Janet Bloomfield, reporting from her bunker
Janet “JudgyBitch” Bloomfield, lovely human being that she is, has resumed her harassment of feminist writer Jessica Valenti. Several months back, you may recall, the integrity-deficient Bloomfield tried to smear Valenti by Tweeting a series of made-up quotes she attributed to the writer.
The fact that the quotes were patently ridiculous, and utterly unlike anything Valenti has ever written, didn’t stop Bloomfield’s army of knucklehead followers from swallowing her lies whole – or, once informed that the quotes were fake, of declaring that they sounded like something someone like her would say.
On Monday, Bloomfield tweeted one of the more obviously fake Valenti quotes that’s been floating around online, and her followers once again responded with predictable outrage against Valenti. Their response included this lovely tweet below from a proud #GamerGater and rabid feminist-hater by the name of Sean Hudspeth:
Inspired by #GamerGate I have added bright red text and arrows.
Then something really weird happened. Apparently tired of having to defend posting her flagrantly libellous fake Valenti quotes, Bloomfield decided to post some quotes from Valenti that were … real.
Well, mostly real, in any case; one of the “quotes” Bloomfield used was actually a headline to an article of Valenti’s in the The Guardian. Presumably Bloomfield, who fancies herself a writer of some sort, is aware that editors, not authors, generally write the headlines. Or maybe not.
Aside from this little slipup, there’s just one teensy little problem with Bloomfield’s new approach to demonizing Valenti: when you quote things Valenti has actually written, even grossly out of context, they don’t sound much like the ravings of a manhater. They sound, you know, pretty … reasonable. And when you look at these quotes in context, in the articles they came from, they sound more reasonable still.
Here’s one of Bloomfield’s new memes, designed to portray Valenti as some sort of misandrist Ms. Scrooge:
Aside from the fact that the first line is the headline I was talking about – Valenti almost certainly didn’t write it – and that the second line is, you know, a jokey reference to the stresses of Christmas in her family, up to and including “cooking a multi-course meal for a small army of Italian-American relatives,” what on earth is wrong with suggesting that men share in the Christmas chores?
Indeed, if you actually take the couple of minutes it takes to read the article these “quotes” are from you will discover that Valenti is actually quite a big fan of Christmas, and that her allegedly terrible misandrist message to men is the following:
[A]s the women in your lives work their fingers to the bone to bring you holiday cheer, get up and lend a hand.
Seriously, asking dudes to wrap some presents isn’t the same as sending them to a feminazi reeducation camp.
Another of Bloomfield’s new memes highlights — and takes out of context — a deliberately provocative question from a book by Valenti, asking parents to reflect a little on the ambivalence and in some cases regret that many parents feel about having had children.
Unlike Men’s Rights Activists who want to be able to legally abandon their children though “paper abortions,” Valenti is not urging mothers (or fathers) to desert kids, just to think about the complex and conflicting emotions that parentood brings up – and to talk about them openly, in the hope that this will help other new parents, and those considering parenthood, to better understand the magnitude of what they’re taking on.
But it’s the third quote from Valenti that Bloomfield has chosen to highlight that is the most troubling. Not the quote itself – it’s utterly reasonable – but Bloomfield’s attempt to use it to smear Valenti.
Here’s Bloomfield’s meme-ified version of the quote:
While this is a severely truncated version of what Valenti wrote, with a good deal edited out in the middle, it’s a more-or-less reasonable simplification of Valenti’s basic argument: that her ability to get an abortion when she was in her twenties and far from ready for children helped her to pull together the life and career and marriage she has today – and, though she doesn’t put it this baldly, to provide a better life for the daughter she has now.
For what it’s worth, I agree completely: It is a good thing that women who aren’t ready to have children can end their pregnancies legally and safely. It’s good for them. It’s good for their partners. And it’s good for any future children that they might choose to have.
And if they choose to never have children, that’s perfectly fine as well. As Valenti argues, and as I agree, they don’t need to offer an explanation for their abortion or abortions to anyone.
I should add that abortion rights for women make my life better too. I don’t want children of my own, and birth control sometimes fails. And while I’ve never had a partner who’s gotten an abortion while I was dating them, I’m grateful that abortion is there as a backup.
I don’t owe anyone an explanation for this any more than Valenti does. But of course men aren’t generally asked to provide explanations for their partners’ abortions, while women who have abortions face all sorts of opprobrium for their choice, from nosy and judgemental relatives and from the Janet Bloomfields of the world.
Of course, all but the most backwards of abortion opponents will generally make an exception when the life of the mother is at stake.
And that’s what makes Bloomfield’s attack on Valenti even skeezier. Because, as Valenti explained in the very column that Bloomfield is quoting from, she not only had an abortion in her twenties when she wasn’t ready for kids, she had a second abortion in her thirties when her life literally was at stake.
As Valenti explained in a moving essay in 2011, her then-baby daughter and she were “a deadly combination before she was even born.” 28 weeks into the pregnancy, Valenti’s doctor discovered that she was suffering from a potentially deadly condition called pre-eclampsia and was confined to the hospital; she then developed an even more life-threatening complication that led to an emergency c-section and the premature birth of a dangerously underweight baby who needed months of intensive care and who, Valenti wrote, “looked like a baby that would die.”
Happily, both baby and mother survived the ordeal.
A few years later, when Valenti discovered that she was pregnant again, she realized that another abortion was really her only choice. As desperately as she wanted a second child, the risks were too great. You can read the story of her second, reluctant abortion here; it’s hard not to tear up reading it.
Attacking a woman for getting an abortion when she knows she’s not ready for a child is bad enough; attacking a woman for getting an abortion because her pregnancy may well kill her is, frankly, inhuman.
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Thank you, thankyouverymuch. 🙂
Much good has come from this thread that started with so much bad. Nicely done, people! 🙂
We follow the Way of the Mammoth!
Nah, MRAs want (cis)men to have the ability to have ‘paper abortions’ and write off all responsibility for caring for their child or providing financial support, but they also want (cis)women to be forced to carry, birth, and raise any pregnancy that happens, completely without support from the father or from welfare, to punish them for having sex/being ‘careless’/clearly attempting to trap the father of the kid/being born female.
I think that different men want different things, even in the mens rights army, but the one thing MRAs have in common is they do not think women should be able to say no to them ever for any reason.
Basically, women exist to serve other people and should never have any wishes of our own or otherwise inconvenience anyone else. That’s what all misogynists believe.
Any wishes we have are wrong – even if they’re complying with what the man previously wanted. But we’re also wrong if we don’t anticipate his every whim. Essentially, we can never be right and will always be punished. That’s your MRA attitude, because even if they got total unquestioning obedience, they would not be satisfied with it.
And Janet just got banned..
It’s generally Mr C who wraps presents from both of us, because he’s better at it. Ultimate misandry!
JB just got banned from Twitter again?
RE: Wrapping presents
My family’s like Bina’s, in that we just throw the the gifts all in gift bags/boxes for family, and we tape/staple them shut. We reuse them year after year until they fall apart (or even longer), so yay recycling!
OT:
Of course all the feelings we (cis) wimmens have are wrong! We’re (cis) wimmens! We (cis women) have periods (AKA unwanted monthly subscriptions to Satan’s Waterfall from puberty until menopause roughly) and junk, so our hormones make us irrational! Damn you estrogen!
Yeah. Of course we’re damned if we do, and damned if we don’t. It doesn’t matter what we say, because if WE say it, it has to be wrong via the magic of MRA Logical Paradox Logic. (Feminists are ALWAYS wrong. ALWAYS no matter what!)
Feminists could say that we want less male rape victims and more victims speaking out against their rapists without being judged or shamed, and they’d go out of their way to hurt male rape victims, despite their “message” of being “for men”. (And we do, and they do.)
If some of the things we say were said by men (or even men in their own movement), they’d be cheering and holding their fellow dudebro up like he just won the “war”. To an MRA penis=right, and vagina = wrong. (Double wrong if you’re a “man with a vagina/woman with a penis” because these chucklefucks are transphobic as fuck.)
Though, if you’re like JudgyBitch, then you get used as a shield against ANY shouts of “sexist!” that your opposition can throw at you! Because if one woman says that an MRA’s right, then that means they are infallible. “I’m not sexist! My mommy/girlfriend/internet female friend who lives in Canada so you just haven’t met her said so!”
JB banned from Twitter again?
Bwahahahahaha!
We don’t do Christmas here, but across ‘tother side Mr K takes great pleasure in putting up stockings and wrapping presents for the resident Furrinati. Which, given we’re under the paws of ninenteen of them, means there are presents all over the place, and I leave the paper-shredding on the day to your imaginations. 🙂
We got all the critters gifts.The dogs got snacks and things to chew on. The cats got a catnip mouse and a little bird that peeps when you bump it. I don’t expect the battery to last long in the bird. They are gleefully knocking it all over the house. The kids are listening to Christmas music and playing with their stocking stuff. We’re about to eat a big breakfast and watch a Kung Fu movie that I cannot pronounce.
Merry Christmas, y’all!
Judgy Bozo banned again? Best Xmas EVER.
Meowy Catmas to all!
I see she has the Charles-Manson-bulging-eyes glare down pat like some of the misters.
Yawn.
Ye gods, tealily, imagine if she and Elam ever did an interview together. Talk about the ragezombie invasion.
Fnoicby —
They are pro-choice so long as it is their choice.
I believe JudgyB is more of a Fox News American social conservative than a libertarian, with a heavy dose of Red Pill single woman hate. I’m not sure about that and not going to research her beliefs for her the obvious reason, she’s not worth the effort. I’ve read her headachey Twitter feed and draw the line at that.
The Republicans here have given up on women voters outside the south and other conservative pockets. They’ve hooked their wagons to married women, who are painted as morally superior stalwarts. So abortions is another thing that brainless single women do since they’ve been ruined by feminism and liberalism. She’s not going to discuss abortions for health reasons or by married women because that’s off script.
@brooked
Capital-L Libertarians and Republicans are exactly the same thing nowadays anyway. “Libertarian” is just a code word for “Republican but too ashamed to admit it.”
I do think there’s a difference in how much conservative sect cares about “social issues” aka abortion and teh gays. If you go to Right Watch about 40% of the posts about the Christian Right’s apoplectic rage over gay marriage. Libertarians don’t worship straight marriage, are sort of OK with gays to some degree and also are pro-legal weed, yet are still assholes.
You know while all this JB & Paul rage circus is a distraction to everyone , Dean Esmay has blocked anyone who might post anything real about AVFM and is peddling “AVFM gentle champions of human rights” to doctors, looks like universities and places like that..
Deans the only AVFM lead who sounds the least like Charles Manson on meth after talking for more than half a hour..he’s also a sneaky gaslighting lair doing probably the most to advance AVFM right now..People should pay more attention to what he’s up to?
The other day I saw a doctor listing a thank you list of contributors to some academic thing..and Dean Esmay was on that list..knowing what i do about AVFM..that scares me
I just wrote this massive post..and it vanished when i hit “post comment”..sigh
And I was having such a nice day. *sigh*
Could be worse, you could have Tom Martin as a compatriot.
Speaking of Charles Manson on meth, is that really what JB looked like on tv? As for Dean Esmay, he does sound like someone who needs more attention paid to him, especially with his history of HIV denialism.
I’m going to use that, I think.
Friend: Hey dude, what’re you doing?
2-D Man: (waiting for something) Timeacide.
I dunno. Martin’s bad, but at least he’s, y’know, honest, in his assholery. I really think he believes his claptrap. Bloomfield just deliberately makes shit up.
Of couse, with the latest bit of real-quoting she just did, it seems she’s turned her bullshit into a compost heap, if you will.
Trigger warning: pedantry
This is an explanation.
Also, it’s good for any past children they may have had.
That’s just how these movements work: make shit up.
Plus, JB has never come up with anything hilarious, intentionally or otherwise. Tommy boy has hard chairs, an outstanding debt to the LSE and penguin WHORES to his credit.
I’m a bit behind on the posts, but how is JB even back on twitter? Can’t she get perma-banned? What’s the point in suspending a person’s account is she can continually make socks and roll right along?
@Skye
It’s because Twitter just doesn’t care. JB and the MRAs (and the other hate groups that gather there) give them pageviews, exposure and money, which to them is more important than, y’know, not protecting and promoting literal evil.
Her novel sounded pretty hilarious.
She just keeps coming back with a different account or handle or something, if I understand it right (I don’t use Twitter at all). Keeps getting turfed out, but it’s like M. said, they don’t care.
katz, true, but would her nonexistent novel be as hilarious as Tommy’s nonexistent documentary?
Imagine if those two got into an argument. Be dead easy to script:
JB: WHORE!
TM: WHORE!
JB: WHORE!
TM: WHORE!
(fade to black)
@Katz: Reflecting on a discussion we had a few days ago, I’m willing to bet that JB is one “novelist” who will never be inconvenienced by an insoluble hole in her plot.
In fact, I am willing to bet that the only coherent plot she will ever be involved with is the one in which she will be buried.
LOL that sounds right, doesn’t it?
@Lea
“No pregnant person owes anyone an explanation for why they control what happens in their own bodies. Ever. Forced birth is torture. It is the removal of basic human rights.
Fuck that hateful hack Blommfield and her lies. ”
Some of us think human rights should apply to all human beings, including the unwanted. So would progressives if they were consistent. Feminists on the hand distort the issue, pretend it’s entirely about women’s agency, then feign outrage when anyone disagrees. (In other words, never, under any circumstances, acknowledge the third party or entertain the idea that it is human.)
Not sure if this comment will earn a permanent ban or not – be nice to know if it has.
This is how real hate propaganda looks like.
About everything on this site – like this “article” – suggests untruth as truth. In a quite extreme agitative way.
With the wish to silence critics. By smearing. As this “article” demonstrates quite vividly.