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.
Jessica Valenti wore a T-Shirt! Feminism is RUINED FOREVER!
(warning: TV Tropes link)
“the proven-false claim that women are abused more”
Yeah, women shoving men out of their way is perfectly equivalent to men killing women.
That crap has been discredited more times than I could count.
In fairness, I renounced feminism because of Pallygirl. It’s pretty easy to set feminism back.
They always think they’ve found the magic bullet, don’t they?
“This is the scandal that will finally bring feminism down!” I swear, it’s like Republicans screaming “Birth certificate” and “Benghazi” at Obama.
They really do believe their own propaganda, that feminism is on the edge of collapse, don’t they? Pretty fragile for an all-encompassing, world-ruling conspiracy.
“Dammit, Janet!”
I see what you did there! (You too hellkell!)
wordsp1nner — I’m gonna assume that was a reply to QI, not me, but it doesn’t matter any because yep. I can’t even say I have scaly friends, the way bird people talk about their feathered friends, because neither Puff nor the loaches have scales! And then you have rays, who’d prolly be considered fish, but don’t really have fins, and eels of course don’t so just what is a fish? A thing that lives in water and isn’t something else? Useful definition that is! (And what about the fish that don’t always live in water?!)
My definition? The little ones I feed and cleanup after XD (herding catfish is worse than herding cats, you can tempt cats with food, doesn’t work on scavengers)
What’s with all the trolls today?
DonB: Yeah, a lot of those studies appear to be relying in the Conflict Tactics Scale, which has a lot of problems.
And is Janet Wilkinson this Janet Wilkinson?
Le sigh. You are not making a big enough deal out of this. Maybe you just can’t? That’s okay. I think I can…… LOL!
And we’re supposed to give you as much drama as you want because?
JB, you might try making sense some time. Oh, right, I remember.
So wearing a T-shirt is the moral equivalent of wanting to slam a woman’s face against a wall and watch her bleed. That was satire, you say? What was he satirizing? Women who say things that make a man’s boner sad?
Nah. You’re doing a damn good job discrediting yourself and your cause all by yourself there, JB.
Bloomsfield is such a piece of shit. So sick of misogynists pretending they have some sort of moral high ground.
Guinea worms squick the shit out of me. I read about them in National Geographic when I was 8 or 9 and have never been the same.
Abraham Lincoln has something to say to Judgy’s fanboys.
%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fenergysmartohio.com%252Fplan-your-job%3B327%3B250
Sorry thr link is funky. I posted from my phone.
You mad JB? Awww. Aren’t you sweet.
JB, don’t you have some shit to own? Go on it and fuck off.
^own
Oh JB is back?
:: yawns ::
““the proven-false claim that women are abused more”
Yeah, women shoving men out of their way is perfectly equivalent to men killing women.
That crap has been discredited more times than I could count.”
No, it hasn’t. Not. Once.
And no, Michael Kimmel doesn’t trump several hundred studies, no matter how many of your man-bashing dreams wish it so.
I’m referring to the FREQUENCY, you mouth-breathing imbecile. Men are physically stronger, which a child could prove causes more damage so to blame it on teh ebil patwiarchiez is blatantly deceitful. Similarly, the hyperbolic oversimplification of your post is beyond inane.
Get that through that thick skull of yours?
Doubt it, but I don’t expect much from you lot.
I accidentally clicked on Janet Wilkinson’s nym. It goes to her Facebook page, where at the moment the top post is an infographic entitled “5 things women can do to stop provoking men”. I may vomit.
LOL, yes, Jessica Valenti singlehandedly set feminism back by wearing a t-shirt in poor taste (and by “poor taste” I mean featuring a meme that I enjoy but that outsiders might not understand). Who knew she was so powerful?
JB, I’m getting so much secondhand embarrassment from you right now. Can you just not?
Similarly, you failed to address my point that even if it is with less frequency, mocking said victims is still reprehensible.
“But noez, it’s just satire” they cry. Of course, somehow it can’t be satire when reversed, because then it somehow becomes bigoted because teh patriarchyz.
LOLno.
If something is bigoted, it does not rely on social constructs or disparities by the dictionary definition (which, as we know, is the end-all-be-all of feminism). It’s clear cut and relies not on your warped definitions. Get over it.
DonB, how does linking to a bibliography prove your point?
THE CONTEXT OF “MALE TEARS” HAS BEEN EXPLAINED ALREADY. Goddamn it, are MRAs required to fail a literacy test before they’re allowed to take the red pill?
I know the shitty, tired argument you’re trying to use here, but you expressed it so poorly, I think my patients could do a better job of explaining it than you, and they all have four legs.
Shit, why didn’t anyone tell me it was Make Shit Up Day?
This is so goddamn stupid, I can’t even snark it.
“THE CONTEXT OF “MALE TEARS” HAS BEEN EXPLAINED ALREADY. Goddamn it, are MRAs required to fail a literacy test before they’re allowed to take the red pill?”
And I have already made clear why this context doesn’t change sh*t, and the erroneous claims that underly it. That you refuse to acknowledge it is only evidence that you refuse to acknowledge it.
“I know the shitty, tired argument you’re trying to use here, but you expressed it so poorly, I think my patients could do a better job of explaining it than you, and they all have four legs.”
Ad hominem.
“Shit, why didn’t anyone tell me it was Make Shit Up Day?”
Literacy is a good life skill, hoss.
“This is so goddamn stupid, I can’t even snark it.”
Translation: “I have no argument”
You don’t science, do you, DonB? It doesn’t matter how many studies there are, if they are relying on a faulty instrument (the CTS), then the results are going to be flawed.
You are also don’t appear to be able to read for comprehension, either.
Which troll was it who had this sort of difficulty with the concept of quotation marks?