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.
Seriously, what would satisfy you here? Because if they’d elected the woman to be the leader, that would be female dominance. But because they didn’t, that’s Secret Backhanded Female Dominance?
Bingo.
Tom’s entire argument rests on “sure, it seems like us men are in charge, but the little woman gets her way with the nagging and the pouting and the sexytimes, amirite, guys?” sitcom logic. To the point that even women in cultures where they’re treated as house slaves are still too powerful, because they have those special female nagging powers! Oh, wait, they don’t, because they’re not allowed to speak without permission, but they can walk really meaningfully.
I can’t imagine how he failed to impress a gender studies graduate program.
I especially love this part. Even when women can’t vote and don’t make any *conscious* decision to talk, they’re *subconsciously controlling everything with body language*!
I wonder how Tom would react if he were in a coffee shop with a few other women who were ignoring him. Would they still be sending out commanding non-verbal signals? Dastardly!
@ Ithiliana:
~cheers right back at you, because you are awesome~
Actually, I find myself becoming increasingly sympathetic to Tom’s claims that he experienced blatant discrimination in the gender studies program at LSE. Graduate programs do tend to discriminate against individuals who can’t read for basic comprehension or furnish actual evidence to support their arguments.
@ Tom:
Aries wrote Men and Women in Interaction; I’ve already explained why her research flat-out contradicts your claims.
Female Power and Male Dominance (Cambridge University Press, 1981) is by Peggy Reeves Sanday, and except for the epilogue, it focuses exclusively on gender relations in tribal societies. My impressions from skimming FPaMD are not entirely favorable — I’m picking up on a lot of structuralist overtones, which raises a few red flags for me, and I’m also having vague flashbacks to Marita Gimbutas. However, my reservations about Sanday’s methodology notwithstanding, I’m fairly certain that she isn’t saying what you think she’s saying. One of her central arguments seems to be that in many societies which are ostensibly male dominated, women nonetheless maintain access to political and economic power, although this access is not always negotiated through publicly acknowledged channels. Sanday calls this power structure “mythical male dominance,” and yes, I’m sure you practically piddled yourself with glee when you read those words. Sadly for you, “mythical male dominance” doesn’t actually mean “secret governance by whoriarchal puppetmistresses.” It just means “greater political and economic participation by women than the publicly recognized model of gender relations would predict.” According to Sanday, women do not fare better in societies exhibiting mythical male dominance than they do in gender egalitarian societies; their contributions are devalued, and they are often subject to socially sanctioned male violence, such as rape and beatings:
So, yeah. Citation still needed.
PLEASE DEFINE WHORE, TOM.
And tell us how your study could be disproven, so that we know if it’s a more serious theory than the invisible dragon in Holly (or was it Ozy?) ‘s garage. So far the dragon win. (of course)
And then if you have time, prove you theory without misrepresenting studies. We have too many smart and educated people here, so that won’t work. (and really, a study which said that men almost always get chosen as leader no matter what, that’s you’re proof women control the world?)
Tom makes me sad. Here I am, all proud of myself because I’ll be sending my thesis to my committee today and will be defending sometime in April, and yet he got admitted into a grad school, and one that is more prestigious than my own. I know he only lasted 6 weeks, but the fact that he was there at all somehow takes away from the accomplishments of all other grad students. It also makes the rejection letter from the other school I had applied to sting just that much more.
On the other hand, it looks like I have a new book to read!
Tom,
If you’re having a hard time identifying that 2007 Harvard study, might I recommend that you go the fuck to the library?
I can’t believe this is still going on!
( ⚆ _ ⚆ )
random6x7, Congrats on the thesis! You apparently know how to make a logical, well-sourced argument! Our friend Tom, not so much.
WHORE:
1. A woman who has sex for money.
2. A woman who receives anything from anyone ever.
3. A woman who tells men what she wants.
4. A woman who complains about anything.
5. A woman or a man who does not support Tom Martin’s idea of “equality.”
6. A woman Tom Martin doesn’t like.
7. A woman who hasn’t patented anything.
8. A Muslim woman.
9. A woman who allows men to lead her.
10. A woman who participates in the oppression of women.
11. A woman who doesn’t think gender studies should include men’s issues.
Thanks, cloudiah! Although when I was putting together my bibliography, I kind of wanted to put a whole lot of “That dude, from the paper we’ve all had to read, you totally know it”. Part of me definitely sympathizes with Tom’s inability to cite.
Shit, this is still on? I guess if Tom got into grad school, I really need to get off my ass and take the GREs.
Not to pull a Mr. Al here or nothing but FUCK ALPHA FUCK WORDPRESS.
So, surprisingly, I found a 2007 Iowa State University study that looked at 10-minute interactions between 72 married couples and determined that wives were more likely to dominate discussions. Which doesn’t exactly synch up with what Tom Martin was saying, but I mean, ISU is known as the Harvard of Iowa, right?
Anyway, in addition to the 2007 Harvard-published Amato book I found last night (which pointedly refuted the idea that wives make decisions in 9 of 10 decisions in their marriages), I started searching the SSRN database for scholarly articles about marriage and decision-making, in the hopes of finding this mysterious 2007 Harvard study. Instead, I found a variety of articles by researchers in the past decade or so who claim that husbands’ and wives’ education, financial situation, age, culture, etc. affect whom the primary decision-maker is in the household or whether decisions are made jointly (not to mention the effect these circumstances play in perception of who has the power to make decisions, and how couples might wish to portray decision-making process to outside researchers). None of which — I hasten to add — come anywhere close to supporting Martin’s claim that wives make 9 out of 10 of the decisions in a marriage.
I would start to suspect that perhaps Tom Martin has misremembered or *ahem!* misrepresented this famous 2007 Harvard study to us, but this seems unlikely, since all of his other writings here have been so thoroughly accurate and well-reasoned. What a mystery!
@Tom:
Dude, if your supposed evidence comes from Megargee’s research, then fucking cite Megargee, not Aries.
Of course, Megargee offers precious little support for your pet theory (as I mentioned above, “leader” generally means “leader,” not “pawn of the whoriarchy puppetmistresses”). Here’s what he has to say about his own findings (note that he’s writing with a coauthor, so he’s referred to in the third person when his solo research is being discussed):
Noting that, “In our society it is generally considered appropriate for men to dominate women but not vice versa,” Megargee hypothesized “that these social role prescriptions would act to inhibit high-Do women from assuming leadership when paired with low-Do men.” . . . In the absence of gender role conflict, Do was an excellent predictor of leadership assumption for men and women alike. Inducing social role conflict by pairing high-Do women with low-Do dramatically altered the situation; in spite of the fact that, by virtue of their measured personality characteristics, they were more qualified to lead, only 20% of the high-Do women who were paired with low-Do men took the leader role.
. . . In a second study of gender roles [Megargee and Carbonell] kept track of which partner actually decided who should lead and who should follow. In contrast to high-Do subjects in other conditions, the high-Do women paired with low-Do men retained control of the situation in a socially appropriate fashion by playing a much more active role in determining who should take what role. This has since been referred to as the “power behind the throne” or “Nancy Reagan” syndrome. However, it is a much less robust phenomenon and has only occasionally been replicated. (Megargee and Carbonell, “Evaluating Leadership with the CPI,” 1988.)
Note that last sentence. The one in bold. It’s important. Sometimes, in mixed-sex pairs, women with high-dominance personalities will superficially defer to men with low-dominance personalities while still exerting significant control over the decision-making process. However, it is more frequently the case that women with high-dominance personalities will actually cede genuine control to men with low-dominance personalities. I’m not seeing “whoriarchy” here; I’m just seeing the good old patriarchy. And here’s another thing to consider: even if dominant women do sometimes behave deferentially toward less dominant men without truly deferring to them, what makes you think that those women benefit more than they would if they openly assumed leadership? (I am assuming – perhaps optimistically – that you don’t believe that any given woman should automatically defer to any given man, regardless of their relative leadership abilities.) Yes, being “the power behind the throne” might shield a woman from a certain amount of fallout when things go wrong, but by the same token, it would deprive her of the bulk of the benefits when things go right.
(To all my fellow manboobzers: I am sorry for clogging up this thread with giant walls of text. I am off to bed now, I promise!)
Proper citation is for WHORES.
Tom: Feminism’s job should be to portray men’s achievements as something women should want to emulate and surpass,
Why?
Why should feminism be trying to make people equal? That’s what it’s doing, why are you opposed?
Is it because you resent not being, “on top”? Are you like Meller, upset that you can’t have an economically dependent woman you can force to have sex with you?
It’s ok. You can tell us. We won’t think any less of you.
Tom: Let’s see what you said:
1: A woman who accepts anything from a man, including inventions you presume (absent facts) were made by men must either
1a: Give back at least as much as she gained, from men, to men, or
1b: Fuck any man who is in the mood.
2: Any woman who fails to do that is a whore.
Since actually fulfilling 1a and 1b are not possible, QED you have defined the class, “whore” such that it includes all women.
Specific examples, on your part, were, “a woman waiting for Mr. Right to come along, before she has sex” and a 12 year old being given to another man as a bride.
Those were both whores, because the first chose to be selective in whom she chooses to fuck, and the second because she didn’t say, “no” when her family (i.e. the men in it) sold her like an animal. That she would be turned out to starve, or beaten to death for disobedience (or merely killed to get the bride-price), you don’t care about. She has the physical ability to say no, and she didn’t, ergo… WHORE!
I’m trying to keep this updated but it’s getting very difficult.
WHORE:
1. A woman who has sex for money.
2. A woman who receives anything from anyone ever.
3. A woman who tells men what she wants.
4. A woman who complains about anything.
5. A woman or a man who does not support Tom Martin’s idea of “equality.”
6. A woman Tom Martin doesn’t like.
7. A woman who hasn’t patented anything.
8. A Muslim woman.
9. A woman who allows men to lead her.
10. A woman who participates in the oppression of women.
11. A woman who doesn’t think gender studies should include men’s issues.
12. A woman waiting for the right man before she has sex.
13. A girl in an arranged marriage.
It’s ok. You can tell us. We
won’tcouldn’t possibly think any less of you.FTFY
@auntHortense I enjoyed reading your wall of text!
14. A woman who makes minor household decisions without consulting her husband.
New theory: men are actually back seat – back seat driving (trunk driving? Unless it’s a bus) to avoid the responsibility like minor household decision making.
Disprove if you don’t agree.
Tom: A lot of you are changing the subject.
No, actually, we are all talking about one thing… the holes in your theory/what you are actually arguing.
You are repeating a “Code LaLALa!!!”, wherein you pretend (I hope it’s pretense) to not understand/see the replies.
You’ve been shown how your definition applies to all women.
You’ve been asked to explain what a woman can do to “stop being a whore (to which you have made a non-responsive, “stop whoring”, reply).
You’ve been asked what it would take to disprove your theory (e.g. General relativity, which would be disproved [or need, at the very least, some major revision, were some way found to exceed the speed of light).
You’ve refused; while pretending you were being challenged to disprove some other theory.
A lot of you, who would have been patriarchy theory-adherents will now, in the face of an explanation of how women run ‘patriarchy’, attempt to claim that whatever that traditional gender dynamic is called hardly exists today.
Did you try this trick with the judge? Because all you did here was say, “I’m right, and you know it.”
The problem for you (here, as in court) is that you have done fuck-all to prove your case, other than to say, “I’m right, and you know it.”
What am I right or wrong about, and why?
Well… I suspect you are correct on things like time of day, and your name, and that you were enrolled in the LSE, and other simple things.
As to gender theory… you are clueless. When presented with evidence you merely engage in contradiction (e.g. Saudi women are the most oppressive in the world because… you said so. That they can’t vote, work, travel freely, pass laws [or protest them] are beaten for so much as speaking to man they are not related to, etc. you then claim proves they are the dominant force in society… why? Because you said so).
That’s why you are wrong, because all you do is say, “I said so, that’s the way it is, and anyone who disagreess is a poopyhead.”
Good luck with that on appeal
I wonder, did Tom expose his whoriarchy theory to the court, or did he manage to bite his tongue and not say ‘whore’ once a sentence?
I get the distinct impression he wasn’t able to say very much at all.
That was probably for the best.
Tom’s case makes me wish that the UK had court TV as the standard.
(Well, not really, but in this case it would have been funny!)