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.
You know, a man CAN have a fat ass, if he’s willing to eat enough cookies. (re: uncomfortable chairs)
From my perspective, women’s studies, which became gender studies, is one of the important steps in a greater understanding of the world that can’t be overestimated. As I’m sure one of my teachers must have said, not only did feminist scholars and others’ focus on untold histories and topics expand our understanding of the world outright, it also, by virtue of separating out half the population from the mainstream narrative in the histories of women (as an example), made visible histories of men and masculinity, and in doing so created the foundations on which MRAs (and of course many more interesting people) now stand.
@ Katz:
Camille Paglia.
@Shaenon and Quackers: re: Isaac Asimov. And sf LoC as slow internet!
Seconding Shaenon–he was young, very young. And Susan Calvin: welllllllll, the brilliant intelligent ‘masculine’ woman who excels at manly work but cannot be attractive or have a sex life is another fairly sexist stereotype which is not to say I didn’t adore her in the ROBOT stories.
Part of what Larbalestier does is point out how the debate over gender was taking place in fandom between male and female fans from the earliest days of the pulps, i.e. the 1920s, 30s, despite the stereotype that “no women were in fandom until Captain Kirk seduced them all in because girlz didn’t read/write sf.”
Helen Merrick has an article online I think about how sf fans were communicating over the distance via LoC and fanzines for decades before the internet came alone (and fanzines and apazines are still out there–I know a male fan who LOOK HERE NWO NOT A HORRIBLE MAN STORY who began doing his fanzine in the 1940s and was still doing it in the late 90s). SF fans were also among the earliest adopters of the internet. Let me post this and I’ll go look for the Merrick article.
Helen Merrick’s incredible article on the virtual community created by fans well before the internet:
http://refractory.unimelb.edu.au/2004/06/17/%E2%80%98we-was-cross-dressing-%E2%80%98afore-you-were-born%E2%80%99-or-how-sf-fans-invented-virtual-community-helen-merrick/
I published a Star Trek fanzine for my Outpost in the 70s, and was active in APA-FIVE (earth’s greatest apa!) from the late seventies (on and off, GAFIATING on occasion) until I was writing my dissertation. I was out of fandom until 2003 when Peter Jackson’s LOTR film dragged me back in and I discovered online fandom (HOLY SHIT! I don’t have to wait a month for emcees!), and slash fiction!
“Ssssh! We slut feminist men are trying to infiltrate the system! Don’t give us away!”
NOBODY expects the slut-feminist men!
[preparing to fetch comfy chair]
Feminazi haven Oberlin College (the first coed and first interracial college in the U.S., and one of the first with coed dorms) also has sweet library chairs.
http://blogs.oberlin.edu/about/ethos/womberlin.shtml
Susan Calvin was my total hero growing up, but there’s no denying that some of her stories are less than totally enlightened. “Liar!”, the one where a telepathic robot lies to Dr. Calvin about a man she has a crush on, can be painful to read. Also the one where she plays mommy to an infantile robot.
As a kid, I read a lot of old sci-fi, and I used to switch the genders of the characters in my head so I wasn’t always reading about men. There are still stories I picture with female leads even though I know they weren’t written that way. And I maintain that the gender-reversed version of Bester’s The Demolished Man is better than the real one.
That’s because there’s no such thing. The masculine of slut is stud, everybody knows that.
/sarcasm
Yes, yeeeesssss, join the slash fans! There is no escape! MWAH HA HAA!
@Bagelsan: Nobody told me about slash n the late 70s when I was a Trekkie!
I learned about it from academic essays (Joanna Russ!), and thought it was great in theory, but it wasn’t until 2003 when I got sucked into Jackson/LOTR fandom and found myself writing RPS (then later FSP) that I realized the TWUE depths of it all.
But I seem to be almost exclusively a LOTR slash fan–nothing else really appeals to me…..
@ Kyrie
If I’d gone to college in Sweden I’d have spent a lot more time in the library. Actually, I’d quite like one of those green chairs for my apartment.
It is so nice to see how you bigots dismiss the legitimate claims of reasonable and moderate MRAs like Tom Martin …
In the future, as the gender debate becomes more and more polarized, and you find yourselves dealing more and more with people like ME, I wonder if you will complain about why MRAs are angry and unreasonable …
Bigots. Vile bigots.
That’s fantastic.
Us, or the chairs?
I think that “masculinity and men’s issues should also be examined in gender studies classes” is a reasonable belief. “…and if you don’t agree with me about that, you’re a whore” is NOT.
If he was determined to go with a gender based insult, at least “bitch” would have made some sort of sense. “Whore” is just baffling.
Tom Martin here. I haven’t read all the comments, but here are a few clarifications:
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.
The university’s library management ignored the complaint.
I read all the university’s equality regulations, then phoned the Equality and Human Rights Commission, who took the complaint seriously, and in fact, phoned me back, and advised me hard seating in a library would be in breach of the Gender Equality Duty Act.
(It would be indirect discrimination, as it impacts on one sex more than the other on average).
Then, after discussing the issue with the EHRC, the university library manager promptly wrote me a letter, inviting me over to discuss the issue, so I went, and he showed me the new padded seating which would be installed.
In breach of contract cases, it is helpful to establish that a buyer has read the terms of contract which has induced him into buying the product – and I mentioned this prior seating complaint in court – to establish I had read the terms of contract before entering the contract.
What the press all mysteriously failed to report, is that the university’s rules and regulations specifically ruled out the use of sex-discriminatory learning materials.
The judge also ignored this point.
This is one of many reasons I will be going to appeal.
Finally, several 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.
Cue hilarious jokes avoiding the central complaint.
See, no, you are presenting whoredom as a bad thing. As a person who supports sex worker rights, that’s ridiculous to me. There is nothing inherently wrong about charging for sex, any more than there is about charging for a massage, and by presenting whores as bad you’re contributing to the stigma that makes rape of and violence against sex workers such a problem.
Was this you who made this Youtube comment?
“I differentiate between real women and whores. Stop conflating the two. Only women can eradicate prostitution, by putting price down to zero. It is misogynistic of you to pretend a criticism of prostitution is a criticism of all women. Real women investigate, innovate, and invent. There’s no Nobel prizes for being a hooker. Feminism must renounce prostitution in ALL its forms. No Nobel prize for making excuses for prostitution either, so, when you’re ready, let’s hear it sister”
“Women owe men some inventions.”
The facepalms, they do not stop.
Oh look, already we got a “We hunted the mammoth for you!!” rant.
Sure, and a chef charges for money. Why isn’t the MRM all up in arms about the lack of free sammiches? Or is it that women owe us free sex for our manly inventions?
Women owe men sex because MAMMOTHS, Shadow. Duh.
Hard seats: The real reason more women than men attend college!
Mammoth sandwiches for all the men!
Mammoth and cheese!
MLT!
Philly Cheesemammoth!