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.
By “reality” I’m assuming you’re referring to a body of knowledge that rests entirely on arbitrary social constructs that skew methodology and lead to ultimately meaningless results? Nah, it doesn’t really hurt much. I can dismiss you right away because I already know that you’re just another dipshit who uncritically accepts everything scientists say.
That link doesn’t say what you think it does about gender studies.
Lat thing, feel free to thrash my english. English isn’t my first language after all. Bye 🙂
I don’t think anyone has a problem with men are generally larger/stronger than women. The vast majority of athletic ability though comes from training, not brute strength. Most men aren’t trained athletes so women who are will be far more capable than them despite men being generally bigger and stronger.
I don’t think anyone would deny human behaviours have biological roots and some examples of sexual dimorphism in humans are, to a degree, attributable to sexual behaviour. It’s just not fucking black and white and “So that’s why women don’t make money or hold leadership positions” is not a reasonable conclusion when women didn’t even work outside the home until recently and are still maligned for it (though they’re maligned for staying home too.) There is no indication whatsoever women are less capable in these respects. Considering the social factors and what people are telling us over and over again, we know there’s a large component of socialization contributing to the lack of women pursuing prestigious leadership positions. Maybe to some extent women really just aren’t capable of or interested! But we’ll never know until that assumption gets dropped.
Probability of sticking the flounce? Nil.
They never can stick the flounce.
What are the odds Linda sticks the flounce? And what are the odds Linda only decided to abscond when they were threatened with a permanent banning.
As for your chapter, Linda, I stopped reading when it became clear that the author was attacking a straw man version of feminism (much like you yourself are incidentally). Also since you were previously linked to MULTIPLE scientists dismantling your bullshit, and your one “prominent scientist” is an Evo Psych advocate, and you seem compulsively dishonest I think I’ll continue to force my “fantasies and delusions” of fairness and equality on society as a whole.
Please stay fucked off. Thanks.
Flounceflounceflounceflouceflouceflouce.
I used to be intimidated by evo psych enthusiasts until I realized that the ideas they uncritically accept, such as biological sex and biological race, are nothing more than social constructs. They really don’t have any upper hand at all. They are simply stubbornly maintaining a mode of discourse that justifies sexism.
From Linda’s link:
(Also: the whole equity feminism/gender feminism thing is BS)
Death, taxes, and troll fail. These things will always be with us.
From Linda’s link:
Cool. So we’ve established that prominent scientists do not think that “sexual dimorphism” disproves feminism.
Aand there’s the flounce. Let’s see if Linda sticks the landing.
And xie even left me a little present! Sadly, an excerpt from a book criticized for its black-and-white view of gender is hardly the scientific evidence xie was harping on all this time, so… *shrug*
Ninja’d by maistrechat!
Hey, who was that troll who always signed off with a smiley?
So someone remind me – what had all this to do with JB thinking that libel and harassment are good PR?
Can’t remember, but this one is definitely a sock.
I get the impression Linda’s got a pretty fragile ego and took off not because she has better things to do but because she was surprised we weren’t all bodyslammed by her links and silenced. She flounced out of self-preservation. I promise you she’s not off doing anything better with her time!
Yet we’re the ones who are projecting our delusions onto society? How about she just lets people give it a shot, refrains from stereotyping, and we see where the chips fall? Because I think she’d be surprised how prevalent women are and how well they do in traditionally men’s roles. She’s never going to have that learning experience if she maintains the belief sexual dimorphism prevents women from succeeding outside of popping babies though.
And maybe she’s right and women just suck and we’re wrong. At least we’ll have given it a shot!
Seriously, who here claims men and women are identical in any respect?
Aw. Too bad. Linda never did get around to explaining just why any of that stuff xie harped on about mattered.
All well…
“Is it because of socialized gender roles that men are more muscular?”
Men are more muscular? I am a man, and I’m certain I’m not more muscular than Samantha Wright, despite being half a foot taller and over 10 kilos heavier.
Because the grown up thing to do is make up lies on twitter in order stir up drama and impress boys? I’m truly humbled by the maturity and class of JB. I hope my parents never find out that she exists so they won’t be disappointed that I haven’t lived up to her glorious example.
Interesting that these evopsych trolls never seem to use the sexual dimorphism argument to undermine the ability of men in traditionally feminine roles, like raising children.
Wow. Linda Wong may be among the most desperate trolls I’ve seen in a long time. I mean, the rapid-fire commenting, the constant link-dropping to sites ze clearly has not read, the sad attempts at snark while clearly not in a position to use it, the insistence on being right and on the side of reality and logic while committing several huge logical fallacies in the process, the sign-off smiley as a way of feigning confidence…
It’s funny that ze’s making this huge deal out of the scientific method, yet doesn’t realize that ze’s the one making a positive claim about human society being entirely the result of biological imperatives.
Also, what’s with the value judgement? “blah blah evopsych blah blah gender dimorphism blah blah of course! Don’t you know anything about science?!!?!! blah blah… and ta-da, this is how things are supposed to be!” I don’t recall there being a widely acknowledged scientific principle pertaining to ethical questions in human societies. Can someone help me out here?
@bunnybunny:
But that’s different! You see, society views males as disposable, and never gives men a chance to be a father! We need to change society so that men are not devalued as parents!
*every irony meter in the world explodes*
Huh. That was weird. I haven’t even gotten to my argument for financial abortions yet.
What puzzles me the most is Linda’s implication is that risk – taking and aggression are invariably positive traits that lead to reproductive success. There is a logical leap here the size of the Grand Canyon. And by the way, have you seen today’s science news? Homo sapiens’ lower testosterone levels relative to other hominids were apparently an important factor in the development of civilization.