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.
So, you think taking 60% of someone’s income and charging them for a meaningless “license”, issued by you, and an equally meaningless “qualification”, presumably taught by you, will not be considered “controlling” by the law?
Well, that reflects your usual grasp of the law, I suppose.
I find it deeply amusing that all forms of cooking and food preservation are a silly frippery, taking time away from important things like frivolous lawsuits, youtube videos, and applying for degree courses you have no intention of completing.
Yes, I’m sure Tom lives on a diet of nothing but raw, sprouted wheat.
Like, it’s a metaphor, but it’s literally important too (possibly ignoring the god bit depending how into that you are). Is not having scurvy only for prostitutes too?
Don’t some cereals not malt well anyway? Not an agricultural expert here.
tl;dr: Tom’s still a git.
Pillowhell, I am proposing that someone set up a brothel using the regulation and taxation route. Make a documentary out of it. At the end, present the chancellor with the tax money which it currently allows prostitutes to evade.
I am proposing that I don’t do this project however, because I don’t want to converse with prostitutes given their all round general stupidity.
Taxi drivers have to do training and pay for a license, and effectively pay higher rates of taxes, but they are not considered to be ‘controlled’. So I don’t see why a voluntary brothelfull of women determined to pay their taxes, even though the government doesn’t want the money, would be considered coersion either.
Admittedly, the national service bit would be coersion, which would require a change of law (the whoremongers).
Some Paulaner monks used to live on barleywine and water through lent, which I suppose is water, malted grains, plus tiny amounts yeast and hops, but that was a considered a pretty serious ascetic move and was only for six weeks or thereabouts.
*doppelbock, which is similar to barleywine
They were arguably the predecessors to what we now call “engineering students”.
Reading Tom’s fantasies is really weird. Tom, keep it in your diary, or at least on fanfiction.net.
Hey, Cloudiah! Someone needs to write a fic about hard chairs, highly-taxed brothels, and a diet of nothing but wheat kernels!
Good news guys, I’ve got some exclusive footage of the awesome new LSE chairs:
So Katz, can we take it you want hard chairs in libraries, prostitutes to be tax-exempt, and food which takes all day for women to prepare?
CLEARLY discriminatory against straight dudes! And that chair doesn’t take payment, so it is a whore.
Have we figured out yet exactly what makes a person a whore vs non-whore? Sex, payment, no-sex, no-payment? Just existing while female?
You don’t need to be a person to be a [*****]. Female penguins are [*****]s. Dung beatles, monkeys – it’s easier to be a [*****] when an animal, as there’s less conscience to wrestle with.
Existing while female, Unimaginative. That is all that is required to be a whore in Tom definitions. It is why he is no longer allowed to use it here. It actually has no real meaning past, “woman” the way he uses it.
He does make an exception for male child prostitutes though, he calls them whores too.
Oh, of course. I had momentarily forgotten how much of an animate pustule Tom Martin is, and how truly disgusting and dehumanizing his opinions are.
And can I say how much I resent Steele for taking all the teeth out of the word “vile”? Because until Steele, I would have called Tom Martin’s pronouncements vile, but now that word has connotations of “this word is used by melodramatic, disingenuous, stupid trolls and therefore reflects badly on anyone who uses it”.
Yes I do call child prostitutes prostitutes. The child prostitutes c all themselves prostitutes too, or business people entrepreneurs etc. It’s all so glamorous when you have the mental age of a 13 year old, and the physical age of a 13 year old too apparently:
http://www.readperiodicals.com/201010/2337139671.html#b
Having Tom in moderation is like doing a jigsaw puzzle. You don’t get to see the whole picture (or rather, conversation) until the end!
Now I’m curious, are all organisms that produce ova whores? Like… hermaphroditic flatworms? Parthenogenetic rotifers (no males at all)? Female trees?
(Female gingko trees are assholes–they drop sticky, foul-smelling fruit all over the place–but I’ve never considered them “whores”.)
Tom would know all about having the mental age of a 13 year old.
It is a bit like arguing with an arrogant, petulant teenager, isn’t it? Except that it’s easier to be patient with teenagers because you know they’ll eventually grow out of it.
Yeah, Tom has no excuse for his behavior, other than being a dumbass.
And those awful chairs!
varpole: Estelle was in no way entirely incorrect;
In English we say, “Estelle was…” Well no, it’s hard to make that statement into good Enlish. I think you were trying to say that some of what she said was right, but your attempt to be nuanced was an utter failure.
I’d probably say, “Estelle wasn’t entirely wrong”, but that would require you making it possible that she was in part correct, and that was something you aren’t man enough to handle.