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.
Maybe if he took some ibuprofen his mood would improve?
Tom Martin: , it is more the peasant population itself, enforcing traditional rural gender roles, where the women don’t do paid work anyway (the slaves), so don’t need an extended education (as the natives see it).
FTFY.
“Estelle was in no way entirely incorrect” is fine . A slightly clumsy use of litotes, perhaps, but I don’t think trying to translate TM’s shit into “good English” is particularly helpful. There’s enough in the actual content to address without falling into vaguely prescriptivistic pedantry.
Happy: Tommy Boy is serious, to the tune of losing a court case and having a £35,000 judgement entered against him.
In no way entirely incorrect is clumsy as all fuck. The multiple negatives are not emphatic, but used to cancel each other out; as in a algebraic equation; but without the functional elegance.
Tom Martin: Renouncing the Taliban in all its forms? No, it’s not practical. Yes, it is renounced.
So you agree them segregating female student is wrong? That being one of their forms, and all.
Lowquacks: *doppelbock, which is similar to barleywine
Not by half. Barleywine is sweet as all fuck, and to be truly palatable ought to age for 5-20+ years. It runs to 12-16 percent ABV
Dopplebock is slightly sweet from a late dosage, and runs between 6-8 percent ABV.
Tommy Boy: How many of you accept the argument that women are innately crap at inventing things?
Not me.
First compiler of Computer Code Grace Hopper
Circular saw Tabitha Babbitt 1812
Electric hot water heater Ida Forbes 1917
Elevated railway Mary Walton 1881
Engine muffler El Dorado Jones 1917
Fire escape Anna Connelly 1887
KevlarStephanie Kwolek 1966
Liquid Paper Bessie Nesmith 1951
Locomotive chimney Mary Walton 1879
Medical syringe Letitia Geer 1899
Paper-bag-making machine Margaret Knight 1871
Rotary engine Margaret Knight 1904
Scotchgard™ fabric protector Patsy O. Sherman 1956
Submarine lamp and telescope Sarah Mather 1845
The Colored Flare (very Light) Martha Costen 1857
Anti-fungal ointment (Nystatin) Rachel Brown and Elizabeth Hazen 1950
Non Reflective Glass Katherine Blodgett 1938
Cataract Laserphaco Probe Patricia Bath
Disposable Cell Phone Randi Altschul 1999
Refrigerator Florence Parpart 1914
Frequency Hopping for secret radio transmission Hedy Lamar 1942
Blissymbol Printer Rachel Zimmerman (12 years old) 1984
Film development method for astronomical photographs Barbara Askins 1978
At least Estelle Hart took the debate. I believe Kat Banyard was originally offered it but passed.
Estelle may have evaded huge swathes of debate by instead obfuscating onto ‘patriarchy’, class, race, blah, blah, but at least she showed up.
Estelle has written some positive things about women making the most of the opportunities available (which is why I applauded her) but on the night, she showed her true sex-segregating, victim-feminist male-blaming colours.
When I confronted her with the fact that her organization presided over falsifying rape statistics by use of self-selecting opinion polls, it was like water off a duck’s back for her. As I say in the debate, professional feminists these days [think they] need to be professional liars and she certainly didn’t have anything to say about the lies her organization makes.
@Pecunium
re:beer, I was using wikipedia, which gives doppelbock and barleywine as both being sweet, not particularly hoppy, and of 8-12% alcohol content. I’ve had neither. Thanks for explaining the difference, though – sounds like they’re mostly similar in being very strong beers.
I’d still stand behind not picking on “not entirely incorrect”: emphasis is not the only reason to use multiple non-concordant negatives. It’s a slightly different meaning to “some of what Estelle said was wrong”. Australians do seem to be very keen on litotes, so that could bias me w/r/t what sounds clumsy and what doesn’t.
Additional inventions by women:
Actually fucking washing your hands while look after sick people, Florence Nightingale.
Beer is common attributed to women as an invention.
Disposable diapers, sewing machines, basket weaving, pottery and weaving. Knitting.
Well, Florence probably didn’t “invent” that, but certainly popularised it.
And I’d like to point out that beer and “civilization” happened within close proximity to each other.
Florence Nightingale did invent the pie chart, though.
“Civilization”* as a concept is closely tied to “agriculture”, in the development of which women were most definitely involved.
This is a stupid game that Tom wants to play in general, though.
*And yeah, all kinds of imperialistic ideas about nomadic and/or hunter/gatherer peoples going on with that concept, too.
@Unimaginative
I knew she was a bit of a graph pioneer, but I didn’t know that! Florence Nightingale is just generally a cool person, though.
Hearing this reminded me of being about 12 and being told to show up to my academically-gifted-extension class thingy as a scientific figure – I showed up as Tycho Brahe in a blanket-cape and Groucho Marx glasses sans-moustache painted to resemble copper and a drawn-on moustache, and my twin sister as Florence Nightingale in apron and headscarf with a lamp.
Pecunium, that is an impressive list of 25 things 25 clearly awesome women have invented.
And all other inventions…
Today, only 10% of patents are awarded to women (which is totally lame – lame as in deliberately shooting oneself in the foot lame).
I saw a study in the Observer a few years ago saying that women who believe the “glass ceiling” to be a real thing actually temper their ambitions and they earn less. The tone of the article was like “Doh! – these stupid women have been taking our victim-feminist stories literally.”
I am saying there are virtually no glass ceilings, women can be the greatest inventors, but will have to get their heads out of their asses and think about how they can contribute to make the world a better place, and only feminists are aloud to speak on women’s issues these days in the media typically, so it’s important to get the positive stories right.
Do women have equality of opportunity. No. I admit it. They have SUPREMACY of opportunity, what with positive discrimination to get more women into science and technology and every other field.
Part of this project involves sorting out the men’s equality issues, quickly, so compacted fecal matter like Douchetrail are all right for a laugh, and misogyny is generally bad, but there are some real problems with women’s general input to date, which should be lampooned you ditzy fucks. Don’t lose sight of the fact we can’t fly independently yet, (but all want to be able to), don’t have a cure for cancer etc, and someone has to sort that stuff out:
This video nails it, but you will have to pay attention to it until the end. Yes you can!
@ lowquacks: you and your twin sister are, without a doubt, the coolest 12-year-old people I’ve ever virtually met.
Something weird going on here. THIS video!
@Unimaginative
Thanks! Though obviously we’re not 12 any more. I do love dressing up still though, and we’ve had a few neat costumes between us since.
That entire class was just incredibly cool though.
Bored now.
I have to ask, does anyone know what the flying fuck this is supposed to mean? I’ve probably read it a few dozen times now and it still makes absolutely zero sense.
I like to play x whilst dancing, but I’m often appalled by how unfree, difficult and unsexy it is. If only I had something that could fix that!
It shouldn’t take more than an hour to fit! That would be too long to fit something to do the thing in question, oh, far to long! And if it needs batteries, God help the inventor.
(Seriously, WTF?)
It takes an hour to fit, in a one off installation.
Funny to bring up a video by Kelly Jones, a follower of a man named Kevin Solway. Kevin Solway thinks all emotion is considered feminine and all emotion must be eradicated as the right way for humans to be is masculine (ie. perfect rationality like a computer). I fought with these self-proclaimed philosophers in ’09 but like with most crackpots they faded into obscurity long before they even made any traction.