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.
I dunno, that’s pretty light-hearted compared to the shit that comes out of their mouths on a regular basis.
You do know that the Paul Elam article was written as a satiric response to a jezebel article were feminists were bragging and laughing about beating the shit out of their boyfriends do you? http://jezebel.com/294383/have-you-ever-beat-up-a-boyfriend-cause-uh-we-have
andrea harris, so if a guy would wear a t-shirt with the text “I bathe in female tears” you feminists would be cool about it if he explaines that it referred to man-hating feminists only?
I’t hilarious that you don’t see the problem in advocating double standards and at the same time claiming you are fighting for equality. Ever wondered why you lack credibility in the eye of most normal and reasonable people?
Linda… “I bathe in male tears” does not have horrible harassment/abuse/patriarchal baggage attached to it. We live in a patriarchy, where women are not treated as equal to men in all ways (including opportunity and outcome). Women are raped more than men, abused more than men, make less than men, don’t have the same opportunities as men, and so on.
So you are 100% correct that if an MRA or just some dude wore an “I bathe in female tears”, we’d react quite differently, considering the history of how society has treated women verses how society has treated men.
Context. It means things.
Why didn’t someone tell me it was opposites day before Linda showed up? Give your friends a heads up, people. I was drinking a cup of tea when I read that last line, and keyboards aren’t free.
Yeah, on second thoughts, a libel case is more trouble than it’s worth- they don’t need any more publicity.
Besides, they’d only use it to claim they were being unfairly treated, because she said it was a joke and that makes anything she does totes ok. Just like if they were to say that the only reason you shouldn’t hit women is because you’d get in trouble for it, but then called that satire, that would obviously also be fine. /s
Linda, you do realize that Paul Elam is a professional cyberbully who proudly proclaims that lying, harassing and scaring the shit out of women gives him a boner, right? Frankly, if that man were even capable of tears, I would be sincerely surprised.
Now be off with you. It’s embarrassing to see someone spill so many words with so little basic reading comprehension.
Making stuff up about someone deliberately so that they will be harassed and then calling that harassment “owning your shit” is one of the more… direct examples of victim blaming I’ve seen.
Nathan, you obviously don’t have a clue.
The discrepancy in male vs female rape is not as large as you think, and btw men are murdered more often than women, suffer from violence more than women, die prematurely more often than women, more likely to become homeless, drug addicts etc than women are. It’s a joke to say that women have it worse because of lack of female CEO:s
Humans are a sexually dimorphic species, you do understand that sexual dimorphism is caused by the fact that males and females in a species has faced different adaptive problems during our evolutionary history. You do realize that men have higher variance in reproductive success than women which results in higher intrasexual competition? You do realize that this makes men the more aggressive and risk-taking sex? You do realize that this is the reason why men are more willing to take risks and make greater sacrifices in order to gain social status and domination?
If women would have been treated the same as men in our society far fewer women would have survived until old age throughout history. You do realize that society has always seen men as the disposable sex don’t you. I think the fact that throughout history women have always been more likely to die of old age than men speaks volumes about the supposed female oppression.
Don’t confuse me with a MRA, I think both MRA:s and todays feminists are equally pathetic. You blame the inequality of outcome at the top levels of society on patriarchy and discrimination, while MRA:s blame the ineqaulity at the bottom of society on a gynocentric society and discrimination. You are both equally pathetic and wrong. Equality of outcome of the sexes in a sexually dimorphic species is simply not possible.
I’m pretty sure the “male tears” t-shirt was satirical too. For some reason, Paul Elam writing a HILARIOUS bit on abusing women doesn’t deserve criticism but a sarcastic t-shirt does….?
And no, I wouldn’t go on a tirade of lies if someone wore a “female tears” t-shirt because I’m not a liar nor do my grievances require lying about.
And also no, equality of opportunities has not yet been achieved so looking at outcomes and saying “women just aren’t good at/don’t like responsibility and big paycheques” is fucking stupid.
Oh and btw, equality of outcome and equality of opportunities are not the same thing. Just to remind you before you start [criticizing] the lack of female CEO:s
They’re not the same thing but they’re correlated: If we don’t have equality of outcome, then it’s obvious that we don’t have equality of opportunity either.
Or are you using the Libertarian definition of “equality of opportunity”, as in “The rich and the poor have equal opportunities to get arrested for sleeping under bridges.”?
If so, then you’re right that they’re completely different things. But in that case “equality of opportunity” is just code for “maintaining the status quo” and it’s not an especially noble goal.
I don’t have a clue? I don’t have a fucking clue?
I feel like you don’t, Linda. For the record: 1 in 6 women have been or will be raped. The same is true for 1 in 33 men. This is according to our own fucking government.
This really is easily available information for anyone who knows how to use Teh Googlez.
Also… you’re “both sides are full of shit” crap?
Yeah.
No.
You may as well be saying that scientists and Creationists are both full of crap. Or scientists and AGW denialists. Or… well… you get the picture.
If that was satire, Elam just did a follow-up article that wasn’t satire with pretty much the same message. Or maybe he’ll tack on satire tags after the fact like he did the last time.
Lol, men as disposable.
All the while a third of female people were already dying in pregnancy and childbirth.
People have been pretty fucking disposable throughout history. Prior to highly effective contraception, all fertile women were subject to a life threatening condition due to their very biology. No shit they weren’t going to war. Women were already dying in massive numbers and if more of them were killed on the battlefield there’d be no more baby machines for the men who survived to take advantage of and rear their offspring.
Hey Linda, how about addressing the points we challeged you on, instead of going on yet another talking-points tangent? You’re not fooling anyone here with that. We’ve seen it all before. Repetition doesn’t make it any less stale.
Linda, you do realise that men are also the ones more likely to be committing most of those crimes? Also, you do realise that evopsych does not a solid argument make (#notallhumans, also you’re completely ignoring the effects of socialisation)? And you do realise that if men are the disposable sex, it’s kinda weird that historically, people have always wanted sons? I don’t want to write an essay here, so I’ll not get into the whole historically men have choices, women are basically property thing.
I feel like I could’ve worded that better, but you get the point.
marinerachel,
I’m not the greatest fan of Paul Elam but he wrote that article in response to this article in Jezebel http://jezebel.com/294383/have-you-ever-beat-up-a-boyfriend-cause-uh-we-have
It clearly shows the double standard of feminists when it comes to domestic violence. It deserved a sarcastic response. You do understand that by writing articles like that Jezebel doesn’t make it exactly difficult for people who want to argue that todays feminist movement is rife with double standards and misandry do you?
you do realise that spouting evo-pdyche bullshit is pathetic?
LOL. If it matters so much to you, Linda, go take it up with Jezebel. Stop wasting everyone’s time here, you silly troll.
Nathan,
Can you please provide me with links to back up your statistic? Please don’t confuse sexual assault with rape since sexual assault includes an unwelcomed pat on the back.
LOL!
So Linda is our AVFM talking points spouting troll for the day, I take it?
And JB is not the brightest crayon in the box, is she?
Oh dear…
Hey Linda? This is what you sound like with your first couple comments.
I hope you can see the problem here.
*boggles*
Did… did you actually read that thing?
Here’s the “offending” paragraph:
It was snark. Snark aimed at demonstrating the problem with the study the linked article used. They weren’t “beating the shit out of their boyfriends,” they shoved. And hit a phone out of a dude’s hands. And slapped a guy who was being offensive. And socking a guy who had just thrown someone’s laptop.
It was demonstrating the problem in the definition of “violence,” and pretending small acts like slapping or pushing are the same as “beating,” as well as the problem with the definition of “non-reciprocal,” where a violent act could be triggered by something like cheating or throwing a laptop but still count as “non-reciprocal.”
In response, we get a report about Paul Elam’s boner, and how he gets hard from thoughts of “fucking their shit up.” Nasty bit of work, that.
you do realise that spouting evo-pdyche bullshit is pathetic?
You do realize that evolutionary biology and evo-psyche is not the same thing? Sexual dimorphism is part of evolutionary biology. Please explain to me why men are larger, stronger and more muscular than women. Is it because of patriarchy and socialized gender roles or is it because of evolution? If you agree that it is because of evolution you must agree that men and women have faced different adaptive problems, being physically strong has simply been much more crucial for men in order to survive and reproduce than for females. If that was never the case the difference would not exist. Otherwise I would love to hear from you why men are the larger and physically stronger sex. Please give me your explanation.
And yet you are defending AVfM whilst accusing feminists of being clueless hypocrites. ..