EDIT: Bloomfield says she found the screenshot on Facebook. Details below.
Janet Bloomfield – A Voice for Men’s compulsively lying “social media director” – is at it again.
A couple of months back, Bloomfield – who goes by JudgyBitch1 on Twitter – decided for some reason that she could best serve AVFM’s social media directing needs by straight-up libeling feminist writer Jessica Valenti – by making up inflammatory quotes and attributing them to Valenti in a series of Tweets. She later boasted in on her blog that the quotes – which she admitted she’d conjured out of thin air – had inflamed hatred of Valenti and caused her to catch “a bit of hell.”
Now Bloomfield is pulling the exact same stunt again. This time, her target is feminist cultural critic and #GamerGate bete noire Anita Sarkeesian.
On Saturday, Bloomfield tweeted an obviously doctored “screenshot” of a tweet that Sarkeesian never made.
https://twitter.com/JudgyBitch1/status/518538483405975552
Screenshot here in case she takes it down or gets tossed off Twitter again; here’s another screenshot including replies from JB’s fans.
How do we know this is fake? Well, whoever made this fake screenshot made one glaringly obvious mistake: this Tweet is way too long to be a real tweet. Twitter, as you probably know, has a strict limit on the number of characters you can use in a Tweet. 140. This fake tweet has 218.
Here’s what happened when I typed the same text into Twitter myself: as you can see, I went over the limit by 78 characters. That’s, uh, a lot.
As you can see, the “Tweet” button is disabled; it’s simply impossible to post Tweets that are too long.
Looking back through Sarkeesian’s Twitter timeline, I found the real Tweet that she posted at 2:32 PM on the 29th of September.
"Siskel and Ebert made their own 'tropes vs. women' video in 1980" via @Polygon http://t.co/5CxJxfH2YI
— Feminist Frequency (@femfreq) September 29, 2014
As you can see, not only does the time match, but the numbers of favorites and retweets is roughly the same as well; there have only been a handful more added since the fake screenshot was made. Whoever made the fake tweet obviously just screenshotted this real tweet and then pasted in new text using the same font used by Twitter.
The sheer incompetence is astounding.
Did Bloomfield make this Tweet herself, or did she simply pass along a fake screenshot she found somewhere else? Well, Google Images couldn’t find any other instances of this fake screenshot on the internet; Bloomfield appears to be the first person to post it. Which suggests that either she or someone she knows made it – or someone else made it and sent it to her, and she posted it on the internet without checking to see if it was real.
Given her proclivity for making up quotes and attributing them to her enemies, I’m going to take a wild guess and say that I think she had something to do with creating the fake screenshot.
EDIT: Bloomfield says she found the screenshot on Facebook, on a page called Feminist Crazy Quotes, where it seems to have first appeared. Here’s her Facebook repost of it. It’s not clear where Feminist Crazy Quotes got it, as I can’t find any other instances of the tweet on the internet using Google Image search. It’s still not clear why the supposed “social media director” of AVFM, a woman who seems to spend half her life on Twitter, would not immediately realize that the Tweet was way too long to be a real Tweet.
If you scroll down through the responses to Bloomfield’s tweet, you’ll notice that Bloomfield’s fans ate this blatant deception right up; inclined to believe the worst about Sarkeesian, they easily convinced themselves that this preposterous, overlong, literally impossible tweet was real. And Bloomfield was in the thick of it, egging on their hate.
@JudgyBitch1 @femfreq Does this twat ever NOT complain about anything? Her vagina must be dryer than California's crops this year
— BigAngryPhil (@TheBigAngryPhil) October 4, 2014
https://twitter.com/JudgyBitch1/status/518539850656784384
https://twitter.com/JudgyBitch1/status/518540314953650176
When one #GamerGater noted that the quote seemed a bit much, even for the hated Sarkeesian, another commenter pulled out the “radfem” card.
https://twitter.com/JohnCobalt/status/518540889715920897
It goes without saying that Sarkeesian is not, in fact, a radical feminist.
When a few other tweeters pointed out the obvious – that Sarkeesian’s alleged tweet was in fact way too long to be a real tweet – Bloonfield fell back on the same “logic” she used when she was called out for making up quotes about Valenti: well, she may not have said this, but doesn’t it sound like something Sarkeesian would say?
https://twitter.com/JudgyBitch1/status/518541193169616896
No she wouldn’t. She didn’t. If she had, you wouldn’t need to use a fake screenshot to demonize her.
Amazingly, even after the tweet had been revealed to be fake, even after JB was reduced to claiming it was a “Poe” – just as she did with the fake Valenti quotes – the hatefest continued on, with dozens more tweets from JB’s peanut gallery denouncing Sarkeesian for her imaginary racism.
Here are just a few of them:
@JudgyBitch1 @femfreq Your racism is more disgusting than the anime that comes out of Japan. That's why you only cater to white women.
— Pepper #GoldenDeers 🔞 🪷 (@GintaxAlviss) October 4, 2014
@JudgyBitch1 @femfreq Obviously Anita who has constantly made racist statements about Japan. But a white woman like her oppresses minorities
— Pepper #GoldenDeers 🔞 🪷 (@GintaxAlviss) October 4, 2014
@JudgyBitch1 @JustLaurenB I don't like anime personally but i have to just say it. She's a cunt…….
— online larper (@Trektadactyle) October 5, 2014
@JustLaurenB @Ryang115 @JudgyBitch1 That is like Hitler saying to the Polish you don't have a culture.
Its basically it.— man-size lizard (@bio_nils) October 5, 2014
@DarkCityUK @JustLaurenB @JudgyBitch1 I believe even if she didint tweet that she probably thinks that way.
— online larper (@Trektadactyle) October 5, 2014
@JudgyBitch1 Gee, its almost like she wants to be criticized for her ignorance, just so she can call it "harassment": http://t.co/7ltBxaM6Ev
— Diogenes (@DioWallachia) October 5, 2014
One more prudent Tweeter suggested that Bloomfield might want to take down the blatantly fake screenshot, if only to protect herself.
https://twitter.com/PhoenixCE/status/518811930576691200
Ironically, while going back through Sarkeesian’s timeline to see if I could find the Tweet that was used in the screenshot, I ran across this:
For those asking my @xoxo talk should be online soon. In it I discuss how defamation, libel and slander are often deployed to harass women.
— Feminist Frequency (@femfreq) October 1, 2014
And while most the overwhelming majority of this defamation comes from angry men, some of it comes from angry women – like Janet Bloomfield — who are every bit as dishonest and abusive as their male counterparts.
Um, you make up things and say someone else said them, so you can have something to complain about, something nobody else saw first? Attention-whore much?
Anita can indeed sue Judy in a court of law, since Judy has indeed committed slander a number of times. SHE IS COMMITTING AN ACTUAL CRIME.
From Wiki, on Canadian libel law.
However…
So it sounds like it wouldn’t be quite open and shut, even in a Canadian court.
To be clear, JB’s whole defense in that case would be ‘but nobody listens to me except rage-addled people who already hate her, so obviously, because I have no audience, there’s no libel.’
And the counter-argument is that this is the internet and those comments are visible to everybody, even reasonable people who might not have a context to understand that JB is a liar speaking to rage-addled people.
While real women are suffering, dying, feminism is placing MRAs at the center of discourse. The feminist convo is completely derailed as scarce energy & resources are being wasted on this.
She faked a tweet before, but she wants us to believe that this time she was honestly misled and at the same time it’s satire?
Really?
Hi David – I’ve read this site quietly for a while because your frame of satire is the only way that I can stand keeping up with this, but this one covers something so despicable that I had to speak up! It’s absolutely shocking that someone could post something as obviously fake as that and then try to turn around and twist it to their advantage.
It’s also interesting that on Twitter, the loudest opponents resort to making fun of your appearance as they would a woman, rather than what you’re saying.
The phrase “grasping at straws” describes most claims by JB and other antifeminists really well, doesn’t it?
Especially since the straw feminists they’re creating get increasingly specific and thus increasingly easy to spot as time goes by. Anita Sarkeesian, a radfem? Lolwut?
The irony is that I think from a feminist perspective anime (I can’t speak for other Japanese media) is generally better at portraying women than Western media. Even though female characters do kinda get pushed into the moe/fanservice archetype (though moe itself encompasses a lot more things than stereotypically cute) I find that that female characters, even if they happen to be showing a lot of skin, are well written, have real character development, and are far more compelling than female chars in Western works. Kill La Kill is a good example actually – but then Kill La Kill featured some of the most desexualized nudity I’ve ever seen in media – all the characters are deep, have complex motivations, and are relatable (except Nui who I think is one of the worst anime characters ever created)
I think there are elements of cultural chauvinism if not racism that lead to this charge that “anime is sexist!” or at least significantly more sexist than Western media.
I might be completely wrong though.
so is anyone gonna ask janet what her favourite anime is
Jenny
I don’t why either sorry I don’t know how to fix it
While there could be race issues involved when a white person criticizes anime as being super-sexist it’s not automatically so.
Unless of course Japanese people aren’t human but a race if super-humans that are immune to sexism, which is totes not racism beicause it’s a POSITIVE STEREOTYPE ! Positive stereotypes are not dehumanizing and racist guys!/s
It’s relevant because it seems to be the new sexist “GOTCHYA” to hide behind minorities and POC and then scream “racist” when called out for their sexism. #notyoursheild indeed.
*because. Damn phone keyboard.
@funvampire02:
She’d probably pull a Sarah Palin and claim that her favorite anime is “all of them.” Except “Free!” Judgy clearly hates “Free!” because it’s mere existence is misandry. *sarcasm*
*its existence
I find her claim that she found the fake tweet on the “Feminist Crazy Quotes” Facebook page and ran with it completely believable. I’m also confident that she doesn’t care if the crap she finds on the “Feminist Crazy Quotes” Facebook page is legitimate or fakery photo-shopped by anti-feminists. She only cares about getting more anti-feminist memes that seem legit, because goodness knows those malevolent radical feminists say crazy shit, amirite?
When she saw the Fakanita tweet, it would have never occurred to her to worry about it’s authenticity, despite it being a screen shot and obviously too long to be an actual tweet. She was thrilled to find something she and her equally non-critical thinking followers could rail against, because they view everything in terms of a imaginary cartoonish ideological battle where the most important thing is pretending you drew blood against your dastardly feminist enemies.
Back when I enjoying her masterful PR work for their wee little conference, I saw JB and her followers denounce an anonymous quote on top of a random stock photo of a young woman. I can’t find that particular one, but there are a bunch of newer anti-feminist memes clogging up her Twitter page. JudgyB will passionately argue with memes attributed to no one, as long as she can prop them up as a straw feminist or straw woman behaving badly.
In fact, the person who made the Fakanita tweet didn’t need to put that much effort into the hoax, they could have simply superimposed that quote over a photo of Sarkeesian and immediately hooked JudgyB and her ilk. JudgyB has made it clear that she doesn’t worry about the actual source or legitimacy of the quote, it’s true enough if she thinks it sounds like “something [Sarkeesian] would say”. JudgyB’s unhealthy mix of intellectual dishonesty and cultural war fantasies would make her dangerous if she wasn’t an inept nonentity, but luckily, despite all her efforts, she’s a just a sad fucking nuisance.
Well, it’s not too difficult to beat superhero comics in the treatment of women, that’s an awfully low bar.
@Memnosyne janet anonymously posting CrossAnge defences on ANN’s forums (that thread is terrible by the way oh dear god)
The ANN CrossAnge thread, that is.
@funvampire02
ANN threads can be absolutely terrible sometimes. I remember some guy complaining about “Sailor Moon Crystal’s” opening theme being “too feminist” because it had lyrics that related to female empowerment. -_-
I just caught Anita’s XOXO talk over on The Mary Sue (http://www.themarysue.com/sarkeesian-xoxo/).
This talk was a month ago. In it, she was ALREADY having 200+ character tweets falsely attributed to her by uncritical idiots, attributing false statements to her with stolen images.
So, JB is _either_ a cartoon villain forging libel incompetently, OR a gullible dupe wallowing in hatred, willful ignorance and self-enforced stupidity. She’s also late to this particular fad.
I wonder if JB has ever managed to watch some of Miyazaki’s work…
…somehow I doubt it.
Waaaay too many empowered and developed female characters.
Hello Kitty is too empowered and well developed for Ms. Judgy.
Lady Eboshi <3
@vaiyt
And Lady Eboshi isn’t just empowered and developed. She’s one of the best villains in anything, ever.