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.
I’d also prefer if excel would STOP FUCKING CRASHING.
Like, there,s too make data for excel. My poor brain.
That’s an insult to the genius of Bloody Stupid Johnson. Tommy boy would never manage to come up with anything as wonderful as the Patent ‘Typhoon’ Superior Indoor Ablutorium with Automatic Soap Dish or the Johnson Exploding Pagoda.
In fact, with Tommy’s “I’ll come back in fifty years” comment, he’s admittted he has but one tenth of the creative genius of Bloody Stupid “It Might Look A Bit Messy Now But Just You Come Back In Five Hundred Years’ Time” Johnson.
Source.
Argenti, you need a database. /IAADBA
What’s interesting is that the closer we get to his true motivations (women aren’t worshipping my cock as they should!), the nastier he gets and the more frequently he lashes out. Like the baldness issue, you know when you’ve hit a sore spot immediately because of how he reacts.
Meanwhile, he keeps trying to get under our skin and gets nothing but “lol!” in return.
Yup.
Say, does this make us some sort of Acid Queens? We’re having fun needling Tommy.
You are a DB … what’s the a?
And I’ve never had excel get this ugly before. Oh well, I got the first set done, and just removed it from the second set (I can only DL all the survey data, not all of it except last download). This set is 500~, last one was 1,000~ so hopefully it’ll behave now.
1,593 replies btw.
Database administrator.
“The researchers described women’s vocalizations as encouragements”
If this was true why would it be a bad thing? If she liked what you were doing and encouraged you to do it more through vocalization wouldn’t that be a good thing?
Am I missing something?
But I managed to find this screencap!
I think they’re a little fuzzy on the concept of communication. You are enjoying something, so you make a noise so that your partner knows you’re enjoying it. But I think they think it’s not “legit” unless the sound were involuntarily ripped out of you by the sheer force of pleasure.
::dies::
I can SO hear Attenborough saying that!
I am laughing so hard right now. This has been “Dispatches from cloudiah’s couch,” episode #1137.
My high school drama teacher taught me the secret of writing convincing Attenborough-style commentary: the word “here” at the start of it. Sir David doesn’t actually do that a lot (although probably more than the “natural habitat” that most people use when parodying him), but reading it or hearing it forces you to hear it with the strong RP dipthong – “he-ah” and throws you into reading it with his voice.
I’m also working on a big Excel dataset right now, bleh.
Gutbusters, I don’t see any papers like the one you’re describing that used brain scans. I see a 2011 paper that’s based on a self-reported survey of 71 women, and it basically echoes, with its wee sample, everything I’ve been saying here. (Women on the whole orgasm from clitoral stimulation more than penetration! Some women make vocalizations during penetrative sex to aid their partners’ pleasure! Duh!) Will you link the study you’re talking about? Because I fear it’s actually this one and that your point-missing behaviors are impeding your ability make sense:
“Evidence to Suggest that Copulatory Vocalizations in Women Are Not a Reflexive Consequence of Orgasm,” ‘’Archives of Sexual Behavior’’ (June 2011)
Gayle Brewer and Colin A. Hendrie,
http://academia.edu/1145736/Evidence_to_Suggest_that_Copulatory_Vocalizations_in_Women_Are_Not_a_Reflexive_Consequence_of_Orgasm
Is that it? Because it’s not saying what you’re saying, and I don’t see this other study on female copulatory vocalization.
I’ve always referred to exaggerated moaning when a dude is getting close to what you’d like him to do as putting on the landing lights. Presumably that’s evil too.
(Shrugs)
Hah this study definitely could be called “Evidence to Suggest that Sometimes Women Are Putting On the Landing Lights For You.”
It’s a pretty pointless paper overall and basically “reveals” what non-paranoiacs with healthy attitudes toward sex already know.
A bit more on it, as I’m really sick of this dataset:
This particular study, by questionnaire, asked 71 women about things like what makes them orgasm most frequently, the sounds they make, the timing compared to their partner’s orgasm, how vocalizations affect their male partner. 100% of the women were orgasmic. You will all be shocked to learn that the women reported climaxing most often from clitoral stimulation, with non-oral partner stimulation narrowly beating (haw!) out the rest of such stimulation. Penetration/”intercourse” orgasms were less frequent. But note these are all orgasms. Do I have to mention that involuntary vocalization and orgasm are, erm, bedfellows? I hope not?
Okay, so: “Within sexual encounters themselves, females reported experiencing orgasm most frequently during foreplay and to a lesser extent during intercourse prior to male ejaculation…High levels of vocalization were also seen during foreplay.” The women also reported vocalizing during afterplay. See right there? That’s your beliefs flying out the window. This doesn’t say that women always fake every noise, poopypants. If this is in fact the study you’re talking about — and if you don’t post this brain-scan study for us I think I’ll be on solid ground to assume it is — the very contents of the paper itself invalidate your claim.
The researchers found that there were “significant differences between vocalizations made during foreplay and vocalizations made during intercourse before their partner’s orgasm” and, again, that “high levels of vocalization” were seen during foreplay. There’s some stuff about other parts of the partner’s orgasm too, but the important aspect of that is that women appear to be moanin and wailin just fine when their clitorises were being taken care of. Less so when they’re seeking to please their partners in the manner that said partners get off the most on, but the number isn’t zero, either. This is totally revolutionary stuff.
92% of the women responded that they thought vocalizations boosted their partners’ self-esteem. 82% reported having used them for this purpose. Those SHREWS! Boosting their man’s self esteem?! BITCHES. 66% reported using these to speed up their partner’s ejaculation. So within this sampling of 71 happily orgasmic people you basically have what we’ve already been saying: orgasms are more frequently achieved in women by clitoral stimulation, women vocalize when they are indeed feeling pleasure, and in instances when they are engaged in penetrative sex and are not expecting to orgasm (note that I didn’t just say “penetrative sex, always”) they make noises that they believe will increase their partners’ pleasure/self-esteem/bring about his orgasm/etc. There’s some talk of sometimes also wanting to hasten an orgasm due to being fatigued or in pain or, yes, bored, which is pretty obvious human nature stuff. But note that 82% there before you go off on Bored Whores or whateverthefuck. Guys’ tongues get tired too.
There was “asynchrony between orgasm and vocalization during actual intercourse, although they were correlated during foreplay and afterplay.” So…well, like we’ve all been saying. And note that they correlate! Also not “asynchrony.” That does not mean “no correlation at all.”
“These observations were further supported by responses to the question “what percentage of time do you make noise during sex, even when you are not going to have an orgasm”? where 25.3% of females reported making the noises when they were not going to orgasm over 90% of the time, 56.2% over 70% of the time, and 79.1% over 50% of the time.”
This is not all the time, every time, each-time-ever sorts of stuff saying “every verbal noise a woman makes during sex is fake.” And 68% of the women said they’d stay with a man in the long-term even if he didn’t give them orgasms from intercourse. Not because they are just resigned to never get off, but because there are several types of sex and other ways to get off other than penetrative intercourse (see earlier in the study). How is this harming men again? Different bodies get off on different things. Good partners focus on what the other enjoys. These women reported that they believed their partners derive pleasure from vocalizations, just as many of their partners, going by these numbers, clearly understand what their own partners derive pleasure from. The questionnaire respondents are reporting NOT that they fake it and don’t communicate; they’re reporting that they, in fact, get off plenty — 100% of them report being orgasmic — and that they get off most frequently from partners. That means they ARE communicating. They’re not going without what they like and stewing bitchily to drive their men to drink and fret and post like a sexually insecure paranoiac all over the internet.
“Together, these data clearly illustrate that human female orgasm and copulatory vocalizations are dissociated during sexual intercourse.” Sweet, everyone knows this already! Sometimes you don’t come, big whoop. Note the “orgasm” there, not the “human female everything involving sexual contact.”
Also note all this stuff about knowing they’re not going to orgasm themselves. This doesn’t mean zero pleasure either. This enlightening paper says that, wellsir, not every single sexual sound is correlated to one’s own pleasure. And the whole reason women’s vocalizations are being studied this way in the first place is because female copulative vocalization specifically is a unique primate thing. You are getting all the wrong things out of everything here.
Note “reflexive” and “honest”: “This indicates that at least some of these vocalizations are under conscious rather than unconscious control, giving rise to the possibility that copulatory vocalizations in women fall into one of at least three categories. These are reflexive,honest or dishonest signals of their state of arousal. To reinforce the point concerning conscious control,nearly 80% of females reported making copulatory vocalizations even when they knew they were not going to orgasm themselves.”
See those words about reflexive and honest (i.e. involuntary and/or from genuine pleasure)? Those mean “Tom Martin is wrong and this whole conversation is really bizarre.”
It then goes into physiological and evo-psych-lite speculation as to why women might vocalize voluntarily in addition to involuntary noises, at one point using the word “manipulate,” which you are welcome to take completely out of the context within which it’s presented, like any good MRA would. In context that word describes things like making the guy climax faster/increasing his self-esteem and pleasure/wanting it to be quick this time/”ensuring the delivery of his ejaculate”/bringing painful intercourse to a head (HAWWW!) more quickly.
I’m open to having those of you in the publish-or-perish community criticize any of this, as unlike our brave chair-battler I reserve my moaning for things other than criticism.
Discovered for the first time (now that it’s being reported to men in a paper)!
Now I want to see a Pratchett take on the idea that men have just discovered that women orgasm more from direct clitoral stimulation than from fucking.
That should read “also NOTE ‘asynchrony,'” rather than “not asynchrony.” Asynchrony is different than no correlation.
One of the authors is a woman! I’m looking at some of this pair’s other papers and they’re hilarious:
Hendrie, Colin A. and Brewer, Gayle (2012) Evidence to Suggest That Teeth Act as Human Ornament Displays Signalling Mate Quality. PLoS ONE, 7 (7). e42178-e42178. ISSN 1932-6203
!!!!!
Brewer, Gayle (2011) The evolutionary psychology of Shrek. In: Social political and economic aspects of Shrek. Palgrave Macmillan. Item not available from this repository.
Shrek? Yep, there definitely sound Tom’s kind of researchers. Shame he didn’t understand what their paper said.
I feel like we need a flowchart to illustrate the process by which MRAs misinterpret and distort research.
Something like this?
I don’t even know why the world, even the portion of the world as routinely ridiculous as evo-psych academia, needed a paper showing that sometimes women make voluntary noises in bed. It’s like sociologists doing a paper to prove once and for all that sometimes people laugh at things that aren’t funny. Functioning humans already know these things. There’s the discussion of primate behavior at the end of this particular paper that tries to tie it into wider primate behavior I guess. And a 71-person questionnaire isn’t much of a study. It seems as though they basically set out to prove what everyone already knows so as to get to the primate bit.