[TRIGGER WARNING: Discussion of child rape]
Tom Martin is one of the most prominent Men’s Rights Activists in the UK. He’s best known for a failed lawsuit he launched against the London School of Economics, charging the school’s gender studies program with, you guessed it, misandry. The case was thrown out of court this March, and Martin celebrated his defeat by calling a lot of people whores on Twitter and, I am proud to say, in the comments here at Man Boobz.
While Martin, known perhaps ironically as @sexismbusters on Twitter, is clearly more famous in the UK than he is here in the states, this peculiar crusader against what he sees as sexism has been celebrated (and his defeat in court mourned) by numerous Men’s Rights sites on this side of the pond. He’s been discussed many times on the Men’s Rights subreddit, where one supporter declared:
And he’s gotten write-ups on an assortment of other MR sites from The Spearhead to MensActivism.org to one Man Boobz favorite, the now-defunct What Men Are Saying About Women. On the website of the National Coalition for Men, one enthusiastic commenter gushed:
Finaly a real man with balls !!! Not like the rest of us . Tom is my hero .
But the Men’s Rights site that has given Martin the most support has been A Voice for Men, which featured Martin on one of its “radio” shows, reposted an article on Martin’s crusade from his website that seems to have been written by Martin himself (in the third person), offered updates on his lawsuit, and even publicized a recent public debate of his in England. The site has also encouraged people to donate to Martin’s legal fund.
One wonders what these supporters will make of some of the strange and awful things Martin has been saying in the comments here on Man Boobz in recent days. (There is no question that it is really him; he confirmed his identity earlier by emailing me from the account associated with his website Sexismbusters.org, and anyone skeptical of any of this is invited to contact him directly through his website.)
Most of the comments he posted here during his first commenting binge were rather risibly misogynist, frequently punctuated with his favorite epithet “whore,” a designation he feels is an appropriate one for 97% of all women and (he had recently added) for 98% of Man Boobzers of either gender. You can see here or here for numerous examples of Martin’s wit and wisdom – including his argument that hard chairs are discriminatory towards men and his now famous declaration that “female penguins are whores.”
His more recent comments, though, haven’t been funny in the slightest. Martin’s new obsession? Child prostitutes – and why they aren’t victims so much as victimizers, willing participants in an activity that makes them big money. Let me put another TRIGGER WARNING here. This is some of the most repellant material I have ever featured on man Boobz.
Here’s Martin’s opening statement on the subject:
The latest establishment scam in the UK, is to describe child prostitutes as “vulnerable children groomed for sexual exploitation”, then talk about them being “passed around” etc, without mention of the fact that these young people agreed to be whores, and are getting paid for it.
In a followup, he elaborated on this logic:
“Yeah, she offered me a job as a prostitute abroad, which would involve me receiving lots of money for taking cock, so I accepted, became a prostitute, and therefor, according to the official fem definition, this makes me a sex slave”.
Grow up!
Even a 10 year old knows, if someone is paying you for sex, that makes you a whore.
And when he talks about ten year olds here, he means this literally; in his mind, trafficked ten year old children aren’t really victims, but economic actors making an economic choice:
I stand by my statement, that child prostitutes know what they are doing, and therefore deserve to be called prostitutes, not victims.
A progressive European country (either Holland or one of the Scandinavian countries, I remember hearing), introduced in the late 90s, the legal principle of no arbitrary minimum age for consent, rather, the legal requirement to ascertain whether lawful sex had taken place was to establish whether the child or young person ‘understands the meaning of consent’ …
Now, if a ten year old is for instance [specific sexual act redacted] for money up front, then there is very much less question whether that whore understands the meaning of consent or not.
In another comment, Martin suggests that ten-year-olds who have been the victims of what some people insist on calling “real rape” would be offended by anyone thinking that ten-year-old prostitutes suffer from rape – when, after all, the child prostitutes have “agreed” to it.
From the perspective of a child who has actually been raped by an adult, how must it seem, to hear the victim-feminist establishment conflate child rape with child prostitution? The raped child remembers having no choice about participating in the sexual activity, of being forced, and then is asked to consider his or her fate or level of agency as similar or the same as that of a child who marketed them self for sex to an adult, took payment, then performed the act.
I don’t think the average 10 year old genuine rape victim would buy the manboobz style analysis that all child prostitution is rape … .
Questions of genuine agency are complicated, but not complicated enough to pass a 10 year old genuine rape victim’s bullshitometer I posit.
Oh, Martin doesn’t actually think ten year olds should be prostitutes. He thinks they should wait a few years, until they’re at least 14.
Should child prostitution from the ages of 13 up be legal?
Nope. I think that prostitution is a potentially dangerous profession for which a basic qualification in health and safety be required, like an NVQ – and that kind of course would not be attainable until after the minimum of secondary school years are completed, so aged 14, 15, 16, 17 or even 18 or more depending on the country.
The real problem, in his mind, is that young girls try to enter into the business when they should be in school:
States with child prostitution problems should be forced to get these children back into schools to complete their education, and child prostitutes who persist should be treated as school truants, a misdemeanor, and given the carrot and stick approach to get them back on the straight and narrow or go to young offenders institutions. If they want to be prostitutes when they’re old enough, then they can go to the careers advise officer, where the pros and cons of the profession can be laid out, and an application for the training course and license can be given.
Martin mocks the very notion that child prostitutes are being exploited:
Imagine you caught your underage 15 year old daughter on the game, what would you say to her?
“Okay darling, obviously you played no part whatsoever in choosing to be a prostitute yourself, so mummy’s going to help catch the nasty pimp who put you up to this, because what you need to learn is when 15 year old girls accidentally suck cocks for money, they should be compensated, with a bit of victims of crime compensation, and, not forgetting, the original £12 cock-sucking bonanza from the punter. That’s right sweety. Double bubble time. Pass me the phone. Now how does this thing work?”
Or… would you ground the whore for 6 months until she passes all her GCSEs?
Well, given that approximately 98% of manboobzers are whores themselves, I’m guessing you’re probably going to want to blame it all on MRAs.
So prostitution should be legal. But since prostitutes are very bad, they should pay high taxes for the privilege of plying their trade, to keep them poor and in order to repay society for the damage they do:
Prostitutes need to be taxed and licensed so heavily, rendering the profession a relatively poor way of making money.
Anyone who practices as a prostitute without the necessary qualification and license, can go to young offenders institute/jail – just like any other persistent illegal unlicensed trader would.
Anyone working on the sly as an escort, should be hunted down by the taxwoman, and if caught, given a huge bill for tax evasion, as well as a fine, and prison for not having a license. Unlicensed tax-evading prostitutes should be hunted down (which would be easy enough).
Anyone choosing prostitution should pay the highest taxes, and know why those taxes are so high – because of the damage prostitution does to the prostitutes and their customers and their environment and the society.
In a followup comment, Martin sees a silver lining in the form of all the tax revenues that prostitution will bring in:
If licensed hookers pay for a massive license fee and heavy taxes, then some of that money can be ring-fenced to research how best to get women (and girls) to renounce prostitution in all its forms, because let’s face it, a lot of housewhores and princess wannabes could do with a little economic activity-inducing work ethic therapy themselves.
Meanwhile, the customers of underage prostitutes – in other words, the child rapists – should be treated gingerly:
[M]en who pay money to have sex with child prostitutes should not be criminalized – but taken out of circulation and treated compassionately for their condition. I’ve heard that most criminal activity peaks with testosterone levels, in the late teens, but paedophillia is the only crime that increases in frequency as these men get older, indicating a growing pathology for them rather than just a typical immature criminal act.
He offers this final summing up of his twisted argument:
[P]edophiles who pay children for sex are not really rapists, because the child consents, then performs the act, indicating they understand the nature of the contract. The elder is still a pedophiles, but the child prostitute is still a prostitute.
If the child is enslaved – it’s rape, or too young or stupid to know what he or she’s doing – rape. But poor, and in need of food? Not rape. A choice. Unwilling to do other hard labour paying 9 times less than the prostitution route? Not rape. A choice.
He then extends his argument to the rest of the alleged 97% of women who, in his mind, are whores:
Whatever your age, follow the golden rule, of never taking money for sex, then prostitution will be eradicated. Only the prostitute can stop charging for sex.
And of course, that means rejecting courtship gifts, engagement gifts, marriage gifts, divorce gifts, and government largess also.
I don’t think many of you are ready to renounce prostitution in all its forms. …
I know a whore when I see one.
He even returns momentarily to his earlier assertion that female penguins are whores:
Someone or other here said I was anthropomorphising human behaviour onto penguin behaviour by calling penguins whores or something.
But the point is, being a whore, is an animalistic trait, that human females should not need to resort to, given they’re at the top of the fucking food chain already. Google “nuptial gifts” and you can read studies about various animals granting sex to those males who provide the most food, or even the most glittery non-edible trinkets etc, or in the case of penguins, rocks to build nests and shelter with.
I’m saying women are better than penguins, or at least would be if they renounced prostitution in all its forms.
I’m sure the women of the world will be happy to hear that Mr. Martin thinks they are potentially better than penguins.
I doubt many of Mr. Martin’s American supporters are familiar with his elaborate apologia for child rape. I would like to invite Man Boobz readers to show this post, or at least some of the more repellant quotations from it, to the proprietors of the various MRA blogs and MRA forums I have mentioned above.
I wonder if any of his supporters will be willing to renounce him publicly once they know what he has said here – and apparently in some recent public debates as well. Surely no legitimate “human rights movement” would want to be associated with anyone who spouts filth like this.
Nanasha said:
As a person with Hashimoto’s Disease (no working thyroid), who has to take thyroid medication for the rest of my life (which is derived from dessicated thyroid BTW) just so I can fucking FUNCTION and not die from horrible diseases related to Vitamin B deficiency, feel like getting out of bed is a monumental and Herculean task, constantly feeling cold and clammy, bloating and gaining weight uncontrollably and otherwise spend my days in a thick, Silent-Hill like fog, I’d like to thank Tom Martin for yet again making fun of people like me who have severe issues with our endocrine systems (for profit), because HAHA, everyone knows that making fun of people with medical problems is TOTALLY COOL YO.
Nanasha, I’m really sorry to hear about your genuine thyroid problem. I was making fun of fat people with glandular problems as in thyroids, pituitaries, and lymphs, in that they can’t stop eating them due to their calorific potential as offal. I had no idea that genuine thyroid medication was actually made from desiccated thyroids, which you eat! And your right, me not knowing that makes me a complete bastard. So, carry on whoring then. My bad.
It would be easier to understand why it isn’t obvious to everyone that Tom is running a con if he stopped going VISIT MY WEBSITE AT…all the damn time.
Cassandra, everyone else, all on reddit,
The bottom line is, I’m right. Always remember, political correctness is factual incorrectness. Child prostitutes do exercise agency (so are not raped). Here’s an excerpt from a paper on mexican youth sex workers, which is much less forthright than me, and attempts to contextualize with victimology and political correctness, but nevertheless gets to it in places:
… it is clear that these youth are active agents who, despite their limited circumstances, engage in potentially risky commercial sex exchange (as well as survival sex), as a way to exert some small amount of control over their personal circumstances, as well as meet their basic needs. Absent in these [youth sex workers’] narratives are any notion of themselves as a victim, a stark contrast to the way that youth are portrayed in media accounts of child prostitution.
Now which one of you dumbos wants to compare these youth sex workers’ choices to sell sex then spend the money to someone actually being raped?
You all do! Except for the actual children on the front line taking cock and spending the money, who know the subject better than you.
Don’t insult their intelligence.
More…
Similarly, in describing their entry into commercial sex activities, fourteen year old Juan… stated the following:
The first time it was to try what it felt like and to see if I could earn money that way. It was at the home of someone I knew who had offered me money for sex. He gave me 20 dollars for almost an hour. Later I tried to get more from them. I would play the fool until they offered me more and then I would go [with them] (Juan).
And a bit more…
Although many youth engage in sex work to meet their basic needs, a great many also use their earnings to buy cell phones, computers, televisions, sunglasses, CD players, trendy clothing and make-up. Youth sex work is not only a survival strategy of the poor, but is consistent with the use of capitalist consumer practices in constructing social identities.
And finally…
… youth sex workers are often portrayed as victims of “commercial child sexual exploitation”, with little acknowledgement of their everyday worlds, including their own understandings of themselves as entrepreneurial agents.
So, the child whores don’t think they’re being raped, but you do?
In truth, you’re just trying your collective best to delegitimate the grounds for my lawsuit against the sexist gender studies orthodoxy, by grasping at politically incorrect, factually correct things I say, and then trying to get all the other feminist industry drones to back you up in some kind of popularity contest.
And if you’re David Cuntrelle, that is your life’s work.
Tom Martin,
when people have a bad range of options from which to choose, they make the choices they feel deliver the best results. it does not follow that these are good and healthy choices, simply the best they can make in awful situations. in this sense, they can be seen as active agents. However, this does not detract from the fact that they should not EVER have to be in this situation and that, legally, they cannot consent.
are you so morally bankrupt and emotionally stunted that you genuinely believe that, given a choice between doing some chores around the house for some pocket money then watching a DVD, a 10yr old will prefer to…you know what i can’t type it. I have children, 2 daughters and i am trembling with disgust at you.
you degrade and demean everything you touch.
“are you so morally bankrupt and emotionally stunted that you genuinely believe that”
Yep, he is. And he’s hoping to turn that quality into a source of income by spreading his ideas to others.
@Cassandra, on one level i know he is, i’ve been reading his comments since he started the misandrous chairs nonsense…but you know, on another level, it’ so hard to believe that anyone can trumpet that utter tomfoolery (hurr hurr). the most generous i can be is that he is trolling to see our reactions to such vile victim blaming.
this is actually really funny
“carry on whoring then”
I thought they stopped making the Carry On movies after the 70s, other than that unfortunate attempt to revive it in the 90s. Who knew back then that Carry On Whoring was going to be the wave of the future*.
*Not really. But you know Tom would try, if he thought there was a way to make money out of it.
I know this comment is hours old, but I really must express my shock and surprise that CassandraSays was not deeply emotionally wounded at having her personality insulted by a prostitution-obsessed child rape apologist.
Tom, okay, seriously now. We get it. We’re convinced. You’re a phenomenally wretched failure at being human. We’re all amazed you can continue typing with a keyboard that’s surely long since completely clogged with the putrescence that oozes from your every pore. We’re astounded that you can go out in public without spontaneously generating a torch-and-pitchfork-wielding mob of angry villagers. We realize it is a wonder of the modern age that all of the electronics that allow you to communicate with the outside world don’t simultaneously short themselves out in selfless sacrifice to prevent you from further contaminating the mental landscape of the planet. We can all probably admit that we’ve never before read the works of anyone so foul that merely glancing at a single sentence you’ve puked out suddenly makes us feel that we’re sitting on the edge of a burning lake of feces. Some of us probably hope against hope that nothing you create leaves the confines of this planet’s atmosphere because if some advanced being out there sees it, they’ll probably engineer another K-T Event for us to prevent the species that spawned you from ever leaving this rock. Really. We understand now. You can go.
I’m late to this, but on ravens and writing desks, Carroll said in a preface in 1896
*Note spelling. This was ‘corrected’ by the publishers and so forgotten as part of the answer.
Last year, I switched from a full-time desk job to a part-time desk job/childcare combo. Over the last month I bumped into former colleagues on two separate occasions, and both thought that I’d significantly lost weight.
Since I last weighed myself at a medical checkup several years ago, I have no idea what the ‘before’ and ‘after’ figures were, but I was struck by the fact that two people independently mentioned it.
And yet I’m only half as economically active as I was at the start of 2011. How odd.
Well, it’s 11 a.m. GMT and I’m about an hour’s train journey from London. I’m quite tempted to go up and try and find Tom and his experiment. Assuming he’s woken up yet, poor little guy must be all tuckered out after a hard night of calling women whores on the internet. He’s such a trouper!
Although having said that, if I use the public transport services, even though I’m paying for a ticket do I still owe someone sex? Who do I have to give it to? The train driver? The ticket attendant? My boss for giving me the money in the first place? The people who founded the company who I work for? Because I’m not flying to LA to try and find Larry Page or Sergey Brin, it seems like a bit of a faff.
Sod it, I’ll just stay home and try balance mine and my partner’s sex-accounts.
Sadly, I’m stuck with the kids today, otherwise I’d be going up to London myself – I’m not much further away than you are.
But I can’t bring them with me, for obvious reasons.
@Wetherby
*nods understandingly*
I’m glad he shows he’s true colours, so there can be no doubts about the game he’s playing.
…Whorenopoly?
97% of women are whores….
So the ones who aren’t are under the age of two and are dying of severe neglect or starvation in remote villages too far from humanitarian aid.
Hey look! I just found out how not to be a whore. All I have to do is figure out how to turn back time and die a horrible death!!
Hey Guize! Guize! Let’s get on this so we can live that sweet sweet life of being the rare woman that’s approved of by one man with all the personal charms of an unwashed armpit!
Given that we just recently learned that you think a woman will spend pretty much every waking moment of her day being whorish simply because she’s never publicly renounced prostitution, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to want to get a precise definition of “whore” from you.
Oh, speaking of the above: at what age does the “being a whore for not publicly renouncing prostitution” thing kick in?
You deligitimize yourself, asshole.
Tom, seriously, have a conversation where you expound on your child prostitution views among people who are not feminist and see how far that gets you. Make sure to mention that the child of ten chose it freely.
I went out yesterday. Went out whoring. By which I mean, I went out with my man to celebrate our anniversary. We split everything evenly down the middle, but I’m pretty sure I was still whoring it up, because it’s not like he covered his massage and meal and I covered my own; I was buying his and he was buying mine. Women who accept anniversary presents are whores!
3.5.
I’ve got the 4e books, but somehow the game just seems less interesting than 3.5.
I would, but I can’t ever remember if I shoot up, or snort.