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Several weeks ago, antifeminist attention-seeker and Twitter scofflaw Andrea Hardie — perhaps better known under her aliases Janet Bloomfield and JudgyBitch — launched a crusade of sorts against female suffrage.
Though Hardie seems to believe most of the nonsense she regularly spews, her campaign is so patently a publicity stunt that few people have even bothered to respond to it. Sure, I wrote a post on it, but then again that’s sort of my job.
On Twitter — which she has not-so-sneakily returned to under her real name after being banned for targeted harassment — Hardie has been trying to make the hashtag #WhyWomenShouldNotVote happen.
It’s not going to happen. Even with the presidential primaries dominating the news in the US, and talk of politics and voting in the air, Hardie’s hashtag steadfastly refuses to trend. Indeed, she seems to be writing half the tweets herself.
With millions of Americans in 12 states going to the polls today to vote in the Super Tuesday primaries. I thought I’d take a look at what Hardie has been saying to try to convince the world that half of these voters shouldn’t be voting at all.
So here are The 19 Dumbest Reasons Andrea Hardie Thinks Women Shouldn’t be Allowed to Vote. Prepare yourself for internalized misogyny, blatant racism and xenophobia, rape jokes, and a lot of truly bizarre logic. And I think I might have caught a whiff of desperation as well.
1) Because women are inferior to, and envious of, men
https://twitter.com/AndreaHardie/status/704110796196945920
2) Because (white) women are wreckers, not builders
https://twitter.com/AndreaHardie/status/703220649171537920
3) Because western women will need men to protect them from the refugees they’ve welcomed into their countries
https://twitter.com/AndreaHardie/status/704498299160666113
4) Because women don’t want to shoot refugees
https://twitter.com/AndreaHardie/status/704308224909037569
https://twitter.com/AndreaHardie/status/703950068672569344
5) Because a Muslim woman in Moscow beheaded a child
Despite supporting the mass murder of migrants, Hardie believes that a horrific murder carried out by an Uzbecki woman in Moscow is an indication that all migrants should be excluded from “Western” countries. Oh, and the fact that women generally disagree with her on this means that they shouldn’t vote.
https://twitter.com/AndreaHardie/status/704296245846790145
Huh. Less than two weeks ago, an Uber driver went on a shooting spree in and around Kalamazoo, Michigan, killing six and seriously injuring two others. The alleged shooter: a white, native-born man. Should we therefore deport all white, native-born men from the US? And should we ban everyone who doesn’t agree with this draconian solution from voting?
6) Because a black guy in France slapped a woman who turned down his sexual advances
https://twitter.com/AndreaHardie/status/703254696132222981
It seems a little curious that Hardie is getting so worked up about the sexual misbehavior of the man in question.
Generally speaking, her response to allegations of sexual violence, no matter how convincing the evidence, is to blame the victims. She is, after all, the woman whose response after two of the Steubenville rapists had been found guilty was to spew forth an angry tirade attacking the victim as “a stupid, drunk, helmet-chasing whore.”
Oh, and she also argued that Jimmy Savile’s underage victims were the ones exploiting him.
Perhaps Hardie’s real objection to the alleged refugee mentioned in her Tweet was not the violence he directed at a woman but, you know, the fact that he’s a Muslim refugee?
Or at least that she thinks he is? The video in question has been making the rounds on assorted right-wing websites catering to immigrant haters and other racists, but none of them link to any news stories about the actual incident. One poster on Reddit says it’s actually a video of an incident that took place in France in 2010. Beyond that I could find no info about the woman or the men who assaulted her.
7) Because some women wear burkas
https://twitter.com/AndreaHardie/status/704098451232047104
8) Because native-born Norwegian men don’t commit any rapes, at least if you ignore all the rapes they do commit
https://twitter.com/AndreaHardie/status/702628912564723712
The police officer making this claim is only talking about literal stranger-in-the-bushes outdoor rapes, not the rapes in which the rapist and victim know one another. That is, most rapes, which apparently aren’t rapes to Hardie.
9) Because some black men who might possibly have been raised by single mothers are criminals
https://twitter.com/AndreaHardie/status/703304277146669056
10) Because women turned Gawker into a pussy-beggar?
https://twitter.com/AndreaHardie/status/704106096437420032
11) Because women don’t need to be able to vote in order to influence politics
https://twitter.com/AndreaHardie/status/703251681560109060
This is a bit of a weird argument for her to make, given that all of her reasons that women shouldn’t vote would also seem to apply to women having any influence over politics.
12) Because women want to be cattle
https://twitter.com/AndreaHardie/status/701766288050417666
13) Because the suffragettes didn’t suffer enough
https://twitter.com/AndreaHardie/status/702909675516329984
14) Because of the actions of fictional women on the show “Single Ladies”
https://twitter.com/AndreaHardie/status/701836204275322881
15) Because most women expect men to ask them out
https://twitter.com/AndreaHardie/status/701830281519562752
16) Because mothers worry when their sons go to war
https://twitter.com/AndreaHardie/status/702608508068438018
17) Because Twitter is asking Anita Sarkeesian for advice on how to design effective tools against harassment
https://twitter.com/AndreaHardie/status/701861916617138177
18) Because she thinks the author of a book about rape isn’t hot enough to be raped
https://twitter.com/AndreaHardie/status/702496789841186816
Harding is in fact a rape survivor.
19) Because if women have choices they ruin everything
https://twitter.com/AndreaHardie/status/702541768680726529
Well, that’s enough of that.
Paul McCartney’s suffragette-mentioning song “Jet” doesn’t make much more sense than Hardie’s tweets, but it’s vastly more entertaining. So here it is.
Does… does Hardy think that there are three women in Germany for every man? How does she think Germany maintains this gender ratio? Do Germans practise polygyny in her mind?
@Social Justice Atheist:
I’m of the opinion that acting against your own interests is the noblest thing a privileged human can do. The world needs more male feminists, more white people working to unmake racist structures, more first-world people fighting colonialism, straight people being LGBTQA allies and so on. Anyone who’s content to defend their privilege is someone whom I have contempt for.
If Hardie is genuinely of the opinion that women are the privileged gender, then a) being wrong is her superpower, but b) IMHO she’s picked the right moral stance based on the flawed information she has.
ETA: It is my suspicion, however, that Hardie neither knows nor cares about privilege and power structures. Rather, she hates women for her own reasons and thus will throw whatever dirt at them she can find. If being privileged sounds pejorative then sure, she’ll throw that.
Ha ha, now that’s a funny joke! Just what I needed to wake me up…
[frantic whispers]
Wait, you mean… she’s serious? Oh damn, initiate evacuation procedures!
@EJ
I understand what you are saying, but in my opinion working against privilege wouldn’t necessarily be working against your own interests. Unless of course you are sexist, racist, etc. and just want to see marginalized people continue to be oppressed. But lifting others out of oppression doesn’t necessarily mean that you are working against your own interests because I think it is possible to live in a world where everyone is treated like an equal human being. Nobody is marginalized, and nobody is superior.
Of course realistically, we are very far off from this and people who are privileged will need to sacrifice some of that privilege so that oppressed people can have the same opportunities. But in the end, this works out to a system that will level the playing field and will make it where nobody has more rights than anyone else simply because of gender, race, sexual orientation, class, etc. Dismantling privilege may seem to some people like they may be “giving up” something, but it still doesn’t take away things like human rights, equal opportunities, etc.
So, I guess the conclusion is it depends on what you define as “interests”. Originally, I mean “interests” as in basic human rights and equality, not privilege or superiority. What JudgyBitch is saying goes against her basic rights as a human being, even if women did happen to be the privileged class. For example, men are the privileged class but saying that men should not vote wouldn’t help oppression against women, it would only be taking away mens’ human rights to vote. But I see what you were saying: that the good of the many outweighs the good of one person or group of people.
I personally think we should aim to accomplish a world where nobody is privileged or disadvantaged.
P.S. You are probably right about JB, she could care less about things like that and probably doesn’t even understand a lot of it. It’s most likely about her silly past grudges with other women.
@SJA:
I think we agree and I think you said it far better than I could.
With regard to Hardie’s motives for doing it: to an extent I’m of the opinion that it doesn’t matter. She could be a p-zombie for all I care and her positions would still be equally harmful.
@EJ
Truth. It doesn’t matter her intent when her words and actions are so toxic.
Mugwump:
Did you see where 20% of Trump’s supporters think slavery should not have been abolished?
OT: I was just catching up on the latest Monday Night Raw, and The Boss Lady (Stephanie McMahon) just went on a straw feminism tirade because her brother’s trying to take control of the company from her because she’s being coddled by her father and making awful decision after awful decision. (For instance, there have been a greater number of injuries on her watch, the ratings have plummeted, and so have their stocks).
“He’s just trying to take my power away from me because he’s a man!”
My eyes could not roll any harder. I know it’s a storyline, but goddamn.
Oh, and to make things better, she goes off on a tirade after her first tirade about how the fans are going to be forced to “show [her and her husband] the respect we deserve! You will bow before your king, and you will bow before your queen, me!” And now she’s strutting away cradling the “Award for Excellence” her father made just to give to her.
Yup, totally breaking glass ceilings there, Steph. What a great role model you are for young girls you are, throwing tables around and yelling about how no one respects you after you tell them that you don’t care about them numerous times.
[/wrestling rant]
I’m sure that Andrea Hardie has many reasons for ranting against women, all of them bad. EJ (The Other One) is correct: Being wrong is Hardie’s superpower.
I think that the queen bee syndrome is part of what’s going on with Hardie. The queen bee wants power and she doesn’t want to share it with other women.
Here’s an example of a queen bee in action. I read somewhere that early feminist Betty Friedan (author of The Feminine Mystique) appeared on Virginia Graham’s TV show Girl Talk in the 1960s. Graham opined that women didn’t need careers, that they would be happier being housewives and mothers.
Friedan leaned toward the camera and said, “Women, don’t listen to her. She has her own TV show.”
Rarely have i seen a more despicable brown-noser.
Let’s take a break with some kinkajous:
http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-live/photos/000/005/cache/kinkajou_596_600x450.jpg
http://www.exoticanimalsforsale.net/images/kinkajou.jpg
http://usercontent1.hubimg.com/10365182_f520.jpg
http://www.zooniversity.org/wp-content/uploads/Kinkajou.jpg
http://www.jandaexotics.com/images/DSC_0647.jpg
Baby:
http://www.vegactu.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Kinkajou-baby1.jpg
I think that commenter LindsayIrene was quite knowing. This Bloomfield/Hardie person just wants to make a living for themselves. I think she doesn’t care either way about people’s “rights”. Just like a version of Ann Coulter. An even try-hardier version though.
My brain is actually dissecting those quotes like a check off box
Racism
Women as Object
Spooky Scary Minority
Hive Mind Minority
Women as want to be used and dumb yet somehow uber intelligent reptile overlords
If it’s any consolation I get to know that her hashtag spreads like a cyst, inert and easily removed from eye view.
I can’t even bring anything intelligent to say other than “yeah, no that’s incorrect and silly and fearmongering, you self loathing chauvinist.”
re: 4)
The Daily Mail article is deliberately misleading. A Twitter poll is hardly representative for all of Germany. And it did NOT ask whether refugees should be shot at the borders.
Perhaps Andrea needs to hang out with a different group of women, the current group has skewed her perceptions.
I remember doing my final school history exam talking about the suffragist movement (in the UK) and one of the sources on the topic was an anti-suffragist woman proclaiming that women shouldn’t get the vote because they couldn’t understand politics and wouldn’t have time for it. The thing was, as I pointed out in the essay and got 100% for, it was a woman, engaging in politics, stating that women wouldn’t be able to engage in politics. I thought it hilarious at how someone back then could be so conditioned to have such a terrible lack of self awareness…then I saw this post. Guess such extreme idiocy is timeless huh?
EJ,
Maybe she thinks that Germany is so misandrist that feminists there killed off 75% of the male population. I mean, how else do you explain their feeemaale chancellor?
Oh shit. Did I just reveal too much about the plan for Hillary’s victory?
Sorry, Katie!
@EJ, @SJA – One can even advocate for human rights from an intensely selfish place.
Ex:
It’s better for me to live in a society in which people working in the service sector can take paid sick leave rather than come into work to spread contagion.
It’s better for me if the children who will grow to be my society’s adults have access to good nutrition, comprehensive education, and stable housing so that they can help to keep civilization humming along as productive, contributing members.
It’s better for me if tax policy allows for a more equitable distribution of resources. Even if it means that my family “takes home” slightly less money, we will have a more stable, prosperous society in which to spend it.
What gets me most about some arch-conservatives isn’t their self-interest – everyone’s self-interested – it’s their shortsightedness and lack of scope.
@ mockingbird
I’ve always thought that, even if you can’t see a moral case for feminism, a system that excludes half of all potential geniuses and Entrepreneurs from fully contributing hardly makes economic sense.
@Alan:
That position only holds if your ultimate goal is the enrichment and betterment of all of humanity. If instead your goal is to maintain the dominance of a particular section of humanity, then an entrepreneur or genius arising from the downtrodden is a nightmare, not an opportunity.
Hello.
I am sorry to ask, but what 13th, 18th and 19th are refering to ? Are they laws ?
Have a nice day.
I don’t know why, but reading these tweets, each more hideous than the next, the words “poo-flinging ape” came to mind. I don’t know if that’s a quote or I dreamt it, but it seems to fit, kinda.
Anyway, here’s a duckling shouting “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!”
http://giphy.com/gifs/xT9DPHufHM87jmRWBa
@ occasional reader
They’re amendments to the US constitution.
(As they’re numbered in chronological order it’s perhaps no surprise that 13 came before 19)
In golf, the “19th hole” is a drink to celebrate finishing. The others are… the holes in JB’s reasoning?
Hey! That ‘debate’ between Sargon of Akkad and Michael Brooks happened, at it was actually more fun than I had expected.
Basically, Michael started the discussion by asking Sargon to define what “regressive left” actually means, and to give specific examples of alleged regressives engaging in such regressive behavior. This stunned Sargon and he never got past this first question for the entire debate. He kept trying to appeal to Sam Harris and at one point even appealing to his own youtube followers as an argument from authority/popularity. The discussion ended before Sargon ever managed to even define what “regressive left” is supposed to mean.
And his youtube subscribers have already made up some weird conspiracy theory that his mic was muted so he couldn’t answer the question (yet, of course, nobody in the comments wants to explain what the answer actually is), or that the video was seamlessly edited to cut out parts of Sargon’s replies. I lolled my way through this. Pretty amazing stuff.