3526 Take The Red Pill | Cassie Jaye and Stefan Molyneux
"When feminist filmmaker Cassie Jaye sets out to document the mysterious and polarizing world of the Men’s Rights Movement, she begins to question her own beliefs. Jaye had only heard about the Men’s Rights Movement as being a misogynist hate-group aiming to turn back the clock on women’s rights, but when she spends a year filming the leaders and followers within the movement, she learns the various ways men are disadvantaged and discriminated against. The Red Pill challenges the audience to pull back the veil, question societal norms, and expose themselves to an alternate perspective on gender equality, power and privilege."Cassie Jaye is the founder of Jaye Bird Productions and the director of the award-winning documentaries “Daddy I Do” (which examined the Abstinence-Only Movement versus Comprehensive Sex Education) and “The Right to Love: An American Family” (which followed one family’s activism fighting for same-sex marriage rights in California). Her latest project “The Red Pill” which examines the Men’s Rights Movement and gender equality.The Red Pill Movie: http://www.theredpillmovie.comFreedomain Radio is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by signing up for a monthly subscription or making a one time donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Main Radio.
Hope you're doing well.
I'm here with Cassie J. She's the founder of Jaybird Productions and the director of the award-winning documentaries Daddy I Do, which examined the abstinence-only movement versus comprehensive sex education and the right to love an American family, which followed one family's activism fighting for same-sex marriage rights in California.
Now...
Cassie clearly has had enough of love of the left and decided to veer into men's rights activism.
Not as a pro-men's rights activist, although I think it's fair to say that her, or rather your, perspective shifted over time.
But the movie is called The Red Pill, and it examines the men's rights movement and gender equality.
A fascinating movie.
I watched it twice last night, and...
Man, it is instructive.
I think it's well-crafted.
It's honest.
It's raw.
It's passionate.
It's all the good stuff that you want in a nice frappe of emotion and reason from a documentary.
And you can find out more at theredpillmovie.com.
Cassie, thanks so much for joining us.
How are you today?
I'm great.
Thanks for having me.
All right.
So...
The question of the relations between the sexes is really, really fascinating.
And what I thought was interesting about the movie, one of the many things, was that you, of course, talked to the men's rights activists and are getting a message out that agree or disagree really, really needs to be heard.
But at the same time, you went across the aisle, so to speak, and talked to feminists and invited feminists, some more mainstream, some, I guess you could say, a little bit Left of center, as far as mainstream goes.
And you gave a sort of balanced perspective, and you didn't appear to be taking a side.
Like, you didn't confront anyone in the movie particularly hard, but you presented this information.
Did you want to confront people?
Did you want to just say, here's the buffet, take what you want?
So how was your approach to putting the movie together?
That's a good question.
Well, I did confront my interviews.
I just didn't include all of that in the film.
And I think that was, you know, a choice to try to present people saying what they believe in to the audience without my trying to, you know, I wasn't trying to convert anyone to my views while I was interviewing people for the Red Pill podcast.
I don't really want to see that kind of documentary.
I didn't want to make that kind of documentary.
I think it's better for the audience to trust that they're educated enough to make their own opinion, have critical thinking capabilities.
So I just wanted to let...
Feminists speak for themselves and men's rights activists speak for themselves.
And in the end of the film, I do lightly share how I changed from making this film.
But it's not about pushing my beliefs on the audience.
But I did pose rebuttals to all of my interviews and try to...
See if they would fumble or if they had a good response.
And most of the time they did have a good response, depending on the person you're talking to.
What I'm getting from you is that the outtakes are going to include fistfights, which I think would be fantastic.
Fantastic.
And we should look forward to that.
Now, one thing I thought was, well, another thing that I thought was very interesting was when you were talking to, I think it was Catherine Spiller, the head of MS Magazine.
She said, men are not discriminated against in any way.
It was a pretty blanket statement, and I could sort of see how a feminist might say, well, men have the advantage, but to say that men are not discriminated against in any way, when there is affirmative action and the draft and the family courts, which do seem to favor women, I could see a feminist saying, well, generally, men face this, a 2 out of 10, but whatever.
Women face an 8 out of 10.
But in any way, that seemed like a rather extraordinary statement and speaks, I think, to kind of a potential echo chamber or bubble where beliefs are just not challenged.
And I think that's a real shame, no matter what your ideology.
Yeah, I think it's something where, you know, this has been her field, her industry for decades.
And, you know, she is in an echo chamber of sorts and working at Ms.
Magazine and going to the conferences she does and the roundtables that she does.
So, you know, I think it would benefit people who are leaders of the feminist movement to speak to the leaders of the men's rights movement to just, you know, broaden their perspective or at least challenge their own beliefs.
But it does seem like that's not...
I guess average for many people to challenge their strong health beliefs.
So I'm curious about why that is.
Well, I mean, even if she considers, and I think maybe she does, or those kinds of feminists do consider men's rights activists the enemy, don't you study your enemy and absorb their beliefs?
Like, I could tell you What Hitler was bothered about and maybe even mount a sort of temporary defense of it because it's one of the first things I learned in debating is get inside the skin of the person you consider your opponent and figure out what makes them tick so that you can more effectively disarm.
So she could have said, well, here's what the men's rights activists say and here's where I think that they're incorrect and so on.
But yeah, just this nothing.
Now, one of the other journeys, man, what a pendulum you had, and I think that's what gives the movie some of its really compelling emotional content, is for those who don't know the sort of backstory, Cassie went to Hollywood as a teenager.
And so she went to the, like, I don't know, ass-graptastic toxic sewer of masculinity known as Hollywood, and And, and, and it was, well, I want to hear some of these sort of tales that you had, where, of course, you know, I mean, to some degree, you're selling youth and sex appeal, but not, you know, in that kind of way, where you want producers grabbing at you and mouthing breathy, grotesque promises with their halitosis breath.
And then, of course, you went from a place which you thought was more positive with masculinity but turned out to be negative to a place which you thought would be more negative of masculinity and turned out to be more positive, which was the men right.
I mean, that to me, what a pendulum swing.
I'm surprised your head isn't still doing that exorcism rotation thing.
Oh, a little bit.
Yeah.
I don't think I can summarize my whole life experience.
No, you must do that.
Right now, we've got three and a half days.
But, you know, the highlights, because it's really quite a swing.
Yeah, it is.
And I think I'm still processing what happened in Hollywood, where going to Hollywood at 18 years old did make me a feminist.
And it also came at a time when Facebook was starting to come around, Twitter was starting to come around.
I moved to Hollywood in 2004.
And so a lot of my feminist information coming to me was through social media.
And a lot of my frustrations in day-to-day life was going on auditions or getting my agents Great character breakdowns of what I was going to be auditioning for.
And it was always, you know, young girl, You go for help.
I'll follow the bloody footprints.
Yeah, and it was always about the appearance, and she didn't have a personality of any sort, and so I was just frustrated with that, and so that made me a feminist, and then following Jezebel and feministing, and then making my first film, Daddy Ado, about sex education, and I think getting even more involved with just feminist perspectives, because I was researching a lot about reproductive rights, and Single motherhood and sexual abuse of women.
So, yeah.
And then, of course, my third feature film about the men's rights movement, I was expecting it to just be discovering the misogynistic, dark side of humanity.
And I thought that would be entertaining and people would want to see it and buy it because it would just be, you know, this side of We've never seen before.
No one's ever documented it, which now I know why, because apparently it is career suicide to do that.
But yeah, this is kind of a rollercoaster of Well, of course, you had found the mythical evil patriarchy.
You know, I mean, it's supposed to be everywhere, but apparently you have to look at certain dark dungeons on the internet to find it.
And to go spelunking among the sort of disarray of an anticipated dark patriarchy, I mean, would have been an exciting thing.
How long did it take for you to...
Begin to question whether the men's rights activists were as they had been portrayed to you before going in.
And of course, I know that you talked about this in your video diary.
It's like, maybe they just hypnotized me.
Maybe they put something in my coffee.
Maybe they're just so overwhelmingly charismatic that I'm losing my way.
I mean, what a disorienting thing.
Yeah, well, I filmed for a year, and I would say about three months in of full-time, you know, studying and reading about the Men's Rights Movement, interviewing people in the Men's Rights Movement, around three months in, I really started to wonder...
Okay, I'm taking what they were calling the red pill.
When I started researching the men's rights movement, they called it the red pill.
So I was thinking, oh my gosh, I'm starting to take this.
I can't argue with what they're saying.
I find this to support it.
And so that's when I started to reach out to feminists to interview.
And in a way, I was trying to interview feminists to...
I'm going to retrain myself on what to believe.
What is the talking point here?
How do you rebuttal Warren Farrell or Paul Elam when they're saying these things?
And then, you know, I went to the feminist scholars and realized they really didn't know much of anything about the men's rights movement, so they weren't a really good counter because, like you said, you should study your enemy, and they had not.
So then I really started to wonder, okay, well, Why have we been taught that these are the monsters of preventing women's rights from progressing?
I was reading the articles.
GQ magazine did this horrible hit piece on the men's rights movement and even doctored the photos to make them look like meth addicts.
But knock out a couple of teeth and give them like, get under the eyes.
Right, okay.
A couple of horns up here, yeah.
If you look up GQ, the men's rights movement article, it's really shocking what they did to the photos and how, I mean, and there was this one story of a man who apparently was a pedophile and no one had ever heard of this men's rights activist and he was at the conference and I mean, there's a lot of speculation about he was a plant for this story to make the whole movement look worse because the other people they interviewed for GQ were Fairly reasonable, like Crystal Garcia and Sage Sherrard.
So then, you know, I started to lose my faith in the media and how they're reporting.
And then I did my Kickstarter campaign and lost even more faith in the media of how I was being portrayed and the spinning of my own story and smear campaign against me.
So, yeah, it's been a long journey.
Well, you know, you'd think that a magazine like Gentleman's Quarterly would be down with the patriarchy and defending the brothers no matter what they did.
And this is the funny thing.
When you hear about the patriarchy, of course, and it's considered to be this big giant physics of the universe, the gravity that holds the dysfunctional social order together or whatever, if there really was such a thing, you'd think it'd be a little bit easier for these guys to get their message out.
I mean, and...
It's not.
It's hard.
It's hard.
You know, you hit a lot of prejudice.
And I really wanted you to talk about some of the challenges you've faced just getting the Benjamins together to get this thing rolling.
Because, man, I mean, when it came to your first two topics, which, you know, interesting, fascinating stuff, you know, you could say appeal to people slightly left of center – You were just like, no, no, I've had enough money, thank you.
I think I'll be able to take it from here.
No, no, tsunami of cash, not needed.
But it seemed like crossing a bitter desert to try and get the funds together for this one, even from the people who had been favorable to your last two films.
Yes, and I should mention that right before the Kickstarter, I was at the last thread of my rope.
I was ready to shelve all the footage because I'd already been through...
Over two years of just climbing up a sheet of rock and having nothing to grab onto, it was really difficult, not only just to get outside funding from grant organizations that didn't get any grant funding, and then also going to my previous angel investors from my previous films who declined backing this one.
They didn't want to see this film.
They didn't want to support a film about the men's rights movement.
Even Though I was trying to explain to them I'm going to have the same approach with all my films, which is just let people speak for themselves, let the audience make their own opinion.
If your beliefs are strong enough, then they should be upheld at the end of the movie.
Why are you so afraid to hear another person's perspective different from your own?
And then within my personal friendships, my family relationships, just the amount of ostracism Ostracization?
Ostracism?
Ostracism, that's right.
I just think of a big bird putting its head in the sand, but that's how I get it.
Yeah, it was really brutal.
I was thinking, why am I putting myself through this?
I'm a filmmaker.
I'm not trying to be a men's rights activist.
I'm not trying to become a spokesperson for men's issues.
I just want to make a film about it and share with other people what they believe and do they have valid grievances.
And so, you know, it was tough to get funding.
And so then I turned to Kickstarter as a last-its effort.
And it was really— Kind of hoping it wouldn't work in a way, right?
Okay, fine.
I'll do this Kickstarter so I can say I did it, but it's fine if it doesn't happen.
I was really just resolved.
Halfway through the Kickstarter, it didn't look like we were going to make it.
And I thought, okay, I'm going to start a family.
I'm going to start nesting.
I was pretty excited to go into the next chapter of my life.
Because I had already gone through this two-year struggle of just my ideological beliefs.
So now to have...
My struggle public was another hurdle to jump over.
So I was okay with my only benefit from this film just being the personal journey I went on.
And then the Kickstarter was successful, so then I had to deliver on everything I promised I'd do.
And so I was glad to do that.
Yeah.
And just to be clear, I mean, I know that there's obviously various conspiracy theories that are always floating around, this kind of stuff, but the Kickstarter was without strings.
So it wasn't like there was some giant group that said, okay, we'll give you the Kickstarter, but only if you turn all of the feminists' hair blue or red, or whatever it is, right?
It was without strings.
It's like, here's the cash, go for it.
So I just really wanted to point that out, that there was not, no strings attached, kind of.
Yeah, no one had any influence on how I was going to make the film.
And, you know, I'm stubborn enough where they wouldn't have, even if they tried to have influence on me.
But, you know, just for clarification, if I was going to make a, you know, hit piece on feminism or a pro-mens rights activist movie, I mean, I had a lot more footage to do that.
And I didn't take that road.
It's not an anti-feminist film.
I'm not trying to, you know...
Take it down or expose it or anything.
It was really just focused on the men's rights movement and what they believe.
And I let the feminists have their strongest arguments in my interviews that I thought could bring balance to the film.
But, you know, ultimately it's up to the viewer to decide which is the stronger argument.
What you do, you turn on the light.
You don't grab people's head and, you know, force them to look one way or just turn on the light.
And here's what you can see.
One thing that you were there in the room with the people, with the men in particular, that you were interviewing, Cassie, but one of the things that I kind of got radiating off the screen from some of the men was a lot of pain.
I mean, obviously, there was some anger as well, but I mean, the men who'd been sort of chewed up by the court system, who couldn't see their children, who had been falsely accused of various crimes, I mean, just pain, pain, pain.
And the funny thing is, of course, that my whole life, of course, you know, there's this stereotype that, you know, men need to get more in touch with their feelings, with their capacity to feel.
You know, try saying that to women.
Well, you know, you need to get more in touch with your capacity to think.
And it's like, no, no, that would be pretty sexist.
So the funny thing is people say, well, men, you should get more in touch with your feelings and you should express your feelings more.
Except then when men do express their feelings, no, no, put that back in the box.
That makes me feel uncomfortable.
Being in the room and seeing that kind of male vulnerability, how was that for you?
Because it seemed to me like there was just a lot of stuff going on, not too far under the surface while you were interviewing them.
You know, I think it's a mixture of when I went on this journey, I realized how many differences there are biologically between men and women, which with my feminist beliefs, I always kind of tried to I don't know, just push that down and not really let that peak up.
There are no difference between men and women, and we're all the same.
We should all be treated the same, this kind of androgynous culture.
And then meeting the men's rights activists, I learned that there are a lot of differences, like the way girls and boys learn differently, and men are more tactile, and they need to get up and stand and touch things and play with things.
So, I did learn the biological differences between the genders, but then when men's rights activists were being vulnerable, I really started to learn how similar we are emotionally, that words can hurt.
Abusive words or even physical violence can stay with you for a lifetime.
Trauma as a child can affect men and women both.
I don't know, equally, but I think it would be fairly equally about how men and women are affected by their childhood and abuse.
But we have dealt with it differently.
I think biologically, women are more communicative.
Men like to hold things in or bond with other people through productive activities like working on a car or going to play pool or something.
But when it comes to emotions, I think in a lot of ways men are very emotional and they just don't talk about it.
Talking to men's rights activists, there was also a learning curve with trying to listen without getting defensive.
I've noticed this with a lot of my audiences too.
for women in the audience, especially feminist women in the audience, is always wanting to make it about your own experience.
Well, I had an abusive father, or I was abused by a boyfriend or ex-husband.
So yes, I can hear men cry about their child custody battle, but I still can't entirely get on board with them sharing their feelings because I've been so hurt by a man in my life.
And then they kind of have this, well, we all suffer, but women suffer more because throughout history, we've had less rights or less opportunities than And so then it does kind of become this who has it worse contest.
When men are addressing their emotional grievances, a lot of people aren't willing to hear them or even offer compassion or sympathy because they keep churning around and making it about them.
I don't know.
It's like that old joke about, like, the selfish state, you know, who says, well, but enough about me, let's hear what you think about me.
Anyway, so, you know, and that is a challenge, of course, you know, that people say, well, let's invite men to share their emotions more, but if the emotions that men share make other people uncomfortable, in other words, if it's not sort of chivalry, white knighting, and adherence to state values and a willingness to sacrifice themselves in war, but rather emotional pain over being maltreated by society, then it's like, okay, well, that's enough sharing, man, let's get...
Get you back on the sewage system to unclog something unpleasant.
Now, what's it been like for you, though, with your relationships?
because, you know, for those who don't have a sort of public-facing belief system, I mean, I've been doing sort of this stuff publicly for like 10 years, everyone thinks that you sort of face the world and you deal with your challenges in the world.
You know, you get your trolls and you got your fans and you, you know, you get your volatility and you get your attention and all of that.
But there's a sort of backstory that goes on with personal relationships that the work that we do that faces the world, well, we interact with the world a certain amount of time a day, But the rest of the time is friends, family, loved ones, and so on.
What has the spillover been like from this movie and its reception as well to your personal relations?
Well, the most positive influence that making this film had on me was the change in my relationship with my boyfriend of five and a half years.
And I've been in the process of making The Red Pill or working on it for three and a half years.
So my boyfriend and I have been together much longer than before I started making this film.
And how it changed was before making The Red Pill, I... Oh, I complained about everything.
And it always seems like it was because I was a woman, I have to do the housework.
Or if I was ever struggling in work, it was because I was a woman.
And I mean, there's even...
Pretty honest.
I mean, there's even times now where sometimes I'm like, well, is it because I'm a woman I'm being treated this way?
And I think that's okay to identify those moments and think, you know, this sucks, this is sexism or something like that.
For instance, for example, there was a theater that booked the Red Pill to screen there and they invited me to screen the film there.
And we were talking on the phone about what the ticket prices were to be and how we were going to divide the sales and all that.
And so as we were talking on the phone, the manager of this theater said to me, are you the best person for me to be speaking to about this?
Do you have someone else that I can speak to about how we're going to run this event?
And I said, no, I am the filmmaker.
I'm just a one-woman band.
It's me making this film.
I'm the final say.
So even those kind of moments creep up.
And I'm like, gosh, there are times when...
I'm identifying when I'm being treated in a way where I think if I were a man, would it be different?
Well, I'm sorry to interrupt that story, but my guess would be that he wanted to negotiate hard, but didn't feel comfortable doing so with an attractive young woman, you know, which is sometimes a bit of a challenge for men, right?
I mean, how do you negotiate hard with?
So, I mean, he could have been white knighting, who knows?
But sorry, go on.
Yeah, well, and knowing that this happened a couple weeks ago, I was thinking, yeah, okay, there's still sexism, but it's also towards men.
And so I don't take those kind of moments so defensively now because I understand that men go through things where one of...
So Allison Tiemann's husband I was interviewing for the Red Pill, she's one of the honey badgers, and he was talking about how his...
I think his mother is in the furniture industry or something.
She has a furniture shop and so he was just going to see his mom and someone bought some furniture and they thought he worked there and so they just looked at him and said, that needs to go in the truck.
And so that would never happen if I was just standing at a furniture shop visiting my mother.
So obviously there's ways that people...
They point at you and say that needs to go in the truck.
They're probably going to get arrested as a kidnapper or something.
So yeah, it's a different situation.
Anyways, back to my boyfriend and how our relationship changed.
It improved because I stopped calling out every way that I was being discriminated against because I was a woman or feeling like I was at a disadvantage or being mistreated.
And I just started to recognize that it happens both ways and I try to not perpetuate it, do that to a man.
There were these videos on YouTube that were going viral for a while where a Man would be hitting or shaking a woman in the street and people would come and knock him out or pull him away and call the cops and all that.
And then if the genders were reversed and the woman was hitting the man, then there were actually bystanders coming in and starting to hit him too.
And then they interviewed people on the street and asked, well, what did you think was happening?
And most people said, well, he probably deserved it.
He probably cheated.
He probably is a scumbag, whatever.
Yeah.
So, you know, I think once you start to recognize that both genders have ways that they're mistreated, then you can not only, you know, stop yourself from being a part of the problem and, you know, recognize that that is a problem and you shouldn't act that way if a man is being hit by his girlfriend or wife.
And also be less angry and resentful about your own, you know, ways that you're being mistreated or you feel you're being mistreated for your gender.
And, you know, nature – I'm sorry.
I know I'm supposed to be interviewing, but I'm just going to get on my soapbox for a second, and I apologize for that ahead of time.
But taking nature personally is a huge mistake.
You know, if it's hailing on your wedding day, it's not because the cloud gods hate you.
It's just nature, right?
And so I watched the movie last night, as I said, and coincidentally, before I went to go and see the movie, I had a massage.
And I was chatting with the guy because I'm chatty.
So, you know, I can't take my mouth shut even when I'm getting a massage.
And he said, well, you know, most massages and most masseuses on the average lifespan is like 10 years.
And I said, oh, is that because you get bored or your joints hurt or your thumbs hurt?
He's like, yeah, well, that's part of it.
But he said mostly what happens is it's kind of a female-dominated industry.
And a lot of times what happens is women say they go have babies and then they say, actually, I think I prefer staying home.
and then they don't come back to being a masseuse.
What we have now is we have two things that we didn't historically have, which is we have excess resources and we have control over fertility.
And these things were unknown.
So in history, when resources were very scarce, well, you could only have 10 doctors in the county.
And if half of them were women, then some of those women would end up opting out of being doctors to have kids and you'd end up with fewer doctors at a time when that would make the difference between life and death.
We have this ridiculous species.
It's ridiculous how long babies take to develop.
You know, I mean, it's 20 years.
What are we, elephants?
It's ridiculous, right?
And so women were constantly disabled with child rearing and child raising and breastfeeding and pregnancies and so on.
And so investing a lot of resources into sort of market-facing activities for women just didn't make much sense.
Because you couldn't have as many as you wanted of whatever you wanted, engineers or doctors or whatever, or farmers.
And so it wasn't anybody's big conspiracy.
It's just that we have this ridiculous brain that takes a quarter century to mature and somebody needed to nurture that along throughout most of history.
And the ladies with the feed bags tended to be the ones who were put in front and center in that role.
And it wasn't like there was some conspiracy.
It's just the way that evolution designed things.
And I think to the credit of men and women, when we got access resources and control over fertility, it's like, hey, the pearly gates have opened up.
Opportunity abounds because things have changed.
It wasn't like, well, we smashed the patriarchy with ideology.
The ground shifted underfoot and we thought we traveled somewhere.
So that's sort of my very – it wasn't historically any sort of, ooh, are we going to exploit these women?
It's just this is the way that our ridiculously slow-developing species and its brain needed to be nurtured along.
And it had effects and some of those effects were negative for men and for women.
But we were all just struggling to survive in a harsh environment and get to this wonderful place where we could have great conversations about gender over the internet.
But getting here was a bit of a haul and I don't think that there was any conspiracy involved to oppress one or the other.
It's just the way that things fell out, you know, the natural dominoes that fell down.
Absolutely.
And I think that's why gender studies is quite frightening right now on college campuses is because it is so feminist, ideologically driven information and how they look at, historically speaking, how the genders evolved and the roles changed.
The way that they frame that information is always that women were oppressed, men were oppressed, It's not that simple.
I think you know it.
I learned it from the men's rights activists I met and spoke with that biological differences did lead to and also how we weren't as Evolved, scientifically speaking, back then.
We didn't have reproductive choice like we do now or economic resources that we do now.
Even just the internet has opened up so many opportunities for stay-at-home moms to have careers.
Or stay-at-home dads like myself.
Oh, you're a stay-at-home dad?
Yeah.
Awesome.
How's your child?
Oh, she's just delightful.
I mean, what a treasure.
I mean, it's fantastic.
And I can't recommend it highly enough.
You said you're starting a family.
I assume that right after this show anyway, but it's well worth focusing on.
And the more time you can spend with your kids, the better.
I mean, you know, everyone says, oh, when you have kids, time kind of flies.
And it's like, well, yeah, if you're out, Ten hours a day working and all of that, and you only get to see your kids' quality time half an hour, an hour a day, sure.
But it's like watching every tenth frame of a movie.
The movie seems to go by pretty fast, but, you know, you get the real quality time.
That's my recommendation.
So, yeah, whatever you can do to, you know, find a way to make a living while your kids are napping and spend more time with them.
The better.
So there's my other, I guess, minor diversion.
Do you mind if we turn to your relationship to the left?
Because I've really been curious about that.
So not exactly card carrying, but you were definitely front and center of leftist stuff.
And some of which I perfectly agree with, you know, gay marriage and so on.
Who could disagree with that?
Yeah.
as a woman to the left, right?
Because the left, of course, tends to be very pro-feminist and claims to be pro-women.
I wonder how many feminists, you know, who say, well, you know, we've got to have a female leader of a Western country.
I wonder how many feminists are then going to be very pro-Marine Le Pen, who's rather a right-wing woman who's trying to become head of the French government over the next little while.
And I don't think they're going to be.
You are, you know, an ambitious, intelligent, competent, accomplished filmmaker who's taking on a challenging subject that no lady and few men have dared to go down spelunking through this particular area of masculinity.
And the left's relationship with you as a woman who's not conforming to the leftist dictates or dictums is, to me, quite fascinating.
Has there been a change in your relationship to liberalism and to the left?
Because you've taken this huge arc from left-friendly topics to topics that the left may have a few issues with.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Where I stand right now is I really feel uprooted.
I don't feel like I've been able to put my flag down on any territory right now and say, this is what I'm endorsing.
This is what I'm standing behind.
This is what I stand for.
Because after making the red pill, I... It really turned my world upside down with everything I thought I knew to be true and how I saw the world is now uprooted.
Including my liberal leanings, I still am a registered Democrat, but...
This year in particular with the election and also working on finishing the red pill and realizing how often the liberal media twisted my words and my story and tried to make me into the monster that I saw them making the men's rights activists into, which I'm not a men's rights activist today.
I don't call myself an MRA. I'm a filmmaker that made a film about men's rights activists.
But, you know, just for doing that and not making a hit piece on MRAs, the liberal media and my liberal friends have really, you know, drawn a line in the sand and said, you're not with us, you're now against us.
And, you know, so I am extremely frustrated with liberals and Democrats.
And I think I'm even more upset because When you are part of a family or a group or a tribe that you have been fighting for and fighting with for so long, you have a certain level of expectation and you hold your own tribe to a standard of excellence and integrity and truth.
It's been disappointing when I realized that they're not standing for truth and integrity.
So, yeah, I don't know where I stand now.
I haven't accepted a new label just because I've dropped a few.
That's another thing with making this film, and I don't think it's any secret anymore that after making The Red Pill, I have dropped the label of feminist.
And what...
I would hear from my feminist friends and family members as they would call me after seeing the film and saying, how could you drop the label?
Why are you not a feminist anymore?
So what, you don't care about women's rights?
You don't care about reproductive rights?
You don't care about XYZ? And I find it really fascinating that just dropping a label of feminists would...
People now think that I'm anti-women or promote violence against women or anything like that, which couldn't be further from the truth.
I'll always support women's rights and empowering girls and women and, you know, I... But when you do take on a label that does have political implications and actions throughout history to say,
well, this is what feminists have done, and they have fought against joint custody, and they have fought against including boys as victims of rape, and they have fought against all these things that I would think are gender equality issues, and I am truly for gender equality, and Human rights in general.
And so how could I be a part of a group that is not walking what they preach?
But yeah, so I kind of went on to feminist after talking about liberals.
But yeah, I just want to see...
I want to see people really...
Stand up for what I think are good virtues like human rights.
I'm sorry, my cat's playing with a rock right now.
I don't know what territory is standing up for all human rights right now and wanting to protect rights and also fight for rights that need to be upheld.
Well, I would invite you into the realm called philosophy, right?
Because when you exit labels, when you exit dogma, when you exit ideology, and I was this way inclined when I was younger, which is an annoying argument.
Well, you see, I'm older than when I was younger.
But no, I mean, I was into objectivism, and that was my particular dogma.
And then at some point, you just say, I'm going to follow reason and evidence, whatever they lead, and my tribe is going to be people who think clearly, not anybody who has conclusions that they're emotionally bound to.
And that's, you know, why sort of I work on this as a philosophy show rather than a here are the answers show, but a methodology of thinking, Socratic reasoning and all that kind of stuff.
It's a challenge because, you know, we have this tribal gravity well and we're a tribal species.
You know, as Aristotle said, whoever would live alone is either an animal, a beast or a god.
And having, you know, none of those really apply to human beings.
So we have this gravity well.
We want to join this particular tribe.
But if the cost of joining that tribe is a loss of individuation, well, it seems a little bit too high a price to pay for me and I think for others.
So that is a real challenge.
And the funny thing about, and I go back and forth on this, so I'm not going to give any particular answers.
I want your thoughts on it if possible.
When it comes to sort of the lefty, feministy, more radical kind of thinking, So you did some movie making which portrayed, I shouldn't say portrayed, which gave a voice.
A voice for men.
And, you know, feminists are also like, give women a voice.
Let's have a voice.
I don't really know what that means.
But, you know, apparently it just means let's hear people's opinions and perspectives.
And we like multiculturalism and different, you know, perspectives and so on.
And you gave, I think, a fair hearing to the grievances of these activists, which I thought was noble and an honorable thing to do.
And I would say that of any activist who wanted to get their opinions front and center.
Now, the people who oppose that, part of me wonders if they say, well, those people are evil.
You know, by definition, they're just completely evil and immoral, and you don't give a voice to them because that's supporting immorality and evil and a dark tribe of testicular monsters or whatever the particular tattoo of the month is.
But on the other hand, Cassie, I think it's fairly clear as well that there's a lot of financial incentive behind all of this as well.
that if men's rights are more respected and honored, and if some of the things around that men want are put into practice, then certain women are going to lose some power.
I mean, women have a lot of power in the family court system at the moment, and if men get more equality in that, then women are going to lose the power to affect their will through that particular court system.
And some women will benefit, and some women will be frustrated.
And you can look at it, Title IX funding, you can look at it, funding for women's shelters and so on.
It is a little bit of a zero-sum game, And I wonder if it's all like, well, they're evil, and that's just the fundamental moral core of what we're working with, or, well, I'm going to call them evil because if they get what I want, if they get what they want, I get less of what I want in a sort of material Benjamin-style way.
And I don't know if you have any particular thoughts about that, but I go back and forth on which is which, or maybe it's just two sides of the same coin.
I... I think that there's a lot of industries making a lot of money off of the idea that women are disadvantaged.
And to keep that, I guess for lack of a better word, trade going is more beneficial to organizations like...
Oh gosh, I'm really going to get attacked by saying this.
But organizations like Ms.
and Jezebel and...
The Commission for Women and Girls and any kind of, well, the domestic violence industry for women's shelters, apparently over $1 billion industry, violence against women.
So there's a lot of money exchanging hands on the idea that women are disadvantaged.
And if you add men to that equation, then it's no longer a gender issue.
It's a human issue, just like hunger, where there are people who are suffering.
And apparently that doesn't have as easy of a marketing strategy to just say all people...
Many people suffer violence when they're children or in relationships or with the roles that they're expected to live out to have a family.
If all people suffer, then...
I mean, it's kind of like we'll get in line with all the other issues that there are to donate to and funds.
But if it's just one gender and it's women and it's this image of, you know, like domestic violence posters of women cowering with a black eye, it's a very powerful image where it gets a visceral reaction out of especially men to see a hurting woman who is abused.
Yeah, there's a lot of money in this.
And something that I think is good for anyone to ask themselves about feminism is when will they achieve what they're seeking out to achieve?
And what would that look like?
Because if you do talk to a lot of feminists and what their issues are and what they're saying that they want...
A lot of it wouldn't really work, in effect, or if it's something that you can never achieve.
We always hear that women have it all, that women can't have it all.
Apparently it's also a form of oppression saying that women could be an amazing mother and housewife and also have this amazing career and now this is putting even more pressure on women to do it all and have it all and that's unachievable.
I'm still not sure if feminism is for women having it all or saying that that's oppressing women to say they can have it all.
I haven't figured out where their stance is on that one.
But But basically, there's no perfect world in feminists' eyes of how gender should be treated.
But some of the things that I've been seeing them say that they do like is really concerning.
For instance, there was a documentary...
I think came out last year.
I forget the name of it.
I'm sorry.
But it was about a woman in New York who was in her 40s and never married, never had kids.
And she really wanted to have a child, but she didn't have a man in her life.
So the whole documentary is about her going to a sperm donor and having a child on her own.
so then she interviews all these other women who had children on their own and the dating pool in New York is all these single women to very few single men and so there's apparently this growing movement of women having children through sperm donors and the documentary was really it was like a women empowerment film saying that we don't need a man we can have our own child and a career and a family on our own with our friends to help raise them or whatever but
But really, the message was, you don't need a man.
But it's also saying, children don't need a father.
And, you know, it was a film that was revered in feminist circles.
So I think we need to look at all of this and talk about this discussion of what is the perfect world regarding genders and equality.
And a lot of men's rights activists say that gender role fluidity is important.
So to allow equal opportunity for fathers to be a stay at home dad or to not be the only breadwinner or have that kind of responsibility on solely their shoulders.
So men's rights activists are about wanting to see both gender roles be malleable.
But we also, Erin Pizzi talks a lot about what do children need?
And Erin Pizzi was the founder of the First Women's Shelter.
And she talks a lot about how there is a destruction of the family kind of happening with partly the way that we're trying to remove fathers from the equation.
And.
But also, you know, just with this whole female empowerment dialogue that's happening right now, or has been happening for a really good, strong five years, I would say.
In the past five years, it's been, at least in my news feeds, it's all covered in my Facebook feeds and Twitter, is It's about uplifting girls and women and to the point where you're willing to step over men and make fun of them and not see the gender hypocrisy in that.
I think the best solution right now for where we can head with gender equality is shining light on the hypocrisy and the double standards.
And if we educate, especially young people, more about the evolution of gender roles, why they were in place, not to demonize all men saying that they created this Horrible world for women to live in that was under their thumb and that kept them in the kitchen without rights.
That's That's not a true, you know, gender studies classroom to talk about the genders.
We need to look at what men went through, historically speaking, and their provider and protector role and what that meant and how that wasn't, you know, patriarchal privilege to be drafted to war and to, you know, have no, even still today, and not have rights to your own child, whether it's the right to know that you have a child.
There are men who, when the child turns 18, then they're told, oh, by the way, that 18-year-old is yours and you owe me now 18 years of child support.
No repercussions or accountability for the woman lying for that long.
You know, there's just...
But all of those gender issues that affect men are completely ignored from the discussion And feminists will say that we need women to have equality before we can talk about men.
But, you know, how can you even really say that we're only going to focus on one side of the seesaw until we get equality and then we can make, well, okay, if we're going to use the seesaw equation, maybe it's because if we talk about men, then women are going to have a little less privilege and Well, when feminists say we'll talk about men's issues when women reach equality, spoiler, women by their definition will never reach equality.
That conversation will never happen because this is the leftist game, right?
Find any field of human endeavor, find statistical differences between various groups and ascribe all the differences to bigotry, sexism, racism, some phobia, whatever it's going to be.
And the reality is that these...
These sort of promos for women's shelters and so on, the show, the bruised woman, the tear, the sadness and so on.
Well, they rely on the very virtue that most feminists say don't exist.
They rely on men saying, oh, that's terrible.
We've got to do something about it.
We've got to protect these women.
But of course, they're saying, well, it's a misogynist, patriarchal rape culture where men love to beat up on women.
It's like, well, men should be giving those pictures the thumbs up and they should be posing them with like making jokes.
But they're relying on the very chivalry.
And concern and care towards women that they kind of claim doesn't exist.
And that's kind of, to me, the two-faced aspect of it.
And again, just understanding evolution and biology, it makes perfect sense why women would be treasured and men would be expendable for the simple reason that sperm be common and eggs be rare.
And the amount of investment that's needed for a man is considerably less than the amount of investment that's needed for a woman.
And if the tribe has 20 women and one man, then it can regrow itself.
And if it has 20 men and one woman, it kind of can't.
So this is just basic biology.
This is how people have developed.
And the last thing, you know, I think a lot of groups, and I sort of speak for men maybe a little bit here, a lot of groups are like, when groups come with frustrations and some legitimate claims of mistreatment and so on, it's like, okay, here you go.
And then they come back for more.
Okay, you go.
Come back for more.
Okay.
At some point, you're like, wait a minute.
Am I just caught up in some kind of scam here?
Like, is this ever, ever going to end?
Is this ever going to work?
Because right now, a lot of the feminist ideals have been achieved.
And first and foremost, since they consider a lot of masculinity to be toxic and negative and so on.
Well, first of all, then, children who are raised without fathers should do a lot better in society than children raised with fathers.
And of course, the complete opposite is true.
And I've got a whole presentation called The Truth About Single Moms, which people can refer to below.
The outcomes for a single mom raised children are absolutely disastrous, but they kind of got what they want.
You've got daycare teachers overwhelmingly female, you know, raising a lot of kids from, you know, pretty much weeks after birth onwards.
You've got primary school teachers overwhelmingly female because any man who wants to teach a child must be a pedophile.
Yeah, try that with any other group.
Yeah, all black men.
Yeah, good luck with that, right?
So you have, like up until sort of junior high or high school, it's an overwhelmingly matriarchal shaping environment.
And so given that women are so central to shaping children's lives and society, shouldn't boys be a lot better?
But it seems as female influence over early childhood for boys has grown, so has complaints about masculinity.
And it's like, well, wait a minute, because there wasn't rape culture around when I was a kid, but now that we've got two generations of men raised by women, now men are incredibly dysfunctional.
It's like, well, Well, then what?
If men are not necessary, but women make men worse, what are we supposed to do?
Summon robots and space aliens to raise our children?
I mean, what's the answer?
Yeah.
That's not even a question.
I'm not going to pretend that there's a question in that.
Just take it where you want.
Well, I'm supposed to be due a nephew in a few weeks, my first young boy in my family, and I'm hoping that by the time he's in his teen years, things will be better because that's really when boys start hitting puberty is the time when the suicide rates start spiking up ahead of girls.
And Warren Farrell talks about it being when Boys learn their masculine role than the suicide rates double and triple and quadruple.
But I... I think, you know, this dialogue that girls are to be protected and never hurt a girl and boys are, you know, the boys are stupid, throw rocks at them kind of mentality that if you believe someone's been privileged throughout history and that they're the oppressors, then it's okay to make fun of them and step all over them and throw rocks at them because they deserve it.
This is their, you know...
Only if we accept historical guilt.
Only if we accept patrilineal guilt, right?
That men are responsible for what happened in ancient Athens, where, by the way, 90% of the population were slaves, which meant 45% of the male population were enslaved.
But somehow it's a patriarchy.
Let's just brush over that.
But this idea that guilt passes from father to son, and that that which was, I would argue, somewhat biologically dictated and determined throughout history is somehow the moral responsibility of boys in the here and now— That is an extremely weak argument, if not downright corrupt argument.
And what it does, of course, is it allows you to have your two-minute hate against a designated target, that all your life's frustrations can be summed up, boiled down, and stuffed into one patriarchal myth-maker, and then you can just have your two-minute hate against that, which generally goes on for a little bit longer than two minutes a day, and then think that you've done something good to improve the world.
But I think that...
You know, creating straw men of negative patriarchal dominance and then hating on them and then destroying to some degree the lives of boys in the here and now.
I don't really feel that's a big giant healing wand to wave over the world.
Yeah.
One thing I would like to share, because this happened recently and I haven't been able to share it on any interview, is one of my dear, long feminist friends, one of my most feminist friends of all my friends, went to see the red pill about a week ago and called me demanding to know why I dropped went to see the red pill about a week ago and called And so I asked how her experience watching the film went.
And so I want to share this because I think this is an interesting example of the times that we're living in.
So, I So she took her boyfriend of, I guess they've been dating for about a month, to go see the film.
And she said that she entered the theater and she said it was mostly white men.
And she saw a Make America Great hat.
And she actually said...
Sorry, go ahead.
So she said she actually had to leave.
Because she was triggered.
These are her words.
I'm not trying to, you know, over-sensationalize the story at all.
So she said she was triggered.
She had to step out of the room and catch her breath before going back into the theater to sit down and watch the two-hour-long film.
Oh, sorry to interrupt you.
Sorry.
But, like, if I went to go and see a feminist film and there would be mostly women in the audience and I saw a I'm with her Hillary t-shirt, I'd, like, have to go out and breathe into a paper bag in the hallway before I could go back in.
Okay, got it.
Yes, exactly.
So she went back in and sat down and watched the film with her boyfriend.
And, oh, sorry, the person who was hosting the event, I don't host all the screenings.
We have hosts throughout different countries who request to host a screening of the Red Pill.
So the host was introducing the film, and they mentioned how they...
These are her words summarizing, so I'm not quite sure how this played out, but she said that he lives in a misandric culture where he feels that he's the target of a lot of hateful statements and that kind of thing.
And he mentioned how rape culture and this idea of rape culture is putting a target on all men's backs.
They're all the enemy kind of thing.
So she said that she felt extremely uncomfortable by his introduction to the film because...
She said he was representing the film as already being anti-misandry and anti-rape culture, and so she didn't feel welcome there, and she actually said she felt unsafe at the screening.
So then she watched the film, and I actually didn't get a lot of her comments on the film itself, which was, I would have loved to know, because I think the standalone film, anyone can watch it and get something from it, even if you're the momentary.
You know, staunch feminists out there.
But after the screening they did do a Q&A but she said she had to leave because she said she felt unsafe.
So her and her boyfriend went home.
And she, for the first time, found out that he didn't consider himself a feminist.
And she was shocked and appalled.
And he said he didn't know a lot about feminism, but what he saw of feminists in the Red Pill movie, it made him not like feminists.
So then she told me that she felt like the film didn't represent feminism well enough, and so she felt she had to basically sell him on what her version of feminism is.
Wait, Ms.
Magazine doesn't represent feminism well enough?
Yeah.
Okay, sorry, go ahead.
Just trying to follow the story and keep my lip button.
Go on.
So then he started to explain to her what he experienced in his life that came out of him by watching the Red Pill movie.
These experiences that he started to realize were related to him being male.
And I don't know.
She didn't tell me what those experiences were, but we can have an idea.
So he started to explain...
Trauma in his life.
And, and then he ended up saying after watching the red pill, I feel like I would be a men's rights activist.
So she, uh, they had biggest, I mean, they only been dating about a month, but they had a huge argument.
She left.
And so the next morning she called me demanding to know why I stopped calling myself feminist.
And she wanted, I asked her about what happened.
And so she told me she had this huge argument with her boyfriend.
And she now says that, uh, She's going to have to break up with him.
So what I gather is because she's a feminist, he says he's not.
He said he may be a men's rights activist now watching the film.
And she said, there's no way I could be with a men's rights activist.
So anyways, after hearing her reaction to this whole experience, And this is by far one of the worst I've heard of people watching The Red Pill.
I have had a lot of feminist friends watch the film and walked away okay and actually more enlightened than saying thank you for making this film and I'm going to look at men or my own son or my own husband in new and better ways now.
So this is a rare experience.
But it did make me wonder, what about labels?
Because she saw the Make America Great in the theater and that made her trigger to walk out and have to catch her breath finding out that her boyfriend didn't call himself a feminist made her upset although I'm sure he's for women's rights and he doesn't beat women or anything like that he just didn't have the label and then for him to say he's had his own experiences being mistreated for being a man and he said that maybe he could be a men's rights activist and that was the final straw for her that she couldn't
stay with a men's rights activist So what is that about?
Well, the first thing that I get, Cassie, and I'm not even going to pretend to be politically correct here, the first thing that I get from this is if you can't handle contrary information to your particular ideology, you have no business in the realm of ideas.
And so if she goes into – she trusts you as a friend, right?
So she's not going to a Klan rally or something like that, right?
And if she sees a hat of a Trump supporter and feels unsafe and has to leave, that is so stereotypically hysterical Victorian female couch-fainting, get me the smelling salts, Blanche Dubois nonsense that it's like, okay, well – I think we're good to
go.
This is sort of an argument that, you know, I'd have much more respect for feminists if they embraced different ideas.
You know, like when you went to see the head of Miz, you said, well, I want to get different ideas in the movie.
She's like, good, good.
It's like, well, how am I getting different ideas in Miz magazine and talking about what men are interested in?
So it just seems like the worst stereotype is say, well, you know, women shouldn't be in the realm of ideas because they're too emotional.
And they can't handle it.
They're not rigorous enough.
They're not logical enough.
They get too hysterical and so on.
And it's like, I don't particularly believe that because I've been influenced by an enormous number of female intellectuals.
But this particular example, Cassie, is like, hmm, he's not helping the stereotype very much.
I was too emotional to have an opinion around me that differed from me.
It's like...
That's called being an intellectual.
That's called being in the realm of ideas.
Like, you've been exposed to a lot of hostility as a result of this movie.
You're still getting up.
You're still doing your thing.
You're still doing your interviews and so on.
So, I don't know.
I'd hate to say something as simple as, like, well, you've got to toughen up, but it's like, you know, you live in a country where Trump won by a landslide.
You know, the fact that you saw one Make America Great Again hat and, you know, virtually fainted on the...
Popcorn carpet?
All that means is that you're surrounding yourself with an echo chamber, and that makes you weaker, not stronger.
You must expose yourself to alternate viewpoints.
You must expose yourself to the best of the best of the worst arguments you can think.
The best people with the best arguments with the worst ideas you could possibly imagine.
And that's how you grow strong.
You don't go to the gym and lift a feather and then say, I'm Arnold Schwarzenegger.
You've got to push against the stuff that makes you uncomfortable.
That's how you grow.
If you want the light to get in, you've got to put a crack in there somewhere.
And so if she is unable to emotionally handle differing opinions, she's kind of feeding into the whole myth that women are too emotional to make much sense in public discourse.
And I wish she wouldn't do that.
There are women who have great stuff to say in a public discourse.
Yeah.
Every screening I attend or hear about, there's always some weird stories about someone who really had a panic attack by going to the screening.
One of them, another kind of, I don't know what to make of this example, was, and I hopefully don't get in trouble for being too honest about this one, but it was a gender consultant for Marvel, Disney, and Pixar.
Oh, no.
So she came to the screening, I assume, to have hopefully a broader understanding about the men's side of gender equality.
But afterwards, she came up to me and she said that she didn't feel like feminism was represented well enough in the film and that I should have interviewed different feminists.
She didn't think or she didn't feel?
She didn't feel like...
See, now that's the thing, right?
The fascism of feels is like, just because you're upset doesn't mean that other...
And if you can't control your own emotions, you always end up having to control other people.
And I don't want to interrupt your story, but just that bit where she says, I didn't feel.
It's like, no, no, no, that's not what this is about.
It's a public discourse about ideas.
Your feelings don't particularly matter.
But anyway, I'm sorry.
Well, I mean, you know, executive editor of Ms.
Magazine and the vice president of the Feminist Majority Foundation is in the film, so, you know, that's a pretty big, you know, heavy hitter there.
I did communicate with Gloria Steinem during the making of the Red Pill, and I asked if I could interview her for the film.
She said she didn't know enough about the men's rights movement to speak on it in the film, right?
That's her job!
It's part of her job.
Anyway, go on.
Sorry.
So she told me to interview Michael Kimmel.
And so that's how I found Dr.
Michael Kimmel, who's included in the film.
And he is one of the leading kind of feminists in, well, definitely one of the leading male feminists, but also leading the charge for the discussion of men's issues within feminism.
So I interviewed him in the film.
And then we get, you know, reviews of the red pill saying that Oh, Cassie J made an odd choice of the three main feminists she interviewed.
Two of them are male scholars.
So, you know, well, how can men be talking about feminism for them?
But, you know, it's a film about the men's rights movement.
So if I'm getting the feminist perspective, isn't it okay to have Male feminists giving the feminist perspective on men's issues within the gender discussion of feminism.
But, you know, Gloria Steinem declined to be interviewed, so she sent me to Michael Kimmel.
So I told the gender consultant for Marvel that this is how I found these feminists to interview in the film.
And we also had feminists who declined at the very, like the night before interviewing, saying that they were worried for their safety after researching the men's rights movement online, that if they were a part of this film, that they would be doxed or there would be, you know, hate mail coming to them, that kind of thing.
So, you know, it was difficult to get feminists to be interviewed for the film.
But, you know, I think the scholars that we do have in the film are a good representation of what feminism stands for or what they'll say in regards to men's issues.
Yeah, I got to think that's maybe a little bit of projection, this fear of – and no doubt that women, as men, face a lot of negative repercussions from public statements around sensitive topics.
I'm not going to try and say that doesn't happen.
But I've only – I think I've spoken at one or two men's rights conferences.
One in Detroit, we had to get up on stage in the face of a bomb threat and – I don't know that many feminist conferences have been cancelled because of bomb threats from men's rights activists, but I certainly know that there have been a lot of challenges to men's rights conferences and threats of violence from feminists.
So I think if there's a reason to feel fearful, I think it would have more to do with bomb threats than emails.
So...
And, you know, the last – and what I mentioned in that was the women's role in the cycle of violence is something that we have a huge blind spot to for a variety of reasons I've gone into before.
I'm just touching it briefly here.
Women are primary caregivers.
Violence in childhood is a strong predicator of violence in adulthood.
And so if we live in a violent world, a lot of it has to do with female caregiver violence towards children, spanking, hitting, yelling, verbal abuse, and so on.
And I've had Erin Pitsy on the show and here, and she talked about, as you, I think, well point out in the documentary, I don't want to give anything away.
That there's, you know, some confession of women saying, oh yes, I'm violent.
Yes, I'll hit someone at the drop of a hat.
And if we can focus on, you know, feminists say, well, where there's a power disparity, the violence is even worse.
And there's no power disparity greater than that of mother and child.
Because a child can't leave.
A child's got no shelter to go to.
A child can't call the cops and have the mother taken away.
And so, sure, if the man's the primary caregiver and he's three times the size and he's hitting her, there's a power disparity there that makes the violence even worse.
but we don't really talk about the power disparity between mothers and their children and the violence that's involved in that.
And I think if we could focus on, you know, you'd say men and women, but given that women are the primary caregivers for most of the world's children, get women to stop hitting their children, get women to stop abusing their children, I think we'd be a generation or two away from a staggeringly peaceful society.
And I'd not noticed feminists focusing on that saying, well, look, look, if men are raised angry towards women, well, who's raising them?
Women.
I wonder if that could have anything to do with the fact that men may be angry towards women if the women hit them consistently, which they seem to do.
Like in England, 80% of women have confessed to hitting their baby before the baby is one year old.
That is a lot of violence to be, I'm not even talking about circumcision, which is a whole other topic, but that's a lot of violence to pour on a very young mind from female caregivers.
I don't know, could it be possible that you could, you know, grow up with some resentment towards women if you've been beaten around like a ping pong ball with a mallet for your early years.
And And I think focusing on that, like if we just take the ideology out of it and say, okay, let's look at the real roots of violence.
Where does it come from?
Childhood trauma.
Who's most in charge of childhood?
Women.
So if we can get women to parent more peacefully and still put responsibility on men and all that, That would be a fantastic way to help break the cycle of violence.
But we take female dominance of childhood out of the equation when trying to talk about the cycle of violence in society.
I just don't think we can solve it without focusing on that.
But focusing on that seems to be an extraordinarily difficult thing for a lot of people.
Yes.
If you look up a lot of the...
I guess famous serial killers throughout history.
Many of them grew up in fatherless households with abusive mothers.
And yeah, there is something to a mother's abuse that really is deep-rooted in people when they're growing up.
Or just look at the black experience in inner-city America where you have massive majorities of single mothers and gang culture and violence and so on.
It's Something we need to look at, but it's just one of these things that's really hard for people.
Maybe that could be your next movie.
I'm just kidding.
But that would be...
That is a tough thing for people to look at.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I actually am a little bit worried about...
Oh, gosh.
See, this is going to piss off feminists.
So...
When I'm working, you know, 60-hour weeks and just a stressful job, I mean, waking this phone was extremely difficult.
You're more irritable.
You're sleep-deprived.
And I could at least tell from my own experience that you're more short-tempered.
And I think mothers, you know, once I decide to have a family, if I am able to have a family or whatever, I don't I don't think I could work as much as I do now because it's not a very loving, friendly household when you have both parents who are stressed out and working extreme hours, not getting enough sleep, and then having short tempers.
That's not the right kind of environment to raise a child in.
I wrote a book a year before my daughter was born, and since my daughter was born, I haven't written a book.
I mean, you can't have it all.
You have to make your choices.
Yeah.
I don't want to have around my deathbed, I don't want to have a bunch of books, you know, like, you know, absorb my tears of loneliness because, you know, I didn't know my child or whatever.
Sorry, go on.
Yeah.
Well, Anne, I just say that I think some of us are going to hate me for that because it's basically saying that women should pull back from work if they're going to have a family.
Are you sure?
So should men.
Right.
And, you know, I wish we could have that conversation more often openly without making it People being offended by that kind of conversation that, oh, it's perpetuating the patriarchy or it's keeping women in the house barefoot and pregnant.
But we should talk about that.
What do children really need?
And I think the nurturing, loving, patient side of a parent, whatever their gender, is important for a child to have.
And that includes pulling back from work and trying to make it a safe place.
But a nice space for children to...
For children to grow up and, you know, having this dual income households and, you know, the divorce.
I mean, there's so many other factors involved, but like the divorce rates with, you know, a single mother.
My parents divorced when I was young and my mom was working while she was single after the divorce.
And, you know, as a kid, you learned how to make macaroni and cheese by yourself and, you know, got to figure out how to get the homework done if we're going to keep the grades up.
And it was difficult.
And so I... I urge any new parents out there to really try to think about that children do need a parent that's more involved in the home and can really nurture and pay attention to the child and not have two full-time working parents who are stressed out all the time easily yelling at each other or to the child.
We take time off to go to school, of all people, right?
So Angela Lansbury, an actress who's in her 90s now, I think still working, was a complete workaholic and her kids ended up being drawn into the Manson cult.
You know, boy, there's a sign that things aren't going particularly well.
She had to airlift them out to Ireland.
Parenting is pay me now, pay me later.
You can say, okay, well, I don't want to spend all this time getting involved and invested in my kids when they're young.
It's like, okay, well, then your teenage years are just going to be horrible.
And you're going to say, well, somehow I'm going to have all the time to deal with the mess in their teenage years when they're, you know, don't have the bond and don't have the trust and don't have the intimacy and you don't have the natural authority that comes from investing in your kids.
How are you going to have the time to deal with all the messes that are going to come up in the teenage years if you don't have the time now?
And so, yeah, do it early, do it right, and everything goes nicely from there.
And I say this as a guy who's been a stay-at-home dad for almost eight years.
It is an easy job if you do it well, and it's an impossible job if you don't.
That's good advice.
All right.
Well, listen, I really appreciate your time.
I suspect we could keep chatting, but let's give the audience a time to absorb all of the various stuff we've batted back and forth.
And of course, we have to wait for the avalanche of, you know, you get massively complimentary and massively negative comments that come in from this kind of show.
But I do invite people that we're just batting ideas back and forth.
Nobody's armed.
Nobody's wearing a MAGA hat.
And so I just wanted to remind people, of course, I can't recommend the film enough.
See it with other people.
And theredpillmovie.com is...
Now, I got my own special media preview, but what is the schedule for getting it out there?
How can people who are excited to see the film, Cassie, how can they best go and get a hold of it now?
As we speak right now, what link can we put below?
Right now.
Yes, theredpillmovie.com.
If you go to theredpillmovie.com, you can see the film where our screenings are happening all around the world.
So just go there periodically.
Also follow me on Twitter because I always post when we have new screenings.
So my Twitter handle is Cassie underscore J-A-Y-E. And then we're hoping to be available worldwide online early 2017.
Fantastic.
And did you make it for the standards to get into Oscar nomination territory?
I mean, I know there needs to be a certain number of screenings and all that.
How did you do with that?
Yes, we are qualified for the 89th Academy Awards.
You know, who knows what's going to happen.
I know it's very tilted right now.
Well, Trump wasn't expected to win either, so, you know, you never know.
Yeah, you never know.
I don't know.
We'll see.
But we are qualified, so at least we're in the hands of 300 jury members for the Oscars, so that's cool.
