beings compassion and care. You can do that whilst establishing facts, and you can do it without acting on, and perpetuating, proven myths.

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

No, reserving judgement isn’t insulting, what is insulting is that these rape victims, women and men, are treated by society at large and much of the system as being guilty before being proven innocent and thus someone in need of care, compassion, and support. Feminists may be a very loud voice, but don’t confuse that with fully effective, yet. Sadly Trump is all I need to see to know that change in this regard is painfully, excruciatingly, slow.

Am I unfairly demonizing the feminists who post here?

Yes. For someone who urges this forum to not consider MRAs as a homogenous group, the fact you made those claims of people here you have yet to actually listen to, you’re a f#cking hypocrite. Not that on any other feminist forum they’d be appropriate either. Making both those assumptions is disgusting, demeaning, horrific and INDEFENSIBLE.

Stop digging the hole, take a step back, give the apology that is deserved here, quit talking and “thinking” and if you are not going to hear anything anyone says here because you’re so consumed by MRA propaganda do some actual research for yourself on facts, and attain the lofty heights of actual independent, defensible, thought. You might still not agree, and that’s fine with me, but at least you’ll contribute something more intellectually valuable and honest.

Otherwise, as someone else so eloquently put it, fuck off.

Or keep doing what you’re doing and enjoy the mockery.

There aren’t any other options. Choose one.

I’ll note that “reserving judgment” always means “taking the side of the status quo.” In the event of rape, the status quo is not knowing or thinking about the crime that just occurred. It is providing no support to the victim and no sanction of any kind against the perpetrator. That’s what “I’m reserving judgment” actually means. It doesn’t mean “I’m going to remain totally neutral” because that phrase doesn’t have any actual meaning in the world. There is no such thing as neutral; there is the status quo, and there are states other than the status quo.

So yeah, it’s insulting to a rape victim to claim that you’re the Neutral Zone on this one, because you’re telling a person who was the victim of a fucking crime that you prefer not to think about it and you definitely aren’t going to support them in any way, and certainly not going to stop inviting their rapist to parties. You’re putting your comfort in just not thinking about this kind of thing above their safety. Yeah, that’s insulting.