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.
Yeah, I’ll have to disagree with this as well. Since A) has been covered pretty well by others, I’ll just focus on B).
Option B relies on the assumption that in order to be considered evil, the person in question has to have a permanent condition that prevents them from being able to not be an asshole. It ignores social conditioning, a shitty upbringing and/or warped beliefs, brought on by a craving for approval, social status and power. It assumes that evil is an actual force rather than a collective term for selfish behaviors and attitudes that cause both direct and indirect harm to others.
Talking about evil in this manner perpetuates the belief that evil people are “others”, that is, not like us, as if they were possessed by a demon or something. Accepting that evil people are mainly a product of the various influences in society (just like we are) forces us to look closer at the various messages our society is sending out, and whether or not we should carry on sending them.
Indeed, regarding people as evil and believing in evil as a permanent condition is one of the methods people justify their own bad treatment of people they, for some reason or other, choose to view as permanently and irreversably evil. Example: My mother. She is mostly a warm and caring person – except when it comes to gay people. Her change in posture and tone of voice changes drastically the minute a discussion about social issues turns to gay rights. It’s rather terrifying to behold. It’s not that she can’t feel empathy, it’s that she regards gay people as “others”, i.e. evil and not fully human, and as such, she does not feel the need to try to understand and empathize with them.
Which is why I’m not fond of the term “sociopath” either; It implies that the person is neurologically incapable* of feeling empathy, as opposed to unwilling to do so. More likely, a person with an authoritative personality and right-wing leanings is quite capable of feeling empathy, but the group that constitutes “us” (in the “us vs. them” mentality that many conservatives embrace) in their mind is much smaller than with people with more liberal attitudes. This is what othering does. It’s an attitude problem, not a neurological condition. As such, while people like JB might be too deeply rooted in their no-self-awareness-land** to change, there is still considerable hope for the next generation, provided we continue challenging harmful attitudes and calling people out on them.
I could go on about the inherent discrepancy between social justice and believing in evil as a force that some people just “choose to embrace”, but that starts getting too deeply into the abstracts, and this rant has been long and pointless enough already.
*As an aside, I actually feel much more sympathetic towards sociopaths than towards your run-of-the-mill bigots. At least the former have an actual issue with not feeling empathy. Not so with the latter, who are mainly powered by some kind of self-righteous entitlement issues and a total lack of self-awareness.
**This is also why a favorite curse here on WHTM (besides the wish for legos located directly underneath a vile person’s foot) is that they get a good dose of self-awareness. Not only is realising – truly realising – the consequences that your own horrid behavior has had on other people an awful punishment in and of itself, but it is also the only way this kind of a person can ever hope to be redeemed.
TL;DR: Evil is as evil does.
…… was that donkey OK? Did someone help it?
@ Samantha – I’m so sorry that your childhood was abusive, but – WOW – the way you have reconciled with your situation when you understood the underlying cause! You are really amazing!
Arctic Ape, I currently have a badly behaved female dog (admittedly, a puppy) whom I am fostering. But she just chews things up and tries to play with the older dogs who would rather sleep on the couch and thus get cranky. 🙂
Really, I have no problems labeling someone as “evil” when they apparently relish causing deliberate harm to others. No problem at all. It would be something else if she were unaware and/or ignorant, but that does not appear to be the case with this person.
And people who engage in those behaviors tend not to do that in just one sphere of their lives. That is a behavior that they resort to again and again because they are getting some kind of payoff from it, and don’t realize the harm they eventually do to their primary relationships.
@schwadevivre
I can’t agree with anything you said there.
I describe myself as mad, and I have been known to use the word crazy to describe my current state on occasion. So know up-front that I’m not going to buy into your assertion here that there is no circumstance in which that is appropriate, or that it describes nothing. I have specific mental states that I can call crazy (or even deranged) and most speakers of English are going to grasp what I’m talking about.
Personally I wish you wouldn’t use “deficit” to describe mad people. It may be technically accurate in some cases, but not in all cases. I don’t have a cognitive deficit – if anything I have an excess of cognition, too much to handle at times.
Really, people should be called what they want to be called, and it’s not up to you to decide that the word “mad” should not be applied to me but “cognitive deficit” is just fine, when “mad” is the term I prefer.
I am perfectly capable of thinking rationally about any given situation, and in fact I frequently utilize this to overcome my out-of-proportion emotional reactions. This is true for many mad people. I am hardly unique in this.
Your schema here is mistaken. FYI
Regarding the whole narcissistic personality disorder thing; as someone who has a psychology degree and studied NPD a bit, I couldn’t help but notice that her online behavior fits it too. Here’s the thing though, it doesn’t really matter. NPD is not a psychotic disorder. People who have it are in touch with reality and capable of behavior modification. JB knows what she’s doing. Since none of us are equipped to correctly Internet diagnose anyway, the speculation gets us nowhere. It doesn’t help the people she has bullied but it does add to the culture in which we blame it on mental illness anytime someone harms marginalized people. Something that is harmful both to victims and people with mental illness.
On a related tangent, here’s a handy little article on why sealioning is obnoxious, and how to respond to it. (Spoiler: Don’t.) http://simplikation.com/why-sealioning-is-bad/
I think I’ll respond with a link to this article next time a rando on Twitter or G+ starts the usual “Let’s just have a calm and rational discussion about this, so please answer my endless, droning list of loaded questions” schtick.
Seems like the prescribed answer is “don’t feed the trolls.” As we know, that sometimes works, but other times it doesn’t. Sometimes one must engage with trolls, and learning how to do that without falling into the trolls’ trap is a learned skill that I wish more websites taught.
Oh, don’t worry, the two donkeys posted were rescued safely and totally fine! I wouldn’t have posted mine if the weren’t. ^^;
*If they weren’t, rather.
I think it’s that people are looking for a term that’s more specific about the behavior in question than those two are. There’s a certain illogic that’s flaunted in her posts. It might be that she’s deliberately deceptive in choosing to use that fallacious reasoning, or it could be she genuinely believes the things she’s saying. But either way, it creates a weird, inaccessible mindset, based on either a refusal or inability to engage with reality.
I can comprehend, albeit vaguely, the motivations of a schoolyard bully or an abusive boss. I don’t have to try and cross a gap between the world I live in and the one they seem to describe in order to grok their perspective. I can’t do that in her case–I have to actively believe things I know are not merely ‘untrue’ but genuinely unsupported by empirical examination of the world around us, and that makes it very tempting to reach (incorrectly) for words like “crazy”. It’s dysfunction without an underlying disorder, and that makes it damned difficult to address.
Hmmm. Well, here’s a list of potential clues:
If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say that Janet’s not as high on the ladder of life as she expects to be, since she’s not bright and talented enough (despite her superwoman pose), and is therefore taking out her disgruntlement on those lower down. In this case, women with legitimate cause to complain of unfair, sexist and just plain horrible treatment, namely rape. She’s kicking at those on the rungs below her in an effort to make herself feel “higher” by pushing them lower. Of course, this isn’t going to elevate her one iota, except in the eyes of other low-down horrid people, but apparently that’s her niche, and that is the crowd with which she has chosen to roll. She’s painted herself so far into that corner that she now has nowhere to go but up the wall. And when gravity finally catches up to her, it won’t be pretty.
(Sorry for all these mixed metaphors, but she just reminds me so much of a Wile E. Coyote cartoon. Suuuuuper-genius and all.)
@Samantha:
That sucks, and I’m sorry it happened to you. It’s such a common belief (still! can’t believe we still have to protest this shit!), no wonder she internalized it. She probably grew up hearing a lot of that, and may even have gotten a dose of it herself — if not from her own mother, then maybe someone else. At the same time, though, I just can’t fathom how anyone could do that to her own daughter. It’s a vicious cycle, and I’m glad to see that you chose not to perpetuate it.
And yes, I feel sorry for all of Judgy’s kids. I hope they grow up the opposite of her in every way.
@Policy of Madness:
I think it’s less “don’t feed the trolls” and more “don’t follow the script.” It’s about the technique rather than the person, and the conclusion of the article is that the best way to engage with someone using this particular technique is to disengage.
Oh, and of course, all the virtual hugs for Samantha if you want them. I’m so sorry.
@kirbywarp
Someone here (I’m sorry, I don’t remember who) was engaging with sealioning GGers on Twitter by letting a semi-surreal bot compose all the replies. That was kind of fantastic and IMHO a great way to handle it, better than just ignoring them.
I don’t like calling horriable people ‘assholes’ at least they’re useful and I been around asses they are actually quite good animals. I’ll be with many asses than be with one MRA any day.
@Policy of Madness:
I remember reading about that. It was definitely more amusing, it just took some time and effort to set up.
@ fruitloopsie – I prefer the term based on the Team America analogy – that assholes shit on everything. The rest of the analogy was kinda problematic, but at least assholes are genderless and everyone has one, so everyone is capable of acting like one.
But I see your point – I don’t like to use the word “c–t” to describe anyone, because c–ts are warm and pleasant.
I’ve been trying to phase out the use of the term “d*ck” to describe behaviour, in the interests of gender-equality, but I’m wondering whether it’s actually apposite for those times when some dude is asserting his cis-hetero patriarchal privilege over everything…
This may be a teal deer, but there’s an account called @Ardreign which is very likely to be a Janet Bloomfield alt. Not only does she sound like Janet (even uses the same catchphrases and #womenagainstfeminism hashtag) but she began complaining about JB’s Twitter ban right after it happened. @Ardreign is also followed by Dean Esmay, and follows all the usual suspects at AVFM. Her bio says “A voice for those unjustly suspended.”
Admittedly @Ardreign’s account existed before Dec 24, when Bloomfield’s main acct was banned. But there’s a huge spike in @Ardreign’s tweet activity around Christmas, mostly complaining about JB’s totally unfair suspension and RTing those who support her (Esmay among them.) Seems like the number of tweets from Ardreign is related to JB being banned off her main account.
I’ve posted relevant screencaps to my Twitter and shared them with the Dark Lord. I only wish there was a quick and easy way to report people on Twitter for ban evasion. Janet has gone through like five obvious evasion accounts (e.g. @JudgyBitch2, @BloomfieldJanet, @JudgyBitch3, 4, 5…) and she’s hardly the only person in the manosphere who establishes a new Twitter account immediately after the old one is suspended.
Yes the donkey I posted was rescued and apparently with no injuries sustained. Like M, I wouldn’t have posted a photo if there had been something terrible happen.
I’ve just discovered, I can’t comment on her Facebook page. What a coward she is!
Even Ray ‘Bananaman’ Comfort lets me comment on his Facebook page sometimes, and while he’s a dick (sorry AltoFronto), he’s not promarily oriented towards pissing people off.
@Anarchonist
Thank you! Your comment was beautifully written and really helped me reason through my own feelings/thoughts, and helped me find conclusions I hadn’t reached yet when I posted. You’re great, and thanks!
I guess what it boils down to is, “JB lives in a different version of reality than I do, and it seems like a pretty miserable way to live. I wish she’d figure out a way to be less horrible.” And all of that is applicable whether she’s mentally ill or not, so any speculation there is irrelevant.
I did not know it was possible either, but my gram had polio as a kid, so maybe that had something to do with it.
I cannot say that I was able to forgive, entirely, but I was able to have compassion for her situation. I ended up leaving home when I was thirteen because I was afraid that I would one day get angry enough to harm or even kill her. She hurt all of the kids and no one, outside of my grandparents, would listen. I had to run away a few times before I was physically free of her, but all of the sibs have struggled for our whole lives to get free of the internal nightmare. Healing really began when I met my husband, who is a wonderful man, a great dad and my very best friend in the world.
Happy endings are for fairy tales, but we can all learn to use the painful things as fertilizer for growing a real and loving life.
@ Policy of Madness
As someone who suffers with clinical depression and has had lengthy periods of psychosis, I object to describing anyone as mad or crazy or mentally ill. They are old descriptives that are in no way fit for purpose; they are demeaning. In an ideal world you would use the actual term for the dysfunction but we do not live in a world where the diagnosis is emblazoned on everyone’s forehead.
We all suffer from multiple deficits; mental, physical … even monetary. In the case of JB we seek some explanation for her hateful opinions and insupportable actions and in her case it is difficult to see a rational explanation. Some people get out of the problem by calling her evil but that word just begs the question – in addition to inserting a religious flavour into the argument.
How do we describe JB’s actions and what motivates them? That is the problem, I have already given my personal solution but am perfectly happy to find a better way.
pallygirl, is that ass actually in that thing??? Is that a stupid question? If the ass IS in that, how in the world did it get there?
Too many questions…so little time…ass-in-hole…argh.