Today I’m going to talk about Janet Bloomfield — AKA JudgyBitch — and her bizarre attack on the original Don’t Be That Guy anti-rape posters in Edmonton. But I’m going to take a bit of a detour first, so bear with me.
I recently picked up a copy of Arthur Koestler’s The Case of the Midwife Toad, a nonfiction account of a scientific feud that provided me with some diverting travel reading and put me in the mood to read more of Koestler’s nonfiction.
But doing some rudimentary Googling I made a rather horrifying discovery about Koestler, whom I’d admired since reading his bracing account of breaking with Communism in the classic The God That Failed anthology: according to a recent biographer, Koestler was a serial rapist and abuser of women.
While some doubt the evidence of rape, even his supporters have had to acknowledge, as one reviewer has written, that Koestler’s “treatment of the many women in his life [was] – even without the ‘rape’ – deeply unpleasant. He was manipulative, demanding, sexually voracious and utterly faithless.”
Koestler himself doesn’t exactly make a persuasive witness for his own defense, having once written to his second wife that “without an element of initial rape there is no delight.”
But in some ways as eye-opening as these revelations has been the response of some of Koestler’s defenders. Case in point: Michael Scammell, the author of a nearly 700-page biography of Koestler. After detailing many instances of Koestler’s mistreatment of women, he writes of the accusations of violent rape:
The exercise of male strength to gain sexual satisfaction wasn’t exactly uncommon at that time … The line between consensual and forced sex was often blurred.
Hey, it was the 1950s. EVERYBODY raped women back then.
The sad fact is that, while this is no defense of Koestler’s alleged behavior, there is an element of truth to Scammell’s claims. The line between consensual sex and rape was often blurred back then. Women were often cajoled, pressured, manipulated, and forced into sex by more physically powerful men. And neither party necessarily recognized what had happened as rape.
The fact that the line between consensual sex and rape is a lot clearer today — and that the rate of rape has declined markedly in the past several decades — is largely due to feminism. Feminism challenged older attitudes and definitions of rape and worked at changing these attitudes through education and awareness campaigns.
Feminist activists worked on teaching — and reteaching — both men and women what is and what isn’t acceptable sexual behavior.
It’s an ongoing process, which continues in awareness campaigns like this one, the Don’t Be That Guy campaign launched in Edmonton (and elsewhere):
It’s pretty clear that there’s a lot more work to be done, as the reactions to this campaign have pretty clearly shown.
Anyone who has read much in the so-called manosphere — on MRA and PUA sites alike — will have noticed a lot of alarmist nonsense about the alleged difficulties men have in determining if a sex act with a woman is consensual or not, as if it is simply impossible, if there is any confusion, for men to open their mouths and ask. MRAs and PUAs act as if obtaining consent “the way feminists want it” would consist of some complicated legalistic procedure that would ruin sex forever.
This is patent nonsense. Clarifying issues of consent about (and during) sex — making anything that’s blurry clear — can be done in less time than it takes to read this sentence.
“Do you like this?” “Yes.”
“Do you want me to [incredibly dirty thing]?” “Yes.”
But, as I said, the MRAs and PUAs complaining about the alleged difficulties of consent don’t really seem to be interested in making things clear. They would, it seems, rather have things as blurry as possible.
And that’s because a lot of them want to return to a world in which, to paraphrase that quote from Scammell above, the exercise of male strength to gain sexual satisfaction isn’t exactly uncommon, and in which the line between consensual and forced sex is often blurred.
They would prefer to return to a world in which it’s considered fair game to “take advantage” of seriously drunk women. One in which all accusations of date rape could be dismissed as the result of a fickle woman changing her mind later.
And that, I think, is why MRAs have such a problem with date rape awareness campaigns like Edmonton’s Don’t Be That Guy campaign — which they try to both ridicule as unnecessary and denounce as an exercise in Nazi-style anti-male propaganda. Sometimes both at the same time.
Consider, for example, Janet Bloomfield/JudgyBitch’s recent A Voice for Men post on the Edmonton poster controversies. Bloomfield — who apparently likes to think of herself as one of those no-nonsense women who can get by just fine without any help from feminists, thank you very much — begins by trying to ridicule the original Don’t Be That Guy posters as simple-minded, obvious and utterly unnecessary.
Referring to several specific posters from the original campaign, she writes:
No, obviously, you should not be having sex with a woman so drunk she is passed out face down on the couch with her ass in the air. …
Obviously, helping a drunk woman home does not entitle you to sex.
And in what is going to come as SHOCKING news to everyone, if someone doesn’t want to have sex with you, you should not have sex with them.
I’ll give you a while to process that information, because I’m sure that until this clever campaign came along, you were all busy screwing comatose girls at parties and gleefully hailing cabs so you could help ladies home and then rape them.
That would be very witty and pointed but for the fact that, guess what, men do attempt to “have sex” with women who are passed out or asleep, and that there are plenty of men who seem to think that this counts as a sort of “no harm, no foul, no rape” situation.
Take a look at the discussion whenever this topic comes up on Reddit, for example. Or consider all those supporters of Julian Assange who pretend that the issue is women changing their mind after sex when in fact one of the things he’s been accused of is penetrating a woman sans condom while she was sleeping.
And as for “taking advantage” of seriously drunk women, well, there are plenty of men who think this is perfectly fine — and some who make this the centerpiece of their “seduction” technique. Indeed, one prominent PUA — Roosh V — has confessed to doing just that with one woman who was clearly too drunk to consent:
While walking to my place, I realized how drunk she was. In America, having sex with her would have been rape, since she legally couldn’t give her consent. It didn’t help matters that I was relatively sober, but I can’t say I cared or even hesitated. I won’t rationalize my actions, but having sex is what I do.
Somehow this confession — boast? — hasn’t, to my knowledge, earned him any condemnations from manosphere or MRA bloggers, or even, it seems, cost him any fans.
Meanwhile, on the very site Bloomfield is publishing her post, Paul Elam blames drunk women for being sexually assaulted, writing (as I pointed out yesterday) that women who drink with men are, “freaking begging” to be raped,
Damn near demanding it. … walk[ing] though life with the equivalent of a I’M A STUPID, CONNIVING BITCH – PLEASE RAPE ME neon sign glowing above their empty little narcissistic heads.
After dismissing the Don’t Be That Guy campaign as so much silliness, Bloomfield makes a sudden 180 degree turn and declares it the virtual equivalent of Nazi propaganda against Jews.
Which would be offensive if it weren’t so manifestly absurd. The Don’t Be That Guy campaign isn’t directed at men, per se. It’s directed at men WHO THINK IT’S OK TO RAPE WOMEN and/or MEN WHO MAKE EXCUSES FOR RAPISTS.
A good number of these men — and some women with similar beliefs — seem to spend much of their time reading and/or writing for manosphere sites like Roosh V’s blog and A Voice for Men.
Says the guy playing the victim right here in front of us.
Petey, you’re a fucking rapist. Your issues with consent make that crystal clear.
Less than 5 in 1000 per year is NOT the number I get when I run through Bureau of Justice statistics.
Wiki sez: Assaults on young women aged 12-17 declined from 11.3 per 1,000 in 1994-1998 to 4.1 per 1,000 in 2005-2010
Hmmm. Assume that we’re in a golden age now, and staying at 4.1.
4.1 times a woman’s lifetime–say 80–is 320. 320 out of 1000 is… that’s almost one in three, right?
So, uh, Petey, you know, honey, when the Bureau of Justice makes statistics available, and you lie about them, we can see that you’re a liar, right?
Just like your thing about race and violence earlier–we can see the numbers.
“Maybe the problem is that you’re a lousy reader. I really shouldn’t waste my time arguing with stupid people.”
HAHAHAHAHAHA oh wow
“Maybe the problem is that you’re a lousy reader. I really shouldn’t waste my time arguing with stupid people.”
Nope, that’s not it. I’m a AP accredited journalist who has also copyedited for about 13 years. Reading is one of my things, see?
Also, citations are awesome. And I think other people here agree that citations rock the shit. Like this one concerning rape victims’ relunctance to report their abuse:
http://www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/reporting-rates
This:
is almost funny when you consider that it was written by the same person who wrote this:
I say this a lot, but if you write something and absolutely nobody interprets it the way you meant, you’re the problem, not them.
Yeah, Nobinayamu — I dare anyone to diagram the first sentence.
Also, he wrote this poetry here:
“Attempts to redress the balance through “affirmative action” programs are damaging to both men and women. Damaging to men because the no longer compete on a level field. Damaging to women because the abilities of any woman who “makes it” is now suspect.”
Seriously. No citations, and that kind of smug sexism repeated as some kind of fact that Pete seems to think everyone knows is true. Also, what do he mean by a “level field”? Men no longer get to thrive in these fields because they have to work with women — who are actually inferior? Explain to me how this works.
Oooh, Shiraz, I know it’s not relevant to the conversation at all, but how did you get into copyediting, if you don’t mind my asking? It’s what I’d like to do eventually, after my purgatory of waiting for immigration stuff to go through is over and I can attempt to have a life again.
Hi Dusty. I’ve been a reporter for 13 years and sometimes editors ask you to help out in the copyediting duties, at least, that’s how it happened with me. So, you can try an internship somewhere. The smaller the publication, the more likely they are to pay you a little something — which I know sounds strange. Sometimes I copyedit for online sites for extra money or for print publications with small staffs. My college background is in journalism and English Lit, so, you know, I’m poor right now…but there ya go.
Editing copy is important, by the way. In my second-to-last post I wrote, “What do he mean…” When I meant, “What does he mean…” 🙂 See, everyone needs an editor.
Talk about strawmen. Affirmative action only still exists in a tiny minority of jobs in the US, and where it exists it mostly consists of measures to prevent discrimination in hiring and promotion decisions. In that context, anyone who views women or people of color who are hired or promoted as “suspect” — well, lemme just say that attitude says a lot more about them than it does about those women and POC.
Today on Spot! That! Fallacy! we have Petey!
Audience, can you name that fallacy? If not, that’s understandable, as we have two here —
Argument from (personal) incredulity (divine fallacy, appeal to common sense) – I cannot imagine how this could be true, therefore it must be false.
And!
Inflation Of Conflict – The experts of a field of knowledge disagree on a certain point, so the scholars must know nothing, and therefore the legitimacy of their entire field is put to question.
Score 2 points for Petey!
A wild ad hominem appeared!
Manboobz used definitions!
Audience, did it work?
Ad hominem – attacking the arguer instead of the argument.
• Poisoning the well – a type of ad hominem where adverse information about a target is presented with the intention of discrediting everything that the target person says
And we’re up to 3 points!
Any historians in the audience? Because this one is right up your alley, we have a…
Historian’s fallacy – occurs when one assumes that decision makers of the past viewed events from the same perspective and having the same information as those subsequently analyzing the decision.
4 points!
Ooh, an Appeal to worse problems – dismissing an argument due to the existence of more important, but unrelated, problems in the world.
Well folks, that puts us at five points and it’s time for a commercial break!
“Less than 5 in 1000 per year is NOT the number I get when I run through Bureau of Justice statistics.”
I said first world countries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Canada#Statistics_Canada_data
68 per 100000 in Canada. I believe that figure is even lower in N. Europe.
And we’re back! Let’s start with a less obvious one, shall we?
Women constantly lie! Because everybody lies!
Let’s start with the obvious —
Hedging- using words with ambiguous meanings, then changing the meaning of them later
And then the more questionable —
Fallacy of division – assuming that something true of a thing must also be true of all or some of its parts.
Everybody lies, but especially women. Well yes, if everybody lies then women also lie, being a subset of “everybody”…but this is directly counter to the idea that women lie more than everybody else!
That puts us at 7 points so far!
And we have another Inflation of Conflict! That makes 8 points!
Oh wow Petey, you are really good at this! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Fallacy of Division and Fallacy of Composition in the same round!
Fallacy of composition – assuming that something true of part of a whole must also be true of the whole
She did it, so you can too! You scored 9 points, so anyone can!
Another classic!
(shifting the) Burden of proof (see – onus probandi) – I need not prove my claim, you must prove it is false.
Onus probandi – from Latin “onus probandi incumbit ei qui dicit, non ei qui negat” the burden of proof is on the person who makes the claim, not on the person who denies (or questions the claim). It is a particular case of the “argumentum ad ignorantiam” fallacy, here the burden is shifted on the person defending against the assertion.
Well, that puts us at ten points, and time for another commercial break! Assuming Petey returns for another round that is!
Re: 1 in 4 (it’s actually 1 in 5 these days btw) — http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv08.pdf
Or is the US not a first world country?
That was epic, Argenti. [applauds]
Thanks for the advice, Shiraz! I really do appreciate it. My life is sort of in flux right now, and I’m trying to get what I can squared away so I can get right back to being productive as soon as legally possible 🙂
“I have been both a Wikipedian and an open source software developer for several years now. Neither activity require any qualifications, nor do they require permission. All you need are a few technical skills or the patience to learn.”
“In all the time I’ve been working at these things the amount of human interaction I’ve experienced has been minimal which is the way I like it.”
“The solution in my case was simple: I work solo on all my free software and I only work on Wikipedia articles that few other people interested in but that I have expertise in. ”
In case these comments don’t make clear what I was getting at, I’ve added the following passage:
If you enjoy programming, you already know how easy it is to engage your passion, but in case you don’t, let me tell you. Most of my programming is done on a netbook that cost me $350 which is not a large sum of money and I’ve seen similar models go for as little as $200. My computer has a dual-core, 1.66 GHz processor and is more powerful than many super-computers from 20 years ago. In addition to a computer, you will also need software: a programming language in the form of a compiler or interpretter. I use the GNU suite of compilers which includes C, C++ and Fortran and can be downloaded for free. It will even run on Windows using a program called Cygwin.
To turn the software you write into open source, you can start an account on Sourceforge and upload it so that others can download and use your software, or if they choose, modify it or use it as a starting point for their own work. The amount of human-to-human interaction up to this point has been all but nil. In other words, ladies, if you want to become free software developers, get coding because nobody and nothing else is stopping you.
“She did it, so you can too!”
Yes, that is exactly what I am getting at. The “fallacy of division” and of “composition” as you call it, does not apply in this case. Human beings are capable of a lot and the most courageous of us don’t pay any heed to outside expectations. I’m sorry, but what exactly is it that prevents a woman from writing her own computer programs? You still haven’t explained that to me. The only two possible explanations are either lack of interest or lack of ability. I suspect both are a factor.
Petey, learn to quote. For such an awesome coder, a bit of HTML shouldn’t be a stretch. Your content is already a shitshow, no need to make it worse with your fucked-up formatting.
“Huh? I’m pretty sure Argenti was referring to you talking about women in all fields, such as biking, not just programming.”
Same point. What’s stopping them?
Indeed I was. One woman did an amazing thing, so all women can do similarly extraordinary things is a PERFECT fallacy of composition. They’re called extraordinary for a reason.
Oh and you’re actually at 11 points, I missed one in that mess of yours.
False analogy – an argument by analogy in which the analogy is poorly suited.
Any number of factors that neither make the analogy apt, nor prove that since one woman did it, every woman can.
Which is ANOTHER fallacy!
Fallacy of the single cause (causal oversimplification[27]) – it is assumed that there is one, simple cause of an outcome when in reality it may have been caused by a number of only jointly sufficient causes.
Not to take a quote out of context, but… Yeah. The lack of interest is spot on and if you lack the ability, IE, you haven’t read a single book on coding… You can’t code.
Luckily, we have a way of answering this question here, based on previous conversations. Hey, Ally S, I believe you do some coding in your spare time and or you are proficient with some basic programming?
There, done. That’s someone coding.
What’s your point?
Because that’s unrelated to a larger issue of anything. In fact, unless you’re trying to smugly assert that the reason “Women don’t code” is because “They can’t”, and not something else like “Blocked out of the fields” or “They used to, up to the perception of coding and programming changed and people started rushing them out and bullying to gain prestige as norms changed and coding became a “Man’s job!””
So.. Yeah. That’s why we are arguing that you are, at best, incorrect. You say things, and those things are remarkably bothersome and sexist… Not as an out and out “Women suck!” but in their smug, mildly superior conclusions. That’s really kind of sort of it.
Huh, lost a paragraph.
“Unless you’re trying to smugly…. bla bla bla Fibi fibs…” is mean to lead to….
…. “Then you’re really making no statement of any particular consequence. Concievably, the reason that “Women don’t code” is, well, that they don’t. Some lack interest, some lack ability, some do, some don’t. How does that relate to rape posters, harassment, lies and your point in general?”