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
Thanks, Robjec. 🙂
@Marine Rachel,
I’m with you on this one, and it’s nice to see a few others sticking their heads above the parapet too for once.
I wince every time someone types something insensitive, because I know I’ll soon be scrolling past the latest dog pile trying to find comments that relate back to the original discussion.
Some commenters nicely asking you to not use ableist terminology because a lot of us here are mentally ill and are tired of hearing it = dogpiling, gotcha.
So sorry about your hurt little fee-fees that a few people asked you not to fucking do something and then continued to discuss why that something was bad instead of immediately dropping it like you wanted them to, fantasyarmadillo. Were we supposed to drop to our knees and praise you for your “contribution to the thread”?
Oh, and nice use of fucking sarcasm quotes. [/sarcasm]
The only time I see any “dogpiling” is when people double the fuck down on their ableism or make a passive-aggressive “apology” that goes something like “I’m sorry I offended you, but I still think I should be able to say it”, regardless of how other commenters felt about it. I never see anyone who legitimately apologizes get dogpiled on. Ever. Including myself, and I have been called out for shit on this site. I have yet to see anyone be over-the-top cruel to anyone who casually drops an ableist slur/statement, and legitimately apologizes without snark. I have seen frustration from some people, and yes, that might not be fair to newcomers, but when you have to explain this shit over and over and OVER, it does get frustrating.
No one is saying you’re a terrible fucking person for using an ableist slur, we all understand what it’s like to unlearn shit. We all understand that not everyone knows everything, and it’s possible you just weren’t aware of the thing.
But when you attempt to go “You’re all so mean to me! I apologized and you all just kept talking about what I did wrong instead of looking at everything else I said! You’re all assholes who think you’re special!”, that’s you attempting to paint yourself as a victim and guilt us into feeling sorry for you, and that’s fucking laughable, and that’s when any understanding and niceties fly out the window.
Also, I dug into your posting history. Not only did I find one comment where you weren’t called out for an extremely abelist comment (and I posted right underneath you! Fancy that.), I may have found the thread where you got “dogpiled” on! And fancy that, marinemichael was being a holier-than-thou fuckstick about this very same topic in that thread too! (And they were the ONLY ONES who said that Fang would “get jumped on” for ableism, and no one else brought it up! SHOCKING.)
You know what I found in that comment thread? ONE COMMENT addressing you after you asked about ableism (and went on to say “Well my friends and I don’t find it offensive, so I’m just wondering why you do!”), and linking you to the welcome page, where we have the rules about ableism. All they did was ask you to maybe Google it, and show concern that you weren’t here in good faith.
Unless you can post another thread where you were “dogpiled on” for ableism, then I’m gonna have to call bullshit.
I find it amazing that so many people want to not discuss ableism in threads, and yet they do that by not shutting the fuck up about how they hate it when people discuss ableism, and how we’re all assholes for asking them to not say ableist slurs/phrases. It’s like the Streisand Effect in miniature.
I’m so fucking done right now.
Patreon’s T&Cs are here: https://www.patreon.com/legal
Report JudgyBitch Here: https://patreon.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/204914235-Where-can-I-report-a-campaign-
Damn it, the first link broke.
Here it is.
TIL calling out ableism is as petty as piling on someone for a spelling mistake. Thanks so much for clearing that up for us.
I mean those of you complaining about this, can you please listen to yourselves? “Oh em gee, every time this happens I have to scroll past a bunch of comments in order to catch back up to the original topic!” How, incredibly awful for you. I’m sure the stigma faced by the mentally ill absolutely pales in comparison to the inconvenience of having to spin your mouse wheel an extra few times.
I guess I really need to stop shillyshallying and put up the revised comments policy, which I’ve been working on of and on for some time now.
I’m hoping that once I put the new policy up, with much more specific guidelines on the use of terminology like “crazy” and some other things that it will be easier for commenters here to point to it and say, this is the policy, please follow it.
But the reason it’s taken so long is that it’s difficult to come up with a policy that balances the completely reasonable desires of most people here to have comments sections free of stigmatizing language with the fact that, well, almost everyone in the world outside of certain comment sections on the internet uses terms like “crazy” all the time.
I’ve been dealing with depression and anxiety and other issues for decades now. I know (or have known) numerous people IRL who have dealt with mental illness of all kinds and all different levels of severity. People dealing with depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder. People dealing with eating disorders.
But here’s the thing. Of all the people I know in real life dealing with these issues, none of them (including myself) are personally bothered when people use words like “crazy” or “insane” colloquially. Most of them use the word “crazy” themselves, often quite a lot. “That was a crazy movie we just watched.” “Your cat is acting crazy.”
None of these people are bad people. None of these people are evil. Most of them are the sorts of people I like to have reading and commenting on this blog.
Now, the consensus of the commenters here is that we should avoid this sort of language, for reasons we’re all familiar with, and I’ve put that in the rules here.
I’m committed to that. But the fact is that many of those who come here to comment for the first time are used to using the terms colloquially,and some of them — who are not assholes or evil — use them in their comments.
What I would like to happen — ideally — is for people here to gently remind them of the rules, without attacking them. I would like the newbies to read these rules, and agree to go along with them. And then for the conversation to move on.
In order for this to happen, obviously, I need to get the more specific rules up, and I will do that sometime in the next couple of days.
Here’s what I have so far, at least on these issues. (There are plenty of other rules dealing with other issues as well.)
The policy will also contain this rule as well to deal with those who dig in their heels:
The one place it WILL be appropriate to argue about the rules is in the comments to the post I make announcing the new rules.
I’m hoping that having more clarity in the rules can make a lot of these sorts of discussions unnecessary.
I don’t want people to have to be perfect to comment here. I don’t want them to have to take a quiz first. I want the blog to be open to political newbies who are basically on the right side even if they may not understand all these sorts of issues perfectly.
If they’re truly not willing to learn or adapt or follow the rules then they don’t belong here. But that really can’t be determined by a comment or two.
Yeah, I normally see a polite request to not say something ableist then a “dogpile” only when the poster stamps their foot about it.
I am way more tired of seeing the “but but it’s not fair!” doubling down than anything else. Because THAT’S when I know a massive derailing fight is going to follow.
I guess the only request I have regarding this is that maybe David puts a little footnote under posts that deal with entitled male killers or something, since THAT’S when we get a huge amount of new commenters going “well obviously this guy was mentally ill.”
Yeah, maybe some kind of boiler plate at the end of posts which seem likely to spawn these derails linking to the rules about ableism? Like others have said, what I see is people saying something cluelessly ableist, people asking them to refrain in reasonable civil if somewhat exasperated tones. And then the derail happens when we get people going “but whhhhyyyyyyy can’t I associate bad behavior with mental illness?!?!” and “why can’t you guys elect exactly one person to do all the complaining about ableism so that I can ignore the whole subject more easily?!?!”
Sorry to drag the ableism thread on but I wanted to say that I appreciate how so many people take time to explain to newbies exactly why it’s wrong. I think several people explaining it from different angles is helpful.
Despite having a long history of mental health problems (yay dysthymia and PTSD!) I often used to stay “crazy”, “psycho” etc without thinking about it. When I started reading and lurking on WHTM I found the different explanations of ableism really informative.
It’s also made me more open about my mental health and people have told me that they think differently of mental illness knowing that despite mine I still hold down a stressful full time job, college and being a single mum to 2 boys. And I’m not an asshole (I hope).
So, all the people who are upset when ablelist language is called out, what if we were bombarded with posters using racist or misogynist language? Would it be acceptable for people to speak up against that or would you find that too tedious? Which bigotries are acceptable to you in casual conversation?
sunnysombrera, yeah, I thought about putting something in the policy about the tendency of people to see mass killers as “crazy” because that’s one of the ways that sort of language/”analysis” is most pernicious, but I think you’re right that it would be better to put something about that as a note at the end of posts on things like that that are very likely to draw comments along those lines.
Thank you David. It’s good to know that there will be updates to the rules soon.
@David,
your new set of guidelines works for me.
Btw, what happened to Ally S? When I first started visiting this site, she was quite a dominant voice here, then after I came back after a break from the comment threads she was gone.
Nobody is fucking upset when ableist language is called out. I’m guessing this repeated misrepresention is intentional and no one’s reading comprehension is that bad. The only thing anyone has taken issue with is that the matter of ableism has consumed the comments section of this blog just as Ally’s pet concerns did. People are jumping at opportunities to accuse people of ableism where there is none. Even when there is, instead of “Mate, that’s not cool and here’s why”, the response is completely disproportionate, usually involving the total derailing of the discussion, instead making it about the personal experiences of a handful of posters with mental illness who feel oppressed and take umbrage with words like nuts and loony, preventing the post’s topic from being revisited.
This, to many, is boring as it’s the same discussion being had over and over again by the same people. People are looking for opportunities to accuse others of ableism and when they find them (or make them up) the discussion is rerouted ENTIRELY to be about their personal struggle with mental illness. It happens over many threads. It’s stifling.
So, again, I invite all those misrepresenting this position to blow. It. Out. Your. Ass. Being dishonest after you’ve monopolised what was a fun comments section with your topic of choice isn’t cool. It’s what Ally did. Maybe start actually responding to the criticisms being put forth and cease putting words in mouths.
And yes, I would take issue if it were a couple racist remarks that resulted in such a huge fucking rerouting of the discussion over many threads that the place was turned into a support group for a small number of individuals and the content of the blog posts could barely be adressed any longer. When someone says something fucking racist I tell them that’s racist and to fuck off. If they keep it up, I remove them (or ask someone with the strength to do so to.) By that point the particular matter has been addressed. I don’t go off on a tangent about my personal struggle with racism nor do all my friends leap in and do the same long after the racist remark hasn been uttered and the person who made it, apparently gone. I have those discussions with people who share in struggles with me in appropriate settings.
I don’t turn settings intended for discussion of other topics into discussions of my disadvantage at the first chance I get and certainly don’t do it over and fucking over again. I’m not that special. Not every discussion has to be about me, even if someone indirectly does say something insensitive about me in it. They can be told “Don’t do that and here’s why” and the discussion can resume.
Ideally people will stop absolving shitheads of responsibility for their actions by saying they’re mentally ill and the caricature of mentally ill people as dangerous and/or hostile will no longer be reinforced. That’s going to take time. I think a reminder within a post which is likely to result in such comments not to do so would be helpful because, unlike the comment policy, people respond to the post BECAUSE they read it. I’m guessing virtually no one reads the comments policy. It doesn’t stand out and there’s no mention of “Read this before posting”.
What I also think would be helpful, because, obvs, people really want to talk at length about their personal experience with mental illness and associated marginalisation and the effect of slurs, is a place where that is an appropriate topic of discussion. Remember the Open Thread for Personal Stuff? That seems like a really appropriate place for these derails to be taken without impeding the ability to discuss the topics at hand on blog posts here.
None of this equates to “Stop calling out bigotry!” All it boils down to is “Stop derailing discussions and making them about you long after bigotry has been confronted and rebuked”.
None of this is difficult to grasp.
@David, could I give a quick suggestion on the revised comment policy?
It seems to me like this might not be helpful to include in the policy, because most of the double-downers do so on the grounds that “But so-and-so is doing/saying an [awful thing], which is clear evidence of [armchair diagnosis], and therefore I get to talk about it”.
Seems to me that people who understand ableism will understand that it’s okay to talk about mental illness in the appropriate context, and people who don’t—well, they probably can’t suss out what is and isn’t “evidence”, as you mean it, and it would be best if they don’t try until they’ve stuck around for a while.
For whatever it’s worth; take it with as many grains of salt as you please. 🙂
marinerachel,
After reviewing these comments, I really only found a couple of posts calling out each incident of ableism, plus a side conversation regarding word replacement/comment policy. The conversation regarding JB continued largely unimpeded until you made your lengthy post regarding your concerns.
Reading your latest post, there are several comments I might snarkily quote here, but I won’t. As fun as that might be, it would only serve to further this derail and neither of us want that. Right?
@marinerachel
I’ve only ever seen people here disclose their personal experiences with mental health when it’s literally been the only way to get someone to shut their fool mouths after repeated double-downs. It drives home the point that mentally ill people are not some abstract idea, but real human beings who know whereof they speak.
The fact that it often results in a derail is testament to how many commenters here are directly affected by ableism, and how little patience we have to tolerate repeated infractions – not how much we want to tear apart newbies.
In fact, the majority of newbies have been given the benefit of the doubt, and some have apologised, stopped using ableist language, and become regulars. The ones who repeat the slur, double-down and whine about the comment policy are invariably trolls who end up needing to be banned.
We don’t have to make people feel good about themselves when they’ve already been given fair warning and still come into the comment section with an ass-backwards stereotype that they want to assert as Truefax.
Dogpiling is not always intentional, because of the way comments here work, but sometimes it literally takes everyone in the thread saying “we won’t tolerate your ableism” to get someone to stop doubling down.
These new commenting rules might help cut down on the size of derails, but it always seems to take more than one “cut it out” even on people who claim to be here on good faith.
I don’t think anyone here has been unfair in this thread.
@ David Futrelle – Yay, comment policy! Thanks for trying to maintain a healthy environment here. I also think sunnysombrera had the right idea about including a banner at the foot of high-risk posts for ableism.
One thing that struck me about this issue (while I was driving, strangely enough) is that, for many people, it’s really an issue of limited, or at least habiitual, vocabulary. The fact is that “crazy” and “psycho” and similar words are shorthand, simple, overused extracts from lengthy entries in the thesaurus and all the dictionaries. Similarly, many people don’t recognise that using words like autistic and schizoid are thoughtless one-word versions of armchair or internet diagnoses which is inappropriate in most places.
Perhaps a suggested list of, or at least an approach to, alternative pithy-but-appropriate words … with moral or social emphasis rather than those with psychological or medical presumptions attached.
From nonsensical, preposterous, daft, bone-headed or ridiculous through rude, inconsiderate, thoughtless, selfish, privileged to intolerant, rigid, bigoted, prejudiced. With occasional diversions to unschooled, ignorant, stubborn, uninformed, insensitive along the way.
From petty, mean-minded, self-serving, mealy-mouthed, devious and the like all the way to despicable, abhorrent, loathsome, hateful, detestable arriving at the inevitable destinations of nasty, wicked, foul, depraved, evil.
Then check All The Synonyms. There are lots and lots, and lots, of words. All negative, many of them vivid, most are suitable, most are acceptable. Check out this list for depraved … http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/depraved . Not all of them are appropriate, but none of them have any medical/psychological content. Given a guideline like moral or social OK, medical or psychological not OK, it’s pretty easy to see that most words in these lists — no matter how negative or aggressive — do not have the problematic inferences that concern us.
So we finish up advising people how many multitudes of options there are for saying what they can freely say rather than telling them what not to do or say … when they may be working from a (maybe self-imposed) limited range of ideas and vocabulary.
(Of course the recalcitrant armchair diagnosers need a firmly administered kick in a well-padded portion of their anatomy. With escalating strength of repeated kicks for doubling down.)
Hey marinerachel, why don’t you actually address the topic of this post instead of continuing the derail because the conversation isn’t to your liking? Frex, did anyone bother to report JudgyBitch’s begging campaign for a crossbow to shoot feminists in the face? I did. I don’t give a fuck if she bawls about persecution when her Patreon gets taken down. That’s what happens when you’re stupid enough to describe in lurid detail how you’d murder someone, and then beg people for money so you can buy the murder weapon.
Well i am not a regular commenter here and i certainly have zero say in how the place is run but for my two cents i agree with marinerachel. Rather than competent moderating, this forum really does prefer dogpiling and derailing. Its a thread about a woman threatening to shoot feminists, and yet from halfway down the first of multiple comment pages the discussion has been somebody’s inappropriate use of the term mentally ill. Despite someone else’s snark about shakesville, i LOVE their comments sections. Harmful comments, mild or not, are immediately addressed by the mods, if they double down on the bigotry they get banned, and none of the blogs commenters feel any need to have to set the rude commenter down themselves because its already going to be taken care of. But the mods here, with the exception of David, seem to prefer the dogpiling and derailing method themselves. Its their choice of course, and at least the ableism still gets called out, but it really doesnt make for comment sections worth opening.
Mods? Haven’t seen any comments from any mod on this thread. Or did I miss something?
@ashley: You mean the comment sections where everyone fawns over the blogmistress and contributors, and anyone who dares to disagree – even to correct a factual error in a post – is ruthlessly smacked down by the mods? Where posts tend to only get a handful of comments because everyone’s too frightened of putting a foot wrong and being brutally smacked down for it to actually say anything?
Getting back to the topic, Judgybitch was so proud of this post that she posted it on the men’s rights subreddit. The 20 comments were mostly negative, which seems to have bothered the sockpuppet (JB I think) who showed up to defend it.
Then the mods removed the posting for advocating violence.
Yep, even the MRA mods, who live in the pocket of AVFM like mice, turned against her.
How sad not to be understood and appreciated.