Tom Martin, a former gender studies student at the London School of Economics, recently became a minor celebrity amongst Men’s Rights activists and other angry men when he sued his alma mater for alleged sexism against men.
He’s now had his case thrown out of court. Let’s go to the Camden New Journal for details:
Tom Martin, 39, who lives in Covent Garden, claimed he suffered “anti-male discrimination” while studying for a master’s degree in gender, media and culture at the world-famous university in Holborn.
Representing himself at his application for a trial at the Central London County Court on Tuesday, Mr Martin complained of a lack of men-only sessions in the university’s gym and the preponderance of posters in the corridors advertising services for women without the presence of similar materials geared towards men.
Mr Martin, who describes himself as a feminist, said “hard” chairs in the library were uncomfortable for men and that a “male blaming culture” was evident in course materials, which “ignored men’s issues” and focused on wrongs done by them.
Damn those misandrist chairs and their man-hating hardness!
The judge didn’t buy it, saying Martin’s case had essentially no chance of success. He threw out the case and ordered Martin to pay LSE’s legal costs.
Martin, welcome to reality.
On Twitter, Martin responded to the news by calling his critics “whores.” One of many examples:
But I was really discriminated against, you whores!
And, yes, his Twitter handle is indeed Sexismbusters.org.
EDITED TO ADD: Actual headline today on What Men are Saying About Women:
EDITED AGAIN TO ADD: Tom Martin has replied to this post in the comments. Some highlights:
My legal complaint did NOT involve a complaint about the seating. You have been misled by the press – The Times and the West End Extra/Camden New Journal both mysteriously got it wrong.
One year prior to joining the university, when visiting its library, I did complain, that the seating being hard created a greater disadvantage for men than for women, as men have considerably smaller weight-bearing buttock pads than women, and men are heavier too – so for men, on average heavier than women, have more weight bearing down onto a pad which is approximately four times smaller than women’s on average – according to a BBC documentary on the subject.
He then details his attempts to fight this grave injustice. Also, there’s this:
[S]everal comments here are confusing ‘whore’ with ‘slut’. A slut has sex freely, which I am all for. Freedom of association is the ultimate in humanity. A whore charges for sex. Even if a woman is a virgin, but is waiting for Mr Right to buy her something, she’s a whore.
It’s counter-intuitive, but a lot of professional feminists are whores. They expect the government and men to do them special favours. They make up stories to convince men and government to believe that we all owe women something.
But really, if someone were keeping a tab, then…
Women owe men five years pension.
Women owe men some National Service.
Women owe men some inventions.
Women owe men positive discrimination in university curricula.
Women owe men some child access.
It’s women’s round at the bar too.
For the whole thing, see here.
For more charming quotes from Tom, see this post on the blog Butterflies and Wheels.
@kysokisaen
WIN!
Here’s some more info on this charmer:
http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/2011/09/on_tom_martins_
Also, as Quackers observed, he’s a regular Bloody Mary and will show up on any internet comment thread that mentions his name. Don’t get too excited at the prospect of a new chew toy, though. If he isn’t ranting about how Muslim women are all whores, he’s flashing that ridiculous shaming code at anyone who attempts to engage or criticise him.
There’s a pretty good demonstration of his ‘debating technique’ in the comments here…
http://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2011/09/tom-martin-on-whoriarchy/
http://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2011/09/the-minister-for-the-menz/
Also, haha, I can sit on any flat surface known to man! I am sitting comfortably on a hardwood floor right now!
MY ASS CONQUERS ALL FEMINIST OPPRESSION.
–Rogan
” Maybe Thomas is just mad because he thought he was in for an easy Master’s from the London School of Economics and then the whores all expected him to think.”
Nah, I’m thinking it was an epic troll. Enroll, gather “evidence”, drop out, sue. And all the news articles say “student of a master’s program at LSE”, which sounds great, but he still hadn’t taken the price tags off his new pencil case by the time he left.
I never understand the mindset: I seek validation from you, the school and the instructors, but everything you say is shit. Especially the female professors. How dare they be experts in their field?
@Maya
I took psychology of women, which was a women’s studies course. Came out with my masculinity fully intact and none the worse for wear 🙂
Nothing says feminist like “you’re a whore”
Also, I think hard chairs are a humanitarian issue. Atleast, my ass thinks so
Here ya go, Tom — this gym in Brooklyn provides co-ed and men’s only naked yoga. I think you won’t have a problem with hard chairs there, and you can exercise as well!
http://gawker.com/5893185/brooklyns-naked-space-now-offers-dudes+only-naked-yoga
Yeah, I don’t understand the hard chairs issue. My husband actually prefers to sit on hard chairs, as gets a sore back and finds it more comfortable.
Having said that, I have never, ever heard of a library having gender-specific chairs.
Actual headline today on What Men are Saying About Women:
Tom Martin Faces Slut-Feminist Judge, Motion Denied..
http://whatmenthinkofwomen.blogspot.com/2012/03/tom-martin-faces-slut-feminist-judge.html
His color coding of shaming tactics tells me he’s got waaaaay too much free time.
What’s the color code for self-aggrandizing jackass?
I took an undergrad gender studies class studying masculinity — not very male bashing, being taught by a gay man and all. Unless you consider giggling madly at sexy sexy Fight Club Edward Norton to be “bashing.” 😀
Uh, the judge is a guy.
RE: blitzgal
Ssssh! We slut feminist men are trying to infiltrate the system! Don’t give us away!
@Rogan: Some definitely do contain characters who are off the binary spectrum.
I am ALWAYS happy to babble about the stuff I read and teach and write! I’m a bit hesitant to say they’re “good” or not–I’m an English prof who rejects the idea that my job is to teach the “best” literature: I often teach stuff I don’t love, or don’t always understand, and I talk about that with my classes. Some of these are definitely canonical sf authors (Delany, Charnas); others are much newer (Buckell, Jemisin), and I was also working toward a gender course that was intersectional, including critical race work as well as white feminist/gender explorations.
Samuel R. Delany, Jr. Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia
ToT is not one of my favorite novels (I don’t only teach my favorites), but it is well known for its deconstruction of heterosexual social roles: this wiki entry is pretty good although contains spoilers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triton_(novel)
His autobiography (MOTION OF LIGHT ON WATER) is one of the most fantastic ones ever (and I like his theory more than his sf). He’s an African American gay man, also an academic, which explains the theory!
Suzy McKee Charnas. The Slave and the Free: Contains Walk to the End of the World and Motherlines.
Charnas’s work might be called the ovular feminist dystopia–her full series (four novels) is a brilliant, heart-rending, incredible exploration of power hierarchies, but the focus is much more on sexist hierarchies than gender deconstruction (though her Riding women culture is all female). She’s a white American author.
http://wiki.feministsf.net/index.php?title=Motherlines
Melissa Scott. Trouble and Her Friends. I was talking about this the other day in the cyberpunk discussion: Scott is a lesbian, and all her novels are about queer people in multiple ways–more often queer women which is only one of the reasons she’s one of my very favorite authors (also white American).
Tobias S. Buckell. Ragamuffin. Tobias is an Afro-Caribbean author who centers that culture in his work–I hadn’t realized that this novel followed an earlier one–he’s a fairly new author for me. It’s more space opera, with a future Afro Caribbean culture the center of his focus (though they are sort of underground in the galaxy at large).
http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/ragamuffin/
Nalo Hopkinson. The New Moon’s Arms. Nalo Hopkinson is one of the most amazing sf authors ever: this novel focuses on a female protagonist who gains magical powers through menopause; her homophobia (her ex-husband and father of her daughter is a gay man) is definitely presented as a major issue she has to try to work out of.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nalo_Hopkinson
N. K. Jemisin. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. Little Brown & Company Orbit United States.
I was quite mean here–this is first part of a trilogy. http://nkjemisin.com/books/the-inheritance-trilogy/
I love her works for all sorts of reasons–but it has the least of what I call queerness–it’s deconstructing certain fantasy tropes with regard to race not gender (she’s an African American author).
Gwyneth Jones. Life. http://www.sfsite.com/03a/li195.htm
Jones is a white British author, and her work is incredibly complex in terms of deconstructing gender–I’ve not been able to get through most of her books, but this one is a near future work, and I adored it. More on sex in the biological sense than sexuality.
Justine Larbalestier. Liar.
This is a YA–and notorious among readers because of the complete unreliability of the narrator (Larbalestier is a white Australian author)–many readers loathe the book, but I love it (I have this thing for unreliable first person narrators).
http://www.teenreads.com/reviews/liar
It also became the center of a controversy because of the first American edition having an image of a white girl on the cover — Micah is African-American — with the lame excuse of “well, narrator is a liar, so….”– the cover was changed because of the controversy (the Australian edition avoided any image, which was smart of them).
The following is all scholarship–but I shall babble about them anyway. Larbalestier (yep, same one! She did her dissertation and published book on gender in American sf fandom, then became a fiction author, heh) and Merrick (white Australian) do intellectual histories of gender issues in sf fandom. Both excellent, both totally worth reading (though from one review I remember snarking at, at least one male perceived Merrick’s work as “blaming men” for being all mean and nasty). (Of course, as David does, L. and M. both quoted actual words by, you know, men!). Attebery is the only white male I chose–he co-edited the Norton Book of Science Fiction with Ursula K. LeGuin, and does a lot of fantastic work with gender and sf. His is the most academic of the works.
Justine Larbalestier. The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction. She deals more with pulp sf and the early days of gender debates in sf (letter columns in the sf pulps, stories, etc.).
Helen Merrick. The Secret Feminist Cabal: A Cultural History of Science Fiction Feminisms.
Deals with more contemporary work, so is a lovely complement to BoSiSF
Brian Attebery. Decoding Gender in Science Fiction.
Although you may well know about the Lambda Literary Awards, this is a great chance to highlight their work in celebrating LGBT sf!
http://www.lambdaliterary.org/
The Tiptree Award (named after a writer who tossed a lot of sf people’s gender ideas into shredded salad) also features works that explores or expands gender roles:
http://tiptree.org/
Enjoy!
Rogan: Oops, because of MONDO links, my comment about all the sff is in moderation! Dang, forgot the linky minimum rule.
Color coding: I wanta go CODE PURPLE! (Does he have a code purple? If not, I shall invent it. It will involve lots of LINKS to scholarship that disproves his points, snicker.)
I’m going to start using this line.
“___________ is true, according to a Harvard study I can’t find but is out there somewhere.”
If we call his name three times while standing in front of a mirror, will he magically appear?
Tom Martin. Tom Martin. TOM MARTIN.
@Crumbelievable: Shorter TM: “Harvard”
Curious me, I went looking, for “2007 Harvard Study” and women making decisions on Google; the first three or four hits were him, but I got this article which does reference a 2007 Harvard study, but seems a bit off topic:
http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2011/0630/For-women-s-career-equality-parent-friendly-work-Equal-Rights-Amendment
But I picked up a lot of author “2007 Harvard Studies”–I suspect to get more accurate, I’d have to go to the academic databases, and I’m too lazy tonight, plus am lecturing myself to get up and fix dinner!
Ithiliana: Your class sounds excellent! I took a race and gender in sci-fi class and we also studied Trouble and her Friends and Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson.
Really does show who has all the power in modern day society, doesn’t it?
Nah, I’m thinking it was an epic troll. Enroll, gather “evidence”, drop out, sue. And all the news articles say “student of a master’s program at LSE”, which sounds great, but he still hadn’t taken the price tags off his new pencil case by the time he left.
Likely. Either way it begs the question how the hell he even got into the program? Was the admissions committee too busy to google every applicant? Maybe they should get an intern. His congratulatory admission letter alone constitutes a pretty solid defense against discrimination, I would imagine. ‘Your honor, let the record show that some people are just douchebags, and while they are given sympathy and support to the very limits of our patience, douchebags are not a legally protected class of person under the current discrimination statutes.’
@Katz: Thank you! My students were a bit shocked (although there are many more sf fans in our student pool these days, yay), but they dived right in and did some good work.
I also teach a course on Terry Pratchett (will be doing it this summer during our August mini mester, i.e. 2.5 week class, covering Pyramids, Hogfather, Small Gods.
I was lucky enough to meet both Hopkinson and Jemisin at one of the academic sf conferences I attend–totally awesome!
Most British university libraries have rather hard chairs. Why does he think it’s just the LSE? I always figured that the idea was to help keep students awake – if they put in comfy armchairs everyone would end up napping instead of studying.
Or maybe he thought he’d blow their self-absorbed girl-minds with his Theory of What About the Menz and then discovered that he wasn’t prepared to present it in the context of transitions from controlled to market economies, militarization, cross-cultural comparisons of virtually any social, historical or economic situation, globalization or basically anything more comprehensive or applicable than ‘whining on the internet.’ I’m sure even the kindest and most indulgent professor of ‘Fundamentals of Social Science Research Design’ doesn’t have the patience for that color-coded shaming language bullshit.