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.
maistrechat
You have yet to demonstrate that phatriarchy has anything to do with anything at all. At this point you’re just throwing out a non-sequitur.
Actually I have provided scientific links if you bothered to read them.
Holy non sequitur, Linda, what has science done to you to deserve this egregious misrepresentation?
No it isn’t Linda Wong. You have been arguing that men are INHERENTLY more competitive and desire to be dominant. Women do not grow beards without a significantly higher than standard amount of Testosterone. Men do not need to alter their biological chemistry to be something besides a driven Type A personality.
Also considering we live in a society where transexuality exists (and should indeed be encouraged) I say that no, secondary sex characteristics are no longer a biological imperative.
LLLOLLLLLLL!!!!
“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.”
You guys really enjoy living in la-la land don’t you?
When will you stop uncritically accepting the discursive conditioning that leads you to believe that sexual dimorphism is a thing?
You are aware that you’re assuming physical characteristics are responsible for behaviours you presume inherent in les menz?
I watch animals fuck all day. You’re using a simplified understanding to validate gender roles, not biology. Varied reproductive success can result in intrasexual competition. You got it. Size and strength can be the result of intrasexual competition. Absolutely. So can a million other things. The fact you can’t fathom all the other reasons for sexual dimorphism is on you, buddy. I did a degree is evolutionary biology and ethology already. I’m guessing with relatively high certainty you got yours from UofGoogle.
Now tell us more about how masturbating a child is akin to an unwanted pat on the back because it’s not forced penetration on anyone’s end.
@Linda:
Testosterone is a chemical. It doesn’t have a gender. The olympics are sexually segregated because society decided it should be that way. Partly because they want to include athletes who’s religion prohibits mixing genders, partly because of the society-driven view that women are weaker.
Well, there are weak men and strong women. Why not segregate by ability, and just let the chips fall where they may?
Are you really trying to argue that the olympics, a completely socially-constructed enterprise, is proof of something other than social constructions around gender?
So far today we have learned that Linda hates feminists, logic, science, and the English language. What’s next in her campaign of terror against all of the things?
I’m voting “cats”.
Well now I KNOW you aren’t arguing in good faith when you start tilting straw men. I mean you never were when you came in with the disingenuous “MRAs and Feminists suck, PS MRAs are awesome and I’m totally not an MRA”, but thank you for putting words in my mouth and proving it all over again.
Linda, maybe you should do some research on the Bonobos, the species that is the closest to humans. Virtually nothing you are saying is relevent to the points you are trying to make.
It’s not my fault that you don’t understand how science is discursively constructed. You’re a fucking idiot and you assume you know everything just because you’re able to spew all kinds of scientific factoids.
I don’t live in la-la land. I live in a world – and so do you and everyone else – in which science isn’t a pure method of inquirty but rather one influenced and determined wholly by various discourses. You really don’t seem to understand even the scientific method well with your naive, idiotic denial of how science is shaped by discourse. Try again, sweetie.
I wonder when Linda will stop hir scattergun approach to a gish gallop and actually address anything I’ve said? I’ve even provided science!
Oh wow, looks like there’s an evolutionary psych/biology troll on here who doesn’t have two braincells to rub together to get the neurons firing. Sad, but nothing can be done to save the chronically blind to reality. That being said, holy shit I hope this lady gets brought up on charges. That’s just scummy as hell.
omnicron
Fact is that testosterone affect risk taking too, and aggression and social dominance
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0018506X10002989
http://www.pnas.org/content/106/36/15268.full
http://journals.lww.com/psychosomaticmedicine/Abstract/1974/11000/Plasma_Testosterone__Correlation_with_Aggressive.2.aspx
Most people who rely on spouting irrelevant scientific “facts” don’t understand the philosophy of science. Or philosophy. Or science.
The sea. Space. Ceratioid anglerfish.
maistrechat
You do know that bonobos are highly gendered in their behaviour? You do realize that among bonobos male care of infants is practically non existent?
Again, Linda, what are your thoughts on transgender people?
Please do continue Ally S, it’s entertaining to read you delusional fantasies. Reality hurts too much doesn’t it?
Did I ever say Testosterone didn’t have an effect on brain chemistry? I’m merely chorusing what everyone has said, that your bugaboo of sexual dimorphism isn’t enough to justify strict gender roles seen in most societies.
Oh good, Linda Wrong has gone for the ableism and personal attacts. Mod, clean up on aisle 5!
*de-lurks* My goodness, Linda is tiring. My eyes are aching from all the rolling. Do yourself a favor and listen to what the people here are telling you. There is enormous human diversity. This diversity manifests not just in ethnic groups, but in gender as well. Aside from the obvious example of super tall women and super short men, gender diversity and expression in and of itself is practically limitless. I get that looking at pop culture images of SUPER LARGE MANLY MAN and tiny dainty flower woman can make someone think this is the norm. It is far from the norm.
kirbywarp
“Follow the links around in this forum. Not only do scientists in the natural sciences “not” scoff at the feminist conception of gender ”
Read this chapter if you want to see what prominent scientist do think about gender studies and the like
http://www.pasadena.edu/files/syllabi/txcave_18360.pdf
I have better things to do now, but it was fun to argue with delusional people like you. Keep on denying reality if it makes you feel better about yourselves. But please don’t try to force your fantasies and delusions upon society as a whole.
Goodbye! 🙂
I predict meltdown rather soon.
Howard Bannister:
I know, right? I do not get this at all. It’s like, doesn’t JB remember that time when Rush Limbaugh said some stupider and more offensive than usual things and all his sponsors pulled their support? Not that JB and AVFM have sponsors beyond their readers; but still, if you’re part if a “human rights movement” you’d think you wouldn’t want your press to be all about how you libel people and call them wh*res.