So our old dear friend Janet “JudgyBitch” Bloomfield — you know, the A Voice for Men PR gal best known for her habit of calling people “whores,” including the underage victims of the late, disgraced British “entertainer” Jimmy Savile — has been suspended from Twitter, for reasons unknown.
Bloomfield, for her part, is suggesting that it might have to do with some cakes she was baking. No, really:
So it seems that my account on Twitter has been suspended. I find that odd since most of my most recent tweets have been about baking a wedding cake. Not exactly controversial. I suspect some sort of automatic response was triggered when a lot of people simultaneously reported me for abuse but I have no idea.
Naturally, Bloomfield’s comrades at A Voice for Men have spun this as “Judgy Bitch was censored for a cake!”
Here it is, folks: the pastriarchal construct that got @Judgybitch1 suspended! #pastriarchy #FreeJudgyBitch1 #nomra pic.twitter.com/poK1puKcrn
— Hannah Wallen | Professional Smartass (@Oneiorosgrip) August 30, 2014
And in her most recent post, Bloomfield seems to have decided to go with this “explanation” as well.
Yeah, somehow I don’t think that was it.
Let me offer an alternate hypothesis: Bloomfield was suspended for sending threatening and harassing Tweets to assorted feminists on Twitter and/or for spamming Twitter with graphic images of a baby boy being circumcised.
Now, this is just a hypothesis, but I do have some evidence that seems to back it up.
While Bloomfield’s “JudgyBitch1” account on Twitter is suspended, as a helpful reader pointed out to me, you can still see some of the pictures she’s posted to Twitter in an archive over on Twicsy.com.
If you go there you’ll see a mixture of pics and broken pic icons. The pics that remain seem to be pics that she’s retweeted; the others are ones she tweeted directly, and most link back to her suspended account.
But there’s an interesting thing about these broken pic icons: if you click on them, some of them will actually load.
So what does a little bit of clicking reveal?
Well, in addition to a few pics of the cakes she’s been baking, we find pics featuring threatening language and imagery directed at feminists. Like the one I posted above.
We also find a graphic picture of a boy being circumcised, which she reposted several times, and which I imagine violates all sorts of Twitter rules.
Most of her pics, alas, won’t load. But somehow I suspect we’d find a few more like these in the bunch.
And if it’s not always clear what photos she posted, it is clear that she has her own little army of followers who are happy to spam feminists with these pics. Here’s a link to an old post of hers archived on Topsy showing various JudgyBitch fans all sending Jessica Valenti the same hostile message and the same (now deleted) pic. Somehow I suspect it wasn’t a picture of a cake.
Here are other harassing tweets sent by Bloomfield to Valenti, most of them retweeted by her fans:
- A sexually harassing reference to oral sex
- A misleading misquotation of Valenti, pasted onto an unflattering picture of her, that completely distorts the meaning of what she really wrote. As you may recall, Bloomfield has a history of fabricating quotes out of thin air and claiming they came from Valenti.
- More tweets directed at Valenti that offer up alleged quotations of hers: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
These are just in the past ten days.
Going through these pics not only suggests that AVFMers are being dishonest in how they’re trying to spin Bloomfield’s Twitter suspension; it also reveals a lot about the workings of the Great Internet Lady Harassment Machine, Twitter edition.
Consider this tweet I ran across, which tries to equate feminist writer Jessica Valenti’s “male tears” t-shirt with beheadings carried out by Islamic terrorists.
.@JudgyBitch1 @AppSame @PolitiBunny @JessicaValenti Differences between the two are? pic.twitter.com/e4Jj57LVW2
— Andraos Al-Sulh (@AndrewV691) August 16, 2014
The original Tweeter, a reactionary antifeminist living in Canada, is clearly a reader of A Voice for Men and assorted alt-right racist websites. If you scroll down through his Twitter timeline, you’ll see that he retweets AVFMers like Paul Elam and Dan Perrins, as well as “dark enlightenment” Twitter accounts like the explicitly racist “hbd chick.” And as you can see, he included JudgyBitch1 in the list of recipients for his tweet.
The AVFMers also pay attention to him; if you look at the archive of this tweet on Topsy, you can see that Elam retweeted his graphic comparison of Valenti to a terrorist, as did AVFM fans Markis One and Cora Newbold. One of his other retweeters is a big fan of Roosh and a regular retweeter of assorted other “dark enlightenment” assholes.
[EDIT: AndrewV691 is perhaps better known, at least in Skeptic circles, as AndrewV69, a prolific contributor to the SlymePit, an online forum largely devoted to attacking feminist skeptics on FreeThoughtBlogs and elsewhere, where he has offered his considered opinion on topics such as “Ophelia Benson is a complete fuckwit!” Needless to say, his Twitter avatar is not actually a picture of him; it’s of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.]
Now, MRAs like to pretend that they have no connection with the alt-right – that is, racist – assholes who populate much of the “manosphere.” In reality, MRAs and “manosphereians” intermix freely, and there are more than a few who are both MRAs and racist right-wingers.
It’s not just that these people share remarkably similar ideologies, similar obsessions, similar buzzwords, and similar misogynistic attitudes towards women. They also work together in a de facto alliance to harass feminists online.
In other words, MRAs and manospherians are both heavily implicated in what I call the Greater Internet Harasssment Machine. Indeed, as we can see from the above, notable MRA figures like Elam and Bloomfield are themselves part of the Harassment Machine.
Whatever it was that got JudgyBitch1’s Twitter account suspended almost certainly had nothing to do with cake.
It’s possible to mask your IP too, and she seems devoted enough to trolling to try it.
I’m actually relatively new to Twitter myself, so I’m not sure of their policies regarding that. I know it’s hard enough to report someone doing something abusive there…I bet they only ban if a lawyer or a sheriff’s deputy comes calling. 😛
That said…when plenty of lesser Web forums have much better tools for fending off trolls and sockpuppets than the biggest social-networking sites on the Web do, you know something’s off. 😐
If any of the prominent MRAs were as scared of the evil government/feminazi conspiracy as they claim to be they’d be using TOR. The fact that they make no attempt to hide their identities is actually a pretty good indication that they know their views don’t put them in any real danger.
cassandra: Yup. It’s all victim-blaming and script-flipping on their part.
…Will she get to post her twats on twitter again, we wonder…
Was that a typo, blahlistic? If not, please don’t do it again.
Sorry.
That cake looks like “today the new decorator was learning how to make frosting roses”. And from what I can tell, she did a pretty good job, they look good and really consistent, just… too much. Way, way too much.
Blahlistic — twats? Are you an Emilie Autumn fans by chance? (For the confused, she calls her tweets twats)
Nivi says thankie. And is looking even better now, ze was a bit…pale, if a leucistic critter can be pale, but zir gills are a nice healthy looking red now and I’ll get more pics tomorrow! I’m amazed how easy it was to get zir to eat (most of) a scallop. As the pet store has live bearer fish and was using excess fry as feeder fish, wasn’t expecting frozen food to just need a little wiggle!
…Have hear the name, but not read her…no, an online friend has an arrogant, entitled sister in-law.
( And I generally find lines I’m not supposed to cross by tripping over them and faceplanting, they aren’t necessarily apparent to me.)
Night all.
“Heh… I am suspicious I have a wheat allergy…so I guess I’m anti-pastriarchy.”
Blahlistic, I have to warn you that you are no longer scraping the bottom of the barrel, and are, in fact, evidencing a distressing trend upward toward mediocrity. We have come to expect so much worse from you.
Blahlistic — if you’re interested, I’d start with listening to either Enchant or Opheliac, then ponder reading her book (but I’d read her book before listening to FLAG, because that album is basically the music to The Asylum: The Musical [a thing that better actually come to pass because SQUEE!!])
No probs, lots of us do that! 🙂
So, in addition to issuing thinly veiled threats to a number of feminist writers, JudgyBitch also takes the time to take an “If you’re not with us, you’re against us, and we will knock you down if we think that you’re in our way” stance while fighting her battle for men’s rights. Given that MRAs frequently rail against feminists for supposedly holding a similar stance, that particular tweet seems awfully hypocritical. All and all, more proof that JB is a terrible social media director. Then again, maybe she’s realized that, so she’s upped the ante so that she can get banned from Twitter for persistent harassment and libel so that she could raise awareness for her cause by claiming that she was unfairly censored because of the Feminazi Matriarchy.
Hopefully this is sorted now, but I took exception to saying that the filth jb spews is the same as the work actual activists do. Also that it would be so terrible to try and ‘silence a woman’ when this post was about twitter ‘silencing her’. I’m sure as a mother she is aware of what consequences her actions could have for her family so I don’t know why you’d choose to be a libelous dick all over the internet. I also thought Lea was completely disproportionate in her response.
Maybe its because I’m a filthy European where there are actual laws against hate speech but I don’t believe everyone does have the unreserved right to say and do whatever they want. Woman or not.
It seems hypocritical if you don’t follow their logic.
Everything a feminist does is wrong.
Everything MRAs do, even if it’s the same thing, is fair game.
Presto!
For whoever wanted lemon recipes: Individual Lemon Berry Buckles
8 1/4 oz (1 1/2 cups plus a bit) flour (half whole wheat is fine here)
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt (I use less)
1/4 tsp grated nutmeg or a few good sprinkles cinnamon or ginger
3 oz. (6 tablespoons) butter or margarine (I use Earth Balance/Smart Balance)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
Zest of 1 large (not Ponderosa) lemon or a bit more
2 eggs
1/2 c. buttermilk or soured milk or soured alternative milk (soy, almond, etc)
2-3 c. fresh or frozen blueberries (small best) or two packets frozen raspberries (can’t find bit of bag with weight, sorry)
Extra sugar to sprinkle plus cinnamon
Juice of two large lemons
1/3 c. granulated sugar
Oven 350 or 375 if making muffin cups
Grease 12-cup muffin pan or one regular pie plate or equivalent pan
Mix first five ingredients (through nutmeg) together. Cream butter and sugar, then add lemon peel and eggs one at a time until smooth. Add dry ingredients alternately with buttermilk until fairly well mixed, then (if blueberries) half your berries. If raspberries, break up one packet into small pieces (raspberries almost crumble when frozen. It’s okay if there’s a few whole ones) and stir in – batter goes bright pink. Put into pan and distribute rest of berries on top (may not use whole second bag if raspberries). Sprinkle lightly with sugar and cinnamon. Bake until done (twenty minutes or so for muffin tin, longer for larger cake. Test at center to be sure; tends to cook slowly under where berries are. This is moist, so crumbs will cling to tester, but won’t be batter).
While baking simmer 1/3 cup sugar with lemon juice until slightly thickened, about ten minutes. You want it like a light syrup. When buckle is baked, pierce all over with a skewer and brush with syrup. You’ll have to brush several times to use it all. When cool, cover and allow to sit overnight to soak in, if you can.
Re: too many lemons. If you like lemon curd, that’s a good way to go. ,a href= “http://england.lovefoodhatewaste.com/recipes/microwave-lemon-or-lime-curd”>You can even make it in the microwave. The finished product will freeze for a few months, too.
I think I’ve got a lemon that’s about to go iffy. I might need to get on this myself…
Given I’m a Brit, I guess I’m a filthy European, too. 🙂 But I disagree with how you have framed the argument.
Twitter is not “silencing” JB. Twitter is affirming its rules against (I suspect) harrassment and spamming, and its right to suspend any account that does not abide by them, just as David is perfectly in his rights to ban a troll and is not “silencing” that troll by doing so.
I’m not arguing that a woman (or a person of any or no gender) gets to say or do anything they like, regardless. I am saying that telling a woman (or person of any or no gender) that they should be thinking of their children before voicing a controversial opinion so as to make them afraid and so reluctant to voice that opinion is “silencing” them bacause it is using a veiled threat (“if you do this, your children will be bullied and it’ll be all your fault”) to stop them speaking at all.
I am claiming that this sort of tactic is used primarily against women and rarely against men. And it is unfair and victim-blamey. JB should not be scared off voicing her repulsive opinions because of bullies using it as an excuse to bully. She should not be libelling or harassing, not because her children might be bullied but because it is WRONG and should be illegal.
What’s the old chestnut? “I disagree with what you are saying but I will fight to the death to protect your right to say it”. I’m not saying JB isn’t wrong. I’m not calling for her to be allowed to do or say anything, no matter how libellous or hateful, with no legal consequences. I am saying that the potential bullying of her children by hateful bullies should not be something that is used to threaten or control her behaviour.
Oh, and agree with you that JB’s hateful spewing on Twitter is nothing like activism. Except that if I allow that JB should feel guilty because what she says might lead to the bullying ofher children, them I’m agreeing that anyone who voices an unpopular opinion should feel guilty that bullies might bully their children as a consequence. and that, IMO, is wrong.
Sadly, can’t have my cake and eat it. Even lemon berry buckles. Mouth watering here.
Should mention that original recipe had 3/4 cup sugar, not 1/2, in the cake batter. Personally I like it less sweet, but others may prefer more sugar.
I make a really good lemon tart, too, if anyone wants the recipe. Basically a lemon curd of zest of two lemons, 2/3 c. lemon juice, 7 tablespoons butter, 3/4 c. sugar, 4 whole eggs, baked in a sweet tart crust. I started with the curd recipe from Marion Cunningham’s “Breakfast Book” and lowered the sugar, upped the juice and (important) cut the butter slightly for more tang. Suppose it would make a good lime tart too if I ever had the energy to juice that many limes.
Same here. I can just see what would happen if one of them was molested by some random stranger on the street: First, she’d call the kid a stupid whore, and go full-on victim-blaming in the privacy of her home. Then, to cover her shame on the internets, she’d claim that feminists and the left somehow had a hand in it. And would organize a troll-swarming of Jessica Valenti, or anyone else whom her hateful fancy happened to get tickled by at the moment.
I also worry that they’re picking up the world’s worst behavior modelling from Mommie Dearest Her Own Judgy Selfe. If they don’t grow up to be bullies as well, it will be a god-damned miracle. Frankly, I hope they grow up to be the nicest people in the world, just to spite her. She would probably end up disowning them because of it.
Nivi just gave me a bit of a fright — moving zir gills the way fish do when something is wrong…apparently it’s axolotl for “I’m too lazy to move, I’ll just move my gills instead”
I wonder how well they can see and if they grasp “outside the tank”, cuz Nivi looks to be staring out the window, but I somehow doubt that’s anything more than chance.