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.
The answer: nothing. He’s awesome just for happening to be a man. He gets his manly pride from this arbitrary association and not from anything he actually struggled to achieve.
And that’s why he’s a pathetic loser.
Didn’t I tell you guys he’d show up?
@Crumbelievable
LOL! and many times women are required to wear heels at work in order to look professional. Heels which can actually cause physical damage and pain to your feet and back. What a dumbass.
Probably pink. It’s a feminazi plot to feminize men.
And make them all gay!
I forgot why we wanted to do that, though.
my husband has just pointed out too that libraries require people to be quiet and, as we all know, men have naturally deeper and louder voices then women. He feels this is a clearly misandric regulation. i told him to shut up and fetch me a sammich.
Do you mean tights or thin transparent hose? Like the former, do not like the latter.
I rarely comment, but…
Hard chairs hurt my ass, too. Does that mean that my college, which has mostly hard wooden chairs in the library, is discriminating against me? I wonder if I called the ACLU then I could get comfy chairs in the library, on the basis of discrimination because I don’t have load-bearing buttock pads or whatever. I could reference a BBC documentary I saw once (everyone knows that the BBC is totes serious about their documentaries) and I could do my part to slowly dismantle the whoriarchy.
Actually, Tom “Jackass” Martin, it sounds like you solved the chair problem in the library pretty well. Although I doubt they installed pads on the chairs because they were discriminating (indirectly) against men; they probably installed pads on the chairs because a lot of people really don’t like hard wooden chairs, especially people with bad backs.
See, I keep saying “people” because dudes aren’t the only ones who dislike uncomfortable chairs. Despite their inadequate buttock pads.
Seriously, you need to tell us the name of that BBC documentary. A documentary about butt fat sounds fascinating.
You can add me to the list of people who were extremely unimpressed with Dr. Susan Calvin, btw. I don’t think Asimov is a very good character writer under the best of circumstances–they’re mainly used as devices in stories that are really about world-building–but Dr. Calvin in particular evoked (to me) the image of him scratching his head and going “What are women like?”
Women owe men some National Service.
How many years did you serve in the army, dude? If it was less than five then you owe me some.
Damn, windshield wipers, x-rays, and computer programming wasn’t enough for you?
Not to mention the compiler!
If we’re counting, men owe women 43 presidents, 3/4 of movie roles, and all but one of the Muppets.
Katz, you win a fresh-squeezed internet and my eternal lulz.
I could have sworn there were more than just Miss Piggy. Janice? Mokie? Red?
@katz
I heartily identified with Susan Calvin, myself – and while I found “Liar!” heartwrenching, I also felt it humanized the character a lot. I think a few of this place’s trolls ought to read it, actually – see? Women get rejected and feel lonely too!
Of course, I first read Asimon as a young’un with all the social graces of an isolated gnat, so that might reflect on it. And generally I agree he was bad at characters, but I didn’t feel his female characters were particularly bad the way I felt reading, say, Heinlein. Reading Asimov gave me the feeling that humans were incomprehensible, not specifically women… and yeah, I could relate to that.
Yeah, there’s at least Janice and the chicken. So, fine, men owe women all but a few of the Muppets, and we owe them a Muppet chicken. :-p
Yeah, but Janice hardly counts–aside from a few stray lines as a band member, the only times I can think of where she gets an important part are Veterinarian’s Hospital (as a nurse, way to turn over a new leaf there) and the one where she’s a human sacrifice:
And the chickens definitely don’t count. They can’t even talk!
@Katz: Camille Paglia: Academic, anti-feminist, or as she prefers to say, the only TRUE feminist, since all the rest of us are doing it rong, and Madonna fangirl. And, what I had not known until I read the wiki article, MENTEE of Harold Fucking Bloom (famous for claiming that individuality did not exist until Hamlet, and, clearly, famous Shakespeare FanBoi (who also hates Tolkien so there you go).
See, it’s not men’s fault that they are glorious Dionysian beasts who have created all of culture and civilization to control that urge, and all us ‘umble women who are simply forces of nature should be glad to kiss their feet, or smoething. (I’ve taught excerpts from her work in language and gender courses). So, yeah, an anti-feminist feminist, someone who has fought (publicly) with most of the major US feminists (academic, second wave, and third wave), that’s Paglia for ya!
The EHRC actually agreed with me, that hard chairs are inappropriate for a library, as they impact men more. When we consider that only 2 out of 5 degrees go to men, the gender gap widening, then anything we can do to make men more comfortable taking the academic route, the better.
Given that higher educational attainment increases life expectancy for men, and given that increased educational attainment in men also decreases their violence against women among other things.
Still, well done everybody for not getting it. In your world, that’s a win, right?
“Critical studies on Men (CSM)” is actually recommended in the core texts – chiming in with the overwhelmingly biased other texts, presenting men as overwhelmingly guilty for whatever gender dynamics, thus, excusing the continued freezing out of men’s equality debates – and the continued offensive against male participation and representation at university, as clarified by the Women’s Officer from the NUS, claiming men face no issues.
Now, are you people for or against the inclusion of men’s equality discourse or not?
(Cue patriarchy theory-adherent excuses).
And, are you for or against greater participation for men in universities?
I think it is time to separate the egalitarians from the prostitutes and their toadies.
If any of you whores, douchebags, and gimps want a live debate about it, there’s a documentary in production – so stand up or shut up.
The funniest thing about Paglia’s fangirling is how indifferent Madonna is to it. I can’t remember her exact words when asked about it, but the tone was very “that’s nice, dear”.
Tom, I still want to see the fat-butt documentary! Where can I find it? You can’t just leave me hanging like this!
Also, gimps? What do handicapped people have to do with any of this?
I don’t think you can argue for your inclusion in serious academic discourse about gender at the same time as you call women “whores” with wild abandon.
*makes a note in her book of Sentences I Did Not Think I Would Ever Have To Say*
I want to know what happened to the lady-butt-padding that I was supposed to receive. Maybe Tom stole mine.
Proposed for your entertanment: VIRTUAL CAGEMATCH
TOM MARTIN (now gracing our very pages), with his lengthy diatribes about chair hardness and whores
VS
JOHNTHEOTHER who is starting a HOLY HER HIGHNESS SOCIOPATH CRUSADE against Rebecca Watson, as narrated by by P. Z. Myers here.
Who would win?
Hey! Wait a second! Tom Martin, you want something! There is something you don’t have (a gender studies program that offers cushy chairs and a minor in Whoriarchy) and you want it to be just given to you! You think it’s owed to you just because of your gender and you’re making up stories to convince people!
By your own reckoning… YOU’RE A WHORE!
Let’s try putting more comfortable chairs in university libraries and see if that increases the rate of male graduation.
…And if you’re reading this, seriously, Tom, no one thinks you intended to go to that school to actually learn. You’re not even doing a very good job of pretending that.