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.
So why does a larger percentage of muscle in men mean women should not be CEOs? It’s difficult to have an argument with someone who can’t stop extrapolating physical realities to cognitive capabilities.
Bina,
her you have a more elaborated and complete explanation of sexual dimorphism in humans http://arxiv.org/pdf/1203.6231.pdf
What’s your educational and professional background, Linda? Just wondering where you get your understanding of evolution from. Because what you’re spouting is simplistic and therefore believable to someone lacking knowledge of evolution and animal behaviour.
I’m running through my head all the examples of species where one sex is bigger and stronger. Lots of them aren’t species that engage in violence or warfare. There are a billion and four reasons one sex is bigger and stronger than the other. “So they can take bigger physical risks” is not the answer most of the time.
People make the same mistake when looking at longevity in humans. The assumption men live (like, 5%) shorter lives than women MUST be because there’s no male-centred medicine is another great example of simplistic thinking by know-nothings with a chip on their shoulder. I can think of a bunch of species in which one sex lives a MUCH shorter life than the other, like, half that of the other. Neither the females nor the males receive healthcare throughout their lives though because they’re wild fucking animals. There are a whole bunch of reasons one sex will lives a shorter life than the other. There’s no need to be lazy and assume the one true answer when animal behaviour and ecology and biology are so much more complex. Unless you have an axe to grind.
It’s OK to not know what you’re talking about. I don’t on lots of subjects but I tend to admit I don’t know what I’m talking about instead of remaining convinced I do and lecturing people about something I’m certain about for no other reason than it sounds plausible and I have great self-confidence.
@Linda Wong
Biological sex is a social construct, so any research on sexual dimorphism is pretty much doomed to be inaccurate and methodologically bankrupt. You haven’t proven shit.
In case you’re wondering… yes, Twitter does very nice image embedding, and that is a reply to our troll du jour Linda.
Judgy Bitch is confusing Karl Rove for Poe. Rove’s Law claims that if you keep repeating lies, they become truth.
For other examples of Rove’s Law on this thread, see “Linda Wong”.
Bunnybunny
because men developed larger muscle mass in order to compete for status and domination. The fact that in todays society we don’t use muscle mass in order to fight for status and domination doesn’t mean that men still are much more inclined and more willing to make sacrifices and take risks in order to gain positions of status and dominance.
Actually, in modern western society, yes to a considerable extent it is. The socially conditioned standards of attractiveness mean that men are expected to be muscular and women are expected to be thin. In addition, changes in modern westernised society mean that women are no longer expected to do the amount of hard agriculture labour they did historically, and technology means that doing the laundry is not the muscular activity it once was (you should have seen my granny’s forearms after pounding sheets in a dolly tub as a teenager).
You are particularly dense, aren’t you?
“I’m not an MRA but I’m going to articulate and agree with every one of their talking points, and ask for citations on commonplace statistics..”
Lol evopsych..
“What about the menz? Menz have it worse than women” 🙁
Why Doesn’t MRA bingo have a “It was just satire” square”?
LInda’s working her way up to a nice diagonal. Keep it up! The prize is a banana.
@Linda:
In case you missed my comment, I gave you links to read about science and sexual dimorphism on the previous page.
No, what’s absurd is labeling things like the color pink or opening jars or wearing dresses as either manly or womanly. That we label “behavior” as manly or womanly, when clearly any gender could take on any behavior. The key point for you should be in noting that homosexuality is not a behavior. You can certainly socialize gay people to avoid gay sex and have straight sex, just look at history. The “behavior” can be modified (sometimes with tragic consequences), but the sexual preference can’t.
This. I was going to recommend a few of Stephen Jay Gould’s essays to Linda (Big Fish, Little Fish to start) but something tells me our troll is not going to be particularly receptive.
Scientists can laugh all they want at people who “ignore” sexual dimorphism because of the social constructedness of biological sex, but all those scientists are doing is demonstrating how little they understand the discourses that shape their own scientific inquiry.
Also, see the first comment on this thread, which wasn’t visible initially.
She really does think there is no such thing as bad press.
Really.
marinerachel
You are aware of the fact that men have higher variance in reproductive success than women are you? You are aware that this is a factor that causes higher intrasexual competition? You are aware of the fact that higher intrasexual competition causes increased physical strength, increased bone density, increased risk taking and increased motivation for dominance and status?
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1203.6231.pdf
Pretending not to be MRA trolls are the most tedious trolls of all.
Oh god, Linda, are you for real? You really think all sexual assault is mere unwanted back pats?
Rape IS sexual assault. Much sexual assault that ISN’T rape is every bit as harmful and portraying sexual assault as unwanted non-sexual touching is a fucking disservice. Thanks a fucking lot say every person to be sexually assaulted but not raped ever. Thank you so very much for tossing masturbating a child, sexual assault that isn’t rape, under the heading of an unwanted back pat, you brave, brave hero.
No.
Linda Wong
I see you are dismissing the entirety of the effects of culture on people. Pro-tip: they’re massive. Infants are already in the midst of being taught cultural standards, baby boys and girls by the age of 2 have usually already been predisposed to like Blue/Pink. American culture is such that the standard assumption is that men will be competitive, take risks, and attain positions of status and dominance. The fact that there are men who are not competitive, do not like to take risks, and don’t choose to try and attain positions of status and dominance shows us that it is NOT a biological imperative.
titianblue
“Actually, in modern western society, yes to a considerable extent it is. The socially conditioned standards of attractiveness mean that men are expected to be muscular and women are expected to be thin.”
LOL!! So i guess that’s the reason why female athletes and bodybuilders take testosterone to increase their muscle mass, and socialized gender roles is the reason why the olympics are sexually segregated.
When will you ever stop denying reality?
You have yet to demonstrate that physical dimorphism has anything to do with anything at all. At this point you’re just throwing out a non-sequitur. You could use the exact same argument to justify discrimination against people with red hair, or brown eyes, or any other human physical trait. “People are not all identical” doesn’t justify discrimination.
@Linda:
More socialized behavior. In Britain, there is (or was, not sure) a thing where men weren’t going to the doctor much, because they’d been socialized to view going to the doctor as weakness. That isn’t a thing as far as I’m aware in the US. Assuming men actually were “more willing to make sacrifices blah blah blah,” you’ll find it much easier to look towards society’s influence than the muscle mass of our ape ancestors.
It’s a nature vs nurture question, and we’ve only just cottoned on to how powerful nurture can be, due in part to the feminist movement.
Hey Linda, what are your thoughts on transgender people?
“The fact that there are men who are not competitive, do not like to take risks, and don’t choose to try and attain positions of status and dominance shows us that it is NOT a biological imperative.”
This is as scientifically sound as saying that the fact that there are women with beard, deep voices and who are 6 feet tall shows us that those secondary sex characteristics are not a biological imperative.
Congratulations, you’ve demonstrated a physiological trait. Now explain how a physiological trait magically has more power than cultural forces, or why we should strive to assemble a society built entirely around said physiological trait.
Linda,
Appealing to “sexual dimorphism” is a naturalistic fallacy. You can’t imply an ought from an is. You can’t say, “Men are bigger and stronger, therefore it’s ok that there is inequality in the world.” If you believe in equality, which is generally considered the ethical thing to do in nearly all modern forms of secular ethics, then it doesn’t matter that (cis) men and (cis) women have some varying secondary sexual characteristics.
About all you’re doing is trying to explain why there is inequality. That’s fucking great, but making descriptive claims about the differences between men and women isn’t a justification for why inequality should be accepted.
In other words, you quite literally fail at ethics with your nonsensical appeals to biology. You’ve demonstrating in no way why feminists (or anyone) should ignore the inequalities that exist simply by pointing out some biological features of human reproduction.