[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.
First, to you whose nick I forgot now as the thread progressed at the speed of a Peregrine that’s spotted a swallow, whorenopoly sounds like a game worthy of the Best Boardgame of 2013 award (doubt we can make it to this year’s pre-xmas sales, but by next year the games should be in production and marketing underway).
The First Joe – I’m glad to read your comments, too. I’m sure we disagree on some matters, but it sounds like we also agree on some. We might even agree on more things than one would imagine. I’m really hopeful that you are an MRA willing to look at the matters from the feminist point of view without getting hung on the word feminist – I, for one, do that to men’s issues and agree with a lot of them. But I find it impossible to discuss with virtually all MRA’s I’ve encountered so far because of their utter hatred of women that shines through whatever words they use to try to claim otherwise. Because I have no such hatred towards men, I find it incomprehensible. But I’m very willing to listen and try to understand others, as long as I’m listened to and my discussion partner tries to look at things from my point of view to understand why I think and feel the way I do, and I’m happy to agree to disagree about some things without losing respect for others, if I’m granted the same courtesy. I also believe this applies to most feminist people here. Our reactions to MRA’s just tend to be disbelieving at best because most of the time they don’t give us that respect, or demand that we do it first and then they stop insulting. It has to happen at the same time for both, I believe, which can only happen if every individual starts from themselves right now.
As for Tom. I thought of this after reading a bit of his writings. It’s all very… immature is the right word, I think, because his thought process heavily resembles that of young persons. You know, teenagers passionate about a subject they feel strongly about, or (ohmigawds) first year philosophy students. It’s very black-and-white thinking, grabbing the first idea that comes to mind after reading about something important-sounding as if it is _the_ greatest philosophical discovery since [insert name of a thinker trendy at the time], and rolling with it. But because the original thought lacks nuances and may not be connected to reality or how things work in the real world, whatever thinking follows next is flawed by definition.
Most people become capable of nuanced thinking as they age, but Tom is almost 40 years old. By now he ought to be grown out of immature thinking. Since he is not, I can only presume he is one of the (many) people who lack the brain power and skills, and also cannot see the limits of their abilities (as opposed to people who recognise their limited ability in something).
It’s quite sad, actually. Or would be, if this person wasn’t so vicious toward the most vulnerable
Now that you mention it, talking to Tom is rather like dealing with a stubborn child, though I think you’re giving him too much credit as far as intellectual maturity is concerned. Most teenagers are far more capable of absorbing new information and adjusting their theories accordingly than he is.
VoIP: See, you guys are a lot taller than my dad’s side of the family, every single one of which, male and female, except my dad, is about 5’2,” with the same resolute solidity. Some historian found out that the average height of the Roman soldier was also 5’2″. These are the bodies that built the Roman Empire.
They were more like 5’6″. The 5’2″ number was from someone who didn’t factor out the need to deal with disparate bodies when setting a pace.
Here’s how the computing was done.
The average person has a two step stride of about their height. The Roman mile was established as one thousand paces of a legion. A pace was left-foot to left-foot. So the legion pace was 5 feet, 2.8 inches.
But the thing this guy didn’t factor is that marching troops is a matter of all of them being able to keep pace (stride and tempo), so the stride length is usually a bit less than the free-swinging stride of the average soldier (the US Army, for example, has a 30″ stride, means we cover 5,000 feet in 1,000 paces). My personal pace is 62 paces for 100 meters, which is, oddly enough, 5’3.5″, so that I cover just about one mile in 1,000 steps, over broken terrain. My flat ground pace is about 5’6″. I’m about 5’9″.
Before I got into being a studio projectionist (dailes and screenings and edits and FX reels, and laying down voice tracks for animated filsm and testing subtitles, and…), I did work on the swing gang for a friend’s company.
So I’d get calls at short notice to show up and work on this film or that. Good times. Crazy shit, and it’s amazing no one got killed. One guy (I can still recall his name) got fired for doing something on a day I wasn’t working, and then we discovered he’d used contact adhesive (d-70) to attach corkboard to the wallpaper on a location.
Which was fucking expensive. Luckily this was a shoot with something approaching a real budget (Limit Up, Nancy Allen was the name).
The thing I learned, being talent is Ok. Being crew is Ok. Being an extra is not-Ok. You get treated like crap, have to work like hell, fed like an animal, paid for shit, and if you look at the wrong person cross-eyed you get fired.
Most of the names I’ve worked with/for were decent (Micheal Keaton… a mensch, of the first water. Rugter Hauer… I’d be glad to commit minor crimes again with him anytime, Forrest Whitaker… brilliant,and modest, and such a dedicated craftsman [I ran dailies, and directors cut for his first film; behind the camera, and I asked him if the overtones of Greek tragedy were intentional and he stopped gave me an approvingly appraising once over, said yes; with a smile, and we talked about how well it worked, Judge Reinhold, sweet, and both insouciant about his tooth getting broken, as well as grateful I found the broken piece, etc.]).
The people I came to loathe were the critics. A more entitled bunch of arrogant fucks you don’t want to meet.
But man I miss it sometimes. Hollywood has it’s decided moments.
@eline: “Since he is not, I can only presume he is one of the (many) people who lack the brain power and skills, and also cannot see the limits of their abilities (as opposed to people who recognise their limited ability in something).”
IMO, he seems to be a textbook example of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
“One guy (I can still recall his name) got fired for doing something on a day I wasn’t working, and then we discovered he’d used contact adhesive (d-70) to attach corkboard to the wallpaper on a location.”
Lol, gaffe tape! (Not that I don’t have a number of stories involving the misuse of that stuff…)
themisanthropicmuse – Thanks for reminding me of the term. I was posting very late, in a moment of waking up in the middle of the night (hurray for manboobz at ready on cellphone browser tabs for efficient commenting!) and just couldn’t get the term into my head. 😀 But yes, a textbook case of Dunning-Kruger.
…I’ve got “Rotate Your Owls” stuck in my head. D:
Snowy: So what? Why is being (using the Tom Martin definition of whore) a “non-whore human” something people should want to be? From what you’ve said so far it seems to involve a lot of tedious accounting for every bit of minutia you give or receive in a romantic relationship. I think I’ll pass.
You forgot the public declarations that you do this, and that you do it to avoid being a whore, unlike all the women who aren’t both doing such careful accounting, and publicly declaring they too aren’t whores because they do it.
That’s the part Tommy-Boy really wants, is for women to declare they have all been worthless whores, and that all women have been (and continue to be) worthless whores.
The First Joe: So e.g. the rent-seeking Dad (assuming the daughter was under the age of majority = incompetent to contract as an adult) is not a Libertarian, but a bullshitter. As well as being a shitty Dad.
I’ll agree he was a shitty dad, but I can’t agree he’s not a Libertarian. He didn’t, by personal fiat, declare her an adult, and so in need of recompensing him for her room and board. He tried to get her declared an adult, in law.
Had he done that, she would be someone whom anyone could enter a legal contract with.
So he was being a manipulative ass, but it was in keeping with a stripe of Libertarian ideals, to say he isn’t is a No True Scotsman argument. Yeah, what he did makes Libertarianism look bad, but it’s still valid Libertarian thought behind it.
This is Tommy-Boy’s real point, and it’s the one I’ve been trying to keep in mind: Yes, they are whores! I’m not saying it isn’t disgusting. If females want to eradicate prostitution, then they need to put the price down to zero.
He’s upset that he can’t have sex, anytime he wants, just by saying (in a pub, at work, during class, on a street corner), “I fancy a shag now”, and having some women (whom he finds attractive of course; a little thinner, apparently, than is the norm), all come up and say, “sure, no worries.”
That’s his real complaint. He has to treat women as people, spend some time getting to know them. They, of course, would get to know him. If he shares his views on the sexual economy, I suspect the shag he fancies quickly flies out the window.
But that’s what he means by, “renounce prostitution in all it’s forms.” I suspect the public declarations are so he will know which ones to test by saying he fancies a shag. If they turn him down… whores.
Odd… my last comment is in moderation… All I can guess is I quoted a phrase of Tom Martin’s and it now triggers a flag.
Was it a word that began with W and rhymed with door?
Dani Alexis: Doesn’t that work out to something like $80,000 per year on average in US dollars? And is the standard of living in the UK *really* that much higher than the standard of living on this side of the pond? Because I *know* the average US salary isn’t $80,000 per year.
Gross, or net? The taxes in the UK are higher, so too is the average salary (USD = about 32,000 for average salary). What I’ve observed (in Germany, the UK, Canada, the US) is that the standard of living is about the same, and the ways in which taxes shuffle things about has some effect on salary.
One of the (big) differences is how healthcare is dealt with, and what the presence (or lack) does to social mobility.
Re: “emancipation of a minor” – this is a very recent and rare legal issue.
It’s been a possible thing in Calif. for more than thirty years. One of the odd quirks of the law, as originally written was that a woman who married below the age of consent was emancipated, but a man wasn’t.
There are some other odd quirks to age of majority laws too (Calif. used to segregate them, so that males were of age at 21, females at 18. But men had more rights, so it had different effects).
In my opinion, people of good consciene would not / should not necessarily regard or treat a legally emancipated minor as morally / socially / emotionally / sexually / physically equivalent to an adult, but would / should excercise best judgement on an individual basis, with a compassionate view towards the young person in question.
Yes, but the issue isn’t what one ought to do, but what one can do. A legally emancipated minor is someone who gets to make their own, legally binding, decisions.
Re: emancipation — I’d looked into it, and probably should’ve tried it (the whole “you have parents” // “they aren’t supporting me” screwed me on college costs) — it’s legally binding, but afaik would not raise the age of consent. An emancipated minor can get a job, apt, food stamps, etc, without parental income/etc mattering. It’s also a total pain in the ass, for good reason, and if that girl had ever gone to court and answered the judge honestly, that shit for brains of a father would’ve found himself the target of the judge’s ire.
You have to be self-supporting already, or nearly so (eg living with friends), to prove you can handle the responsibility, and even then, I’ve never heard of it happening to a minor younger than 16 (fyi, sophomore generally means 15, maybe just turned 16.
It’s not like you just walk in and go “I want to be emancipated” and the judge goes “hell, why not”
“Was it a word that began with W and rhymed with door?”
Or began with wh and rhymed with bore?
David (and the rest of us) were sick of listening to Tom insult the regulars with the same term in every damned comment, so David set the w word to set off the spam filter. This is apparently censoring Tom, and if we’re lucky, he’ll stay gone.
One of my high school teachers had a student that got emancipated. Apparently they still made him show his parents’ financial records when he was applying for aid. So it might not’ve worked.
Leum — wha…? I’m assuming we’re both talking US and FAFSA here? So you can’t prove your parents are refusing to spend anything on it, period, it cannot be done?
*hed esplodes*
Yep, US and FAFSA. It’s possible my teacher misunderstood the situation, but I doubt it.
Argenti: Until one is 25 one has to show one’s parent’s tax returns to file a FAFSA.
And being emancipated (at least in Calif.) makes one a consenting adult. There are oddities in how this works. Calif. has it’s age of consent for marriage consonant with it’s age of consent for sex, so there is a change, but in Tennesee one can have sex, legally, before one can marry.
True story about how that disconnect (and the aforementioned being male and married below the age of consent doesn’t emancipate said male). Guy I knew in the Army had gotten married at 17. He joined the Army at 17 1/2. He was sent to Calif. He got a traffic ticket, and his wife had to come, as his legal guardian, to talk to the judge, because he wasn’t, legally, an adult in Calif.
What I recall is that if one has been supporting oneself for three years, the parents’ financial records will be discounted, but they have to be submitted.
One can show that one has been supporting oneself.
“One can show that one has been supporting oneself.”
More things to hate my adviser for I guess…I could’ve done that, but basically got “you don’t have kids, and aren’t married, thus your parents income is what matters”.
And as weird as the consent and marriage laws are, I’m laughing at your story. I’m trying to picture that “your honor, my (same age) wife…I mean legal guardian…is here” = fucked up, but kind of funny.
Leum — considering how fucked up the FAFSA is, your teacher may’ve been right, my adviser was certainly a damned idiot.
Actually, his wife was 19. But yeah.
Ok so his wife was a legal adult, by all measures, but that’s still somewhere between hilarious and fucked up — generally “legal guardian” and “people you can have sex with” are mutually exclusive roles.