Douchebags of History: T.M. Zink and the Zink Womanless Library
Today we celebrate one of history’s greatest, the largely unheralded misogynist douchebag T.M. Zink, who managed to stick it to the ladies even after he died. As Time magazine reported shortly after his death in 1930:
At Le Mars, Iowa, the probated will of T. M. Zink, deceased attorney, revealed:1) His $100,000 estate is to be placed in trust for 75 years; 2) In A. D. 2005 the accumulated principal is to be used to establish, equip and maintain a library on whose shelves will be no woman author, on whose catalogs will be no woman’s name, over whose portal will blaze: “No Women Admitted”; 3) To his daughter went $5; 4) To his widow not 1¢.
As he explained in his will:
My intense hatred of women is not of recent origin or development nor based upon any personal differences I ever had with them but is the result of my experiences with women, observations of them and study of all literatures and philosophical works.
2005 has come and gone and sadly, at least from the point of view of misogynist bibliophiles, the Zink Womanless Library was never built. As a piece in The Guardian noted, his family successfully challenged the will, I’m guessing on the grounds of Quando podeces te regi eorum fecerunt? (“When did you become king of the assholes?“)
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Posted on July 3, 2011, in douchebaggery, evil women, I'm totally being sarcastic, men who should not ever be with women ever, misogyny, patriarchy. Bookmark the permalink. 195 Comments.
Ion: I type fast. Very very very fast. Plus, I’m not on contract.
Ami: I’ve got to walk doggies, so no time to check the magyck cards — but I had asked for one, um, a while back, when you had caught up-mentioned roses, crones/witches (OLD EVIL ONES), cats, etc.
Re: making real ones. Chiming in with others that the cards are transformative and thus probably fair use if you’re not selling them.
A yogurt container?!?!?? Luxury!!!!!
Yeah, I was a nerd before they sold yogurt in containers! We had to um….walk uphill both ways in the snow with cardboard shoes to the dairy to carry it home in um….a hollowed out gourd!
Ha! My high school was too small to have a table just for nerds…
Actually, that was a good thing, because the “nerds” and the guys who played minor sports like wrestling and cross country formed their own clique (I fit into both categories, so it was perfect for me). Sometimes girls even sat with us (shocking, I know).
o_O What’s going on? Why is Ion so upset? At least now we KNOW why he’s been so passive aggressive lately… he feels jealous? o_O Envious? Apparently we’re still in high school and we’re the cool kids and this is a sour grapes thing? Revenge for his exp in HS? o_O
Weird xD Well he’d be like what the 4th troll to think I was the cruel and evil queen bee or something? XD
It’s Dave’s blog but it’s become more than that, it’s become a community :3 I mean ppl post here so often to just talk, like the convos that Pecunium and Ithiliana were having about authors, and it’s a good vibe I mean it’s kinda like going to a book club if you don’t like books and saying “YOU PPL HAVE NO LIVES YOU LOSERS” when they’re happily doing what they like, and when they ask the person why they’re there they’re like “WELL I SHOW UP TO HARASS YOU LESS OFTEN THAN YOU’RE HERE, SO WHAT DOES THAT MAKE YOU?” xD Um, it makes them ppl who like books? xD
I just dun understand this “I’m cooler than you, I have a life thing”… xD At the end of the day, when we all die, I think I’d rather look back and know I spent my life doing things that fulfilled ME, and that made ME happy, and hung out w/ ppl I liked online or off, than I spent my life trying to be cool, or afraid to do things b/c it wouldn’t make me cool, or etc etc :\ Life is short, and you can’t take it w/ you, (sry I was thinking about this last night xD ) who cares if you sat at the nerd table or not as long as you were having fun? I mean… clubbing is cooler than making Magyc cards in theory right? xD And I like clubbing, but most nights, I’d rather be at home making Magyc cards, talking w/ Kirby and my other friends online, and just relaxing :] It makes me happy, and I’ve spent SO MUCH of my life being unhappy, trying to be what other ppl want, etc… that who cares whether things are “cool” or not? xD I’d rather spend my time doing things that are FUN than worry about if the things I’m doing are “cool” or if I’m “cooler” than other ppl or w/e xD
Also Kave, thanks! :], but NWO wasn’t bugging me xD I appreciate the concern tho :3 I find him hilarious…
Ion-you are claiming we are spending 900 billion hours of our time on here and only people who have no lives could do that.
We are saying “hey, we have things going on but during those things going on, we can still post because of technology.”
You are just jealous because I went to San Diego and did not invite you. :p
I’d just like to point out that Captain Bathrobe sounds like the nickname of that homeless guy in the park who exposes himself to passersby. Now there’s a card idea!
Please. I haven’t fit that description for at least the past several months. Besides, everyone knows flashers wear raincoats.
I always hung out at the library with the other nerds. Then we all became Stoners and hung out in the back parking lot, where we were shunned by all the other Stoners unless we had weed. We remained nerds for all intents and purposes.
@Ami That reminds me of a time during a BBQ this weekend when me and my friends broke out our host’s Apples to Apples cards. Someone came in, saw what we were doing, and just shook their heads. “There’s make-outs outside!” they said.
What they probably didn’t know is that we’d spent the former week at a nudist camp/kink event. We’d already gotten our make-outs in, we were tired and just wanted to chill and drink beer… and we didn’t have an Apples to Apples game at home!
I was totally posting comments here while I passenger in the car on the way to a BBQ yesterday. There wasn’t anything on the radio and my fiance and I didn’t have anything in particular to talk about. Sometimes I do think I should put down the internet a little more and watch the world go by, but, whatever, it’s not like I’m here because I really have nothing else to do, the convos can be fun, there are cool peeps.
The first thing I’d drop if I was trying to cut back on internets wouldn’t be manboobz - it would be Vampire Wars! I’m getting better though - haven’t signed in to that in about 3 days. Go me!
T.M. Zink died in 1930. A quick Google search revealed an amusing blurb about him from 1917 which you can read here. For those too lazy to click on the link, the “metallic little lawyer” (love those old newspaper articles, whose authors still felt free to openly make fun of people’s names) was representing a man convicted of larceny for, apparently, offering to sell a woman a car, but instead just taking her money and not delivering the vehicle. Zink handled the appeal, which was based entirely around the argument that women are all liars, and therefore a conviction based on the testimony of a woman (who paid his douchebag client $2500 in pre-1917 money) could not be sustained. So he submitted a 40-page brief detailing all the “reasons” why the victim in this case should not be believed.
Doesn’t this bit, written in 1917, sound eerily familiar? “When they weren’t hauling him out of croup, chickenpox and juvenile court, mending his toys, bruised toes and broken heart, darning clothing, feeding him—all of which he has doubtless forgotten since he attained the wisdom of lordly manhood—that is what the ladies of Mr. Zink’s acquaintance have been doing all his life and are still doing, according to his brief. Powdering, painting and paddling; posing, chattering and hunting scandal like vultures; blocking every public place and talking out loud in the movies; devoting their lives to falseness, folly and meanness and then boasting that the word of one woman in court was equal to that of at least two men.”
Remember, this was 1917. The time when women could not vote, serve on juries or become judges. And this man was going completely off the rails because women could nevertheless testify. In criminal cases where they were victims, no less! Clearly, this was a sign that men were already horribly oppressed by women’s ability to buy cars and come to court seeking justice. The MRM would feel right at home in that day and age.
Or maybe not. Even in 1917, this was a bit strong for, you know, normal people. Zink’s so-called brief was stricken from the record and returned to him, and the appellant was instructed to submit a “proper brief”.
This is a VERY funny article Amused. I really want to read that brief now to find out why having a bird on one’s hat is worse then say, selling a car you have no intention of delivering.
I was so cool in high school I graduated a year early and was the only student in the AP Calculus class.
Hmm…I’m wondering whom Zink most resembles among our resident MRAs. David K. Mellar? Eoghan? AWS? NWO? He’s a classic MGOTW misogynist.
That does sound like NWO xD
I’d go with NWO too.
totally NWO. I could also sorta see Egohan, though, especially with the ‘women are all liars’.
“Before you get too pleased with yourself for that oh-so-witty reply, consider the amount of time I spend posting here, and the amount of time you people spend replying to me. In other words, your statement might have been intended as sarcasm, but it’s pretty much true.”
Ah, too late, I’m all ready pretty pleased about my oh-so-witty reply. I appreciate your concern though.
I guess you must’ve missed all the posts between then and now that weren’t about you. What a surprise.
“Only in your head, dude. Plus you assume I care about ‘winning’ internet arguments as much as you do. As opposed to write a couple of paragraphs and watch you fall all over each other in your rush to prove me wrong.”
And I write two paragraphs about what a garden-variety troll you are and you can’t help but respond. And when I say “garden-variety troll”, I mean you’re pulling all your material directly from the troll playbook chapter entitled “Make vague references to having more of a life than the people you’re trolling and then infer that anything in their lives is either really trivial or a fabrication”. Again, we get it. Your cool disdain for all that we find important and worthy is crystal clear and we’re all ever-so-impressed by how above us you are. And even though you’re so above us, you still find it in your heart to bless us with your presence. And that presence is truly unlike any I could find within five minutes on half a hundred boards on the internet, such a special and unique snowflake you are.
Bright guy like you, I don’t have to point out the sarcasm do I? Now be a good boy and come up with some more original and cutting insults for us to snicker at, at least then you’ll be serving some sort of useful purpose around here if you insist on sticking around.
It depends on which category of nerd or geek we’re talking about. My high school (total of 700 people, about 250 in my class, we graduated in 1973, didn’t have an sff nerd/geek group-as far as I could tell, I was the only person who read that weird shit.
There were chess nerds, and the debate team nerd, but the bigger cliques were the future farmers of america and the sports team and the marching band and the cheerleaders. There was also a big town/gown split in some of those since there was a land grant university where my dad taught (geology, thus the sf geekery from a young age).
I didn’t find fellow sf nerds until I got to Western Washington University in 1977 and found a group of fellow Trekkies starting Puget Sound Startrekkers Outpost 13! OMG, I still remembering seeing the dittoed flyer on the bulletin board in the dorm and feeling a shiver of ecstasy run up my spine. I had found my PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!
Off topic:
One of the odder MRA blogs listed in the links on the right side is The Thinking Housewife.
You have to be pretty special to write your blog in such a way as to make a reader ask themselves “Wait, so, does she hate pizza or black people more?”
“And I write two paragraphs about what a garden-variety troll you are and you can’t help but respond.”
Yeah, he’s pretty generic. There’s not much there there.
NWOaf for Zink, or maybe some sort of NWOaf/Eoghan mix.
caseymordred, from what I can tell Laura Wood, aka the Thinking Housewife, is more of a gender traditionalist than an MRA. Naturally most MRA’s hate her guts even though she agrees with them about 90% of the time.
I did a post on The Thinking Housewife a while back:
http://manboobz.com/2010/10/11/the-surreal-housewife/
My graduating class had 26 kids in it. When I said I was the only kid in Calc, I was being literal. And, yes, it was the public school, and, no, not the smallest one of the three in the county. The highschool/middleschool was a building attached to the elementary school by a walkway. Really, it is basically just one building. There are less than 500 kids from preschool to twelth grade. Which might give you some context for just how cool and sociable I was with my copy of The Stainless Steel Rat in tow.
@Ami, speedlines, Nobby, it can’t be NWO, because he works fifty hours a week and lives in a car with no food. He certainly can’t afford a fancy evil lawyer to manage a hoity-toity $100,000 estate.
Well, NWO also didn’t die in 1930. Well, as far as we know. Though the currently absent Zombie McDonald would probably not like such an affronts to the character of zombies.
Though it would explain how he lives off so little sleep…
Well, NWO also didn’t die in 1930.
Or did he?
I had five hundred kids in my own graduating class so that is teeny tiny DSC.
Ion: Mocking you is more like nine-men’s morris than chess, but still a pleasant pastime. I confess, you are better than Crack Emcee in terms of attempted insult; you at least try to tailor your barbs to the audience, but you need to work on the content; now that you have the form down.
1: Accusing people of things which aren’t true, esp. things like their lives, is pointless. Trying to point out lacks in their lives has a huge likelihood of failure. We know what we do. We know if things like, “you spend too much time on the internet” are going to offend (protip, that’s a charge meant to sway the audience. We don’t think we spend too much time here. If we did, we’d spend it esltwise. This works better in live situations, where you can hear the applause you expect the crowd to make, unless the lurkers really are supporting you in email).
2: Things lie, “Kave has become an internet tough guy”, need some support. Want to call me a pseudointellectual… show places where I am engaging in it. Otherwise it’s just blather. I’ve got a blog, people can look me up, and see what I have to say about things. Charges about character stand, or fall, on observable behavior. Intellectual as an insult is pretty weak. So is, “internet tough guy”, random and the accusation that we don’t have the lives we say we do.
3: If you want to avoid analytic comments about your motivations, best to just stick to things like the merits of female authors vs. male authors. The folks here are pretty good at responding to what is said. If you don’t say, “ooh, you have no lives but Man Boobz”, they aren’t likely to point out how much effort/time you spend here.
In other words, you reap what you sow.
@Hippodameia:
“Yeah, he’s pretty generic. There’s not much there there.”
Any idiot can do the world-weary-jaded “I’m soooo much better than all of this and all of you. Every time you respond to me only proves how important I am. Dance, puppets! Dance!” routine. Internet’s full of them and they’ve been around since the days of “content providers” like AOL. But every one of them is an under-appreciated genius of unparalleled wit, descended from upon high to show us, the little people, the error of our ways and the shining light of their intellect.
All you can really do with them is either ignore them and wait for them to ragequit or mock them and wait for them to ragequit. We’ll see how long this paragon holds out before he’s reduced to babbling about reptiloids and jewish bankers just to try and get attention.
@Ami Angelwings:
“Well, NWO also didn’t die in 1930.
Or did he?”
@Mertvaya Well, Ion’s actually been around for a while. He has spurts now and then, so he doesn’t seem likely to burn out too fast. He is boring, though, tends to show up, throw out random claims, get huffy when we rebutt them, and then disappear for a while.
Talking of NWO, he took his queerphobic act on the road xD and is now banned from No Seriously… xD
Also it took him one whole day to break his “I’M NEVER RESPONDING TO YOU UNTIL YOU STOP USING SMILEYS” thing for me xD
It’s too bad my response to him was deleted too D: He did the usual “so is it a choice or biological! be careful! i have you in a trap! if you say homosexuality is biological therefore you think thieves committing theft s biological!” thing which I’m sure he thought was v clever xD
He just can’t let go… XD
@Nobby: Sounds about typical. Troll, flounce, return, troll, flounce, repeat. Yep, sounding more unique and special by the moment.
I was the nerd/brainy kid in I forget how many shcools… let’s see, started about 3rd grade, so BGE, BGI, SG, back to BGI, BGHS, MHS: Six.
I was lucky… we had a room. an English teacher hosted a D&D club. So that was social mixing. I was also in theater, so when she retired, I managed to take over the little theater for lunch. School of about 2,000 so there was a pretty large mix. Drama, the paper, the academic clubs, the stoners, the surfers and (this was the 80s) the “valley girl” Crowd.
My first high school, I was in the choir, my junior high I was in the orchestra. SG was a small school, maybe 140 students, grades 1-8. There weren’t really any cliques, because the individual cohorts (four room, eight grades) were small.
Sorry I missed NWO’s brief moment of glory on No Seriously.
Ami: What… he tried to compare sexual preference to theft? The mind boggles.
Ami - I’m not sure if he’s 100% banned from No Seriously. He’s banned from my posts, but as far as I know he’s not banned in general.
He’s on the express train to Bantown, though. I mean, people are trying to have grownup discussions on that blog.
Yup xD He said that if you believe homosexuality is not a “choice” but “biological” (my question would have been how he’s defining homosexuality? o_O ) then therefore thieves are biological too and they can’t help but steal… xD (apparently being gay and being a rapist is like tied together now xD)
I just read the piece from the paper.. Zink was a special one, wasn’t he.
I’d say, from the evidence, he’s more a Mellar than an NWO.
I don’t know. Meller likes to pretend he luuuuuurves wimmen, provided they stay in their place, whereas Zink just hates them all, period. I have to give Zink credit for honesty.
Actually, the MRA he most reminds me of is Peter Andrew Whatsit, but I don’t think he’s ever trolled here.
Peter Andrew Nolan, wannabe legal authority and all around crook.
But Mellar goes on about how stupid they are, and flighty, and not really more than children.
As to his love… that would be the love that thinks they should all be killed and replaced with sexbots and uterine replicators (save for a few, of the really sexy ones that can be kept as slaves; a la Gor).
So… he knows religion is a choice too, right?
So choice is something we can ban, and religion is a choice…
Hm. I must be getting Meller confused with somebody else. Wasn’t there another troll who kept insisting he loved women?
@speedlines Maybe Tit for Tat? I recall him mentioning he had a wife and child, and yet he’s said some really vile stuff.
Boy they sure knew how to write obituaries back in the day…Mr. Zink has been
assiduous in his devotions to his wife, and was at her bedside when she
passed away.
His was a bit different: T.M. Zink had many friends and many enemies.
Moreover…. he remarried; sometime between his first wife’s death (1910) and his demise.
And, at the last of the obit… six years before he died; so his antipathy was that strong, yet he married again.
One wonders why.
Well, according to my Guide to All Things Involving Old People, Lucy Maud Montgomery, probably because it was cheaper then getting a housekeeper.
I wonder who was the early 1900s version of me? XD
^Dorothy Parker?
@ion
aww to bad I thought I could troll you for a bit longer.
@ami
well said
Dude, Zink married TWICE? It’s like… women are completely evil and useless, unless they make me a sammich. And even then evil. I don’t even know what to say to that.
It says a lot about male authority and female compliance in that era that a man like this could even marry once, never mind twice. And indeed, that he would want to.