Cassie Jaye (born May 1, 1986) is an American film director, best known for directing the 2016 documentary film The Red Pill about the men's rights movement.
Early life and work
Jaye was born in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, United States, to Nena Jaye. Her parents divorced when she was aged six, and when she was 14 Jaye moved to Las Vegas where she attended Palo Verde High School.
At age eighteen, she moved to Los Angeles, where she was an actress for five years before moving to Marin County, California in 2008. Jaye disliked the stereotypical roles she was cast in, which she described as "cute girl-next-door who always died in horror films." Along with several incidents of sexual harassment, this led her to embrace feminism.
Documentary career
After leaving the acting field, Jaye stayed in films, but as a documentary producer, director, and editor. She formed Jaye Bird Productions, a film production company, in 2008. Her mother is her production partner.
Daddy I Do (2010) Jaye directed and produced the 2010 American documentary film Daddy I Do which examines sex education and sexual abstinence programs in America. Daddy I Do included interviews with the founder of the Silver Ring Thing Denny Pattyn, feminist writer Amanda Marcotte, and Douglas Kirby. The film also discusses personal stories from women facing teenage pregnancy, single motherhood, abortion and sexual assault. Bust magazine praised "Jaye for exposing the truth about abstinence-only programs, the stories of teenagers who buy into it, and its consequences".
In December 2018, Jaye published Daddy I Do on her channel on YouTube.
The Right to Love: An American Family (2012) Jaye directed and produced her second feature documentary film The Right to Love: An American Family in 2012. The film chronicles a family known as "Gay Family Values" on YouTube in the aftermath of California Proposition 8 (2008).
The film premiered in February 2012 at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco, California with guest speaker Zach Wahls. The film went on to screen at the Frameline Film Festival.
In December 2018, Jaye published The Right to Love on her channel on YouTube.
The Red Pill (2016)
Jaye directed and produced the 2016 American documentary film The Red Pill about the men's rights movement. Jaye spent a year interviewing men's rights figures, such as Paul Elam, founder of A Voice for Men; Harry Crouch, president of the National Coalition for Men; Warren Farrell, author of The Myth of Male Power; and Erin Pizzey, who started the first domestic violence shelter for men in the modern world. She also interviewed critics of the movement, such as Ms. magazine executive editor Katherine Spillar, and sociologist Michael Kimmel. Jaye initially relied on her own money to fund the film, as well as that from her mother and her boyfriend, as she found difficulty finding backers from traditional sources after it became known that the film would take a "balanced approach" view of the men's rights movement. In what she called a "last resort", she started a campaign on the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter. The Kickstarter project promised to be a fair and balanced look at the men's rights movement. Her effort was strongly criticized by some feminists including David Futrelle, who runs a website called We Hunted the Mammoth and who said it looked like propaganda. She received support from Breitbart News columnist Milo Yiannopoulos.
Futrelle also accused Jaye of soliciting funding from members of the men's rights movement, which she portrays sympathetically. She has said that the suggestion the film was funded by MRAs (men's rights activists) is "a common lie that keeps spreading," and that the film's backers and producers would have no influence or control of the film. It has also been criticized by Alan Scherstuhl of The Village Voice, among others, for failing to challenge controversial comments and behavior from men's rights figures such as Elam. Jaye has defended the film as being "extremely balanced" and that people were "heard in context without manipulation".
The film had screenings canceled in Australia following petitions, protests, and threats against those holding the screening.