British barrister Barbara Hewson caused a bit of a stir last week when she called for the age of consent in Britain to be lowered to 13 so as to end the alleged “persecution of old men” like those arrested in the wake of the recent Jimmy Savile scandal, which revealed a widespread culture of sexual exploitation of underage girls (and some boys) at the BBC in the 1970s.
Now one female Men’s Rights Activist connected to hate site A Voice for Men has done Hewson one better, arguing that the real culprits in these scandals weren’t the predatory adult men but the girls they victimized.
Janet Bloomfield, a fairly regular contributor to terrorist-manifesto-posting AVFM who is better known as JudgyBitch, writes on her blog that:
[B]asically, the girls were groupies. They wanted all the benefits of hanging out with a big star and they understood it came with a price and they paid it, perhaps reluctantly, but with full knowledge that the trips to London and the fags and the sweet weren’t free. …
And now they are claiming the MEN abused THEM? Looks to me like it was the other way around.
Yes, Bloomfield apparently feels that these poor little rich men were robbed of cigarettes and candy and trips to London by predatory teenage girls. She continues:
It’s a story as old as bloody time. Young women with nothing to offer but their youth and sexuality chase after powerful men in exchange for favors. If we are going to arrest every powerful man who has ever availed himself of willing women, we are gonna need to build a whole lot of jails.
Uh, Judgy, in case you missed the point of the whole debate here, we’re not talking about women. We’re talking about girls. In the case of BBC broadcaster Stuart Hall, one of the victims that he has admitted to assaulting was nine years old at the time. Nine. Savile’s youngest alleged victim was an eight-year-old boy, and dozens of his alleged assaults were upon children in hospitals.
In the end, Bloomfield kind of, sort of, admits that the men may have behaved badly in these cases. But she still wants them to face zero legal repercussions.
Powerful men always have and always will delight in young women hunting them. Young women always have and always will hunt for powerful men. Both sides are equally culpable. Both sides are engaging in abuse. Both sides are behaving shamefully. Both side are being idiots.
But only one side is being held criminally responsible? Bullshit. If the girls are not going to be strung up on charges of solicitation and prostitution, and I absolutely do NOT think they should be, then fairness and equality under the law dictates the men get a pass, too.
Again, you may notice, Bloomfield cannot seem to decide whether or not these girls are in fact girls or “young women,” and in the two consecutive paragraphs right above you’ll notice she slides effortlessly between the two. Perhaps her desire to tag these girls “women” is an admission that, at least on some unconscious level, she knows what she’s arguing is beyond the moral pale.
Elsewhere in her post, she puts up pictures of underage girls whom she seems to think would be impossible to distinguish from adults. Here’s one, of a twelve-year-old model. (She also includes a creepily sexualized picture of the same model at age ten.)
Anyone unable to tell that this is a picture of a child, not an adult, shouldn’t be having sex with anyone.
And anyone as morally deficient as JudgyBitch shouldn’t be judging anyone.
+1.
Yeah, I agree with the rest of the bunch. The reason it creeped me out a bit was that it seems like somewhere, deep down, anyone has gotta realize that grown-up men who wants to bang fourteen-year-olds rather than grown-up women are of a pretty sleazy kind, but you don’t wanna taint your memories, so you pretend as if they were awesome people.
That’s not to say that any fourteen-year-old who has sex with adults is necessarily harmed by the experience either, just that the adults in question probably don’t have the greatest motives. And yeah, although I’m not at bottom a utilitarian I think utilitarianish thinking totally has its place when making laws, which is why we ought to have an age of consent, although it will always be to some extent arbitrary and although it will inevitably cut off some teens who are ready to have sex.
BTW, there was a pingback from JB, and then it vanished? She’s so weird.
Judgy Bitch terrifies me. So does the thought of her being a college professor next year (this will be her new career, according to her blog site).
The main theme of her posts seems to be that women are evil sluts who deserve to be mistreated by men. While this isn’t a new MRA theme, the lengths she goes to to promote it with endless rants and dozens of offensive graphics is batshit crazy.
I used to think Sunshine Mary, author of the Sunshine Mary and the Dragon blog, was bad. For instance, last week Sunshine defined legitimate rape as when “a women gets hit over the head, dragged into the bushes and penetrated.” But, even she doesn’t go as far as to suggest that women deserve to be raped.
Judgy Bitch is in a class by herself. Gosh, I hope someone stops her from spreading her poison soon.
Could JB possibly be realising that she’s defending the indefensible?
Nah, probably not.
I keep wanting to sit JB down and draw Venn diagrams for her.
See, JB, this circle A represents young women who happily pursue older, richer, higher status men in search of mutally satisfying relationships.
And this overlapping circle B represents young women who are abused by older, richer, higher status men who use their money and status to try and avoid any consequneces for that abuse. And see how it overlaps with circle A, because just because you might be looking for a relationship with an older, richer, higher status man doesn’t mean that an older, richer, higher status man (possibly the same one, possibly a different one) can’t rape or sexually abuse you. Because looking for a relationship with one particular man doesn’t mean you’ve given automatic sexual consent to every man with similar characteristics to do anything he likes to you.
And this circle C over here, that doesn’t touch either circle A or circle B? That represents children abused by older, richer, higher status men who use their money and status to try and avoid any consequneces for that abuse. See how it doesn’t touch either of the other two circles? That’s because it represents CHILDREN!
Sigh.
On the pingback, I accidentally let that through, then deleted it.
I would happily allow pingbacks but for some reason they seem to screw up navigation of comments on wordpress.
In any case, she has a post up about this.
http://judgybitch.com/2013/05/13/way-to-miss-the-fucking-point-idiot-manboobz-fails-kindergarten-math-big-surprise-there/
OMGs, JB’s wilfully lacking in reading comprehension. Well, there’s a surprise.
Can’t wait to see your response to that, if you’ll be making one.
She’s willfully lacking in ANY sort of comprehension, way for her to double down. Oh, JB, I can’t wait until they kick you out of the clubhouse. That day’s gonna be a “bitch” for you.
She’s just so painful.
Anyone who’s read it want to quote from it? I don’t want to give a pedo-apologist any page hits.
Maybe some day she’ll decide to live out the other part of her nym and actually judge people who deserve it.
Oh, I see now. She wants 9 year olds not to be prosecuted for accepting sweets from older men who then rape them. Because 9 is less than 13. But 15 year olds definitely to be prosecuted for accepting sweets/coffee from older men who then rape them. Because accepting sweets/coffee means it’s not really rape-rape. because 15 is greater than 13.
Silly me with my PhD in mathematical logic. Expecting maths. And logic.
You know the real crime here?
Those girls probably FORCE those poor powerful men to have pillows on their couches. Pillows!!
Cassandra: BTW, there was a pingback from JB, and then it vanished? She’s so weird.
titianblue: A glimmer of realisation that pinging to this didn’t wasn’t going to help her (as it might end up a top-post?
Ah… nope. She is dumber than a box of rocks.
Amused: But they need to have pillows. What if the cushions on the couch are too hard for their underpadded man-butts?
I take it there is no “don’t offer children gifts as bribes and don’t rape them either” option?
Where does JB draw the line? Is it 15, or is a 13-year-old fair game if she wears makeup and short skirts and sort of seems like she’s asking for it? What about 12? A really mature 11? /appalled sarcasm
JB is a disgusting piece of filth. Truly reprehensible.
CassandraSays, The “don’t offer children gifts as bribes and don’t rape them either” option comes standard with feminism, which is why JB rejects it. Sigh.
@Pecunium
You know, in the past, I’ve asked Judgybleh to clarify that point for us — several times. She’s yet to get back to us. Maybe she makes a fine distinction between pillows (which are misandry) and cushions (which are man-friendly), that my feminist brain is just not grasping? We’ll see.
The women who were interested in me when I was 15-18 (and, perhaps a bit younger, but I was too obtuse to notice it then, and can’t be sure I’m not misreading it from here), weren’t telling me how “smart”, or “mature” for my age. I don’t know quite what they saw in me. I suppose I wasn’t quite as callow as I seem to think (again, from the remove of time) as I seem to think I was.
And I was in social circle where I’d been dealing with adults more than kids, and women in their early 20s were a lot more likely than young women in their teens to go after what they wanted. I found out, in a few cases, after the fact that some of my contemporaries were interested in me, but didn’t know how to go about making any sort of real move.
Adults are better at that; if they are rebuffed by a teenager they are able to walk away. The fellow teen is probably forced (school, church group, etc.) to keep interacting with the person. If they date/have sex then there is the aftermath (breakup/rumor). All of the “secret” non-virgins I knew of were those who hadn’t had sex with anyone in the social circles they inhabited. A lot of the, “sluts” were virgins.
Which is an aspect of the dynamic that people like JB don’t examine. There are a lot of pressure which make it easy for adults to prey on young people.
Jesus, the FeMra is actively trying to be grosser than the MRAs. Happily digging her way to the core of the Earth!
I know that (as a man) I use pillows on the couch to deal with the back. Sometimes the maker of the couch has failed to account for how my body is built, and the back of the couch isn’t supportive enough.
But what do I know, I’m a male, and I’m a feminist, so I’m just confused about everything, obviously.
Aha, but as a skinny man, shouldn’t they be extra concerned about your lack of butt padding? Maybe there’s a special pillow exemption for those who really need them. Women, with our naturally padded butts, don’t qualify for the exemption, which is why it enrages her to see us buying the pillows to which we are not entitled.
(Sorry guys, I don’t know if I can talk about this awful woman’s attempts to justify child abuse any more. Too depressing.)
I’m incredibly bored, so i’ll try to summarize what little of the judgybitch article i can stand to read
She starts with some random thing about kindergarten that I don’t get at all.
Next: ableism already:
She then explains how 13 is bigger than 9 and that lowering the age of consent would make sex with 9 year olds still illegal, ignoring that 13 year olds are still kids
The most honest part of her post
She then says when women date much younger boy-toys (her words) the culture is silent. She also kept going on about an age gap. I can’t tell if she thinks that relationships between certain age differences should be illegal, or if only certain age differences and one of the persons in the relationship is a kid. She’s kind of hard to understand
While this is creepy, he is still an adult. *shrug* and if she sexually abused him, she should still be prosecuted, but not because of the age gap. Because sexual abuse is wrong.
Then she says that cougars (as in older women after younger men) existing makes it a double standard to not like grown men abusing children.
Then she uses a woman who was 29 sleeping with an 18 year old as the same example of you know, a grown man sleeping with a child.
Then she claims that 15 is not a child, which I might agree with, however 15 isn’t an adult either
then she accuses feminists not liking grown men sleeping with children and teenagers as the same thing as denying women’s agency
huh, i made it through the article