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.
J.J.:
Yep. I think he forgot what he was arguing for there for a second.
Did you just apologize for being interrupted mid-diatribe?
It’s like this weird island of politeness in a sea of mangry ranting.
Fuck off Don. The amount of strength the abuser had over the abused matters. Power differntials are important. The severity of the injuries matter too.
If you have to equate a slap with murder to prove your point, you’ve lost the debate.
It’s pretty rich that you’re accusing us of mocking male abuse victims (although we did no such thing) when you’re the one dismissing murder victims anf victims of abuse that results in permanent disfigurement or injury.
Fuck you and fuck ofg.
Only Don could make whatever he’s attempting to say about moral standards sound like either the standards or the person being spoken about are taking a piss.
That’s how I read it. Own goal! (I think that’s what an own goal is…)
K, but your link doesn’t say that. Seriously, how are you commenting on anyone else’s reading comprehansion?
That might be because it’s not satire.
Restating your assfax is not the same as backing them up.
Like I said: too stupid to even engage with. Have fun shitting on the chessboard, though!
@DonB
You got that bibliography from AVfM and I’m guessing you’ve done jack squat with it other than post a link to it in your anti-feminist screeds.
Male tears.
Bigotry:
Social Construct:
Like, say, race, religion, etc. etc. Yeah, no connection there at all.
Aw, did his mum send him to bed already?
Don: when you say you’re going away, you have to leave or else we’ll think you’re a liar.*
*we already do, but follow-through is a good thing.
@emilygoddess
I was under the impression it isnt actually a Pill, its a tube of model glue and a plastic bag
Wow, DonB just assploded. That was very amusing to read.
Kids, severity of violence DOES NOT MATTER AT ALL. That’s right. If I shove you 10 times, and you murder me only once, you are much less violent than I am. In fact, if I shove you 10 times in response to you attempting to murder me 11 times, and the 11th time I fail to prevent my own murder, I am still the more violent person.
According to DonB and, as it turns out, the CTS.
In other news, John Oliver just did more to help men in one 17-minute segment of his show than the entire MRM has done in their existence (seriously, watch this):
I’m sure Don B would be willing to argue that a person who carelessly bumps into another car in a parking lot causing a scratched fender should receive the same punishment as a person who carelessly bumps into another car at 80 mph on an interstate causing several deaths. Making all “assaults” equivalent without considering the level of violence and damage is so blindingly stupid that it totally discredits anyone who uses the argument. Calling it science does not magically turn stupidity into wisdom.
A lot of times it’s not the research, but the assumptions and definitions on which it is based, that makes junk science junk. You’d have to give me a lot of happy juice to get me to accept the idea that a shove equals a lethal beating.
I think this is relevant to our interests:
http://explore.org/live-cams/player/kitten-rescue-cam
Kitten Cam!
http://x4.fjcdn.com/comments/3812921+_5f39b9eb88111f49c7891a81bee4472a.jpg
http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/BfJNPBdZq-A/hqdefault.jpg
http://data1.whicdn.com/images/58024258/thumb.gif
http://persephonemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/adams-family-misandry.gif
Wow.
It must have been hard for JB to make those Tweets while her mouth was foaming.
I missed Don the troll. Remember everyone, who made a chew toy out of him tonight, at least floss your teeth before you go to bed. Troll bits can cause tooth decay if you don’t rinse your mouth or brush or do a good flossing. Otherwise, congrats, I’m sure he was delicious. The stupid ones always are.
Mras liking the CTS is very similar to the “Wage gap doesnt exist if you forget to account for differences in hours worked and make other mistakes that you should have learned about in high school math”
its just “YAY THIS AGREES WITH MY WORLDVIEW IT MUST BE RIGHT”
Oh joy, oh bliss. More fake quotes and libel and ginned-up fauxtrage from the village idiotess. I can hardly wait.
But — thunderation! Don’t you know that an open-handed smack upside a man’s head is capital misandry, and equivalent to rape, assault and battery, femicide and corpse-sodomy combined?
Man-tears are serious cat, and this am serious thread!
I hope Don B doesn’t come back. If he does I may get a lethal dose of head-desking.
Just laughing at this from the latest troll:
And then proceeds to cite not-experts. But he’s a male atheist so he can’t be wrong because being a male atheist makes him perfect at reason and logic. Clearly that male atheist reason and logic let him rationally and logically identify the experts as people who come to his conclusions.
It’s a pity the film title “Expelled – No Intelligence Allowed” is already used.
I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to wait until you’ve finished a couple rounds of arguments before asploding of anger.
Back to the original topic, though, all you can do sometimes is laugh at how blatant their libel is. It’s so obvious that only somebody who has completely and bought into the person spreading it would take it as the truth.
That’s also why it’s unlikely this junk would ever cause any actual damage.
On the unfortunate side, it’s also unlikely that it’d ever be taken seriously by a judge as libel were “lol male feminist = child abuser OBVIOUSLY” actually to cause damage.