A theater chain in Melbourne has cancelled screenings of Cassie Jaye’s The Red Pill in response to a petition on Change.org. Good news for feminists? No. Bad news.
As someone who’s writing critically about Men’s Rights activists for years, including many of those who appear in the film, I ask you to NOT support efforts to get the film removed from theaters.
Yes, the film (which I haven’t seen) looks to be a whitewash of some of the most noxious people in the world.
But if you’re interested in fighting against MRAs and all that they stand for, attempts to get The Red Pill removed from theaters don’t help.
I’m against this sort of thing on principle. But it’s also a very bad move practically. These sorts of campaigns give the film free publicity. They allow Cassie Jaye and her supporters to play the part of free-speech martyrs — especially ironic given the ongoing efforts of MRAs and fellow travelers in the alt right to silence women and feminists through harassment.
It’s exactly what they want.
So please don’t start petitions against The Red Pill, don’t sign petitions against The Red Pill; don’t support petitions against The Red Pill.
Let it sink into the obscurity it deserves on its own.
EDIT: As I said in the comments, this is such a boon to MRAs I would not be shocked in the slightest to discover that it was an MRA publicity stunt.
I’d like to know where he said that, because I really don’t remember seeing statements like that from anyone around here.
Re: “mini Trumps” (or a better one if you have one)
Some of the conversations and arguments in here gave me reason to think about “foreign commentators”. I don’t mean that as a pejorative but instead a reality. Many of you mentioned some of the the same patterns I do in here and elaborating on them. This is more of a complete dissection.
Places like WHTM, Freethought blogs and fandoms create their language and ways of interacting, or selectively use some words over others. Some of it is to more quickly communicate about common areas of interest and concern. Some of it is for intergroup conflict. Lots of positive and negative examples. (Maybe I’ll have something about fandoms that communication evolution if I have time later. It addresses the use of pictures in posting habits. It’s a whole world of opportunities of expression.)
http://i.imgur.com/XD3Y2Rh.jpg
And some people shout “hive mind!” This one is “group think”!
For us here (WHTM commentators) the language is mixed with a high proportion of what are considered “leftist” terms and titles because of the intersectional nature of civil rights. People that frequent other places will be used to different kinds of communication and eventually some end up here. We all have a mental picture for what we consider “average communication” and the results of the reality get interesting.
Posters like Craig are of a type I think of as “name callers”. Their language contains things that are not from the “approved set of negative words to avoid”, yet the content of their words is mostly or all feeling and little to no substance that can be interacted with. And their responses to the reality of their words provide clues about their motivations. Clues only though, progressing farther requires care. “Polite hypotheses”. I do try to be polite about it normally, but to come to our social space like we should be impressed is a different thing. Social context is matters.
Here is the text of Craig’s first comment chopped up.
Craig is explicitly declaring group membership, and then acting like there was a negative response. There was no response yet, so they are predicting and claiming a result at the same time. Insults do odd twists to logic like that, emotions are the point. The final part of this combines with the previous to assert that “white males apologize in a knee-jerk manner because they are white males”.
The implications contained in this include the assumption that we will speak negatively to them only because they are a white male, that they assume that the criticism they have faced as a whit male is invalid, and that the white males here are used to apologizing in a knee-jerk fashion and that what they believe is invalid.
There is no evidence presented for any of these characterizations which suggests that the implications are the point, it’s de facto insult as well-poisoning (Intent does not change this).
>I would love one of you to say you do not support the following: affirmative action, marriage equality, Hillary Clinton, a woman’s right to abortion, man made climate change. No takers? Didn’t think so.
Assumptions: supporting the above items are a bad thing, that the lot of us believing those things are good, necessary, or facing reality believe lies.
Action: creating a pretend event in order to bias the attitudes on display in this thread, and immediately pretending everyone here participated in the event. This is something they think is an insult. “None of you will agree with me!” it shouts. It’s not just meant for us.
Assertions: that we think and talk about the same things purely on reflex and with no actual connection to reality. This is mere asserted insult, no content. I’m a white male too and this is frankly pathetic craven behavior of a person with no interest in reality and purely running on social dominance behavior. A “mini Trump” if you will. They sadly exist in my own family.
I don’t experience man hating at a social level that counts as bigotry. I’m sure it’s a thing, it’s just not a thing that I can pick up in my general environment online and off. I see specific men get hated on for good reason, and claim they are being hated on for no good reason though.
Assertions: that the feminists here only want sexual revenge like they read in a book once. I’ve never read it and I’m unimpressed with the totally undefended assertion about reality. -eleventy points.
@Craig
You are quite welcome Craig. The pieces of defective culture you have brought are not very welcome though.
@Brony: awesome deconstruct. Thanks.
@everyone playing Pokémon Go: I haven’t really had a chance to get on in the past several weeks, so this is the first time I’ve heard of the new buddy system. Thanks :):)
And yet i’m sure that as this film gains steam, it will be attacked over and over again. Lending more and more support to one of the films central ideas, that feminists are against free speech.
@Brony
I like the way you break the troll comments down and even without commenting on the content analyze the used rhetoric instead. It’s a really interesting angle and I would say that you are usually spot-on. Sorry I don’t have anything more eloquent to say, but keep on being awesome? 🙂
You always seem to read my mind, @Brony 😮 That’s basically how I read him, too. Though I’d probably suggest that Craig wasn’t even engaging with us – we aren’t a necessary component in his drama. He’s acting out the script of How It’s Supposed To Happen again the opponents he’s painted in his head. We aren’t people, we’re accessible stand-ins for those mannequins.
Internets are weird.
Okay, no, I’m pretty sure he hasn’t done any of that. I’ve seen him write some iffy sounding things but he sure as hell none of that.
@IP
That’s interesting. If it’s less stressful to just file temporary over permanent, I can understand, but, like, kinda sucks because maybe if he applied for citizenship instead…but, you know, hindsight and stuff.
@Brony
Now I have that song stuck in my head.
@joekster, Brony, Scildfreja,
I get half credit. Reading what other people are saying gets my own “wheels moving”.
http://i.imgur.com/rR8uHUd.png
@Handsome “Punkle Stan” Jack
Aren’t memes grand? It’s like visual cooties.
@AnAlbumCover,
Chances are good that, if the film does well, David will have a thing or two to post about it, sure – likely the discussions on Reddit about it. Given that he reports on the goings-on in MRA-land, isn’t that expected?
We all know that this film isn’t going to go over-the-top, though. As David said right in these comments, there was barely any talk about the film at all amongst its very supporters, up until the call for banning happened in Australia.
(Also notable is that no one knows who called for the banning, and the people who signed the petition are all hyperbolic anti-feminists of various stripes. Make of that what you will).
Further – I guess you need to learn what Free Speech means? Do we need that discussion? Because I’m sure you’ve heard it, and have practiced your replies. Is that a waste of time?
Either way, lovely to have you, thank you for stopping by!
The Red Pill community probably started the petition to drum up indignation. If they do not have indignation and bitterness, they have nothing. I believe in free speech and I don’t think Melbourne should have pulled it. I think most logical people who see it would see it for what it is, misguided anger and backlash against feminism. I also hope it starts a real discussion about how men used the same tactics throughout history when women were wanting to vote, hold lands, or have autonomy. Therefore, this manosphere stuff is nothing new. It has been around from the first time a woman said she wanted to be a human being with rights, any rights. Men think feminism is about destroying their power structure, and it is. Patriarchy has too long given men the only recognized voice in government, society and relationships.
We are moving towards real equality, in gaining rights and the changing of the Patriarchal culture, so the backlash is going to be deafening. Even women will lash out at change because it is scary and they want men to like them. It is precarious because we are all trained to see men as the real human beings and women as other.
That being said, Cassie Jayes film should not be banned in any theater anywhere. The manosphere should not be censored because they have a right to their views.
I love this website. David does a great service to all of us who really want men and women to coexist with positive interactions. I can be for women and for men at the same time with feminism because it isn’t a movement about superiority, but about equality. Most of the manospheres complaints about how men are treated could be fixed by the removal of patriarchy. Patriarchy hurts men as much as women.
Sorry so long and thanks for reading. Thanks David for all you do, as the manosphere can be quite depressing to those of us who just want to be heard and seen as human beings.
@Verily Baroque
Sorry! That should have been your name in my last comment and not mine. I got “phone lazy” in editing.
I love all of the MLP pics and gifs even though I’ve never seen an episode. Perhaps I’ll start on MLP after I’m done catching up on Steven Universe. I’m currently down the rabbit-hole of Youtube theory videos. >.<
I think I need to watch all the SU eps again because I was watching them through my inner 7-year-old eyes and missed a lot of subtext. For better or worse, my inner 7-year-old is a huge part of my inner mental life and although she's very bright, she still often gets in the way of my understanding of complicated adult stuff. She's also the reason I don't comment much. ;p
I also just recently was going thru my jewelry-making stuff and found some sugilite which has me wanting to make an SU bracelet with gemstones. I have almost everything!
@Scildfreja:
Fluttershy sounds like me except that I’m not very shy.
I’m just catching up here.
@SFHC
I have not seen Alan doing any of these things. From what I remember of the 4channers/BLM march discussion, Alan did not defend the shooters; my impression of the discussion was that there were a lot of misunderstandings and people talking past one another. I do not recall the discussions of South Africa/genocide at all.
If he has done these things and I’ve simply missed them, please show me the comments in which he’s done them and I will ban him.
I understand that some commenters here don’t like other commenters here, and they may have good reasons for that. But I’m not going to ban anyone unless I’ve seen evidence of them breaking the rules.
One thing I’ve learned from talking to my sister about refugee affairs (which is her training and profession) is that it’s fucking weird and feels terribly unjust.
That’s in part from being a sausage that was slowly assembled over centuries. It has tended to the better over time, but that’s not a monotonic path, and progress is agonizingly slow.
Another reason is that if you say yes to everyone who needs help, you end up not being able to help anyone. So you have to say no sometimes. And then you need formal policies, because otherwise you’ll be saying yes and no based on bad reasons like “is their baby girl particularly cute” or worse “did they pay me a bribe” or “did they provide me adequate sexual services on demand.” And so now you have policies so you can be fair and not exploit desperate people.
But then someone shows up who doesn’t fit within the policies. What do you do? By the way, this is just the third case you saw today and you’ve got 10 hours to go in the day because how can you stop working when stopping means desperate people might end up stranded or tortured or killed?
And that leads to: I have no idea how anyone can manage to work in this field for more than a few days and still have a heart.
RE: Alan
I understand why some (or even many, or even all )of his comments can be upsetting and not really likable- it happens to me as well sometimes.
I haven’t been present a lot here lately, but since you mention the genocide thing:
I don’t remember the mention of South Africa, but I do remember a “hypothetical” discussion about the destruction of a planet in the Star Wars movies, in which Alan did seem to defend, or not be much bothered by, the fictional genocide of having a planet destroyed.
I was a part of the discussion and it was the one time I felt Alan was crossing a line I couldn’t accept. His reaction was mostly listening and offering apologies (maybe not perfect, but they were there).
I don’t know if this will help a lot. But I felt I had to share my 2 centavos.
It’s sad that the media are taking the cover story at face value.
One example:
https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2015/10/20/racists-trump-fans-and-chuck-c-johnson-join-together-in-boycottstarwarsvii-crusade/comment-page-4/#comment-554802
This is Alan literally saying it’s okay to blow up an entire planet if some of your ideological opponents live there. He also voluntarily compares the fictional Alderaan to atrocities committed in the real world. He’s saying it’s fine to destroy an entire city, an entire country, or even an entire planet, if there’s a “legitimate target” somewhere in that city, in that country, or on that planet.
Frankly, this probably should’ve led to a ban right then and there.
@IP: Thanks for linking to that discussion. It was just before I found this blog, so I’d never read it. And for the record, ROTJ is my all-time favorite Star Wars film. But, I like the whole notion of large-scale space battles combined with swordfights. And I thought the Ewoks were cute.
On Alans comments, I can think of two interpretations other than ‘he’s an elitist shithead’ (It is quite possible that Alan is an elitist shithead. These are just alternate explanations of one thread, and may only add to what can be found in other threads. If so, I apologize):
1: Alan was playing devils advocate. I think it’s totally not cool to do that with any real-world situation, but it really should be allowed when discussing a fictional film. I found the discussion of how the Vienna conventions should be applied in this entirely fictional universe(created by a man who has probably never heard of the Vienna conventions) particularly hilarious.
2: There may be a cultural component here. In the US (and, I’m sure, a lot of other nations), ‘Empire’ is a dirty word, and we at predisposed to assume that any ‘Empire’ is evil. I’m guessing the English don’t see it that way. In fact, I could buy that the English are predisposed to sympathize with any ‘Empire’ over any ‘Rebels’, and may well be predisposed to see ‘Rebels’ as the bad guys in the same way I am predisposed to see ‘Empire’ as evil. If that’s true. than defending the Empire over the Rebel Alliance would be a natural position for an Englishperson to gravitate to.
On the actual comment, Alan almost has a point: what’s the moral difference between destroying a planet to get a bunch of people trying to destroy you and destroying a city (full of thousands of innocent people) to do the same thing? The difference is one of degree, rather than kind.
I would argue that both actions are morally repugnant, and yet my own nation destroyed quite a few cities (Hamburg, Dresden, Hiroshima, and Tokyo to start with, and that doesn’t even start on the Red Army), and killed millions of people (I can’t imagine all of them shared in the guilt of their nations), in the name of destroying Nazism and ‘Halting Japanese Aggression’ (TM). In short, his comment makes me quite uncomfortable, because it forces me to look harder at my own nations history and prior actions.
That’s a good thing.
Missed the edit window:
My last paragraph assumes a moral equivalence between the Axis powers of WWII and the fictional Rebel Alliance of George Lucas’ Star Wars Universe, which is extremely poor logic, seeing as everyone tends to assume that the Evil Empire is inspired by Nazi Germany.
However, I’m not sure we can take that as a given. I strongly suspect that Alan sees the films as inspired more by the US War of Independence, and there was a time when I was deeply afraid that Lucas drew inspiration from the US Civil War.
It’s fiction. You can’t really make assumptions about anything in it beyond what is in the movies, and it’s dangerous to read too much into them.
@ jokester
It started out as an attempt (which I now recognise was very ill-advised) to consider how the Empire might be viewed in a post 9/11 world (cf Ben Kenobi using religion to radicalise and exploit a naive young man). However I clearly went too far with that parallel and once again I apologise profusely for it.
There may well be a discussion to be had about how we cheer for things in fiction that would be abhorrent in real life (how many times does Doctor Who wipe out an entire species for example?) but this wasn’t the place for it; and certainly not in the way I did.
Apologies for the triple post. This will be my last one.
The final reason ROTJ is my favorite? It’s the first one to make it absolutely, unquestionably clear that the Rebel Alliance is heterogeneous, while the Empire is homogenous. This distinction is not made in either A New Hope or The Empire Strikes Back. Think about: in the Battle of Hoth, aside from Chewbacca, is there a single non-human on the entire Rebel base?
Jebus Christ. Annihilating an entire city is also not cool.
I feel like I’m trying to explain this to a hamster.
@IP: I agree that annihilating an entire city is also not cool.
My point was that realizing there is such an obvious corollary between what the fictional Galactic Empire did to Alderaan and what my own nation did to Dresden, Germany, Tokyo, Japan, and a host of other cities made me take a harder look at the Allies behavior in WWII.
Apologies if that point was lost above.
Yeah, genocide is never cool and wiping out millions of civilians is never cool. So let’s not try to justify those things, then.