This won’t be news to a lot of you — I’m a little late getting to it — but our old pal Tom Martin, the repulsive British MRA celebrity, is actually going ahead with the somewhat baffling video “women and comedy” project he was babbling about in the comments here many months ago, when he was still allowed to comment here. Well, “actually going ahead with it” this August if he can get anyone else to agree to work for him for free minimum wage.
The documentary project is called “Laughing with Women” and, Martin explains, it will “investigat[e] if gold-digging impairs women’s joke-making ability, and if, when women reject gold-digging in all its forms, they can become instantly funnier.”
In case that didn’t make sense to you — don’t worry, that’s a completely natural reaction — Tom explains his, er, “logic” a bit further in a jobs listing he’s posted in hopes of finding a crew, which has already gotten a good deal of ridicule over at PZ Myers’ and on at least one comedy website.
Why are women, on average, slightly less funny than men? Does gold-digging in particular impede women’s joke-making ability? When women publicly reject gold-digging, do they become as funny, or even funnier than men?
In his numerous visits to Man Boobz, Martin expounded at length on the topic of gold-digging women, generally referring to them by his preferred term, the shorter and blunter “whores.” Martin has previously estimated that roughly 97% of women fit this description, and has suggested that female penguins are also whores. Frankly, once he gets going on the topic, it’s hard to shut him up, which is partly why he’s no longer welcome in the comments here.
In any case, this odd hypothesis will be tested, Martin says, with a “radical, and revealing street-based social experiment.”
Still puzzled? Mike Booth, the British video comedian behind SomeGreyBloke and Dan Cardamon, has managed to tease out a few more details from Martin (posting here as sexismBusters):
Martin is confident that his proposed video will blow the lid off this whole “women and gold-digging and comedy, no really, they’re connected” thing:
If the radical, and revealing street-based social experiment at the centre of our documentary proves gold-digging does make women less funny (as pre-production research suggests) then our findings will make headlines around the world, our film’s two minute teaser trailer attached to all those news and blog articles (Update: this advert alone has already been blogged and tweeted about by outraged PC types).
The full documentary will be shot to a broadcast-quality standard and format, giving mainstream television companies worldwide the opportunity to purchase broadcasting rights (if they’re feeling brave enough) whilst we maintain a virtually guaranteed revenue stream from our already established hardcore of supporters and fans within the non PC gender equality field around the world, who, along with everyone else, will be able to enjoy Laughing with Women on newly launched pay-per-view channel, Vimeo on Demand (VoD) – where VoD itself takes a very modest 10% cut. The documentary has the potential to be translated into several languages – gold-digging a familiar if hidden story in every country, until now.
In other words, it sounds like some sort of video gold mine.
So I’d recommend that all gold-digging women out there try to get in on the ground floor of this Tom Martin dude.
Oh, and speaking of Dan Cardamon, here’s the faux MRA’s take on the project:
CORRECTION: This post originally stated that Martin wouldnt’ be paying his crew, but he says he will be paying them minimum wage, so I’ve corrected the relevant passage above.
EDITED TO ADD: Tom has shown up in the comments, and I’m letting his comments through (for now at least), so if you have any questions for him, feel free to head to the comments to address him directly.
sittiekittie:pecunium, I guess it depends on the outlook you take on history?
I’m taking primary sources at face value. I’m taking the arguments of secondary/tertiary sources with such value as their theories/arguments incorporate primary sources.
I think we suffer a lot from how the artifacts of public life are interpreted by later ages (take the idea that the hanging corner of table clothes were to “cover the shameful legs of the table”, it turns out they were to keep them from being as easily damaged from things being moved about (cleaning equiment, various carts and serving trolleys), as well as being a symbol of conspicuous consumption (lace was pricey, and having it out where it might get dirty showed that one could afford to keep it clean/replace it).
The idea that such legs were, “indecent” was mocked by Dickens; who was making fun of Americans. The only contemporary references to such things are rare, and derisive. It seems to be an interesting case of Britons (such as Marryat) mocking Americans, and Americans then applying the mockery, as if it were truth, to the British.
The idea became current in the ’60s, and seems to have been a cry against the more repressive ’50s, by making a comparison (albeit not quite true) to an age more oppressive. Sort of the way the TV show M*A*S*H used Korea to refer to Vietnam.
It doesn’t change that women were second class citizens (and a very ill-treated class, at that), but there are a lot of things to show they were possessed of better treatment, in fact, then a perusal of the law implies. This is wen the agitation for the vote began. It’s when marriage for love became seen as the norm, not an aberration.
As with every age, it’s complicated. Among other things the age is temporally vast, and saw as much (maybe more) change than we did. In some ways the telegraph was more transformative than the internet. It’s an interesting time, and often badly glossed (As witn, “Inventing the Victorians” by Michael Sweet, who never gets to the meat of the questions he raises).
Neat. I did not know that about the table clothes. And yea, I agree, anything that’s not within a close temporal proximity to us is challenging to look at while trying to avoid the lens that the media has put up.
“Sort of the way the TV show M*A*S*H used Korea to refer to Vietnam.”
So it was Vietnam? Because my mother insists I’m wrong on this.
Argh! I was going to find you ads for Victorian era vibrators, but Hugo. Fucking. Schwyzer. is the second result for “Victorian vibrators”. I’m going back to the data, it doesn’t piss me off. (Usually, we seem to have had a handful of trolls.)
It’s like the whole image of Victoria herself as some sort of anti-sex prude. Some of that comes from the slash-and-burn work her daughter Beatrice did on her diaries, and some, I think, from the stuff Lytton Strachey wrote in the 1920s. Victoria hated having children, fersure, but she loved sexytimes with the beautiful Albert!
For a Victorian couple whose letters survive, and who had an interesting sex life, I’d suggest Charles and Fanny Kingsley. Fantasies galore from that clerical couple, they adored each other. 🙂
Fun story: My friend and I were out at antique shops, and she found an honest to goodness vibrator from that era, with “Letters of Authenticity” still attached to prove it was made by some doctor or another who was supposed to be an expert in this issue. It’s huge, comes in a typewriter-like case and looks ridiculous, but it is still really neat. I don’t know what she’s done with it, but if it was lying around my house I wouldn’t put it past my roommate to try to get it working, he enjoys old machines and I don’t think he’d get what it is.
SittieKitty — oh goodness, the might-electrocute-you vibe!
Kitteh — some help? Who’s this? http://instagram.com/p/bAO9f9I9vd/
It says it’s a Rubens but that’s all I’ve got. The clothing looks about the right era for you to maybe know?
Albert was a bit of prude. He was also a bit of a paternalist dickwad. He (despite having no real legal authority) took over a huge amount of the role of governance; he supplanted her previous mentor, Lord Melbourne (though she was very much a monarch; attempting to form the first minority Gov’t; which failed because of secondary issues of politics, which led to Melbourne becoming Prime Minister again).
So man facets to the age. I think it’s part of why Steampunk is so fond of the trappings of Victoriana, among other things they were so bloody certain they could do anything.
That’s not only a Rubens, it’s a self-portrait.
Rubens and I share a birthday, btw. 🙂
Pecunium – rare thing for a man then not to be a paternalistic dickwad to some degree. Albert was fairly prudish (not surprising given the family behaviour he was reacting to – more power to him for not acting like his douchecanoe father and brother) but he’s also one who’s been unfairly written off to a large degree. Yes, he was effectively uncrowned king, but that was something Victoria wanted (she was sexist as all getout too). He was a damn sight better at the masses of work involved, he was highly intelligent and informed, and contrary to legend he did have a sense of humour. He also had a lot more social consciousness and imparted some of it to Victoria: Melbourne was a total fail in that respect.
Hey now, we’re not all men! Some of us want the wonderful fashion and gears and fancy machinery without the sexual hang ups and patriarchy! (Now, with this much data, I am glad for computers, don’t get me wrong. But I love me some top hats and gears!)
Also…music time!
http://youtu.be/_j3hREMP1pI
Thanks kitteh!
Pleasure! 🙂
kittehs: It’s not that he wasn’t good at it, nor that he wasn’t good for Victoria, but to some degree the problem is (and it manifested later in other ways) that he didn’t get it ratified. Which caused her to have other, unofficial, advisors; which could have caused real problems; even undermined the idea of monarchy.
How about:
EAT ME; YOU PENCIL NECKED, RECEDING HAIRLINED, SOCIALLY STUNTED, DELUSIONAL FUCKNUGGET FROM HELL
Too long?
And kittehs beat me to the ID.
Okay folks. I’ll check back in 50 years.
Ooh ooh, am I the twat?* I think I’m the twat! How exciting!
Seriously Tom, you have never given a reasonable explanation for why gold-digging is even bad. I mean especially since your definition of gold-digging includes such grievous offences as accepting a drink from a man and then not fucking him. But even if we’re talking gold-digging in the classic sense, like marrying a wealthy man 20 years older than yourself for the financial benefits, I fail to see why that would be morally reprehensible. I mean, lying to the dude? Yeah, that’s not okay. But if everybody in the relationship understands what is going on, I do not have any problem with that.
*I am amused that autocorrect tried to make this word “teat.”
I think at this point, Tommy boy’s just pissed he has no gold to dig.
Haha, more like it’ll become sentient and start taking over my house. He’s big into computers and mechanical things like robots, I get the feeling eventually my media system will be a living entity, with how much time and effort he puts into building it/tweaking it so it’s just right.
I’ll be a twat with you Viscaria! Goldiggers ftw. It’s about time all that money got into the hands of the real power in society (ie: women) and out of those silly men’s hands. They’d probably use it to better society instead of spend it all on themselves!
Oooh, Tommy’s getting pissy, the oh-so-reasonable
toupeemask is slipping and his genuinely creepy little self is showing again. And he’s threatening to leave the thread! I am totes terrified he’ll take his genius self away!HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
How about this bit of naysaying: Go fuck yourself, rape apologist pedophila apologist and insult to your gender. Go sit on hard chairs until your poor bony arse is numb, then go walk on a thousand legos.
Shaming enough for ya?
“LittleKitten”
You call that an insult? XD
I WISH Tom would take himself away. If he’s firing up his SnitMobile and about to take off into the ether, godspeed.
He does get mighty pissy when us twats won’t do his bidding. A smart dude like him should be able to figure out why we’re not.
In short:
About your new project.
No.
Njet.
Nein.
Nej.
No
Ei.
Ne.
Jo.
—
In longform:
Read these words carefully:
You don’t get to dictate what I do. You don’t get to dictate what people who don’t work for you do. I can’t speak for anyone else, and I won’t.
But you are not a man doing amazing work for the good of humanity. You’re a blinded, bigoted, raging person who somehow finds the mental energy to get up on a pedestal and declare the world shittier, shabbier and shoddier than anyone else around you.
You have no understanding of correlation, causation or questions.
Historical records? You don’t care
Conflicting studies? You don’t care
Sociological precedent? You don’t care
Experiences directly at odds with your stated objective truth? You don’t care
Anecdotes that contradict your current ideas? You don’t care
Suggestions about statistical methods? You don’t care
Conversations about sexual behavior that differs from your interpretations? You don’t care
Good luck with your study. Enjoy doing your things. Have fun finding your findings.
And please leave, because even I find you obnoxious now and I had the part of my brain that finds things obnoxious surgically removed with a spoon..
And – Please tell me there are no minors present – for the fucking record, what the fucking scientists fucking found was that the fucking vocalization of the word fucking and oh god oh god was fucking timed with the fucking fuck ejaculation of the fucking male partner fucking the fucking female in this fucking experiment, and did, in fact fucking correlate with fucking arousal levels – but generally it was assumed that it was a fucking attempt at making the fucking male fucking ejaculate at an opportune time.
Fuck.
This is publicly available data that you are blithely misrepresenting. It’s so incredibly disrespectful towards the people involved and towards the hard work of scientists testing these things.
Like this is some point beyond lying, or mere misrepresentation. This is you, re-arranging the entire universe to suite your needs. And you’re supposed to objectively measure people’s behavior?
*Come on*
Please stop! Or I’ll start rhyming!
Aye. It doesn’t make much sense. I thought we gold-digging whores were terrible; why would we be expected to obey a master man?
Besides, we came up with some great names. I’m rather partial to “A Whore and a Gentleman” and “A Whore Grows in Brooklyn”. But “Ben-Whore” made me snort at the breakfast table, which then required me to do a short performance on the Tom Martin phenomenon. My parents were highly amused.
Yo Tom I’m being 100% honest with you: women don’t fake every single vocalization in bed ever. There are women talking to you here and you’re not listening to them. Listening to us would actually help you not sound to detached from reality in your other public pronouncements, you dig? Do you really, wholly believe that all women throughout history faked every single sound during sex? Is this actually your position?
Also, please post this study. I’m genuinely curious. And before you do, note that when I mentioned the study of men and their feelings toward funny women, I mentioned that it was the men in the study, not *all* women, as you have written here about what you’re taking from this study. Also please note that I’m genuinely interested in this study not just to dismiss it outright, but I am also genuinely telling you that faking orgasms isn’t a thing with all women! It’s just isn’t. You also, based on your YouTube comments I keep mentioning, seem to think “sex” is only penetration. And fewer women do enjoy penetration than enjoy other sorts of stimulation, but plenty of women like penetration just fine. As I said before, look at the clitoris, the full organ, and see how it has a “head” just like the penis and then extends inside; look at where it is in relation to the vagina. You can learn a lot about women’s sexuality from stuff like this.
Women can have a variety of different orgasms.
No one is saying something so simple as “the patriarchy made me do it.” What people are saying is that women’s sexuality has long taken a back seat in a lot of ways, meaning that penetration has been treated as the be-all-end-all of sex, and in the world of social condition it largely still is: check out any mainstream movie with some sort of sex scene. It’s usually a representation of penetration, and often shows the two people coming at once. I’m relatively young and even *I* grew up thinking that’s how sex works: a man and woman, penetrative sex, both coming at once if you’re doing it right. And that’s Hollywood stuff! It’s not how it works for a lot of women. Again, look at a woman’s anatomy. Some women really get off on penetration; some women even “squirt” from it. It’s more common for women to orgasm largely through stimulation of the external clitoris.For a very, very long time all the way through today women have been taught that they should be enjoying penetrative sex because that’s what the male partner wants. And yes, women have faked orgasms from penetrative sex in order to please their male partner. No one is saying that that’s men’s fault, they’re saying that it’s the end result of a societal structure that has ignored the realities of how a woman is wired in favor of emphasizing penetrative sex. Do you not see the difference, or why some women fake it? It’s to make the man happy. Hopefully in such a situation that’s not the only sex such a couple is having–hopefully he gives her what gets her off, she does the same, everybody gets what they want because sex is fun and different bodies work differently. If you’re focusing on some study that shows that some women fake it in order to encourage their partners to orgasm in a penetrative context, what’s the big deal? Is there really some “aha!” there? Not all hetero guys enjoy cunnilingus but they do it because that’s what’s what their partner enjoys, just as some women don’t get much from penetration but do it because their partner enjoys it–and that partner probably enjoys vocalizations, as partners of all genders tend to.
This is Human 101 here. Duh!
Also in your YouTube comments you were talking about 20% of women studied in some study of penetrative sex. Now it’s all women everywhere? And this is evidence of shitty communication, when it’s, as you said, more about encouraging the male partner? Did the study also cover what happens before and after penetration, and whether or not these couples did anything the woman might enjoy?
If anything, you should see women encouraging their male partners as evidence that women aren’t all self-directed whore harpees or other such MRAish silliness. And come on, the fact that some women still feel unable to communicate their desires in bed is influenced by all that socialization I was talking about, and about the history I mentioned above, and the way we’re all taught that penetration=sex. If you grow up thinking (and seeing in a million movies and tv shows and in book,s too) that you’re both supposed to come at the same time via penetration alone, you might have a problem communicating your needs or even understanding what they are. That’s the stuff people are talking about with regard to the problems patriarchal social structures have saddled us with. We’re just straight-up taught that a dude getting off is the most important, and that a woman can get off exactly the same way and *at exactly the same time*.
Anatomy 101, fella! Come on now.