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.
I think part of it is also the shortcomings of our language. Because we group everything under homophobia, with no subsets, you can’t refer to the various subsets in particular without going “Straight men who are scared that gay men will hit on them, thus treating them in a way that treats them as feminine”
BTW, if Tom is still around, here is the luckiest man there was:
http://www.explosm.net/comics/1944/
@Rutee Katreya
It was not meant as an exclusive definition.
It was made in response to a comment that told of such an occurence, hence there was context.
I do fully know that there is more to homophobia than this, that the reasons in heterosexual women are different, and so on.
It is only a catchy phrase in the appropriate context.
This is how every man I know who is a father feels. Even my own father, who’s got some sexism issues and who’s marriage with my mother hasn’t been the best, isn’t stupid enough to suspect that that I’m not his daughter. Not just because I’m basically him, lady-version, but also because in spite of all their rocky relationship issues, my parents DO trust each other and always have.
And I’d bet my bottom dollar that a paternity test to “prove” my relation to him wouldn’t magically fix everything between them and bring about world peace.
Also, totally unrelated, but the chair thing, he does know that academic institutions have been using cheap, totally fucking uncomfortable chairs since before lady-types were even allowed to attend them, right? To what does he account this “misandrist” use of hard chairs in times when the only folks attending higher institutions were all these heavy, bony assed dudes?
I know, I know, whores. The answer is always whores.
Yeah. If it turned out that my father wasn’t genetically my father, he’d still be the guy who carried me around Boston on his shoulders, who taught me how to ride a bike, who ran me to the hospital when I got hurt, who hugged me and said “I love you no matter what” when I was in trouble, the guy who’s bethe my father and my teacher and my friend for twenty-six years.
What’s a SPERM next to all that?
To be honest, if a man don’t want kid and wont participate in raising it except by giving money to the mother, it’s really better to know if the DNA matches. But that doesn’t make it worth spending 400$ * 90% of the population of the world for nothing.
2 520 000 000 000 $.
Governments helping single parents so that they don’t have to rely on the other genetic parent sounds a hell lot cheaper.
Tom: The pre-sex contract could be a simple, quick, application on a mobile phone which records the man and woman’s voice, or videos it, so eradicating fraud. It does not to be a four page document in triplicate.
Where is it stored? How is it authenticated? Can it be unilaterally revoked? When? How? Since it’s a contract what are the considerations given by each party to the other?
What if, as with me, one has a moble phone which doesn’t do apps (seriously… my phone is good for one thing, and one thing only… talking to people. No camera, no texting. It has an alarm clock, and a really arcane “reminder” system, a calculator, and a calendar. That’s it).
Contracts are not simple and easy, even when they are straightforward. Breach of contract is a thing. Revocation is a thing. Withdrawal is a thing. Negotiating them is a big thing, and far too often surrendered in boilerplate and EULAs.
You know so little about so much. It’s a wonder to behold.
Molly the difference with the TSA screening pictures, is that they weren’t automatically scrambled (and no, I don’t give a shit about someone perving at an x ray, because I’m smart enough to look at the bigger picture)
Like making everyone take a paternity test in which something less than three percent of the results are going to say, “He’s not the one” and less than that are going to be people who would otherwise care.
But you want to make it a worldwide thing, so you can sleep easy at night. That’s some pretty big picture; keeping it all in perspective thinking going on there.
And the mask comes off. It’s not about what’s right, or wrong, or good policy… it’s about, “fucking their shit up”.
fuck your civil rights you lying whores
That’s all you need to see to know what Tom’s about. It’s not the chairs. It’s not the problem of men not being welcomed into largely female programs… it’s that he wants to strip the civil rights of women, and those who think they have rights.
Maybe after being sent to prison for a crime you didn’t commit, you might change your minds about the seriousness and extent of falseys (and misandry). I’m all for sending manboobzers to prison.
False accusations about rape… bad. Putting people who have committed no crime in prison, just to prove a point… fine; if they are feminists.
He’s not fighting for equal rights for men. He’s fighting to make sure women are second class citizens.
Unfuck you, for the rest of your life.
The chair thing is still fascinating me: it’s the only original troll though I can remember since I’ve been hanging out over here. My sense was that in fact the chair historically was pretty much barebones (but still only for the elites! peasants, serfs, slaves, etc. stood).
So some links on chairs:
Wikipedia: History of the chair
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_chair
Random History: From Benches to Barstoold
http://www.randomhistory.com/2008/11/11_chair.html
THE HARVARD CHAIR:
http://www.everythingharvard.com/chairstory.htm
Social history of the chair (photograph):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/theurbansnapper/2588182342/
Yup, chairs are connected to social standing (or social sitting ahahahha)
http://www.articleonlinedirectory.com/398348/the-history-of-the-chair.html
*original troll THOUGHT
He could had taken a better route
Here’s an update on the result of my 2007 complaint against LSE’s library which at the time contained only hard chairs. I contacted the Equality and Human Rights Commission and argued that men have smaller weight-bearing buttock pads than women but weigh more than women therefore have more weight bearing down into a smaller area on average, and that therefore, hard seats in a publicly-funded building would discriminate indirectly against men (as the hard seating impacts one sex more). The Times misreported my court case against LSE’s Gender Institute, claiming the hard seats complaint was part of my 2009 to 12 lawsuit, and Douchetrail, through no mistake of his own believed it, but then called it wrong by belittling the significance of the hard seats complaint. Here is a video of LSE students now singing the praises of LSE’s library, with all its new comfortable seating. In the video, you can see hard seats at the computers. They too have now all been changed to padded seats:
As Douchetrail avoids pointing out any effective things MRAs do, it falls to me to direct manboobzers to the UCL debate vid, “Is feminism sexist?” The response videos are both excellent too. Enjoy!
Are you feeling alright Tom? Your comment didn’t mention whores.
LOL so you are not charging for your videos? I thought there was a market for them?
Padding for chairs, an important issue of our times!
Sorry, I don’t need to watch poorly shot and edited videos by a silly man to know feminism is still needed. If someone else wants to bite the bullet though, feel free.
Bostonian, neither of the above videos are my videos. Whilst you don’t think it worth while to watch the debate, there are about five youtube videos of the debate, with a total of about 9000 viewers in 10 days who have thought it worth while to watch, and the videos have a 99% or higher approval rating, so most people don’t seem to agree with you, but of course, you ARE entitled to your wrong opinion, as always. Nobody can take that away from you. Well done for taking part. Yes you can!
And Bostonian, it looks like a new lefty school is opening with trendy but impractical chairs:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2231308/Holland-Park-School–80m-school-built-featuring-bespoke-300-classroom-chairs-glass-walls-roof-terrace.html
The EHRC did rule in my favour over the hard chairs being inappropriate, and LSE’s library had no padded chairs, took my complaint, spoke to the EHRC, then invited me to a meeting to show me the new padded chairs being introduced, and now has only padded chairs, as well as beanbags, and couches, to everyone’s benefit, so your opinion doesn’t really count on the scale of things, other than an example of how wrong you continue to be on the issue.
Sure there will be bigger issues that you’re wrong about also, but that should not deflect from how wrong you’ve all got it on this issue.
Nepenthe, in the UCL debate I do ask if feminists will renounce prostitution in all its forms. No feminist did. Be the first!
So you are taking credit for stuff that is not yours? Brilliant.
Since you hail from the alternate universe that says 97% of all women are whores, I am confident in my reality based judgement.
Keep on being a miserable failure!
Aw, feeling neglected, Tom? Don’t worry, here’s some free publicity for you:
“[F]uck your civil rights you lying whores” – Tom Martin
Also, a piece of advice: when you’re complaining that people don’t talk about how effective you are, be sure to bring up your theory about how Saudi Arabia is a “whoriarchy” ruled by the women who can’t even go outside without wearing a burka. We can’t let people go without knowing what you’re all about, dear Tommy.
You should also be sure to bring up your advanced notions about how child prostitutes actually prey on pedophiles while you push the idea that feminism is sexist.
People need to be educated about your brilliance, your egalitarian bona fides, and your sheer efficacy, Tom.
You know what the fun thing is? If Tom had simply campaigned for more comfortable chairs in the library, he would have had nothing but success. Because softer chairs benefit everybody. Making it about butt pads just makes the whole thing a big joke, despite softer chairs still being a nice thing to have.
Maybe Tom should have been campaigning for bean bags… at least then he could have pretended he made a difference by showing us the video.
Tom really should have mentioned that the 99% approval rating boiled down to about 101 total upvotes and 1 downvote… Looks like most of the you-tube comments came from MRAs, probably from Tom advertising the video on websites. Not to mention all of the fat-phobia against Tom’s debate opponent. 🙁
Y’know, if I were debating Tom… The only thing I’d be able to do is say “That’s nice Tom, but half of everything you said is false, and the other half I just don’t know where it could have come from.” He’s said nothing new, just repeated the idea that because only a small percent of rape charges end in a conviction, it must mean that all the rest are false claims. But he disguises it in language that make it seem as though that is the established opinion.
I feel terrible for the woman who needs to wade through all this bullshit without the benefit of fact-checking…
If only we could have some kind of noble crusader for softer chairs without the same person also being an enormous douche.
Bostonian, these are videos that are not by me, but feature me, or the effects of my activism, and which relate directly to this manboobz article. It’s really not that complicated. My video trailers will appear on my sexismbusters channel, where you will be invited to pay for the full features. It is free to subscribe.
Tulgey Logger, no I’m not feeling “neglected”. I’ve been busy doing something unrelated, so am very pleasantly surprised to find five videos on youtube covering my debate with Estelle Hart, featuring all the men’s rights movement authors who came along to take part in the debate and show support, and even a feminist, previously hostile website, butterflies and wheels, being a bit more positive about my efforts.
It is a concern though, that analysis of the youtube debate videos’ viewer demographics shows primarily men watching rather than a more equal representative audience – hence my post here.
You’ve got Bostonian here saying she doesn’t want to watch a video because it’s “poorly shot and edited”, which apart from being superficial is also false (the video is overall very well shot by manwomanmyth with one camera, and unedited).
It’s a debate with informed men’s activists making their points clear, and a professional feminist obfuscating (although in a way more subtle than Bostonian).
And just to clarify my position, Saudi Arabia is still a whoriarchy. The veil is a form of sex segregation and we know women are the ones who segregate from the men. In the words of the Talking Heads song…
Malala getting shot though…
Maybe manboobzers have been following her story closer than I have, but my current understanding is that the Taliban (in Afghanistan) are not actually against girls going to school, but are against girls and boys going to coed schools, so in a stand off between Western agencies insisting on coed, and the Taliban insisting on sex-segregated schools, the Taliban have said it’s either segregation or nothing, and the Western media simply report that the Taliban are against female education all together.
It would be nice to hear Malala use her platform (now she has police protection) to directly and explicitly challenge sex segregation in education, rather than going along with the conceit that the Taliban are dead against girls’ education all together, her perpetuation of this propaganda it seems, the actual reason they shot her in the head.