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.
Briefly diverting back to cakes, I admit to hating Victoria Sponge.
*hangs head in shame*
I’m a cake purist. I like cake, with a little (not too sweet icing), but never with fruit, jame, or cream.
Hence my loathing of trifle.
When I bake it’s either Coffee Walnut cake (occasionally with ground walnuts in the cake), or a St Clements cake (lemon/orange/lime drizzle cake)
@gilshalos, That St Clements cake sounds delicious. Share a recipe?
@WWTH and Lee – The sad thing is that this is probably progress. I grew up in a community not too far away from this one, both culturally and geographically, and in the 80’s there were still a few elementary school teachers who read Bible stories to to their classes. I can’t imagine it was much different here.
Are you sure she’s not a feminist in disguise? Seriously. She couldn’t be doing more damage to those guys if she were doing it deliberately.
Makes you wonder. Secret agent? Who’s really paying her to be this vile?
It must be tiring being as ragey as JB is all the time.
Ahh, Victoria Sponge…
So, two people were lost in the desert, wandering around looking for water, when they saw a little camp with three tents set up and ran towards it.
At the first tent, they asked for water, and were told, “I’m sorry, I only sell sponge cake.”
At the second tent, they asked for water, and were told, “I’m sorry, I only sell custard.”
At the third tent, they asked for water, and were told, “I’m sorry, I only sell chopped fruit and preserves.”
As they stumbled off, one of them said to the other, “Did that seem at all strange to you?”
“Well, it was a trifle bazaar…”
(gets a headstart before people start throwing things)
I’m at my parents till a week Tuesday, so i don’t have access to most of my books just now.
It’s my adaption of a lemon drizzle cake.
The basic recipe is a plain cake with a little lemon rind in it, when baked and cool you poke holes in it with a skewer (still in a loaf/cake tin!) then pour over a syrup of the juice of two lemons heated with a little sugar till the sugar dissolved so it soaks through the cake.
For the St Clements I used one lemon, 1 orange and 1 lime, and reduced the sugar in the cake/syrup cos of the sweetness of the orange.
Hope that helps!
I got over being enraged 24/7 at twenty-three. Ms. JB needs something in her life that provides her with satisfaction/fulfillment.because right now all she’s got is that which feeds her anger.
It’s a pretty basic citrus loaf, huh, gilshalos? Nice and dense and sour. Freezes and defrosts great too.
I need more recipes for lemon desserts. I usually seem to wind up with more lemons than things to use lemons in, and my lemons go bad, and I become sad.
I know it’s not a cake, but it is full of chocolate, so may I recommend this tart to anyone feeling the need for some pure, condensed decadence in their life? Because it is freakishly delicious. Plus dark chocolate simplicity wins out visually over too-blue frosting flowers in my book any day.
@WWTH
I think the same thing of Attila Vinczer who talks about his boys a lot so it’s not motivated by internalized misogyny. I’m trying to stay out of this conversation because what I said is still being twisted but had to respond to that one.
that looks delicious *bookmarks*
What I’d be reluctant to do, if I was a parent, is get involved in any group that has members who advocate the lowering of the age of consent (like parts of the MRM does). That’s a giant blinking neon red flag for a parent if ever there was one, or at least it should be.
Not just for parents. For anyone.
You do realise it was in fact feminists who have has links to pedophiles in the past right ? Google Harriet Harman and PIE and see how she was recently grilled and nearly lost her job over her work supporting a pedophile group. Harriet Harman is a feminist politician who works for the UK government. The work she was involved with funded PIE who were essentially trying to lower the age of consent to 10. If don’t believe me google it, the story was covered by all major UK newspapers.
“who have has links”
If you’re going to be as literate as a cat meme I don’t know why I shouldz googelz anything.
And no one knows who the fuck that is because she’s not some big name mainstream feminist with any cred. She’s some fucking gross individual who happens to identify as feminist. She doesn’t work for a major feminist org with loads of supporters.
On the other hand, “Fucking kids is OK” is trumpeted by a large quotient of the mainstream MRM and it’s most prominent voices.
One of these things is not like the other.
Frankly, at this point it’s starting to look like during the 70s and 80s a significant chunk of the British government was involved in, at the very least, actively conspiring to protect pedophiles. There’s an inquiry and everything. So the fact that Harman was involved too isn’t a huge surprise. Everyone else seems to have been.
@Janet Wilkinson
And that excuses JB’s pedophile apologia how exactly?
Auntie, if you are going to claim people who disagree with you twisted your words, then you are not leaving this discussion. You are just refusing to answer questions and complaining about tone while accusing people of dishonesty.
You know what? You don’t have to stick your flounce on my account. I’ll leave the thread. That way you don’t have to answer my questions, explain yourself or ever concede that you made a mistake.
@Lea
Your hostility was over the top and I refuse to engage with you over this unless you dial down the aggression. If this is really about my opinions on Ally or Shakesville, do us all a favour and deal with those directly and honestly in a more appropriate thread.
I never accused anyone of dishonesty before this comment. You’re approaching gaslighting territory and I don’t appreciate that one bit.
@Auntie Alias, if you claim people are twisting your words, that is accusing people of dishonesty.
As has been discussed at length in this thread, telling people (particularly women) with unpopular opinions that they should be thinking about their children before expressing those opinions can be used as a silencing technique. The fact that we disagree so strongly with the opinions of JB does not mean we should be using her motherhood as a way to blame her for expressing them.
While that may not have been your intention, more than one of the commenters here, including me, gained that impression from your original comment – that parents (especially mothers) should potentially be silenced because speaking out gives bullies an excuse to bully their children.
Assuming that is not what you meant to imply, please stop with the defensiveness and the accusations, and just clarify yourself.
I would prefer it if Janet “Judgy Bitch” Bloomfield was suspended over slander and harassment. Or her incessant blaming of victims of sexual violence. The very things that make her a loathsome person.
As pictures of circumcisions go, that pic depicting a newborn having his foreskin amputated was not that graphic. It may not be in good taste, but neither is forcing medically unnecessary procedures on children who by definition cannot give informed consent. Opposing circumcision of minors is usually the sole good point MRAs make albeit poorly most of the time.
Would you support someone being banned from twitter for linking or posting a graphic depiction of FGM or forced normalisation of intersex children? If it was newsworthy or illustrated a certain point, I would not.
How about everyone cuts the defensiveness and hostility instead of just one side being accused of preventing fruitful discussion with their behaviour, hmmm?