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.
It is sad that Tom assumes DNA makes a family when that has nothing to do with it.
In my own family I have one sister adopted out (Dad is not her dad.) I have one sister adopted in (Dad and my step mom are her parents, not her DNA ones) and my mom is my mom even if I call my step mom “mom.”
Fathers, even ones who find out later that their child is not biologically theirs, are most likely going to keep fighting to have access to their children because DNA is not what makes a family.
We’re gonna need a paternity test bingo card eventually. Same answer as to the last one who suggest it: no, it doesn’t work like that. If it does, prove it. How much do you think the price would drop anyway?
See, that’s the funny part: you actually get that a test need people working. These people need to be paid; Which costs a lot.
So now you want to make it a world law, when countries can’t agree on stuff like “torture is bad”? You want to go in countries where people are starving, where people are dying for lack of meds, for lack of water just to do a test that 9 out 10 already know the answer and the tenth isn’t in any danger, well until you go tell their father that they’re not their father and some of them get thrown to the streets.
You want to spend money nobody has for something not life threatening and which concern a tiny proportion of people. How about you spend this money on AIDS testing and meds?
You’re the one who’s refuse to be empathic to hypothetical me who was raped by a stranger and will go to prison because of that.
I know you’re already deep down this hole you keep digging ad I don’t want to hit you with the shovel, but you never actually proved any of that, nor the effect that this supposed sex difference could have.
I think at this point it looks like Tom is trying to prove that men just aren’t meant to SIT. IT’S UNNATURAL!
P.S. Tom, why do you think hordes of women will want to move to Saudi Arabia in a post-911 world? Did you miss 911 entirely?
You’re saying parents and children who aren’t biologically related can’t form “real families”, but it’s the rest of us that lack empathy. Sure thing, sport.
Dude, seriously though. If you want to have a paternity test upon the birth of any child that is supposedly biologically yours, you should feel free. I hope anyone who would reject their kid after finding out they’re not blood relatives would make damn sure they were blood relatives before the kid gets a chance to bond with them. No kid should ever have to find out that daddy doesn’t want to see them anymore because they have the wrong damn chromosomes. It’s just unbelievably intrusive to demand that every other potential biological parent do the same thing, even ignoring the cost.
And to think some people adopt children on purpose.
Oh also, well done claiming to be concerned about the poor sweet children, while at the same time suggesting that single parents of newborns should be jailed for 6 months. Yup, you’re just all about the kids, aren’t you Tom?
@Molly
What’s the point in looking at any individual event, when everything’s being controlled by the Whoriatti anyway?
Well joe, I have to agree that the biggest victims are men who die in war. What often gets overlooked though, it that the survivors, often women, children and the elderly are continuing to suffer. They suffer the loss of the dead men, they are suffering through the nightmare of war, they often continue to suffer malnutrion, starvation, homelessness, rape and disease long after the war is done. I don’t want to undercut the very real suffering of dead men, but once dead they suffer no more. The survivors suffer for years if not lifetimes after that and are here right now waiting for help.
If I could end war I would. But I can’t bring back the dead. I can help the living. Also, you do realize that in several areas of the world that women and children are also combatants right? That they are suffering right along with the men?
Perhaps the problem with men die in war is that the north American continent hasn’t fought a war on its own soil in such a long time.
Joe its not like wars are fought out in the hayfields anymore. Civilian targets(villages and towns) are deliberately targeted. Armies sweep through cites and villages killing everywhere they go, and they don’t care who they hit. Hell, if they kill a pregnant woman its a two for one goal!! Just walking down a street to get your groceries can get you killed. Walking across your field to water crops you could step on a landmine. And guess what? The killing doesn’t pass you by because you have two x chromosomes. Landmines don’t do gene tests before they explode. Women aren’t immune to chemicals like agent orange.
@pillowinhell Did you mean to comment on the “Highlights” post? (It’s getting a little confusing!) I only point this out because I think your comments are good, and Joe should see them — though he’ll probably ignore them, so maybe why bother… [Slumps back into inertia.]
Joe, it takes a shit ton of abuse and real papable soul grinding dread and certain knowledge that your abuser will kill you, for the victim of said abuse to turn on their attacker. And its almost always done when their abuser is somehow incapcitated because the abused victim has lived in terror for so long and because they are certain that there is no other escape. They’ve tried and tried and tried to run, only to end up with more pain and more terror.
The answer to this is to create supports and change cultural values so that no one finds themselves having to make that choice.
I have just as much sympathy for men who have to face their abusers as I do women. And abuse needs to stop long before someone feels that the only way out is to kill their partner in self defence.
I’m just going to leave this for you to read Joe, it shows what happens when women get convicted of murdering their spouses
http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_lzhczqOOaQ1qz9zmqo1_1280.png?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ6IHWSU3BX3X7X3Q&Expires=1331913960&Signature=w64co0dkID1cz%2FuGFBtx8jZQcpo%3D
Whoops! Which thread am I on again! I couldn’t find my way outta a paper bag with a choir of angels to lead me some days!
Thanks!
Yep. A constipation of manboobzers have failed to come up with any good arguments (obviously) about why paternity testing shouldn’t be mandatory.
Some bad arguments? Lots:
“It only effects a small percentage, so doesn’t matter.” It effects millions of people, so it does matter.
“It’s a loss of civil rights to have a DNA database.” No, you don’t even need a database to establish paternity. And much more significantly anyway, its a loss of the child’s rights not to know who its genetic parents are.
“It would cost too much.” Ask the average 18 year old who has been unable to trace their father whether they’d pay £400 to find him. And ask the average social worker (who isn’t a marxist feminist man-hater) whether it would be worth £400 for a child to know who their real father is, or ask a probation officer the same question.
“Just because someone isn’t the biological father doesn’t mean he can’t be a good parent.”
True, but the biological father should always get the first refusal at being that good parent. The presence of the biological father makes a huge difference to well-being for a child, and so is optimum. The biological father still has the right not to be a parent to the child (just like the mother does), but it should be a conscious decision – not a cover up by the mother or a lethargic state crying that £400 for a paternity test is too much or some loss of liberty.
And for those people who want lower taxes, they can argue the parents should pay towards the cost of the compulsory paternity test. Not all or even nearly all of it though in my opinion, because while both parents and the child will benefit from knowing who the real father is, so will the rest of us – as a child who knows who their real parents are is significantly less likely to go on to have a life of crime, drug addiction, under education and under employment, and is significantly more likely to go on to have a productive life.
With comfortable seating, they just might go all the way.
Remember, your leader, David Futrelle is a douche, who cannot or does not want to distinguish between a men’s equality issues and misogyny.
He made a judgment call with this article and got it wrong.
If its his job to get things wrong, then he is a huge winner.
Martin, the laws are already in place in Canada so that men can know the paternity of their children if they wish. It often comes up in court that men question their paternity and the law deals with it in an evenhanded manner.
Failing an outright chromosome test, a simple blood type test (which is done automatically right after birth) may be enough to prove a child isn’t his. But tell me why men who’ve been married to a woman for years and suspected the children they were raising all that time weren’t theirs suddenly decide to bring that up when child support is being decided?
Yes, children do have a right to know their parentage. I will conceed that my certainty about my maternity does color things. But I fail to see why you want to make this such an issue, paternity tests can be done at any time. Perhaps what you’re worried about is the anger of a womans integrity being challenged, of her feeling shamed unnecessarily? Because that’s exactly what a mans faces with near certainty when he tells her he wants the test done. You want an easy out for the men, he can just throw his hands in the air and say “its not my fault that you’re assumed to be a lying slut?”
That’s what you really want isn’t it Tom? A law that will automatically make a woman feel like a lying slut everytime she has a child. Despite the fact that most of us (like 90 percent) aren’t.
You do know that those tests take weeks to come back right? And that with every child in the nation being tested it will end up backlogged right? Have you thought about how a family might function whilst awaiting that test? That civil rights are being violated?
I’ll make sure to tell my cousin, her husband and her son.
I’ll tell her that the loving guy her son calls dad isn’t the optimum while the asshole who told her that she could have him or the baby would have been.
Oh, btw, are adoptive parents less than optimum?
And what about lesbian couples with kids?
But again, it’s all about the menz with you. The children are only a spunky sidekick.
Tom, yet again you fail to provide any evidence. I’m increasingly doubting you have learned anything of value in your supposed education. Considering your inability to understand citation and basic factual analysis, it is no wonder you will continue to fail in your efforts in court procedures.
You know what, I think this is worth stating. I don’t know who my biological father is. Now I could go out and spend the effort discovering that information, but I have not cared for the past 24 years of my life, and I will continue not caring. Why? As far as parental relationships are concerned, I have a family, albeit only half is biologically related. Does the biology truly matter? For me it doesn’t. They are my family, just as much as those that I share direct genetics with. My siblings and I have discussed this as well, and they too share a view similar to my own.
So you seem to imply that you are speaking for all those children out there wondering about the importance of their biological fathers. Except, these sorts of narratives do come down to the individuals if they wish to explore their genetics (Again, never explaining why this connection seems to matter). Yet you also imply that this is a problem on a near epidemic like level. But you provide not a single shred of evidence for this. You give no sources, you give no solid citations, you do not create the semblance of a coherent argument. Your only method is to make a claim that holds little to no ground, and call all criticism of it “whores”. You do not even give any indication that you understand how a basic psychology survey may work. Considering your multitude of definitions for “whores”, I doubt you can operationalize something as basic as a survey.
When you state that those here have “failed to come up with good arguments” you are projecting there. Because you never had a “good” argument to begin with. This should have been something you learned in undergrad. Discourse does not consist of “you are a whore, and I am right about everything because I say so, and these studies I can not find”.
Did you know that in Canada that newborns are tested for HIV? Despite my having been screened for STD during pregnancy, despite my partner having been screened and despite the fact that neither of us were in high risk catagories. The nurse present told me it was legislated and wouldn’t come out and say it, but it has to do with fathers who don’t tell their partners about their health or what they’ve been up to lately. They impugned the integrity of my daughters father and I was spitting mad!
So, I’ve been offline a good part of the day, but are women who don’t provide the identity of their child’s father whores?
I assume they are, I’m just wondering if he’s spelled that out yet.
You really couldn’t give a shit about equality here.
By making paternity tests ‘routine’ it takes away the need to have an “I doubt you” conversation between the suspected father and the mother.
And if it takes a few weeks to get the results, fine. The ‘father’ just needs to keep all his receipts. No biggy.
Any other excuses?
The only negative consequence I can think of, is that women will in the short term be slightly less inclined to have clandestine affairs (as unable to pass baby off as husband’s, and so less inclined to become impregnated by alternative (usually more alpha) males than their husbands.
But this has an upside too. It means women will be more likely to marry for lust and genuine sexual attraction in the first place.
Or, in the long term, more likely to shop around for the best genes for each impregnation, thus, encouraging men to stay in top shape, rather than become lazy and complacent genetically hazardous slouches as husbands can currently.
And of course, it means the man can shop around for a fitter model too, so this will encourage mothers to stay in shape too.
So, marriage is a potentially separate deal from parenthood, replaced with a mix and match system of establishing who the parents are of each individual child, and then both parents legally obliged to cater to the needs of that child (unless they opt out). The parents’ relationship with each other becomes less important.
The shared parenting joint custody model after a couple separates is in keeping with this direction (something that women’s groups have opposed since the 1980s in favour of the primary care giver ‘winner takes all’ system (maternal gatekeeping by fems) – but the joint custody model might be superior, as when each parent has their turn with the child, they are more likely to actually focus attention on doing interesting activities with the child, rather than just plonk it down in front of the TV etc.
With a more fluid mix and match approach to family planning, there is a heightened need to ensure that no sexual diseases are transmitted, so there will be jobs for the girls and boys in 24 hour GUM clinics on every street corner.
Any questions?
How do you propose to prevent men from “opting out” of fatherhood by the simple expedient of giving a false name to the people they fuck?
Or, as we said before, from forging an ID or just plain lying!
Whoa.
Apparently if you get lazy and out of shape, your genetics change.
“And if it takes a few weeks to get the results, fine. The ‘father’ just needs to keep all his receipts. No biggy.”
Really? Every couple with a newborn, the father is keeping receipts just in case? Instead of bonding with his newborn, he’s hedging his bets so he can walk away and sue the post-partum mother for expenses? This does not a happy family make.
Tom, you’re way to anxious to prove every woman a whore, instead of looking out for the best interests of the child or the family.
And what if the father wants to parent the child anyways? Do his rights as the father on the scene then get wiped away? Good luck getting that one through the courts, or public opinion.
I love how Tom’s theory will supposedly get rid of all the uggo fat women. Cuz it’s not like no one’s told them they’re fat before!
Also, Tom, how do you think American women view Saudi Arabia and Islam after 911?