[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.
ShadetheDruid: The thing that most infuriates me is that they all expect the English Teacher to agree with them, and then are shocked and horrified and upset when I don’t.
I was giving a report to an administrative group on Moodle the other day, and the Dean of Business was all “but there’s no grammar or spell check,” and I’m all “that’s a feature not a bug, and a good thing, because the grammar and spell checks suck,” and the shock was palpable.
Nanasha, don’t worry. What I take from what you’re saying is empathy training ie. maybe if they experienced a day in the life of an exploited child they would get it.
Many people, I see, interpret these musings as revenge fantasies. When I wonder the same thing you do, I don’t have an iota of a revenge notion. Ilithana brought the discussion around to the other side of the argument, questioning if it really would work, or what would that say about us, etc. A Clockwork Orange explores these issues.
I think you and I might think something along the lines of ‘how can someone not get this’? And we might think it’s as easy as exposing the person to their own range of uncomfortable sensations so that they can transfer that to ‘other’ and realize, oh yeah… that’s sucky and uncomfortable for that other person and humans don’t deserve this on a basic level.
So again, people interpret this as revenge fantasy, or (better yet) question if it would be helpful at all. I think you and I put too much stock in the psychopath being like you or me.
@ithiliana, I have a MA in English and am often asked by friends to help their kids out with English. The first thing I do is switch off the grammar and spell check and then usually go on to argue with the kids about why I have done that. It’s a personal bugbear.
@Shade
“The energy would probably be better spent putting out more criticisms of parts of our own groups (in this case, feminism)…”
I don’t really understand what this means. Can you explain it further please?
I find the idea that suffering is going to make people better to be awfully suspect — there are too many sentimental narratives in the U.S. about how the oppressed/downtrodden/etc. are somehow saintlike, and I think that’s a dangerous narrative for the majority to have.
And the fact that there are so many documentaries about starving children that don’t exactly touch on the fact of how the politics (not food shortages) are causing starvation; how starvation is used as a political tool; how the U.S. benefits from economic exploitation worldwide–well, that sort of radical analysis doesn’t play well in what some critics call “poverty porn.”
I don’t know how much empathy is learned or not, but I remain seriously dubiously that anybody who has reached adulthood without gaining any sense that other people are human beings with equal rights is going to be taught it easily, or quickly, or meaningfully–I am dubious of redemption narratives.
I am not a big fan of zie or zir mainly because they sound like slightly altered homonyms to he and her. Preferably, a gender neutral pronoun would be different enough from he, she or it to feel separate and truly neutral. Plus it does feel like co-opting German in a somewhat awkward way. Anyone have any ideas for truly gender neutral terms? I would be up for more discussion on this.
@BigMomma: Nope, it’s a great pedagogical tool.
As I tell my colleagues: the actual ‘quality’ or correctness of the commercial grammar and spell checks are lousy to abysmal. What is out there tends to be Business English.
If a student doesn’t actually KNOW the standardized rules, and just blindly assumes that the program is correct, then that leads to a whole category of what some of us now call grammar or spell check errors: that’s most visible in the spell check, but it happens in grammar check sometimes (I always turn that automatic format crap off). (The spell check can help catch SOME typos, but again, it can also create errors).
And assuming that just because the grammar and spelling is correct by some program means that the writing is “good” is just……ARGH!
I have recently begun similar campaigns against the “turn it in” or similar plagiarism check programs, heightened after a student of mine who plagiarized was trying to assure me that it could’t be plagiarism because she ran one of the free programs online, and it said her paper was plagiarism free. Since the academic article she copied from was in a subscription database and not online, of course the frakking program didn’t pick it up–but it was still plagiarism.
(Turnitin is not only NOT effective, it also violates copyright of students forced to submit their work from which the company makes a profit, and they also offer a paid for service for students to check to see if their paper is plagiarized as well as the stuff for universities–and it’s seem more and more as a way to help students make sure they don’t get caught, not that they aren’t plagiarizing–using the very narrow definition of word for word copying….)
BigMomma: OOPS pronoun reference error. By “it’s” in “it’s a great pedagogical tool,” I mean TURNING the program off.
I just say “them” or “they.” I know it’s not grammatically correct, but almost everybody knows what it means.
@Ithalana
Well that’s what I tell myself. How could they not know that when someone is cut they bleed, so to speak, so… yes.
What I have a hard time with is CARING what happens to a person when they terrorize others. I don’t wish harm on them, but it would take a lot of convincing to get me to care about that person. I believe that some people forfeit their lives. So to back up a bit, first of all, I don’t think that every living being is precious, or that somehow, someone that causes harm and suffering to others is needed on this planet. Why is that person a special snowflake? The victims are more important to me.
In the political realm, I believe that every Ayn Rand follower should have to live on a desert island without any resources. In this example, it should be more clear this is not revenge against people that don’t believe as I do. It’s entirely different than that. It’s to say, ok, if you REALLY believe that you are self made, then prove it. We’ll have a discussion of what you’ve learned about reality in a few years, etc. Also why should they not have to really live their own values? I believe that each person supporting a particular type of system should have to live as the most marginalized in that particular system. Why shouldn’t they?
When people argue to me that they believe in survival of the fittest (socially and politically), my argument to them is, I should be able to murder them. That is not revenge on the person because they hurt my feelings by believing something different than I do, it’s a logical conclusion to their OWN beliefs. So if I can achieve murdering them, then I’m the big winner. However, these people would normally not argue for abolishing laws against murder. They just take what’s established for granted.
So with extreme criminals, people that torture, murder and rape, I think along those lines, but not as revenge. Why should they not live by their own values?
I get the other side of it. I saw A Clockwork Orange as a kid, and have been against the death penalty for most of my life. (I’m not against it in theory, a quick painless death that is, people are not special snowflakes we need around after they’ve ended lives themselves, but the way the death penalty works, it’s clear that innocent people have been killed, there’s institutionalized racism, etc.)
Cliff said:
I’ve ignored this person for a long time, but after seeing them post in the r/mr thread, I asked the Reddit admins to ban him as an imposter. I also asked the r/mr mods to ban him, but somehow I suspect that won’t happen b/c the mods are shitheads.
mostly i just hate the checks because it removes a level of necessary critical thinking and evaluation. the kids I am helping are usually fairly disengaged from English so see me as interfering with something that made their life easier, despite me pointing out the errors created by the checks. LIke you, I hate the notion that grammar and spelling are correct/good thanks to some program…there’s a soulessness to it (can i use that word?)
Turnitin, huh? things have sure got advanced since i was an undergrad (early 90s)
and, oh shit…i’ve just realised that some of the kids i help are boys….i should be telling them to forget the humanities according to Steele or lose my feminist tutoring credentials…
@ithiliana (as was my last comment)…for a minute, i was a bit confused about the pedagogical tool remark, then my brain reordered into what what you meant to say (read: what i HOPED you meant to say!) ; )
Scrapemind:
We already know you think genderqueer people aren’t “normal,” dudebro.
Nanasha:
I don’t think we think you’re a horrible person. I, at least, don’t think you’re a horrible person. I do think, however, that you tend to speak before you think through what the implications of what you advocate can be, and then you get defensive when people take offense at those implications. Do I think you wish ill? I don’t think so.
Also,
It doesn’t sound like German at all: “sie” is German for she, “Sie” is the formal or plural you. The German gender neutral pronoun is “es,” and the gender neutral article is “das,” neither of which sound anything like “zie.”
I prefer “they” because we already use it, but whatever.
In the other thread, Martin implied that he’d been molested as a child, so it’s not that he doesn’t understand the powerlessness a child would feel. It’s that he can’t empathize with people who aren’t him, because they are WHORES (you cunts).
Like I said, he baffles and sickens me.
I don’t really understand what this means. Can you explain it further please? – Fembot
Sure, can do.. I think. I managed to confuse myself a bit too. o.O
I guess what I mean is, examining in-house issues > debunking asinine MRA claims about decades-old feminist writings that we probably wouldn’t agree with anyway (if they did say what the MRAs claim, which seems to be turning out not to be true at all). I guess it was just the first thing I thought of related to the idea overall, since feminists saying awful things that we personally don’t agree with would be infinitely more important to deal with than specifically debunking MRAs.
It was mostly an example related to concept of “a feminist may have said bad shit once”, but you could use anything. Like mocking and countering misogyny > debunking asinine MRA claims, or pointing out shitty views the MRM has > debunking asinine MRA claims, or even watching those kittens > debunking asinine MRA claims.
It could just be that i’m too cynical about things that seem pointless (at least unless i’m getting some fun out of it, as with dealing with trolls)? If so, fair enough. I just tend to default to not bothering to even attempt things if it looks that way.
Ok, thanks ShadetheDruid. I see what you mean. I kind of agree, but there’s still a part of me hoping to get through to them once they’re proved wrong. But I guess that will never happen, because most them are total shitheads who will never admit to being wrong.
Well I for one think Tom did an awesome job of explaining his views in the original comments section, and can’t wait to see the results of the experiment he’s shooting this Sunday in central London to find out which sex is more sexist on the street, women or women?
If one of those 2% of manboobzers who has a paid work ethic would like to come along and help conduct the 3 hour shoot and experiment, and doesn’t mind working for no money on this one like me, then they should email [email protected] for more information.
It involves being on camera at times, measuring sexism, and trying to make non-sexist jokes.
Tom, sweetie, if you’re going to sockpuppet you need a different screen name. Either that or to learn that referring to oneself in the third person is just not done.
Huh… Reading between the lines a bit, apparently the one group of people who aren’t whores are the ones who will have sex freely and readily without being compensated. Kinda weird how that one works.
Doesn’t even matter if they have a ton of sex either. Just so long as they don’t expect much in return.
Gosh, you sound like an unbiased outside observer. 🙂
Seriously, you couldn’t bother commenting as “Mom Tartin” or something when you’re praising yourself?
I assume sexism will be measured with a sexismometer?
And the non-sexist jokes will all be about WHORES?
@Cliff:
Oh man, imagine if tom had a sexismometer?
*beep beep beep*
Welp, looks like that woman is sexist.
*beep beep beep*
Looks like that one is too.
*Beep Beep Beep*
Wow, that one is even more sexist!
*BEEP BEEP BEEP*
Holy crap, there’s so much misandry around the meter’s nearly broken!
*crsh*
Crap, there goes my irony meter.
*BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP*
Huh, it beeps while I’m alone too. Damn thing must be broken.
Sexism is of course measured by how often Tom feels the need to call women whores. Just not in the way that he thinks.
I thought Tulgey’s points were pretty spot on, and that a publisher should put out a collection of his poetry and get him to write several essays about Tom Martin. If you’d like to get in touch, please call 555-867-5309.