TOM MARTIN ANSWERS BACK IN THE GUARDIAN

It is not often this site is charitable to The Guardian but fair's fair, they allowed Tom Martin to respond to Jonathan Dean's piece about Tom's case.

You are left though with a sneaky suspicion they thought he would shoot himself in his foot when he of course is to on his mettle to fall into that trap.

 As ever, the article is illuminating and so are the comments.

One thing I noticed in the comments was the lack of anti-male feminists coming to the fore to take Tom on. Maybe it is because they know he is right and also because that is not the sort of tactics they employ. They prefer to fight on their own territory rather than have a discussion with those who disagree with them (when do you see the feminists argue against Dr Catherine Hakim on her gender pay gap critiques).

Lastly, it is great Tom is taking this on and also in his article he linked through to this site (resulting in 365 individuals hitting the site) - hopefully many will stick around.

Posted by Skimmington

Comments

[John Kimble]

Not especially impressed with Tom's article TBH though clearly it's way ahead of the piece attacking him. I'd guess the problem is that Tom can't really reveal too much at present and is mostly holding his fire for the actual court case. It's very kind of him to send some traffic here though and further increase the profile of this site.

It was certainly a nice surprise to see the Guardian allowing a response. A great deal of credit should go to all those who requested such an article in the comments section and therefore forced the Guardian's hand.

[John Kimble]

Just to clarify the above, what I mean is that his piece lacks detail/evidence. The arguments are of course excellent and the content that is there is very well written.

[Groan]

A very insightful comment about the lack of rejoinders. You are quite correct to observe two key tactics (which the Feminist literature is quite up front about so its no secret). a. to engage in discussion only on their own terms (as to do otherwise risks diluting the message or distraction on to less favourable ground). b. "No Platform" to ensure any opposition view is afforded no opportunity to get to a wider audience. Both adopted from revolutionary movements.
So it is a matter of policy not to engage in debates that may have the effect of allowing opposing views to be aired and to limit the agenda to a small number of favoured issues often supported by "sound bite" data, such as the recent stuff on Boardrooms or the ling running DV campaigns.
I have to say these are very effective in keeping their sometime esoteric and often unpopular aims out of public scrutiny. A recent example is the unpopular issue of mothers working. Public "debate" had become effectively a repetion of a mantra that all women in all circumstances would want to work and were prevented from doing so. Surveys and reports continually evidenced the reverse was true. To have engaged in public debate with Dr. Hakim would run the risk of this weight of evidence being highlighted. Tessa Jowel's survey showing this, is a "surprise" and newsworthy precisely because for years similar surveys have been quietly ignored. I hope this will be the significance of Tom Martin's case in that amongst other things it should test the accuracy and validity of much of the key "texts". As the defence,it seems, have aknowledged that there is discrimination and will have to give evidence to support their assertion that it is justified. Which of course lays them open to counter arguement. Hopefully covered by the Media.

[Tom Martin]

Tom Martin here. Thanks again for the excellent coverage.

I would like to make clear, that the Guardian editor told me not to provide references - then the Guardian followed my article up with another one, skewering me for not leaving references.

To my main unreferenced claim, that women are four times more misandric than men misogynistic, see the following research:

Gender differences in automatic in-group bias: why do women like women more than men like men? Rudman LA, Goodwin SA. (2004)

Unfortunately, the abstract of the research is written in victim-feminist obfuscation, covering up the full extent of the research's own findings!

I will be appearing on A Voice for Men radio show this Tuesday (7pm Eastern Standard time) - tune in, or go to the website and listen to the archived show soon!

Please keep the donations coming.

We are definitely getting there!

[FedUpMan]

Tom, I just want to wish you all the very best for your case and I applaud you for taking a stand for men's rights. I did a sociology course many years ago where there were only a couple of male students out of a group of roughly 15. The teacher was female and, looking back, obviously a feminist. Thinking back to the tripe that she spouted when we talked about gender roles and how sexes are portrayed in the media etc. I can honestly see why youngsters are indoctrinated with such blatant misandry. I can remember how all the girls nodded and laughed at her preachings whilst me and the other guy kind of just went along with it because we wanted to pass our O levels and not cause any trouble. If I took a course like that these days I'd give 'em absolute hell. Go and win Tom, please, on behalf of half of our population. This sort of nonsense needs putting to an end.

[John Kimble]

Tom, would be interested to know who at the Guardian told you that. I suspect they didn't want you educating people by linking to insightful material. If there's one thing I've learned then it's to always reference everything!

BTW readers may well have noticed my lack of input at Guardian CIF over the last few months as I was a very high profile poster over there in the past. My comments there are currently subject to pre-moderation with no explanation for this given and ever since I've refused to post out of principle.

None of my input there was remotely out of line or in breach of any of their house rules and some of my comments were amongst the highest rated on the site. I refuse to be censored or be subject to differing standards so therefore I refuse to participate at all rather than be discriminated against.

I think the fact that Natalie Hanman graduated form a gender studies course says it all really.