Janet Bloomfield — the slur-spewing A Voice for Men “social media director” better known as JudgyBitch — has launched a rather unique fundraiser on Patreon: In addition to funds to spend on better videomaking equipment, she’s asking her supporters to send her $800 for a crossbow so she can “shoot the feminists in the face.”
JB isn’t joking; she’s an avid bowhunter, and she has her crossbow all picked out.
Of course JB claims that the weapon will only be used in self-defense, in case some angry feminist shows up at her door with an axe or something. But in the video above, posted to her Patreon page, she describes her fantasy of using it to maim or kill a feminist in detail, and with great relish.
She starts waxing poetic about what she calls the “angel of death crossbow” at 8:32 in the video above. Here are some of the highlights.
In this first clip, she describes what she would do to any “little brave feminist” who showed up at her door unarmed but seeking a confrontation.
The tl;dr? She would shoot them in the gut with her crossbow, dead center, in an attempt to sever their spine and leave them paralyzed. “You’re gonna drop,” she says, “and you’re never getting back up again.”
As for those who show up at her door with “a hammer, an axe, a knife, a gun” or other weapon, she promises to shoot them dead without warning. “I would love to do it with that beautiful angel of death crossbow,” she says, with a certain manic glee. “Let’s buy Janet a crossbow so she can shoot the feminists in the face!”
MRAs, male and female, seem to spend an awful lot of time and energy fantasizing about doing great harm to their opponents. But this is the first time I’ve seen one actually set up a Patreon fundraiser so they can buy a deadly weapon.
H/T — @TakedownMRAs
I don’t think any of this disagreement is about the *right* to use ableist language. As a sufferer of mental illness myself, I really appreciate the push-back on casual ableist language. I’ve learned a great deal from the comment sections here.
That being said, as a human being who makes mistakes, I sometimes find the overly harsh treatment of people who slip up to be…well, not really helping. Chasing someone off isn’t spreading a message. It’s missing an opportunity to change a person’s worldview.
@EJ
Thank you so much for putting into words why it makes me so angry when people argue about how they should be allowed to hurt other people’s feelings because it’s just words. That attitude seems to have only gotten worse with the internet, as now the interaction is not face-to-face, but for people like me who live very much in their heads and don’t do as well in the physical space, the internet is the best means we have to reach out to others, and the toxicity has just been growing. Grown damn adults play bully because they think it’s funny and they don’t give a shit what it does to anyone until it affects them somehow.
I think I should explain something here. I’m severely disabled. It’s not something I can hide. I not only have to walk with a cane, I have a substantial spinal deformity that you just can’t NOT notice. I’m sometimes told I look “100% like” other people, which considering how rare my condition is has to mean I have a similar condition and that’s it. Oh, and every case is different in a lot of ways so no two of us really look the same. It’s called kyphoscoliosis and you can look that up if you want. There are many pictures online. I used to live in a neighborhood where someone else with a vaguely similar condition worked and we were constantly mistaken for one another even though he was bald, at least 20 years older than me, had a big bushy mustache, and dressed nothing like me. He didn’t even use a cane out of some misplaced since of pride. And yet… So many people just saw someone who was disabled and that’s it.
I’m constantly told I have it easy because I don’t have to get a job or wait in line. The fact that I get a very, VERY modest check is apparently some luxury I don’t deserve to millions of people in this country. I’ve been attacked for no reason, ignored at bars, been asked to leave public places, and in school when cameras were going to film (it was one of the only private schools in the state so we got some TV coverage) I was always kept far away from the cameras. Oh, and I have suffered from chronic severe anxiety and depression my whole life, as well as bouts of OCD and PTSD from a variety of traumas including spending my childhood in a hospital bed and surviving years of child abuse.
A casual perhaps outdated expression or even a joke in no way resembles the very real and very hostile treatment I along with many, many other disabled people experience constantly. I’ve been accused of “ableism” on this site too. I can tell you about ableism. I can tell you about ableism all day long. I have to tell you, it is very disheartening to see people spending all their time unnecessarily piling onto someone who really did nothing wrong when I KNOW most of you, if not all, will just go about your lives and not give any thought to these things except when you happen to run across a comment you don’t like. I see it everyday. I see how uncomfortable the most self-described “liberal” and “tolerant” people get. There is just as much uncomfortable staring and snickering at Whole Foods as there is at Five Guys or Home Depot or anywhere else.
I get that your intentions are good. I appreciate that. But you are missing the point. Changing attitudes and making people understand that I am just as human as you, that is the point. The point is not to treat me like some kind of walking disease while at the same time resenting me for getting a pass to cut in line at the DMV. Language is important, yeah, but when 99% of the outrage I see both on the internet and out in the real world is about someone saying “I get a little OCD” or “Wow, you’re nuts” or something like that and when I try to tell people about how I’m treated in my daily life and people say “Wow, I had no idea things like that happened” and honestly mean it, I have to think something is missing here. When we see deformed people as horror movie monsters we describe as “nightmarish” I have to think something is missing here.
The point, dear readers, is this. There is a LOT more wrong with the way we treat disabilities than casual language that may or may not reflect certain passe societal norms. There are thousands of people who are barely even seen as human. When someone shoots up a church or theater we bend over backward to avoid talking about the red flags that were ignored because we ignored them and didn’t help. We have homeless shelters full of people using wheelchairs, walkers, and canes to get around and even more suffering from everything from depression to schizophrenia. We throw them away and arrest them for being in one place too long where we might have to see them.
This, what we’re doing here, this does not solve any problems. When we have a rash of mass shootings and seemingly no way to tell when they might be coming, thousands of disabled men, women, and children on the streets, people who can’t get SSI benefits because they’re directed to approve as few applications as possible, and people who can barely keep a roof over our heads when we finally do get our checks because apparently we need to live in poverty for the sin of being injured or, even worse, born this way, there are more important things to deal with. There are real pressing concerns here. Self-righteous railing against perhaps outmoded vernacular does not change the fact that people panic and grab their kids and run off when I get close on the street.
These things are real, they’re not exaggerated, and they’re real problems. Maybe you should give that some thought the next time you pat yourself on the back for your takedown of that obviously evil person who happened to use an expression that could use an update. I’m predicting many of you will reflexively try to defend yourselves and tell me I’m being unfair and that you’re on my side. I get that you’re on my side in spirit and I appreciate it. I do. But before you type up some comment telling me of all people that I don’t get it or don’t understand or something I hope you take a deep breath and instead consider that maybe the fact that I can’t avoid it and deal with it every single time I leave my apartment every day of my life means the thing to do might be not to argue but to listen. Because every time I’ve ever tried to get anyone to listen it turns out the same way. They don’t. Let’s hope this time turns out differently.
But that’s not our job. That’s not why we’re here.
We’re not obligated to take every opportunity to “change a person’s worldview”. We’re not obligated to be educators because someone made a mistake. We are not obligated to make people who are in a privileged class understand what we go through. Some of us just want to live our lives without having to deal with this shit. If someone wants me to spend time “educating them”, then it needs to be on my terms (either pay me or talk about something I’m interested in), not theirs. They don’t get to expect or demand me to do so.
If someone gets pissy because they said something objectionable and were called out for it, and there’s always at least one kind call-out with some not-so-kind ones on occasion (they aren’t even really nasty, just an “I’m so done with this shit”), then as my grandma says: “They can get happy in the same britches they got mad in.”
No one should have to put aside their feelings so they can make sure that someone else is comfortable or volunteer time to “change someone’s worldview”.
No one is saying you can’t make mistakes, but when people here have been more than kind when dealing with people who do occasionally say ableist things, and we only get upset when they double down or try to ‘splain to us why they should be able to use those words, I don’t think you have a leg to stand on to say that we’re “chasing people out” over “slip ups”.
It’s kind of hard to respond to this without knowing the context. Did you say something harmful? Because the issue to me, is that people keep putting their wish not to be criticized above all else. I guess I just don’t see why it matters if one or half a dozen people criticize a fucked up thing you say. What matters is how you respond to it.
I was “dogpiled” I guess my first month or two here. I made an oppression Olympics style comment. Instead of getting a martyrdom complex about it, I reflected on my comment and why it was criticized. I apologized sincerely and we all moved on. I’m glad it happened because it helped me to think more about the way I spoke. It made me a better person and a better ally. I can’t understand why that’s supposed to be a bad thing,
I really can’t fathom why people hold a grudge for months or years because some people objected to a post. Auntie Alias, I keep up with the ongoing threads very well and I don’t remember either me or anyone else having an issue with you. I pretty clearly remember all the big arguments that have occurred since I’ve been here and I don’t remember a big blow out centering around you. Are you sure people were really that horrible to you?
Maybe some of this stuff is like an embarrassing moment. You remember it really clearly and it becomes bigger and bigger in your head over time even though it wasn’t a big deal and nobody else remembers it. Not to trying to gaslight, btw. Everybody does this. I do it too. I’ll bet if you dig up whatever thread this supposed dog piling occurred in, it was fewer than five people objecting to whatever is you said and it probably wasn’t all that cruel.
I think people are just going to have to get over themselves a little bit. This is a place full of smart and opinionated people the majority of who belong to one or more groups that is frequently silenced and looked down upon by the culture at large. I just don’t see this ever becoming a place where everybody is demure and apologetic about their opinions. It would be dreadful if it did.
I’ll copy past my favorite part of that post I linked above and then I’ll stop teal dearing. For now anyway.
David, I just wanted to let you know how much I love and appreciate this blog. You are performing a very important public service. I also wanted to let you know that this post has inspired my own blog post today. http://thetimothycareyexperience.com/2015/07/20/pic-of-the-day-tracks-revisited-7/
I’m not saying you have to educate ignorant people. I just think it does a lot more good in the long run. And I know intent isn’t some magical cloak, but it is a factor. Someone who’s not *trying* to hurt anyone’s feelings can be taught. And yelling “fuck” at them when calling them out is not gentle. It just isn’t. It makes the OP defensive and more likely to double down. Which is just going to make everyone else angrier. It escalates things.
Attacks get very personal and nasty the longer these threads go on. I’ve read some stuff here that has personally made me feel very unsafe and unwelcome in this space (as a woman, as a rape survivor, as a sufferer of mental illness), which is a shame because I really love this site. And I generally like the camaraderie in the comments section, even though I so seldom take part in it. I hate to see it devolving the way it has over the last few days.
It’s posts like the one Auntie Alias has quoted that it get really boring having to respond to. Once again I have to respond to the accusation I obvs don’t suffer with mental illness and just don’t understand! Yesterday I had an appointment with my family, a friend and two shrinks to determine whether I need to be admitted to the psych ward for an unspecified period of time again during which my father argued mental illness isn’t real and I just need to achieve a lower body fat %! Instead of hospitalisation, for the time being, I’m trying experimental ketamine therapy and my dad has cut contact with me. Fuck yeah!
I’m really uncomfortable with the fact I just shared that because to me my health is personal and quite painful to discuss, not something I chitchat about on the internet with any regularity – I have to be twisted and tied in fucking knots before, without provocation, I share a WORD of my medical history because it SUCKS – but what the hell am I supposed to say when dumb shit like “You obvs don’t understand the struggle” is repeatedly expressed with reference to me?
But, oh yeah, assumptions I don’t understand or experience mental illness and associated stigma – totes valid. Gosh, it must be difficult, being privy to such knowledge about people you don’t know. I can’t imagine how overwhelming clairvoyance must be. I actually had to study to obtain knowledge. What a chump!
I sure as shit haven’t defended ableism nor have I seen anyone else do so. I’ve had my concerns written off as such though! So, who’s the abuser?
I’m quite pleased with the discussion I’ve precipitated! As we can see, it’s something that’s been of concern to MANY people and, in their opinions, harming the comments section of this blog. I wish it wasn’t happening in the comments section of a post to which it has no relevance. I haven’t participated in the discussion beyond, like, four posts though so I can hardly be considered responsible for the immense response it’s received! Even if I were as avid a participant as many of those villifying me for calling out narcissistic and often unfair behaviour, I can’t physically move any posts from one comment section to another.
So, to all the miserable posters who have participated bountifully in this discussion and are blaming me for the fact they and many others are still participating in a derail I planted the seeds of, take some responsibility for your actions. Be a grown-up. You’re the ones who made the derail happen just as you’re the ones who reroute the discussion, making it about your personal struggle with mental illness and the associated stigma all the goddamn time, whether someone actually committed a heinous act of ableism or not. I don’t have time to do what you guys do! I have another degree underway, a job, a family, a borderline-addiction to working out, a failed musical career I continue to pursue and my own mental health to take care of. This derail is your baby. The most I did was donate an ovum. I had nothing to do with fertilization or gestation or delivery. Seriously, own your shit (and that’s a James Boileau of Vancouver reference, not one to any honey badger(s)s. I’m not allowing them to appropriate that expression.)
The fact you have rerouted discussions, making them about yourselves repeatedly and unfairly attacked or disproportionately responded to posters and made the comments section anything from a dull to profoundly hurtful place for people who would seek to empower you under the vast majority of circumstances is your fault. You’re just engaging in garden variety bullying which, outside a setting in which you possess a great deal of influence, you wouldn’t be able to do. It’s hard to admit you’re privileged when in most respects you’re not but, in this setting, that’s exactly what you are and it’s what empowers and enables you to go WAY beyond the call of duty and hurt people.
I am happy to be your punching bag though as it appears to be the case many are determined to pretend I’m the only person to whom my feelings of dissatisfaction with the comments section are relevant and no one else has piped up and said “Yeah, I feel it would benefit the comments section if you guys toned it the fuck down”. Years ago, when I was twenty-five-ish, I stopped taking anything personally. The fact some people lash out when confronted about being self-righteous, hurtful and monopolising discussions with their pet issues has everything to do with them and nothing to do with me. I just grew tired enough of some of behaviours that I opted to sacrifice myself at the alter of “Some of you guys have gotten away with acting like jerks and making this place miserable for many for a long time”. Not taking shit personally though is intimately linked to getting over yourself which constitutes not thinking everything is about you and that takes time and learning which clearly some regulars here haven’t accrued yet! I can’t even hold that against anyone. You need life experience, a lot of which is getting kicked around, to learn that.
I get that I’m persona non grata. I’m not delusional (at least not on this issue) and I get that my feelings of “Holy shit, it’s NOT ABOUT YOU and it’s ALREADY BEEN ADRESSED – MOVE ALONG” aren’t welcome to some regulars who think that’s appropriate conduct. I wouldn’t be a very good scientist if I didn’t notice something so obvious! I’m OK with that. I’m just glad the sentiment some of the regulars have monopolised the comments section, making it miserable for many others, is out there and others feel sufficiently empowered to pipe up and express the same or similar, even tangential feelings.
Again, there are posters here I really like and value and I love David and his blog. There are people here, including David, who have demonstrated so much concern for my well-being when I’ve been in crisis that it’s brought me to tears, literally. My frustration is SO not with the blog or most of the commentors on it! I just don’t like some of the trends taken by the comments section with respect to some regular posters to the extent I think it’s significantly hindered discussion and many people’s enjoyment of the place. These trends haven taken over enough discussions to push away great people who would make great contributions to discussion but won’t because they’ve been treated so disproportionately badly and received support for it.
Wow, talk about a WOT!
That’s all well and good. If someone is in the mood to do some social justice 101 educating, great! But expecting people to always do it, especially when the topic is an oppression that effects them personally, is a problem.
I’ll let geek feminism explain way. Partially to show that we’re not some especially vile place full of meanies, that this is actually a problem many have noticed.
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Feminism_101_discussions
This is specifically about feminism, but it actually works for any topic in social justice if you change some of the identifying words like “women” around.
This.
And also this
That comes off to me as “I’m not saying you have to educate people, I’m saying I think it’s a better idea than being frustrated, so you should teach them because it’s better in the long run.”
Then you can go and educate people then and not try and tone police other people who are having valid feelings about seeing this shit over and over again.
I know you’re not trying to do this intentionally, but your posts are coming across as you not giving a shit how other mentally ill people (including myself), feel about this situation, and asking us to put aside our valid feelings to cater to the feelings of other people who were just being ableist, and that feels kind of shitty.
And we do try to be kind to them at first. I have yet to see anyone who has posted here in good faith be only responded to with any modicum of rudeness. Hell, even I bite my tongue in a lot of situations and just say “Hey, can you not do this please?”
Even the “rude” comments are pretty fucking tame. The angriest I’ve seen is someone say “not this shit again” and/or some sarcastic/snarky comment. That’s it.
However, a lot of people are just frustrated that they have this conversation for the billionth time this week, and they deserve to feel that way too.
Still not obligated to teach anyone anything though.
I get it, you have mental illnesses too, but not everyone is going to respond the same way you are to this stuff. Some of us are damn tired of dealing with it, and we do lash out due to frustration or even anger.
However, again, I have yet to see anyone posting here in good faith (who haven’t insisted that they’re a mental health professional and then go on to be horribly ableist, who aren’t known trolls, or who haven’t doubled down) be only responded to with shitty comments, and even the comments that are shitty are either not directed at them, and/or they’re really, really mild.
There’s been a lot of exasperation, and yeah, that can be frustrating to deal with if you’re new and don’t know what’s going on, but there’s also lots of people who do try to respond in good faith to ask them to stop.
You’re acting like we’re just tearing into innocent people who have done nothing wrong with reckless abandon, and I haven’t seen that happen. Ever.
If you know where it did happen, please feel free to point me in that direction.
Going back a page or so, because I fell asleep:
Y’know, for all the trolls and idiots accuse us of being THE WORLD’S MEANEST MEANIES, if we ever have an international IRL meetup, it’ll really just be a big ol’ hugfest.
http://i.imgur.com/C3j69eT.jpg
Let me answer back with this. It has always been a pet peeve of mine when people say “innocent women.” As in “this guy is threatening to harm innocent women” or “that guy is advocating raping innocent women.” It implies that if the woman is *not* innocent, then she deserves whatever treatment she gets. Whenever I see it used in the comments section, I grit my teeth a little bit. But I don’t call it out because I know that that’s not how it’s meant to come across. If I were a bolder person, I would simply explain it as I just explained it to you now. I wouldn’t go, “Sigh, eyeroll, this again, hope you’re here in good faith, you troll.”
I think a banner next to the comments section is best, with an explanation as to why a word most people use in a colloquial sense is not tolerated here. That way, the first time someone’s tongue slips, the commenters can point them to that, ask if they read it, etc. Simple. No one gets told to “fuck off,” nobody gets assumptions thrown at them. If they come back after that, have at them. But the post that set this whole thing off used the term “no sane person.” That’s not malicious. That’s not trolling. That’s using a common English phrase with negative connotations. That’s easily corrected and certainly didn’t need to be escalated into this whole argument.
Aaaand marinemichael comes back in with another wall of text that’s all “me me me, you’re all boring, you keep derailing the thread, I have important things to do, blah, blah, blah.”
There’s a difference between going “innocent people” and “this terrible person MUST be insane to do [insert terrible thing here]!” though, isn’t there?
If it does bother you that much, I fail to see how calling it out would be a bad thing, regardless of how it comes out. Talking about changing how we word things could lead to a valuable discussion.
However, I would like to point out (again) that not everyone is going to respond to everything the same way you do. Some people get frustrated, other people have bad days, some people are nice, and some people say nothing at all.
I would prefer if you’d stop trying to police everyone’s emotions, or at the very least, stop insisting that our emotions have to be set aside to cater to everyone else. It’s really getting tiresome.
That’s what we’re already doing? We’re being nice for the first time, pointing towards the comments policy and welcome package, and then the claws come out if they double down.
Again, it feels like you’re throwing the feelings of everyone else under the bus with tone policing, and asking that we stop getting upset when we have every right to be, and have every right to express that frustration.
Talk about making everything about yourself. I don’t recall anyone saying to you specifically that you don’t have any mental illness and couldn’t possibly understand. If a post wasn’t addressed specifically to you, and my post that Auntie Alias was responding to wasn’t, then it’s not about you.
I was one of those people who showed concern for you when you were going through that crisis last year, in fact. So no, I wasn’t saying you don’t understand mental health issues. But having experience with mental illness really doesn’t mean you get dictate how others here, especially other posters who also suffer from mental health issues, respond to ableism. Anymore than JudgyBitch gets to tell us we can’t smack down misogyny because after all, she’s a woman too.
I think you thought that when Ally S (who you’re still bringing up for some strange reason) left, you would be able to remake the comments section into what you wanted it to be and when that happened you didn’t like it very much. So now you’re trying to get rid of whoever else it is that you don’t like. But this time it’s not one person you can point to as the perceived problem, so it’s a little harder, isn’t it? So, I guess all you can do is resort to popping up and making a few hostile comments once in awhile.
http://33.media.tumblr.com/0f55f9e57ef405a0b1a9294e4af38d02/tumblr_nplajwL7SE1u3pkmko2_500.gif
I’m not asking you to not get upset. I’m not trying to tone police, so I’m really sorry if it came off that way. Of course your feelings are valid. But so are mine. And so are the poster’s. And a lot of the time, the posters who double down do so because they’re bewildered and baffled. They can’t be expected to correct their behavior if they don’t know what they’ve done wrong. It comes off as bullying. It really does.
Not that anyone here has said anything nasty to me (thanks for being so civil, I’m really a non-confrontive person, mostly because I spent practically every day of my life being told to keep quiet because I had “nothing clever” to say), but I’m going to take a break from this site. It’s just bringing back lots of horrible triggers for me. I’m crying as I type this, and that’s just not worth it for me.
Again, sorry if I said anything really offensive or if anyone felt marginalized by anything I said. I really do respect the work you’re doing here by calling out ableist language. Really, you have no idea how your work has helped me to put a new lens on my childhood and upbringing.
@marinerachel, so you are telling people to not make it about themselves by… making it all about yourself? Personally I think it’s a good thing to be able to share experiences, feelings, etc. with others so I am not gonna tell you it’s a bad thing that is what you are doing right now because it’s not, however it is bad that you are essentially trying to tell other people they are not allowed to do so and need to “grow a thicker skin” or whatever.
As someone once said, a thick skin is just that: thick, not invincible, it get grounded down and it’s a good thing to be able to get “emotional skin care” to take care of yourself. It’s not a juvenile thing you grow out of, though acting like emotions are for babies and beneath oneself is indeed a phase one should grow out of while still being able to keep the thick skin one have left ready for when one might need it if possible.
I’ve just put up the new comment policy (and a bit of an explanation of it) in a new post:
https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2015/07/20/new-comment-policy/
So, please take all discussions of the comments policy, ableism and so on to that thread.
This thread will remain open for discussions of Janet Bloomfield, kitties, and other topics not related to the comments policy and/or ableism.
@WWTH
When you disparage me with “martyrdom complex”, tell me to get over myself, and guess how few people piled on me, you are arguing in bad faith. The fact that you don’t remember the incident doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. In fact, you were part of it.
Once again, stop making this about ableism. I made it clear that wasn’t part of my complaint. It’s certainly convenient to use it as a shield when someone complains about the bullying in here but I call BS on that.
@NothingClever
Thanks for speaking up and here’s a bear hug if you want one. :bear:
Sorry, David. I didn’t refresh before posting.
I would love for the people concerned about dogpiling to actually point towards specific examples. Like, with a link if at all possible, or enough detail so that people might be able to find the thread with google. Because I’m not sure if folks are using different definitions of “dogpiling,” or if someone’s memory is fuzzy and isn’t remembering the details (either remembering it as better or worse), or if stories are being passed around off-site, or what.
It’s hard for us folks accused of dogpiling to defend ourselves against something we don’t remember (or remember happening differently), and vague accusations that the community is terrible because of some unspecified behavior doesn’t exactly promote useful discussion.
Same, David. Didn’t refresh.
http://33.media.tumblr.com/9eb2160b9cbbf22f56c06ca2b3c56715/tumblr_nihmspc8Rp1sxxwbno1_1280.gif