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.
@Ithiliana
“My completely evil man-bashing ball-busting list of readings for a gender theory course (I teach all my theory courses as ‘applied theory’) (Time before, I did a bunch of more typical gender theory stuff, including Eve Sedgewick and Judith Halberstam, and our text we ‘applied’ the theories too all semester was BEOWULF the Heaney translation which seriously discombobulated some older senior male colleages: “what does GENDER have to do with BEOWULF” one famously asked me).”
Men are always seriously discombobulated. Ain’t it wierd how everyone here as a personal story about how women are either better at something or men are worse and discombobulated about something. Men are such scatterbrains, aren’t they?
Anyway, I just wanted to say I’m shocked that you have to pay for feminist literature. The smart guys at the top gotta real racket going on. Women pay to be indoctrinated.
The Women’s and Gender Studies department at my undergrad (I don’t have any experience with the one at the university attached to my law school, so I can’t offer any opinions there) was actually rather wonderful, in my experience. The LGBT studies was a basically a subset of the department as well. It was very women and feminism focused, with great critiques from women of color, queer people, people with disabilities, etc, just as it should be. I can only specifically remember reading one writing by a man in the non-queer studies focused classes. Of course, my in-major (philosophy) classes had almost that bad of a gender skew in the opposite direction.
I think it’s common to find guys like Martin in a lot of women studies 101 classes, they’re basically just there to disrupt and troll. They don’t really expect women’s studies to be about something different than it is (except maybe more strawfeminist-y), they just want to derail and disrupt. They want for there to be no spaces that are not male controlled and male dominated, no spaces where women’s lives, theories, etc. are put in focus/centered.
P.S. Ithiliana, I once got to see Jack Halberstam give a presentation on queer negativity, it was…I want to say thought provoking, but a lot of people say that as a negative thing, but I mean it was a positive, it was awesomely thought provoking.
re: Martin’s age. A lot of our undergrads and graduate students are non-traditional age, i.e. coming back to school after working in other careers, so the 39 doesn’t phase me.
I know nothing about LSE (other than it was in a magazine about elite British Universities), but I suppose his admission materials might have been more polished than his online stuff (or, heck, if he was a troll, prepared by somebody else).
*TRIES TO STIFLE SELF AND FAILS* OTOH, he might have been admitted under a quota system!
@Darksidecat: *IZ SO JELUS*
Took us about 16 years (and the retirement of sexist president) to get a little 18 hour gender studies minor with cobbling together courses from different departments approved.
*bitter sigh*
@CassandraSays: if they put in comfy armchairs everyone would end up napping instead of studying.
HAH! I used to doze off in hard library chair while drooling onto my homework pile easy as pie–did it OFTEN!
@ ithiliana
Maybe I have an exceptionally bony butt or something, but just thinking of that made me wince. Wooden chairs are better than NoDoz for me.
The color codes are doubly or triply amusing because half of them are legitimate debate fallacies, but recast as something that only feminists ever do and only to men, and because he couldn’t decide between two or three Really Cool Names he wanted to give them (“The Charge of Endangerment! No–Code Orange! No–The Elevated Threat Charge!”).
Also because the crossed-out feminist fist at the bottom has the wistful tagline “(This image may be freely distributed.)”
This dude is like the first self-described feminist and self-described anti-feminist I’ve ever seen! I’m surprised he hasn’t exploded and taken the whole universe with him with that paradox!
So do we have a name for the class of troll that’s like “I’m totally trying to find common ground with feminists” and then they expect you to agree with something like “women are just naturally subservient to men” and then when you don’t agree they act like you’re being totally unreasonable?
@CassandraSays: Well, it’s true I am comfortably padded!
These days, I have to have good back support because of lower back problems, and many hard chairs don’t have that. Plus, I’m all privileged and stuff which means when I’m tired at work, I can shut my door and lie down on the floor for a nap!
@ ithiliana
Even when I’m at my most padded my butt is bony. It’s just a body shape thing – when I sit on anyone’s lap they complain about my pointy ass bones poking them. So me and hard chairs are not good friends.
Oddly enough though, it never occurred to me to charge my alma mater with anti-bony-butted-people discrimination for not providing squishy padded cushions in all the lecture halls. Clearly I will never make it as an internet activist.
Totally OT, but about the image above – am I the only one who thinks that with wooden chairs comfort is actually more of a shape issue than anything else? If the seat is shaped right some wooden chairs can be both comfy and good for back support. It’s plastic chairs that seem to have been specifically designed to make anyone who sits in them as miserable as possible.
The thing that surprises me about Martin’s age isn’t that he’s 39 and in school again; I’m older than the usual undergraduate, too, so it’s not a shock. It’s just incongruous to see a person using such juvenile rhetoric at 39 and somehow getting into a master’s program as well. Sure, maybe his application essays (?) and etcetera might be polished, but he’s supposed to be a passionate men’s rights activist and he’s going around the internet like a less mature MRAL.
I mean, seriously. Whoriarchy. Saudi Arabia. The facepalms do not stop.
Hmm…
I think we now have a name for that: The Bloody Mary
Into the Shopworn Perennials of MBZ Trolls tread it goes!
So this guy had a Youtube video that was linked from freethoughtsblog.com. I commented in response to someone, pointing out that Tom Martin didn’t seem like he was actually interested in gender equality given how frequently he calls women whores, which is a very misogynistic term.
Here’s his (I’m guessing it’s him, since it’s from the person who runs the SexismBusters Youtube channel) response:
This dude is one sick fuck—like George Sodini levels of sickfuckery.
Also note that prostitutes are not “real women”, because this man should get to decide what a real woman is.
Hmmm, he is made of harder stuff. Cardinal Fang, fetch… the comfy chair ¡!¡!¡!¡!¡!¡!
That’s all I can picture in response to his complaints about miserable wooden chairs- and in all fairness, I too hate those chairs. They remind me of church pews, and they always put my butt to sleep, even though I have a squishy lady-behind. Then it’s all pins&needles for a few minutes when I have to wake it back up again. Not comfy for women either.
Oh yawn, it’s another one of those “the only way women can stop oppressing men is by providing me with unlimited unconditional pussy” deep thinkers.
I’m sort of saddened that he probably didn’t stay in the program long enough (or take it seriously enough) to submit a paper on the Whoriarchy. That would be such a gem to read, and to imagine some poor professor having to grade.
Ah, THIS thing. “I may not be paying you money for sex directly, but I am paying you in attention paid to your worthless feminine yammering! YOU WHORE!”
How charming!
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.).
I have that book! It’s got some great stuff about the culture that evolved in the letters columns of SF magazines, like a very slow Internet. The young Isaac Asimov wrote all these sexist letters!
All right, all right. If NWO is going to keep posting, you all know what time it is.
The Book of Learnin’
Indispensable Facts About the Universe from NWO
College Gender Studies Reference Edition
Science
Evolution is impossible, because otherwise we’d be able to watch dogs evolve into super-dogs. Unless anyone can produce evidence of dogs with super-powers, evolution is a myth.
The theory of evolution claims that life came from rocks. It also states that evolution doesn’t occur anymore because rocks are no longer in make-life mode.
In the animal kingdom, females entice males with their spectacular plumage and elaborate mating displays.
Female animals cannot feed themselves and rely on males to support them. Even in cases where this seems untrue, the males are still tougher. For example, female lions do all the hunting in the pride, but if they come across a really tough enemy, like a hyena, they run and get the male lion to fight for them.
Mathematics
Feminists claim that one in four women is raped in college. But since college lasts for four years, you have to multiply that by four. Therefore, feminists are really saying that 100% of women are raped in college, which is obviously untrue, not to mention proof that women are bad at math.
There are only three percentages in statistics: 0%, 99%, and 100%. In statistical analysis, all numbers should be rounded to one of these three. COROLLARY: If people notice this and start suggesting that you’re just making your statistics up, it is mathematically acceptable to add some other really high numbers at random.
“Zero-sum game” is a fancy term for a game that ends in a tie.
There are two kinds of numbers, quantative and qualative.
Any number over 100 is “billions.”
Health and Medicine
Children are lined up and injected with a dangerous chemical called flouride to make them stupid.
Mammograms cause breast cancer. Doctors advise women to get mammograms at least once a week until they develop cancer from it.
Many hospitals are open only to women and children. They’re not maternity/pediatric hospitals, just regular hospitals that refuse to treat men for no reason.
Male suicide is caused by society trying to feminize men, which makes them so depressed they kill themselves. Before modern feminism, suicide was practically non-existent.
After an abortion, the fetus is chopped into pieces and thrown into the nearest river or lake to feed the fish.
If the FDA worked, we’d have cures for cancer, diabetes, and every disease and ailment. Since we don’t, it’s not doing anything useful and should be abolished.
Male erections are incredibly painful. All men hate and fear the sight of sexy women.
The Affordable Care Act covers gender reassignment surgery for five-year-olds.
Education
Reading is not taught in American public schools.
Public schools offer two kinds of math: traditional arithmetic and New Math. Children are allowed to choose which one to learn.
How-to courses on homosexuality are taught in public schools. This is how people become gay.
Men are not permitted to work as teachers in the U.S.
The University of Cincinnati and all University of California schools have gotten rid of their engineering and computer science departments and replaced them with women’s studies and gender studies.
Thanks to the power of Title IX (see Law), all but two colleges in the U.S. are assembling Sex Police Forces made up of female students and faculty. There are plans to extend this program to grade schools.
Colleges require male students to dress in women’s clothing and march around campus so the female students can harass them. If they don’t do this, they are punished.
There are twice as many teachers and half as many students in U.S. schools as there were 20 years ago. These teachers spend class time walking around in their underwear to arouse elementary-school boys.
There are special schools for toddlers where they are taught about sodomy.
History
Ancient Greece, Rome, Persia, and China under the Ming Dynasty were extremely progressive, feminist societies. That’s why they collapsed.
In ancient China, elite women castrated young boys, while giggling, to turn them into their playtoys. These women lived in harems but were actually in charge.
Before modern feminism, rape was a rare occurrence and almost unheard-of.
The Americas were discovered by Queen Isabella, who ordered every man in Europe to sail westward to get exotic jewels, perfumes and silks for her. It was a stroke of luck that Columbus found land before the entire male population of Europe perished in a watery grave.
The genocide of Native Americans was perpetrated solely by women.
All beatings and murders of African-American slaves were committed by women.
Lynchings in the American South consisted of women accusing men of rape because they were man-hating feminists. Race had nothing to do with it; it was just as easy for a black woman to get a white man lynched as vice versa. In cases where the man was lynched on an accusation from another man, the lynchings were justified.
Women sank the Lusitania as part of a feminist plot to get the U.S. involved in WWI so that men could die needlessly, because women just enjoy watching men die.
In 1919, women took control of all levels of government and law enforcement. There have been no male politicians, judges, or police officers for over 90 years.
The Cambodian genocide: planned and executed entirely by women.
The CIA imported feminism from the Soviet Union by publishing Ms. magazine and Miss Mag and channeling funds to a woman named Gloria Steinen.
Linguistics
The word “suffrage” is derived from the verb “to suffer,” because voting is hard.
Spanish and Russian use the same alphabet. The Russians just have a funny kind of handwriting called cryillic script.
Arts and Entertainment
The Iliad is the story of how Queen Helen of Troy ordered two armies to fight over her. It is based on a true story.
The classical Greek play The Bacchae is a celebration of the roving lesbian gang that murdered the musician Orpheus. It is based on a true story.
The musical Chicago is a polemic about how men should be shot to death. It was written by a female college student in 2010.
All horror movies are about a pretty girl being stalked and assaulted by an evil man. In the end, she kills him and walks away alive.
All TV shows have the same plot as all horror movies, except that the pretty girl is assisted by an all-female investigative team, with a single man in charge. At the end of every episode, the victim sits in a one-way mirrored room, watching the chained-up man with a smug look on her face. Then one of the women from the investigative team squeezes her arm.
Journalism
The mainstream media publishes a study every day detailing a different way in which women are superior to men.
Female journalists only write articles about how men are bad.
Suicides are never reported in the media unless it’s a gay man, in which case it’s treated as a national tragedy.
Fashion
Most girls and women over the age of twelve wear see-through tops and micro-miniskirts on all occasions. Although their skirts are so short their genitals hang out, they do not wear underwear.
The only exceptions to this rule are shopping malls, where girls and women typically wear bikinis.
Women only dress to attract men—all men. If a woman leaves the house in clothes, she wants to have sex with any man she meets. Men, on the other hand, never dress to look attractive.
Law
All U.S. law, from the Constitution down, has been supplanted by the extremely powerful Title IX, a law requiring that all educational, government, and private institutions be 100% female. Title IX has its own police force, which is exactly like the Nazi SS. This takeover of the government was orchestrated by Russlynn Ali, Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights in the Department of Education, who now rules the country.
The Violence Against Women Act makes it illegal for men to hurt women’s feelings.
It’s legal in the U.S. for women to murder men. This is common knowledge.
Laws in the U.S. and Britain are made by a panel of unelected advisors, who commission an independent legal review. Once the review is published anywhere, it becomes a law.
If the names on a contract are in all caps, those people are legally corporations. If they’re in mixed case, the contract is invalid.
The United States is a communist dictatorship ruled by an emperor. If it were a free country, people wouldn’t have to pay taxes or get licenses to drive.
Requiring people to take a vision test to get a driver’s license is an atrocity on the level of the Holocaust, Pol Pot’s genocide, and the famous Communist massacre of Christians.
Each law has its own police force and legal system. For example, if you urinate in public, the Urination Police will arrest you.
The Southern Poverty Law Center is classified as a hate group.
So are women. Yes, all women.
Crime
False reporting of rape is the most serious and common crime in the U.S. The most common reasons for a woman to make up a rape accusation are cheating, revenge, excuse for missed homework, lateness, work absence, and attention-getting.
The average man is falsely accused of rape and thrown into prison without trial on a daily basis. Available statistics say otherwise because the true numbers are kept under wraps by the CIA.
Gay people are fifteen times more likely than straight people to be violent criminals. All the worst serial killers in history were gay.
California has replaced its women’s prisons with spas to reward women for committing crimes.
If there is yelling in a house, the police are legally required to arrest any men inside.
Economics
All financial crises are caused by the Federal Reserve, which is run by the Rothchild family.
All the real-estate speculators who caused the housing bubble were women.
Maternity/paternity leave is the single biggest drain on the economy. If companies got rid of parental leave, it would create enough wealth that all women would be able to quit their jobs and be full-time mothers, like they’re supposed to.
There are no poor women. Whenever a woman needs anything, she sits in the middle of the street and cries, and passerby throw food and money at her for free.
Women control 80% of the world’s wealth, thanks to all the crying.
Business
Because of Title IX (see Law), all businesses with government contracts are required to hire only women to meet gender quotas.
The only businesses owned or run by women are nonprofit organizations dedicated to hurting men.
Women go to plumbing school for three years to get jobs as construction flaggers, jobs which entail wearing hotpants and working on their tans. Also, plumbing schools for women are way more fun than plumbing schools for men.
Charitable Giving
For every dollar women donate to charities to help men, men donate ten billion dollars to help women.
Women’s groups typically receive hundreds of billions of dollars a year in funding. One of the groups that receives the most money is the National Association of Women Lawyers.
Women give a trillion dollars a year to charities, but these “charities” actually fronts for the huge corporations these women own. Economists are still trying to determine how women can simultaneously run all big corporations and only run small man-hating nonprofits.
Nonprofit organizations operate by photocopying fliers, posting them on walls around town, then sitting back and waiting for the money to roll in. Even though the average nonprofit doesn’t do anything else, it’s much too hard for a man to start one, because men are oppressed.
Men are not allowed into homeless shelters unless they swear allegiance to feminism.
Throughout history, billions of men have died for the sake of women, whereas no woman has ever died for the sake of a man. The only way to balance this injustice is for women to randomly punch each other in the nose.
Government
Everyone takes orders from the U.N. and the Jews.
Without government, homosexuality would not exist.
Foreign Relations
In war, women act as “cheerleaders” for both sides at once, goading otherwise peaceful men to fight. These women have no political goals or opinions; they just like watching men die.
Wars are typically started by women nagging their husbands to invade other countries to get pretty dresses.
Female protesters, no matter what the subject of the protest, are just there to goad men into killing each other. They are never injured or killed themselves.
Russia is the “deathplace capital of the world” for men because feminism was invented there (see Feminism). It is the most feminist country on earth.
All taxes in Scandinavian countries go toward women’s causes. Scandinavian grade schools have a holiday where girls are given cookies and ice cream, while boys are given stale matzo. Men in Scandinavian countries are imprisoned for farting.
Judaism is a nationality.
Pet Ownership
Only women own cats. The main reason women own cats is so they can spend money on kitty litter that would otherwise go to men’s shelters.
Romance
Women hit men to test them as romantic partners. If a man hits back, it’s proof that he’s a worthy mate with strong genes, and the woman will immediately have sex with him.
Men enjoy being raped. Any man who says otherwise is lying.
When gay men have sex, they usually do it in front of a straight woman to provide her with free entertainment. Straight women are working to turn more men gay so they can enjoy plenty of gay sex shows.
Marriage and Family
Somewhere in the U.S. is a place called The Ghetto, where between 70% and 99% of households consist of unemployed single mothers living entirely off welfare. Everyone in The Ghetto is black. Sociologists are still struggling to determine why women in The Ghetto don’t support themselves as other women do, by sitting in the street and crying until people throw stuff at them (see Economics).
99% of feminist marriages end in divorce.
The vast majority of violent rapists come from female-led households, because the feminist indoctrination boys receive in such households makes them so angry they have to go out and rape people to let off steam.
Fatherhood is illegal in Britain and there are plans to outlaw it in the U.S.
Youth Culture
Teenage girls participate in hazing rituals wherein they go to the mall in sexy outfits, usually bikinis (see Fashion). If a man looks at them for more than six seconds, they pounce on him en masse and strip him naked.
Most children are still in diapers at the age of five.
Religion
Judaism is the most aggressively evangelical religion on earth. Less than 5% of Jews are ethnically Jewish, while the rest are recruited from the tireless Jewish recruitment efforts.
Catholics worship the Virgin Mary.
In the story of Jesus saving the adulteress from stoning, the moral is that sinners deserve to be stoned.
Pedophilia
All child molesters are either women or gay men.
Prepubescent girls desperately want to have sex with middle-aged men. They advertise this desire by wearing swimsuits to the beach.
Feminism
Feminism is a highly organized international movement created in the Soviet Union and currently funded by the United Nations.
Phyllis Schlafly has worked tirelessly throughout her life to promote feminist causes.
Predictions of the Future
Someday a straight white man will beat up a lesbian for molesting a five-year-old. Everyone in the world will sympathize with the lesbian and immediately legalize child molestation.
In 100 years, white people will have gone extinct because white women didn’t reproduce enough. Archeologists discovering the remains of Western culture (which will die without white people around) will laugh at us for letting women have rights.
Grade schools will soon require children to pledge allegiance to the idea that women are morally superior to men. This future event has punctured the space-time continuum and is causing girls and women to feel superior right now.
That’s unfortunate to hear, especially since he writes very intelligent, non-stereotypical female characters. Dr. Susan Calvin from his I,robot series for one. But you mentioned it was when he was younger, attitudes can change overtime
Asimov was *super* young at the time, like 13. (It’s a good book. For fiction by the author, take a look at her young adult novel LIAR which has some interesting race and class stuff among other things.)
TROUBLE ON TRITON–which I *love*–does, if I recall correctly, talk about autogynophilia in a way that was troubling. I assume this was a “Delany was at that point not well-educated on trans rights” thing–I haven’t heard that it’s a sustained problem and certainly his feminism and especially his LGB activism are awesome sauce.
I am *so* glad to see Nalo and Nora’s works on a curriculum. Not that there aren’t several other writers on that list who I adore, but I don’t think Nora’s got much of an academic following yet, and I’m just generally chuffed for Nalo.
Nalo Hopkinson’s SALT ROADS is one of my favorite books ever; very interesting treatments of race and sexism, rendered in a story that echoes through three timelines (19th century France, ancient Egypt, and the antebellum south in the USA).
If you’re looking for interesting genderfuckery, Sandra McDonald is rocking the genre right now in short stories (Check out Seven Sexy Cowboy Robots, for instance, or Drag Queen Astronaut) and I haven’t read much of her Diana Comet series but it’s about a trans woman of color who’s a detective in Louisiana before the purchase. She’s on the Tiptree long lists for the last couple years.
A former student of mine, An Owomoyela, identifies off the binary. Hir short story “Of Men and Wolves” is not my favorite of hirs but does have some obvious alt-gender content; much of the rest of hir work is influenced by hir understandings of gender.
A lot of the other books I’m thinking of right now are Tiptree winners…
Aqueduct Press is a small, feminist science fiction press publishing out of Seattle (run by L. Timmel Duchamp who herself is an accomplished feminist science fiction writer) and their catalog is a good place to start looking for fiction that complicates gender roles, which includes material about ambiguous and non-binary genders, but isn’t only about that.
Oh! Carolyn Ives Gilman’s BEING HUMAN is an older novel, but I just picked it up when they did a new run and it’s a *really* interesting treatment of gender and enforced gender norms which uses a non-binary gender system, although it doesn’t resemble the non-binary systems we have here and now. Also, of course, Margie Piercy’s WOMAN AT THE EDGE OF TIME features a utopia that allots sex roles (or more saliently does not do so) very differently than our society.
Also, the browser seems to have decided that I’m no longer allowed to post as Mandolin. *frown*
Ithiliana, those courses sound amazing! Thank you for the list of books to hunt down once I have money for books other than my own textbooks 🙂
What was that Mark Twain said about people who represent themselves?
I would like to show what the library in my university-for-one-semester in feminazi-land (also known as Sweden) looked like. Those are not my pictures, though I did started at the time taking pictures of all the different kinds of chairs in the school.
You’ll notice on the picture that male students are in fact allowed to use the comfy… can I really call it a chair?