A Voice for Men’s “social media director” Janet Bloomfield is proving to be quite the innovator in the world of public relations. You may recall her cheeky approach to publicizing the recent AVFM conference, which involved awarding herself “whore points” for calling critics of AVFM “whores.”
Now she’s moved on to straight-up libel, making up fake quotes in order to make feminist writer Jessica Valenti look bad, and then bragging about it on her blog.
This whole sordid episode began several days ago when Valenti, on vacation, decided to send a message to “all the misogynist whiners in my feed today” in the form of a photo of her on a beach wearing a t-shirt saying “I bathe in male tears.”
The AVFM social media attack squad seized on this at once, with Bloomfield telling her followers, wrongly, that the picture had been posted in response to a question about male suicide. When Valenti corrected her on this point, Bloomfield offered a half-assed apology (“My bad”).
Then Bloomfield, demonstrating just how insincere her apology had been, decided to up the ante, concocting four “quotes” from thin air and attributing them to Valenti.
[EDIT: JB’s Twitter account was suspended, so here’s a screenshot of the tweets; I’ll keep the original links up in case she’s ever unsuspended, though that seems unlikely.]
https://twitter.com/JudgyBitch1/status/495366752168329216
https://twitter.com/JudgyBitch1/status/495367262187302913
https://twitter.com/JudgyBitch1/status/495367996337295360
https://twitter.com/JudgyBitch1/status/495374177013346304
Naturally, as you’ll see if you follow any of these Tweets back to their original context on Twitter, many of Bloomfield’s fans assumed that these quotes were real.
Needless to say, some responded to Bloomfield’s dirty tricks with all-too predictable harassment of her target:
https://twitter.com/JessicaValenti/status/495559012449267713
https://twitter.com/JessicaValenti/status/495559068841680896
After brazenly libeling Valenti, Bloomfield went on to boast about it on her blog. In a post with the smug title “Jessica Valenti is not having a good day,” she wrote:
Now, these fake quotes may have been “utterly plausible” only to those who are ignorant of Valenti’s work, but in the hothouse world of the Men’s Rights movement there are people who would probably believe that Valenti eats babies. As I noted, JB’s followers had no trouble believing them.
Later in the post Bloomfield added, with more than a hint of maliciousness:
It’s not clear how having made-up quotes attributed to you counts as “owning your shit,” but I guess I just don’t understand Bloomfield’s higher morality.
Needless to say, in the real world, deliberately publishing false information about someone in order to harm their reputation is libel.
When confronted with this on Twitter, Bloomfield offered some inventive excuses:
@JudgyBitch1 @JessicaValenti JB, "I didn't like her shirt so I lied about her maliciously to harm her" isn't an acceptable defense for libel
— David Futrelle (@DavidFutrelle) August 2, 2014
Later on she attempted to prove that her libelous fake Valenti quotes didn’t matter … by making up things about me:
https://twitter.com/JudgyBitch1/status/495684048237633536
As I noted,
@Alzael1 @virtuarat @JudgyBitch1 I'm pretty sure that "well, I lied about David Futrelle too" is not an acceptable libel defense either.
— David Futrelle (@DavidFutrelle) August 2, 2014
Of course, I’m no lawyer. I can only hope that some people who are lawyers are taking a good hard look at Bloomfield’s lies.
I would encourage you all to screenshot or otherwise archive Bloomfield’s self-incriminatory blog post, as well as her tweets, just in case she decides to talk to a lawyer and take them all down.
At this point, I think it’s probably safe to assume that anything and everything anyone from AVFM says should be taken not with a grain but with an entire shaker of salt.
Also, a disproportionate number of male CEOs being over 6 feet is weird, and also the result of socialization.
Yep! Presidents too. And no, it’s not because women think tall men are hotter, because men usually vote for the taller candidate too.
“Men are bigger and stronger” —> #NotAllMen! My best friend is a man, and he’s slightly shorter and thinner than I am. I dig a lot of heavy clay soil when I garden, so I could probably out-lift him, too, if we had a contest. We don’t, though, because we’re friends, and this Battle of the Sexes shit is really friggin’ OLD.
Ah-ha! But everyone knows that because of sexual dimorphism and ebolushunery psykology, menz are the ones supposed to be doing logic. So when a woman does logic, she’s taking away the logic from a man, so it’s obviously misandry, which proves the MRAs were right all along. Checkmate, Feminists!
Or, you know, these folks might just be really, really thick.
Feminazi stole my logic!
Also, XYY men are taller than XY men. So OBVIOUSLY XYY men, being even manlier than XY men, should be in charge of the world!
Except not. Because that’s not actually how things work.
Also! Men are not more violent than women because they have bigger muscles, and the Y chromosome does not produce violence. Men are on average more violent than women because we socialize them that way.
“It’s the socialization, stupid” would be a simple way to sum it up for the logic-impaired.
Oh, there’s been some discussion of libel. I know about this subject from courses on the other side–Media Ethics & Law as part of a Journalism degree.
Sadly, in a case like this, an actual lawsuit is not worth it. JB’s conduct probably meets the prima facie standard for libel (publication, identification, defamation, and falsity are all sure-things, but ‘fault’ being a bit harder because public figures need to demonstrate actual malice, which means an idiot judge can trip up everything–though I don’t think it’d be hard to demonstrate malice, here).
JB would probably go with a ‘parody’ offense, but amusingly enough, her own followers would knock that down, since they obviously took the ‘parody’ as a real thing. (The other major defense, ‘opinion’, wouldn’t apply to statements of fact.)
But it falls apart at the end stage. You have to prove damages to actually collect any money. At most, the victim here would have little to sue for other than the cost of the suit itself; showing economic harm from this sort of cheap-ass bullshit is pretty difficult. She’d need to get someone in who said they didn’t give her a job because of the alleged claims, or prove that an actual physical attack was spurred by the libel. The courts haven’t really recognized internet harassment as a major problem, yet–some of them still haven’t figured out that physical harassment (like graffiti, notes through the door, etc) are problems.
I suppose she might ask for a judge to issue a writ forbidding JB from posting such things again under threat of a contempt citation, but even that would be damned difficult to achieve–the courts in the U.S. are extremely gun-shy about ‘prior restraint’ on speech.
@potterchick.
I totally agree sorry but I love quotes.
“you mustn’t exaggerate. That’s always a sign that your argument is weak’. – Bertrand Russell.
Or worse, lie, personally insult, ignore, libel.
Poor Judgy…how does it feel to be not worth bothering with? Bwahahahah.
For someone who talks a big game about being an adult, Judgy really does remind me of a small child jumping up and down, going, “Look at me! Look at me! David, look at me! Are you looking? Look at me! POOP!”
She also makes a great case for “owning your shit” being whatever antifeminists think will let them be douchebags most.
@kirbywarp: I’m happy to see Bootsy has also infected your brain. My work here is done.
As for JB, it’s funny how she’ll stir the pot hoping to get a reaction. Then, once she gets a reaction, it’s time for her to go to town on said person and claim “Oh, look at you! You’re mad and can’t take responsibility for your actions!” Super rich coming from someone who barely do it herself.
I swear that Janet Bloomfield is Courtney Love’s snobbier, more boring, wannabe conservative long lost twin Sister.
Janet Bloomfield, Janet Bloomfield.
If she doesn’t scare you, no evil thing will.
I resist calling people like JudgyBitch assholes. The asshole is definitely not a glamorous part of the body and it does have terrible PR, so in those respects it is sort of like JB. But it is a useful and necessary part of the body — try living without one. People like her are neither useful nor necessary, and we can live quite well without them.
I really wish I knew (no, I don’t, but anyway) what she thinks she is accomplishing. She may be on their side, but she is exactly the kind of angry, malicious woman that MRAs generally claim to hate and fear the most. Do they like her because she seems to prove their point about the Evil of the Woman?
But diagnosing her with an outdated concept like penis envy is A-OK? Oh, please.
Well, I’m just grateful to have the context of “male tears” explained and to find it less nasty than it had seemed. I had not come across it as such, and had been rather unsure about how to interpret the handful of posts I’d seen using the phrase.
@LBT: Also, GOD I hate that stupid testosterone bullshit. I WENT on testosterone. It did not affect my risk-taking, my aggression, OR my social dominance.
http://pss.sagepub.com/content/23/5/459.abstract
I always thought the ‘male tears’ thing, DJG, was a snarky remark about the melodramatic gnashing of the hair and pulling of the teeth certain folks put up whenever feminism comes up, but at the same time insisting that men are beings of cold reason.
Admittedly, though, it isn’t my favorite thing since I’d really rather crying be less derided. (That said, I would love to have a Male Tears mug, just because me and hubby both cry relatively easily and it’s weirdly amusing to me the thought of drinking our own tears.)
RE: Phoenician [or rather, from your link]
Throughout vertebrate phylogeny, testosterone has motivated animals to obtain and maintain social dominance—a fact suggesting that unconscious primordial brain mechanisms are involved in social dominance.
Wait, what? That’s not a fact. How can you PROVE that testosterone alone motivates animals to do anything, never mind social dominance? How do you scientifically measure social dominance? And it’s in all vertebrates? What? Even fish and birds and snakes and cats? Every single one?
Though it’s weirdly amusing to me to see the whole eye contact thing. I admit, I do try to stare into people’s eyes when they attack me, but that’s because I’ve found it seems less likely for them to follow through. But it’s more some reptilian part of my brain screaming, “DO NOT LET THEM SEE FEAR! SHOW RAGE!” then a hormonal thing.
(That said, once I’m frightened, I’m fucking hosed.)
The extent to which eye contact is a sign of dominance/submission/whatever is really heavily culturally determined in humans. I’m guessing it’s too much to hope for that they bothered to take that into account.
“Motivated” in reference to, say, snakes sounds like a big pile of anthropomorphizing bollocks, imo.
I propose guinae worm. Since yeah assholes are useful, as are bottom feeders, and pond scum (reminds me, I need to culture some)…and fish shit may not be useful, but it is a requirement of keeping fish…guinae worm otoh…may they and polio soon be things of they past.
The penis envy comment wasn’t a diagnosis, it was snark. For the record, I regard the concept of penis envy as not merely outdated but wrong from the start. Obviously if there was female envy of men (and it’s pretty clear there was, for good reason), it was for the freedom and privileges etc. of men, not for a few inches of dangling meat. It was my impression that penis envy has more or less been thrown in the trashcan of psychological history, and is now a subject of ridicule rather than belief. Sorry if this piece of crap has ever been thrown at you with any seriousness.
It does seem to me, though, that JB is competing with PE in some manner, but I can’t quite come up a precise statement of it.
RE: Argenti
I propose guinae worm.
*shudder* Guinea worms are the WORST. I remember our high school biology teacher telling us about them and the whole class was going D:
RE: cassandrakitty
The extent to which eye contact is a sign of dominance/submission/whatever is really heavily culturally determined in humans.
I have no trouble believing that. Isn’t it impolite to meet people’s eyes in some cultures? (Means I sometimes get alarmed and am like, “should I look at people on the street? Is that intimidating or creepy? Should I look away or will that make it look like I’m ignoring them? Argh I’m overthinking this…”)
RE: GrumpyOldMan
It was my impression that penis envy has more or less been thrown in the trashcan of psychological history, and is now a subject of ridicule rather than belief.
Believe me, it’s still around. More subtextual than outright stating, but… just saying, never underestimate a dude’s ability to think his genitals are at the center of the universe. (And that’s trans guys included.)
http://www.funnyjunk.com/funny_pictures/4254438/Medieval+insults/
I’m also thinking of the insults that are used in Erin hunter’s books: Warriors
Mouse Brain, mouse dung and fox dung. I don’t know why. ;phttp://misscfromdsd.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/w-into-the-wild.jpg