By David Futrelle
So Cassie Jaye‘s execrable “Men’s Rights” documentary The Red Pill has been causing a bit of a stir in Australia. Yesterday, the Sydney Morning Herald published a lengthy puff piece on Jaye and her film.
You’d think Jaye would be overjoyed, but no: she’s kicking up a shine over some of the exceedingly mild criticisms that somehow found their way into the otherwise utterly credulous piece.
Specifically, she’s upset that writer Greg Callaghan suggested at one point that “viewers were owed a more balanced back-story” on A Voice for Men’s notorious founder Paul Elam. “You don’t have to dig very deeply,” Callagham noted,
to learn that the now 60-year-old Elam once created a website called RegisterHer, which encouraged men to name and shame women who supposedly made false rape allegations.
This is such weak sauce that I’m not even sure if it even qualifies as criticism. Elam did indeed, with the help of his former best buddy John Hembling, set up a site called Register-Her that was intended to “name and shame” not only alleged false accusers but also assorted other women Elam and other AVFMers had taken a dislike to, including:
Actress Katherine Heigl, who was put on the site after making a humorous public service announcement for the site Funny or Die promoting the spaying and neutering of pets. Register-Her charges her with “endors[ing] male targeted sexual mutilation.”
Feminist blogger Jessica Valenti, who was put on the site for several newspaper columns that the site misrepresents in an attempt to show that she is guilty of “an ongoing pattern of anti-male bigotry and advocacy for the eradication of constitutional rights based primarily on sex.”
A number of young women who attended a protest against Men’s Rights icon Warren Farrell at the University of Toronto. Register-Her used Twitter Tweets from some of the women, clearly intended as jokes, as evidence of genocidal intentions towards men.
And “name and shame” is perhaps the mildest possible way to describe what the site was intended to do. Indeed, when the site first launched, a giggly Elam explained on the A Voice for Men internet radio show that:
If Mary Jane Rottencrotch out there wants to say that her husband beat her just for the sake of gaining leverage in a divorce he will now have a resource where he can come and post your name, your picture, your work telephone number, your address, perhaps even your route you take to get to work, if you bother to have a job.
While Register-Her never made good on its initial promise to post this sort of personal information about its targets, the site was clearly a major part of Elam’s oft-stated goal to “fuck their shit up” — with “they” meaning pretty much anyone Elam dislikes. Indeed, he once warned a critic of the site that:
I find you, as a feminist, to be a loathsome, vile piece of human garbage. I find you so pernicious and repugnant that the idea of fucking your shit up gives me an erection. …
[Y]ou fucking moron. Your only real hope is to keep your mouth shut and pretend AVfM and register-her.com does not exist for as long as you can. Because, as you can see right now, anything you say or do will be thrown back in your face like holy water on a vampire.
We are coming for you, and we are coming for all the liars out there that have been ruining people’s lives with impunity. …
You are SO fucked.
Jaye’s response to Callaghan ‘s sort-of-criticism? Well, she may not have mentioned Register-Her in her two-hour documentary, but she did leave some footage about it on the cutting room floor!
No, seriously, that’s her response.
Just because you assume something doesn't make it true. I have the raw footage from 2013 when I ask Paul Elam about "RegisterHer" @TheAge pic.twitter.com/nzWgEovJuj
— Cassie Jaye (@Cassie_Jaye) July 28, 2017
RegisterHer is a part of the 98% of footage not included in the final film. Greg is insinuating I didn't ask enough questions, but I DID ask
— Cassie Jaye (@Cassie_Jaye) July 29, 2017
Luckily for us, she’s put the “raw footage” of her discussion with Elam about Register-Her on YouTube. Apparently she thinks it makes her look good — here she is, asking Elam the tough questions! — but she could not be more wrong. In fact, it reveals her to be an utterly credulous interviewer happy to accept Elam’s dishonest spin about his site as a truthful account of “what ‘RegisterHer’ is about.”
Incase anyone is wondering what "RegisterHer" was about: https://t.co/pewAClNjJC
— Cassie Jaye (@Cassie_Jaye) July 29, 2017
If you watch the clip — and I strongly recommend that you do, however infuriating it might be — you will see not only that that Elam’s description of his site is utter bullshit, but also that the highly accommodating Jaye challenges precisely zero of Elam’s assertions, responding to his utterly misleading and at times simply false account of the site by declaring “this all seems completely reasonable.”
That’s apparently her idea of a followup “question.”
If you want a true picture of what Register-Her was really about, check out my post on it here, which goes into more detail than I have in this post. (I borrowed some of this post from my earlier post, but there’s a lot more there I didn’t include here.)
@wwth, mildlymagnificent
So much for the Liberal Media ™
Almost every damn outlet out there is owned by some reactionary jackass and they still complain about freeze peach…
@IgnoreSandra:
That’s perfectly understandable.
I still keep my copy of The God Delusion, despite having lost all my respect for Richard Dawkins as a person. Maybe as a reminder that hero-worshiping real people will lead to disappointment…
Her (il)logic about no-platforming is not just naive and unrealistic, but inconsiderate. The claim that a venue not allowing a platform for a group or specific individual drives it “underground” is simply not true, there are other venues they can use, and – like all FREEZE PEACH Warriors – they completely ignore that whole “freedom of association” thing. Besides, why is it assumed everyone else is somehow obligated to cater to them? That seems disproportionately one-sided, doesn’t it? They certainly don’t act the same way towards their ideological opponents and do little but pay lip service to “engaging with the other side.”
People have every right, especially if they happen to (say) be Jewish, to not allow people like that to speak at their venue – especially if they don’t want to be associated with such.
It’s solipsistic individualism run amok.
I notice it from generation to generation too: the older generation will assume that, within their time, social or political issues have been solved and there’s no need to deal with it further. A younger generation comes along to point out those problems haven’t gone away or developed into something else entirely – with many of the older generation, despite supporting such concerns in the past, coming to the defense of the status quo as a reaction.
It’s almost like a curse or something…
I’d argue validating and enabling attitudes that lead to such behavior are as bad as the behaviors itself. They might not be causing violence directly, but they’re indirectly justifying it by making such positions seem reasonable when they are not.
It’s the same reason I don’t care about judging racism by degrees. Ignorant racism isn’t “not as bad” as intentional racism, because they both inform one another. Racism is racism and ultimately has the same effect regardless of intent. Letting someone off the hook because they were ignorant instead of outwardly bigoted communicates some acts of racism are somehow okay, moreso if their reaction to criticism is to back-pedal and make excuses for it instead of reflecting on such and adjusting their behavior. It probably means they don’t give a shit about racism as much as they do their egos.
Heck, even Oscar the Grouch won the Cannes Award… no wait, that was the “cans” award….
The Murdoch-owned outlets here are champions of this. People like Andrew Bolt claim, on a regular basis, that they’re not allowed to say/think/feel certain things and it’s awful that they’re so oppressed – all expressed via regular opinion columns, guest spots, blogs, TV shows, etc. etc. For “silenced” people, they’re awfully noisy and ever-present.
And our very own home-grown FEMRA, Bettina Arndt, recently argued that if a woman doesn’t want to have sex (read: intercourse) with her husband, she should use oil, and her hands and mouth, to satisfy him. This is an obligation, apparently, as too many Australian husbands are sex-starved. National crisis and all that.
This is always, always the tip-off. Not sure how Mammotheers feel about Dick Coughlin, but he did bring up a fabulous point when a video game ranter named Jontron decided to opine on “multiculturalism” and rattled off some of the bog-standard “white genocide” talking points. After the expected and vehement pushback from… well, everybody, Jontron’s next video was a mealy-mouthed rejoinder about how he “misspoke” and he’s “not really a good debater” and how he’d like to just get on with talking about video games.
And Coughlin was like “Hang on, you just got through telling us that the white race was under threat from all corners, and now you just want to sweep all that aside and make jokes about video games? If you really believed that, why aren’t you dedicating all your energy to that? …it’s almost as if deep down you really don’t think it’s true….”
If there was really this threat to the lives and livelihoods of men from feminists or women in general, where’s the apparatus being built to lobby the government? Where’s the urgent pleas to contact MPs or Congressfolk? Where’s the sample legislation being drafted? Where’s the tweets reminding people of phone numbers to call every day so that men stop dying in the workplace? Where’s the unionization efforts? Where’s the tip jar for the local workplace safety org?
Contrast that with the women of the–for lack of a better term–Resistance. As Bluegal pointed out on the Pro Left podcast this week, it was women, particularly women of colour, that have lead the charge against the Health Care travesty. Because that’s what a real threat to one’s life looks like. Not vague demographic shifts, not “manspreading” or “Oh my god, I was called a racist,” but “Holy shit, they’re really going to take my family’s health insurance away from me!”
“Men’s rights activism”, as it exists in that manner, is a scam. Always has been and always will be.
Mish:
That’s a prominent talking point with right-wing pundits in general, I think.
Even when they’re given every imaginable venue to espouse their views and have them regularly heard, they’ll use any incident like being banned from Twitter or Patreon for violating guidelines as “proof” they’re somehow being “silenced.” Ann Coulter loves to claim that she’s been having her speech suppressed…even as she appears on a talk show to promote her book and the tour that goes along with it, with no awareness on Coulter’s or her followers’ part.
It certainly helps when you erroneously conflate criticism with silencing – though that would mean they hate free speech, since criticism counts as such no matter how much they may dislike it.
Unless it doesn’t count. ‘Cause reasons…
@ Nick;
This….
Despite the fact (yes, I’m using “fact” in the literal sense) that right-wing, or right-leaning people and organizations literally (yes, I’m using “literally” in the literal sense) control 100% of EVERYTHING, they STILL play up themselves, their institutions and their values as being so marginalized they’re in imminent danger of disappearing….
Like refusing to allow the public treasury to be used to fund a nativity on the courthouse grounds is an act of religious genocide.
@ Nick;
The difference is plain…
criticism of you = criticism
criticism of me = silencing
Cassie Jaye is indeed the one who won a Cannes award.
From the fake festival.
@Mish
I totally agree with her ! In fact, she should go do that right now, and never, ever stop keeping them hands and mouth busy and away from keyboards and microphones.
And I think it is naivite that motivates these people. I’m pretty plugged in to the YT “SocJus” community (and I’ve seen you around plenty, Nick ;)), and she strikes me to be the same flavour of “can’t you people just go away” reactionary type the likes of Armoured Skeptic and Shoe0nhead. At least from what I’ve seen since this all started–I never watched her stuff beforehand, only seen clips in Kevin Logan videos, but what I saw presented a person who was genuine and eager to teach young people about sex and sexuality.
What struck me in my reading of Laci’s issues is that for every little bit she presented about gender (for example), she would receive legitimate criticism about trans erasure. In her mind, these were people she considered kindred and they were calling her something terrible (transphobic). Often they didn’t actually go that far, but Laci seemed to react as if every message saying “what about trans people?” was “OMG you transphobic &$!@#!” Now, the mature thing would be to acknowledge one’s shortcomings and strive to correct them; but Laci seems to have issues handling criticism and so internalized those the point that she started actively seeking out validation of her internalized bias from others, others all too willing to do so for the “get.”
I used to be subbed to a lot of atheist YTers and one by one, a lot of them fell to this same thing, following in Thunderf00t’s Thunderf00tsteps to hold feminism to blame for any internal strife in their community. Darkmatter. Amazing Atheist. Dusty. ArmouredSkeptic. Repzion. BionicDance. SyeTenAtheist. Each of them betrayed their own level of hostility to matters of social justice, but ArmouredSkeptic was in my eyes the perfect case study of somebody who just wanted to snark at low hanging fruit, but found that when his peers were asking him to take a stand on social justice issues was like “dammit, why can’t you people just take your pet causes and bother somebody else?” Cue the pushback and suddenly he’s feeling like he’s under attack as a white cis straight man and he finds common cause with an emerging audience of shitlords. I think this is a distinction worth pointing out: ArmouredSkeptic isn’t one of the 4chan-worshipping “Kekistan”-flag sporting Pepes; he’s merely a self-branded “skeptic” that resents people getting in his face about racism and sexism and thus rails against feminists and BLM and anybody else reminding him that racism and sexism still exists.
In a way, that makes him worse than the Pepes because a lot of regular young white guys who aren’t very politically savvy will end up being introduced to social justice through this lens and greet it with the same hostility. Sure, Greg might be a decent guy in several respects and if we were neighbours, might get along well. But he’s stared a moral imperative in the face and failed that test miserably, as Laci now has too.
In case anyone reading this thread thinks we only have a problem with Elam’s site because it’s run by Elam, we also were against Candace Owen’s Social Autopsy site which was (is?) designed to dox bullys. We’re against doxxing regardless of the political or social affiliations of the doxxer or doxxee.
I remember that once, many years ago now, Pat Buchanan admitted that there’s no “liberal media” and there never was. It was just a talking point that they repeated often and loudly in order to make the media believe that they were obligated to give far right talking points serious treatment. And it worked very, very well.
If anyone’s interested in the early history of the “liberal media” talking point, I’d recommend What Liberal Media? by Eric Alterman. It’s probably 15 years old now, but I think it’s still relevant because it shows how this strategy of whining about being silenced started at the top with the most privileged and least silenced people wanting a way to force their oppressive views on everyone and make them seem reasonable. Younger reactionaries who are whining about no platforming and SJWs silencing dissent were fed this GOP propaganda literally their whole lives. They don’t even question that it’s true. They are, not surprisingly useful idiots, repeating the lies that were fed to them by the wealthy and powerful who’ve tricked them into thinking they were brave truth tellers.
Funnily enough, just found an Alternet article where white nationalist Jared Taylor actually articulates exactly why the useful idiots are so apt to believe it: http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/young-white-nationalists-are-hopping-mad-and-theyre-mobilizing-trumps-america
Huh, that persecution complex kinda describes ArmouredSkeptic, doesn’t it?
Shaun from the Shaun and Jen channel had a video about the Fate of the Frogmen and how a lot of the white men that gravitated towards GamerGate and the like resented not having the romantic “oppression” narrative that minority groups had and thus being a “Gamer” became an identity to hold up as being trod upon like “black” or “trans” (ironic for those who claim to disdain identity politics). Far beyond that, I think a lot of the cultural signifiers that buoyed up the ideal of white maleness are gradually falling apart. The hypocritical unsavouriness of history’s “heroes” is coming to light more than it did in the past. The capitalism that was sold as demonstrating white men’s natural superiority is crumbling. And the havens they believed they had (like video games) are becoming more diverse. So where is a poor besieged white guy to go?
The tragedy is that the answer to that question is not hard. I’m a white guy and I forged my own identity. As a Canadian. As a humanist. Hell, even as a furry. It was entirely unnecessary to give into defensive bigotry and says much more about one’s character than any critique about the sins of the white elite of many western societies.
You don’t have to be the villains of history, fellow white guys. But you’re choosing to be if you follow the path of easy racialized answers to the question you’ve been posing. And remember, for most of you, this is the worst you’re going to grapple with this kind of identity hardship. I can think of any number of aboriginal communities in Canada who can introduce you to some severe crises of identity, let alone trans or genderqueer communities.
This seems like a good place to drop one of my favorite Julia Sugarbaker speeches
My response to that fucked-up and creepy line: Oh, it gives you an erection, does it? Good! Then you can go fuck yourself!
@Lumen8, welcome! Don’t feel too bad about being taken in by your first look at The Red Pill. Video is very, very good at lending its contents a voice of authority. We interact with it passively, so it’s harder to engage the critical thinking skills against video when compared to text or an in-person argument.
On the other hand, the fact that you were able to pivot and realize your error instead of doubling down is a huge credit to you! Don’t think that’s a small thing – that’s huge. Keep it up!
Has Lumen8 gotten her welcome package?
I don’t really agree with “no platforming” because I think it’s important to hear what certain people say uncensored without giving them ammunition for a victim complex.
I understand the arguments against that view (that bigots’ speech causes actual harm to marginalized people, especially trans and non-binary people, and typical appeals to “free speech” come from a position of privilege and tend to assume the speech isn’t harmful). But I still think preventing someone from speaking on a campus often does more harm than good.
Cassie Jaye’s documentary about the Red Pill is poorly made. Even if you ignore the subject matter of the film for a moment, its production was amazingly amateurish, considering this is Jaye’s fourth feature film. I watched it and there were all these moments that were just… what?
The worst part about the film is how incurious Jaye seems about her subject. She never asks anyone a tough question in the movie, and looking this snipped of her unused footage, it appears she didn’t ask tough questions at all.
Also, It’s just amazing to me that Cassie had 100 hours of film in the can and included that Karen Straughan interview. That was like, Sarkeesian-Effect levels of ineptitude.
I wrote a full review of the film here: https://idledillettante.com/2017/05/29/film-review-the-red-pill-by-cassie-jaye/
Why? The world is full of white supremacist messages, male supremacist messages, classist messages, homophobic and transphobic messages. It always has been. They’re the status quo. How can hearing what one more bigot has to say possibly add anything?
They don’t need ammo to have a victim complex. They’ll have one anyway. The privileged always convince themselves that they’re the victims so that they have an excuse to oppress others. I mean, look at the other post from today. They feel victimized by a picture of female Marvel employees. Like I said, read What Liberal Media? Their victim complex is a put on. Appeasing them won’t make that stop. We’ve been appeasing them for awhile and they still claim to feel victimized. It’s bullshit.
But you’re still going to handwave them away?
Who does it harm? Not every idea needs to be taken seriously. Plus, if a good portion of a university’s student body doesn’t want their tuition dollars going to pay the speaking fees that enable bigots to making a living spreading hate and harm with their speech, why don’t they have the right to try and stop it? Why is the bigot’s speech more important than the speech of those who disagree?
@History Nerd
Two questions: Who is harmed by “no platforming”? Who is harmed by giving hate speech a platform?
@Nerd
Well, I’m listening. Not sure how you’ll measure the effects of a lack of a platform. Nor what “harm” you’re talking about (you really should be asking yourself ‘to whom’ here). I’m sure you’ll manage tho…
ETA: ninjad by @kupo on harm
What is it with these people and booze? Between Sargon’s drunk-tweeting, Straughan’s cheeks and pretty much everything Elam does, it always seems like the Manosphere is soaked in a self-medicating haze of inebriation.
Not a good look for people trying to put the best face out there.
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine an angry white dude yelling something about frozen peaches with his boot stamping on a human face – forever.”
From my soon-to-never-be-published sequel to Orwell’s 1984, working title 2017 and oh god I hope it fucking stops there but we all know we won’t be that lucky, shit shit shit.
They don’t need “ammunition” for their victim complex. It seems to run on hot air and they’ll always have an unlimited supply of that.
Yeah. They’ll come up with a reason to claim they’re being persecuted no matter what. They deliberately avoid civil debate because they’re at the campus to spread propaganda and try to provoke people.
Having a speaker can cost the university or student union a significant amount of money, and it’s not like the places outside on campus where anyone is allowed to come and speak (speaking outside also has no added signal that the school thinks your views are part of a legitimate debate).
IIRC, Ann Coulter essentially demanded that UC Berkeley pay for her security detail. UC Berkeley recommended that she hold the event during a week when there are no classes because people are studying for finals. Being on campus would be completely optional for most people and there’d be less likelihood of a confrontation, while people are more stressed if they have to go to class. She canceled the event because she claimed she wouldn’t be available that week, so so much for the “free speech” argument.
There’s the Internet, so claims of censorship are basically moot. Nobody with an actual job enjoys that degree of “free speech” anyway.