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.
Holly, did you miss the bit where even a virgin is a whore, if she’s hoping Mr.Right will give her a present some day?
Poor old Virgin Mary, she used Joseph. Disqualified, please submit halo to Mr. Tom Martin immediately.
Now, Lilith, on the other hand. She’s a hero! She ran away so fast Adam never had a chance to do anything for her.
Tom: Fascinating how quite so many of you don’t seem to want get your heads round the concept of having sex without money or gifts being involved.
It’s really not that complicated for me.
Still waiting for the first feminist here to renounce prostitution in all its forms.
It’s the proverbial open door.
Still waiting for you to realise we don’t have sex for money/gifts. The thing is you have this daft idea that one can, “renounce” your idiotic idea of “prostitution” which you have defined as, “being female and choosing who you have sex with.”
Until you accept the logical conclusion of your arguments you aren’t going to be able to persuade anyone of them, because the intractable dilemma you have created will continue to trip you up (as is most plainly evidenced by your loss in court).
It’s an open door, all you have to be is rational enough to apply yourself to thinking it through.
Are any of you rational enough to walk through it of your own free will though?
Nah.
You still haven’t answered the question was your mama a “whore”?
Did she wait for “mr.right”? -she was a “whore”
Did she received gifts from her husband or any man? -she was a “whore”
Okay, so now I’m confused. Tom wants me to put down the crockery and… what, work? I already work, so does MrB. I write in my spare time, is that making a contribution? I make kickass oatmeal cookies and pie crust, I think that delicious baked goods are a positive contribution to society. Is the only contribution I can make sexual?
Also, is his contention that when a man and a woman apply for the same job, the woman will get it automatically, no matter how much experience the man has? Because I’ll tell you right now, if I applied for the paraprofessional job MrB is going for, they would ignore me totally. MrB has something like twenty years of experience dealing with EI/LD kids, five in a public school setting. His experience trumps mine so hard it’s not even funny. But in Tom’s world none of that matters because MrB is a man. Right?
I suppose he’s not much bothered by the idea that basically every man who expects to have consensual sex is a john?
And any man who wants to give his girlfriend presents, wow, he’s like, a mega-john.
(I’ve explained before, by the way, that I give my boyfriend presents, yet have received no credit for being a reverse whore! Perhaps I’m making a whore of him? How terrible of me.)
Yeah, but then she went and had sex with lots of demons and probably demanded gifts and child support.
For the record, I would never claim all women are whores. I’d put it at around the 97% mark in my estimation – so back off, haters.
Ohhh, that makes it sound so much better. Thanks Tom!
The blockquotes– they have failed me.
Okay, not-actually-hypothetical scenario:
This Valentine’s Day, my boyfriend gave me a card and a painting. I gave him a card, a book, and a pot of flowers.
Why exactly do you figure his gift was payment for sex, and my gift was, um, nonexistant?
Holly: …I don’t think 97% of women have even had sex.
But not having sex can make you a whore, because some guy did something, and you didn’t put out, for some other guy (because that something might have been inventing glass, or killing a deer for the first time, or something, way back when in the distant past, and society is the better for it).
Which is why, though he refuses to admit it, he’s called all women (even his mother, whom he seems to want to exempt), whores, even the virgins of 12.
Obviously his dear old mum is exempt from the “Practically all women are whores” maxim
MRAs will always make shitty generalizations about women as long as the actual women in their lives don’t count.
Considering that his mom meets all of his criteria for a whore, that is, she exists and is a woman who has lived, she is indeed a whore.
Oxymandias42 said:
Tom, what evidence would prove you wrong?
Your entire “whoriarchy” gender structure… what evidence could someone provide to show that it is all mistaken? Because the thing is, until you can disprove a theory, it’s not a theory– it’s just faith. And while faith may be valid for spiritual and aesthetic concerns, it has no place in matters of politics.
Here, I’ll start. The evidence that would prove my current gender theories entirely wrong includes:
1) Neurological evidence that shows significant gender differences between men and women rooted in biology.
2) Evidence from the psychology of happiness that proves that people are significantly happier with strong gender roles.
3) Evidence that suggests that any gender overwhelmingly benefits from the patriarchy (as opposed to being hurt less), such as quality-of-life studies of people in more and less patriarchal societies that show that one gender, but not any others, has significantly higher quality of life in the more patriarchal society.
4) Valid arguments that show that liberating one gender necessarily involves harming another gender.
Okay Oxymandias42, regarding questions that would disprove your thesis:
1) What the fuck is your thesis?
2) I think there is some research showing women report they are a little less happy with non-traditional gender roles on average, but given that approximately 97% of women are whores, I am happy to ignore this evidence entirely, for the good of the land, as we’re not here to make whores happy, but achieve gender-developmental progress.
3) I don’t think either sex benefits from the whoriarchy, it is merely a case that in a whoriarchy women think they’re getting one over on their wage-slave husbands, which distracts the women sufficiently from their own downward and backward trajectory, and that of the similarly fascist juntas the division of roles engenders.
4) Liberating men involves mildly inconveniencing whores. It’s a win/win.
So how does it feel to call your own mom a “whore” tom?
I think Tom uses “whore” in the same way that smurfs use “smurf,” so he probably has no problem calling his mother a “whore.”
I don’t think any of those differences amount to “aha, this is the whore gender.”
Gonna need a source on that.
Gonna need that to be a sentence.
…And this is why you want men “liberated.”
Anyway, the “harm” in question is usually just differential. It’s like, yes, when women could own property, you lost the benefit of “being the only gender that could own property,” so I guess that’s a harm, but boo frickin’ hoo. It’s not a harm proportional to the gain to women.
Okay, so 97% of women are whores, and you’re not here to make whores happy… see, it’s not misogyny, it’s just 97% misogyny!
And seriously A WHORE IS A PERSON WHO HAS SEX FOR MONEY IT IS NOT JUST A WORD FOR “EVIL BAD WOMAN OF BADNESS.” HOW DENSE ARE YOU.
Anyway I still do not understand the moral difference between having sex for money and, say, selling haircuts for money. But I suppose that’s just because I’m a whorey whore, the kind who doesn’t have sex for money, who even gives her boyfriend presents and buys him dinner… that kind of whore.
If to not be a whore I have to never accept anything from anyone ever, that’s more than a “mild inconvenience.”
@Holly
I really wish the public could see the stupid and vile shit he says on the internet. I doubt his image of poor persecuted man who only wants equality would survive long after that.
Maya – Yeah, for serious. I think 98% of the arguments about “hm, maybe he does have a point, perhaps gender studies is a hostile environment for men!” would evaporate when he became known as the whorey whoring whore dude.
Jumbofish, you’re still claiming that I am claiming all women are whores. Let me clarify again:
Approximately 3% of women are not whores.
Approximately 100% of women have the option not to be a whore.
but – and I think here is where a lot of the confusion lies – as little as 97% of people actually understand percentages. If there are 100 people, but only 97 of them understand percentages, then 97% of them, understand percentages. Yes you can (not be a whore)!
@Holly
Tom was quoting from Ozy (without using any identifying marks, so I see how you would be confused). The first four numbered quotes in Tom’s post that you then quoted yourself are things that Ozy said zie would need to disprove zir current gender theories:
http://manboobz.com/2012/03/16/tom-martins-anti-male-discrimination-case-against-the-london-school-of-economics-dismissed-he-responds-by-calling-his-critics-whores/comment-page-12/#comment-136931
@Tom
You refuse to substantiate any of your claims, and your definitions are vague at best. No one here is going to take you seriously unless you refine your position. You are only embarrassing yourself.
I honestly don’t even know what the word whore means anymore. At this point it lost all meaning.
Myoo – Oopsie. Well, now I feel like a dumb whore. :p
How, specifically, would I go about doing this?
I already don’t have sex for money. I give my boyfriend about as many presents and dinners as he gives me.
I don’t expect anything from society (except pap smears and the like, and I’d expect trans men to get those too) that men don’t get.
How much more un-whorey can I get?
The thing is, you have never specified how someone is not a whore. Therefore, it is more likely that any given person in your definition is a heaux. You have not said why your mom is not a heaux, so we are left with the high probability that she is indeed a whore, according to your stated definition, which is a woman who works or does not work, who marries or does not marry, who accepts gifts and does not accept gifts, and who has sex with some men and not with others.
Ok…there is no way this guy can be serious. Unless he’s just trying to fuck around with us, how come this “whoriarchy” never made it on his website? is this “theory” what he used to argue his claim of discrimination?
Tom did you bring up your ” whoriarchy theory” in court or in the gender studies class or with other people besides us?
because I’m having a really hard time believing this is real. I knew he was dumb but not this level of dumb O_o