Janet “JudgyBitch” Bloomfield may not have mastered the fine art of public relations in the real world, but amongst those who live in imaginary worlds of their own making she is something of a PR genius.
Bloomfield, A Voice for Men’s “Director of Social Media,” was recently booted from Twitter (again) for “targeted abuse” — evidently her harassment of feminist writer Jessica Valenti, which included making up inflammatory fake quotations and attributing them to her.
Bloomfield, who once claimed (apparently at least semi-seriously) that a previous Twitter suspension was punishment for her posting a picture of a wedding cake, has responded with a petulant note to Twitter and a similarly petulant open letter to the world, insisting that she’s an innocent woman who’s been railroaded by an evil feminist cabal.
She is, of course, full of it, but she’s picked up support from several online publications popular with the reality-challenged: Alex Jones’ loopy conspiracy megasite Infowars.com, GamerGate propaganda hub The Ralph Retort, and right-wing garbage site The Gateway Pundit. She’s got her Twitter followers in a tizzy, and they are filling up my Twitter timeline with their usual brand of nonsense.
Bloomfield claims, in a Facebook posting that’s been uncritically reposted by her supporters in the imaginary-world media, that she’s a blameless victim of a “harassment campaign” inspired by, well, me.
No, really. Here’s what she wrote, apparently with a straight face:
My most recent suspension is the result of me tweeting the actual words of Guardian journalist Jessica Valenti back to her. Prompted by @davidfutrelle, a harassment campaign to report me for spam/abuse was undertaken by users who appear to be under the impression that I made up the Valenti quotes and falsely attributed them to her. This is not true.
It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to make this claim, given that Bloomfield has not only made up numerous false and inflammatory quotes she claimed were written by Valenti, but has also gone on to publicly gloat that her falsehoods were causing Valenti distress. The fake quotes were merely one egregious episode in an months-long campaign of targeted abuse directed at Valenti.
Here’s a screenshot of four fake Valenti quotes that Bloomfield tweeted last August. (I have helpfully labeled the ones that are fake; see here for details.)
More recently, Bloomfield Tweeted yet another fake Valenti quote that has been making the rounds in Men’s Rights circles for months. (The red scrawls on the screenshot are mine.)
See here for more details.
Though none of these quotes sound even remotely like anything that Valenti would ever say, many of Bloomfield’s followers had no trouble believing they were real, and in both instances the fake quotes inspired harassment and abuse directed at Valenti.
Back in August, Bloomfield seemed proud as punch that her fake quotes were causing difficulties for Valenti. In a posting on her blog (which I’ve archived here), Bloomfield gleefully wrote:
And she added, for good measure:
It’s not clear to me how Valenti having to deal with harassment caused by Bloomfield libeling her is an example of Valenti “having to own her shit,” given that the shit in question is not actually hers.
Bloomfield also pulled a similar stunt with a screenshot of an obviously fake Tweet ostensibly from GamerGate boogeywoman Anita Sarkeesian; it, too, inspired harassment against Bloomfield’s target.
Bloomfield has helped to inspire and direct campaigns of harassment against other women as well, including one school teacher she accused, with absolutely no evidence, of trying to shut down AVFM’s conference with death threats. She has also repeatedly libeled me. In all of these cases she used Twitter essentially as an amplifier of hate.
These tactics are pretty much the definition of “targeted abuse.” And “targeted abuse” is what Twitter gave as the reason for her most recent suspension, according to a screenshot that Bloomfield has herself posted on her blog.
But Bloomfield is attempting to convince the world that she’s been suspended for quoting Valenti accurately. In her posts on her suspension, she refers to one instance in which she did indeed quote Valenti more or less accurately – as if that somehow makes up for her fake quotes.
I’m no lawyer, but I’m pretty sure that Bloomfield announcing that not everything she’s said about Valenti is a malicious lie wouldn’t be much of a defense against a libel case.
But, of course, amongst her reality-challenged fans, Bloomfield’s spin has carried the day. Indeed, the headline on the Infowars post detailing Bloomfield’s imaginary victimization declares baldly that:
It seems rather telling that the theInfowars “reporter” who wrote that post touts his Bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing from Nottingham Trent University in his Infowars bio. In this case, though, he merely repeated and amplified Bloomfield’s own fictions.
Speaking of which, Bloomfield also claims that “[m]y account has never tweeted abuse.” This is also patent bullshit.
Her peculiar wording may be a way to elide the fact that she used the official Twitter account for A Voice for Men’s conference last summer to call a bunch of people “whores.”
But the fact is she used her now-suspended @JudgyBitch1 Twitter account to post stuff much worse than this. In addition to abusive tweets directed at Valenti (like this salacious one), she also told one rape survivor [TRIGGER WARNING]
Bloomfield’s attempts to portray herself as the innocent victim of a witchhunt are especially ironic, given how carefully she’s cultivated her “mean girl” image. She attacks feminists – mostly women – with the malicious glee of a born bully, and mocks those who point out her lies and cruelty, using this picture as the profile pic for one of her Twitter accounts.
On her blog, which is often worse than her Twitter account ever was, she blamed the underage victims of Jimmy Savile’s sexual predations for exploiting him, and declared the 16-year-old victim of gang rape in Steubenville a “dumb whore.”
The woman who calls herself “Judgy Bitch” now finds herself being judged for her vindictive, bullying behavior, and doesn’t much like it.
NOTE: If anyone has screenshots of other abusive tweets from JB that I have missed, please email me with them or post them in the comments below; I may want to add more to the post or use them for a followup post.
I dunno, I might consider a cessation of her attacks on other women on Twitter sufficient payment, if I thought it would work. Alas, “asshole” does not appear to be a fixable condition. If someone has reached the age she has without getting over it yet, chances are they never will.
Aaand Pally ninja’d me in a much better and less wordy way of saying it. Whoo, I love it when my net takes 5-10 minutes to load one page! Oh well, here’s another SFW asshole to make up for it:
http://i.imgur.com/WKiEfAc.jpg
She gets validated by the flying monkey MRA squad who come in and fling poo at anyone that she sets them on. She’s not going to stop because she’s getting benefits from what she’s doing.
M: yes, I ended up having to use donkey in my search terms as I initially got images completely not what I was after. And there is no brain bleach strong enough.
It’s a very old dynamic, this thing where women are allowed to hold power in conservative circles IF they agree to only use it against other women. JB isn’t the first to get a kick out of it, and won’t be the last.
Chiming in with the “mental illness is not an excuse for assholery” vibe – I know so many lovely people with actual diagnosed mental health issues. And only occasionally do they say or do assholish things, because even lovely people have their bad moments, but those moments are rare and have nothing to do with their being “ill” – at least not any more than anyone’s frame of mind might affect their mood. And lovely people usually acknowledge when they’re behaving poorly and apologise for it.
I have only met one person who was a thorough asshole, who happened to have a mental health diagnosis, but what compounded his assholery was using his diagnosis to claim I was being unfair to be angry at him for not paying his share of the bills and being an otherwise scuzzy housemate.
As anyone here will tell you – having mental health issues is NEVER an excuse for shitty behaviour (although shitty people love to pretend it is an excuse, because they love getting away with shitty behaviour, with bonus sympathy for being so “broken” and wretched).
All we know about JB is that she behaves shittily. This is not a diagnostic criterion for mental health issues, regardless of how awful she is. The only correct inference would be that she is consistently shitty in her behaviour, and may in fact be a shitty human being.
Anyway, love and solidarity to anyone coping with their brain-weasels, whether or not they fit the DSM criteria for anything.
And a massive Internet hug to Samantha – I’m glad you’ve managed to find a place of peace and forgiveness for that awfulness. It seems a bit of a mawkish, back-handed phrase to say “you seem so well-adjusted”, but I mean to say that healing is no easy thing, and it is good that you have come to terms with it in a way that makes you happy.
Now I’m just hoping those poor donkeys weren’t hurt falling in those holes. 🙁
Imagine the carry-on if JB gets kicked out of the club like Wooly Bumblebee did. There would not be enough popcorn in the world for that circus.
Who was Wooly Bumblebee??
Oh did David piss you off? Suck it up, buttercup.
Never underestimate the number of assholes in the world, nor the number of stupid. Funny how when this type of person gets suspended from Twitter or anywhere else, their whole “suck it up” attitude seems not to apply to them and they make the biggest stink about how unfairly it is.
Wooly Bumblebee’s another feMRA. I can’t remember the details, but she dared express an opinion that wasn’t 100% approved by Pauly & co. and found out how fast they turn on any woman not servile enough. David did cover it at the time, searching her name on the blog will probably bring the article up.
Why mad or crazy is wrong in any circumstances is because It describes nothing. To an extent these terms can describe persons whose perception of, and reaction to, reality is particularly distorted but everyone suffers some distortion of that sort. Personally I prefer the term deficit with appropriate descriptives and qualifiers but I am open to correction because I am still able to learn and admit mistakes
The deficits I can identify are as follows:
Cognitive deficit – lacking an ability to think or reason in one or many areas and, conversely, overthinking in one or many areas;
Emotional deficit – lacking the ability to feel and the converse of feeling excessively;
Empathic deficit – lacking the ability to internalise the feelings of others or over-reacting to what you perceive those emotions to be.
These deficits can exist in both forms at once, for example you can be unable to think rationally about situation X but overthink the consequences of reacting to that same situation. There are probably other deficits but I cannot identify their nature accurately; there will be, for example, some sort of deficit of socialisation.
From this I can see that JB suffers from deficits in many areas but she certainly is not any more crazy than I am, just more deficient.
I’m no Poe’s lawyer, but Bloomfield certainly should have consulted one.
Kittehserf: That was my thought too. Those poor donkeys! How did that happen to them?
It could be her son is unfairly picked on by teachers…or it could be that her “high energy” son is really a vicious bully and she’s denying or outright supporting it. Just imagine the horror of teachers if some kid in the school is like Janet Bloomfield, with a parent who in fact *is* Janet Bloomfield.
Given the source, and the fact that “the high energy of boys is penalized by an evil feminazi school system designed for girls” is a standard MRA talking point, I’d suggest reading that essay with an entire salt shaker in hand.
Her essay could be a load of bollocks, sure. Maybe she’s a hyena at the school gate. I have no idea.
I guess I’m not comfortable with attacking a woman for things we can’t possibly know about – e.g. how good a mother she is – when there are so many other things we do know about that she can rightfully be called out on.
Questioning somebody’s mothering skills has always been a way of diminishing women. It’s right up there with ‘you’re ugly’. Without actual evidence that she is a rotten mother, it just comes across as using a classic sexist tactic.
I may be misremembering this, but didn’t JB come down like a ton of bricks on some middle-school boys who were sexually harassing her daughter?
She’s yet another garden-variety right-wing hypocrite waving the banner of “rights for me but not for thee”. She’s elected herself judge, jury, and imam, while exempting herself from all the rules and horrible consequences that flow from her own fucked-up views on proper behavior for women. Rape, harassment, bullying, body-shaming, and doxxing are perfectly appropriate punishments for lesser, trashy women, but not for special sneauxphlaque Queen Bees and their offspring.
It’s interesting how quickly sanctimonious bullies change their tune when they have to swallow the medicine they’ve been prescribing for everyone else.
Why can’t we just assume that we know nothing about her private life, rather than going directly from “must be a terrible mother” to “is probably a great mother”? Her mothering skills are irrelevant to her “job” harassing feminists on Twitter.
@cassandrakitty. Agree. And if I knew how to do the block quote thingy, I would have block quoted you.
Yeah, it could be that school trouble is made up or the son is made up or Bloomfield’s name, gender and various other attributes are made up.
Heck, maybe she’s really a ill-behaved female dog who likes lying on the internet rather than on the couch. Nobody would know, if only people kept thinking that the giveaway “bitch” is a reference to her character.
That last paragraph was a joke, maybe ill-advised.
I really think that she is trying really hard to be the “new” Ann Coulter.
Samantha,
I’m so sorry. You deserved much better.
JB does favor JK Rowling. I never noticed before.