Did Tom Matlack of the Good Men Project – not to be confused with Ben Matlock, fictional defense lawyer beloved by the elderly – swallow one of those mysterious “red pills” I keep hearing about on Men’s Rights blogs? Whatever he swallowed, it’s apparently causing him to hallucinate.
How else to explain his recent post on the GMP site titled “Being a Dude Is a Good Thing.” Now, as a dude who spends a good deal of time every day being a dude, I’ve got nothing against anyone being a dude, provided that’s what they want to be. It’s just that the piece itself is full of some rather strange generalizations that don’t actually seem to be, you know, true, at least not in what’s commonly known as “the real world.”
Rather than try to rebut his argument, because he doesn’t seem to have much of one, let’s just look at some of his loopier pronouncements:
Why do men get blamed for everything?
Uh, because they don’t? Sure, men get blamed for things, but guess what? Women get blamed for things all the time, too, from witchcraft, to divorce, to getting themselves raped, battered or killed. They’ve been blamed for earthquakes, for “inciting” male lust, for killing chivalry and “killing off real men,” for “taking roles intended by God only for men.” Heck, some inventive sorts have even figured out how to blame women for men who are assholes. And this guy has decided that “Black Women are to blame for the disrespect Black Men show towards Black Women.” For endless additional examples, scroll back through the posts and comments here, visit any of the blogs on my “boob roll,” or simply continue living on planet earth.
Back to Matlack, whose generalizations get more surreal by the sentence:
In the locker room, in the bathroom, on the walk out of the board room, in my conversations with men of all kinds, that’s what I hear more than anything. The resignation that to be a man is to be unacceptable at some level to the woman in your life.
Really? Who on earth are you hanging out with? And what women are they hanging out with? Are men other than Tom Matlack and his possibly apocryphal conversational partners actually having conversations like this on a regular basis? If the “woman in your life” basically hates men, what is she doing with you, and what are you doing with her?
One close friend jokes, “When speaking to my wife I always make sure to look at the ground in deference. And I make sure not to make any sudden movements.”
Um, what?
I’ve watched him. He loves his wife.
He’s a very competent human being. But with her he’s decided the only way to survive is to submit. The female view is the right view. The male view just gets you into trouble.
You see what I meant before about the hallucinations, right?
But Matlack suggests there is hope for the poor demure, never-before-heard-from men of the world. Apparently they are starting to open their mouths at last.
It seems that the blame game in the mainstream, whether through the minimization of male life in pop culture or on television or through the continued obsession with men behaving badly, has finally struck a chord with the average guy.
Let’s just pause a moment to reflect on this whole “minimization of male life in pop culture or on television.” Mr. Matlack, do you actually watch movies or television, or visit libraries or anything like that? Most movies revolve around men as the main characters, with women in many cases serving as little more than a love interest or simply as scenery. Have you ever heard of the Bechdel test? Read up on it, run the test on some of your favorite films, and then get back to us on the “minimization of male life in pop culture.”
Now back to Matlack’s manifesto:
We are no longer willing to be blamed for being men. We are no longer willing to avert our gazes and stay silent about our feelings. We are raising our voices and telling our stories in our own male vocabulary.
Yeah, because men have been so utterly silent about their feelings, their opinons, and pretty much everything, up until now.
To women, I assume the response is, “well, it’s about time.” But just remember when we talk it’s not going to sound like a women in a man’s body. It’s gonna be all dude. And you are just going to have to deal with that.
Ladies, prepare yourselves for a lot more Dudesplaining in the near future. Dudes will be ignored no longer! Dudes!!! DUUUUUDESSS!!!!!!
EDITED TO ADD: Matlack’s gotten some responses on Twitter to his dudely roar; he’s posted a bunch of them here. Guest appearances by Amanda Marcotte and (seriously) Roseanne Barr.
Did anyone else read
and think “abuse”? I want to make sure it’s not just me here. That’s not a normal relationship, I think by definition.
Kendra:
Right, I might be willing to let him slide on thatif he weren’t clearly extrapolating from that one fucked-up case.
Slavey:
You understand that’s not actually a refutation, right?
Unless it’s the “you used big words, therefore you’re wrong” style of refutation so beloved of stupid people?
Slavey:
What ozy actually said was “men should be free to watch what they want, wear what they want, and display the emotional responses they want.” Do you object to that? Does freedom for men bother you in some way?
Dracula:
Well, if you’d fallen for “‘gullible’ isn’t in the dictionary” and the like as often as he must have, you’d be suspicious of people trying to impart information too.
His style seems to be a mix of “I’m not going to back up my assertions because you wouldn’t accept my evidence anyway,” a belief that unfalsifiable is the same as unassailable, and magical thinking (particularly around the mystic powers of words).
ozy:
That’s circular.
I realize I haven’t finally discovered the flaw that’s going to make their whole system come crashing down, but do they know it’s circular? Do they realize it?
Linds:
But very odd(-to-me) ideas of “female experience.” Like, judging from the Wikipedia article she seems to have created a language suited to talking about feelings and sitting on the couch eating bonbons. I actually do agree that women and men have different (if somehwhat overlapping? I guess? Tiresias, are you reading this?) experiences; I don’t know if she exactly nails those differences.
@Hershele: Unlike Newt WO I’m not opposed to Wikipedia articles, but the one you linked to is noted as having problems (I have real issues with Wikipedia’s notability criteria — since apparently being a Playboy bunny/Playmate is enough to get you an entry, but not being one of the foremost feminist sf authors in the US: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playboy_bunny#Bunnies_who_became_Playmates).
But anyway, Laa’dan is a bit more complex than the article implies — and it wasn’t created to test the Sapir-Worf theory: the NOVEL in which Laa’dan first appeared does speculate on the question “what IF women in a sexist, misogynistic culture could create their own language, what would change?” The novel opens with the Constitutional amendment denying women the vote: in fact, I suspect that DKM would cream his undies at the future (to me, and to her, dystopian) image that Elgin presents (as far as I’m concerned she did it earlier and better than Atwood). In this future, women can work only as nurses or a few other limited fields, and only if their male guardian agrees; the one exception is the women of the LInes. In this future, the world economy depends on trade with multiple alien cultures; the translation work for all this trade and treaty is done by linguists who are extended families who practice immersion (their babies are put side by side in environmentally controlled spaces in their homes to learn the alien languages from birth–plus multiple human ones–I did mention Elgin is a linguist, right?)–there is lots of snark about the US method of teaching second languages (FAIL). The novel is US-centric, though there are Lines in other countries. Because of rapid expansion and demands, and because even in this future misogynistic society it’s realized that learning a language is a human characteristic, the women of the LInes are integrated into the translation work, though still denied the rights of men, and still expected to do all the housework (and have unlimited babies to fulfill the demands of expanding trade). For generations, the women linguistics have been in a secret network creating a language to express their realities — later, Elgin did create Laa’dan (in the same way Tolkien created Sindarin and Quenya and others languages for his cultures, and the same way the hired linguistics created Klingon and the language in the Avatar movie). It is interesting to look at what is emphasized in the Laa’dan that is shared in the book (it does emphasize a lot of terminology for feelings, but there are no bon bons), and reciprocity, and relationships (multiple levels of friend and enemy), etc. When the women in the LInes start speaking it and teaching it to the girlchildren (each Line of Linguistics, the extended family, lives in a sort of huge compound; the married couples can have some rooms together, but the sexes are segregated into girl and boy dorms; and the menopausal women are in a separate area–called Barren House).
To really appreciate her testing of the theory, you need to read the book: while you can get a dictionary of Laa’dan, that really doesn’t convey her speculation on the fictional sense (and no, I don’t believe that a bunch of women learning Laa’dan would in fact change anything–language, language acquisition, and how people communicate is too complex). Nor do I buy the idea that women and men speak different languages (though amazingly enough when feminist linguistics point out the differences in how language works, they’re often called man-haters, but when a man writers “men are from mars, women from venus” he gets lauded to the sky, hired for consulting, and everybody babbles on about it).
But just as any sf novel extrapolates from existing scientific knowledge, so Elgin explores the possibilities of a cultural situation in which the genders are so segregated that they might as well speak different languages since they have nothing in common; since the segregation and oppression of women is controlled by males as a class, it’s also a very feminist book (although US centric, focusing only on white women, as Elgin realized herself and tried to deal with in the two later novels).
In the second one, the women of the LInes try to figure out how to get Laa’dan out of the linguist compounds (the Lines are despised by the general population because of government propaganda about how decadent and hedonistic and greedy the Linguists are) — and they work through the Catholic church (the convent is one official allowed outlet for women who don’t want to marry).
Shorter version: Read Elgin’s work! IT’S FEMINIST FANTASTIC!
Oh, and for those interested in sf and poetry: she founded the Science Fiction POetry Association!
Here is link to books by her listed on amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/Suzette-Haden-Elgin/e/B000APYEFW
Oh, and other linguistic affiliations: in the Ozark trilogy (Ozarkers travel to another planet by way of ‘magic’), the system of magic is based on Noam Chomsky’s transformational grammar.
I didn’t know that until i hit my first intro to linguistics class, saw the transformational equations, and went, BIZZUH? But that’s OZARK MAGIC!!!!111!!!
She was born and raised in the Ozarks.
Boyfriend’s Christmas present: acquired.
He love linguistics, considers himself a feminist, and writes sci-fi from a feminist perspective.
Wow, Suzette Elgin sounds like a very interesting author. I’m in Joplin, which is at the edge of the Ozarks, so I might relate to some of her regional references. Thanks for the idea on what books to look for next time I go to the library, Ithiliana.
Hershele, I noticed it, too. I pictured the friend as the stereotypical henpecked husband and his wife as domineering. Matlack didn’t give too many details, but it did register as being somewhat abusive. My main problem was how he used that one bad relationship as an example of what all straight relationships are like. I agree completely when you said
Suzette Haden Elgin
Native Tongue
Chapter Thirteen, pg 145
I am acquainted with Elgin, we have overlapping communities and interests. I have it on authorities I trust that she has some dementia.
If anyone wants, we can talk about Sapir-Worf, weak, strong or the popular misconceptions, as well as some of the structural quirks about the study of linguistic theory.
🙂
pecunium – Stop being so totally way more interesting and well connected than me, man.
And yeah, I’ve been meaning to read Elgin forever. So much to read! Even with the kindle now! XD So muuuuch!
I’d love to talk about Sapir-Worf, but I have to go make food for the relatives. Dammit!
“pecunium – Stop being so totally way more interesting and well connected than me, man.”
Seconded! 😉
I’m not trying to derail with my sob story, but my sci-fi fandom and related freelance academicy reading all got sort of stopped cold with my pstd which made it impossible for me to concentrate on long stretches of text for a long time. Also, I had some memory loss. So it’s like, GAH, I EITHER SHOULD KNOW THIS OR USED TO KNOW THIS YEEEARRRGH!
I haven’t been to a con since the nineties, either. Sniffle. I’m starting to think I’ll never get caught up :p
Molly/zhinxy: I was lucky enough to belong to a couple of communities, back in the day, which had a lot of well known authors/artists in them. From that, and how that parlayed into good Lj-luck, and just being lucky, I’ve been able to have some pretty low “bacon numbers” for a lot of people.
CassandraSays:
“Also, MRAL, remember the conversation about what is and is not creepy, and why? Hugo is arguably not a bad looking guy – too nerdy and straight-laced for me, but he’s not ugly, and he’s tall. But that thing where he checks Rate My Professor for comments where students say they find him hot, and posts about it on his blog? That’s pretty damn creepy.
(Also sad. I think he’s close to my age, and dude, really? You’re still looking for sexual validation from teenagers? That’s kind of pathetic.)”
I sto
Ppedreading him when he posted a love letter from one of his students on his blog. As far as I was concerned that was completely unacceptable. You just don’t do that kind of thing.
Ok so every criticism of Hugo here appears to be rooted only in whether or not you trust that he means what he says, or you think he’s being insincere and disingenuous. None of that seems to be rooted in actual experience with him being that way, but rather an alternative interpretation of what he has chosen to post about himself.
That’s not to say that interpretation is wrong — he may very well be all the things I’ve seen him accused of in this thread. But I see none of the “icky” things that are insinuated here. I CAN see the interpretation, but it certainly isn’t the one I thought of and I see no real evidence now.
I’ve only met Hugo once for a few hours at WAM a few years back, so I’m not exactly a character witness, but I saw and heard only sincerity from him. If you don’t think he’s genuine, well, don’t read him. If you don’t think saying “What I did was immoral and unethical” counts as him admitting he was wrong and holding himself accountable…well, I don’t understand and I don’t know what WOULD count, but hey, don’t believe him if you don’t think it’s enough. But I have no reason, myself, to think he’s insincere.
Whatever you think Hugo is, he clearly ISN’T an MRA who makes overgeneralizations about women and how they’re holding him down. I think his character is immaterial to this particular discussion, especially because an argument that boils down to “He’s creepy!” “No he’s not!” using the exact same blog quotes as evidence is destined to remain unresolved.
It seems to me that Hugo attracts more hate than he really deserves (though in the interest of full disclosure, I may go easy on him because his father was a great guy who taught me a tremendous amount about Kant). Hugo has his flaws, to be sure, but I feel like there’s more going on.
It occurs that the anti-feminists often accuse guys who defend feminism of being suck-ups, just spouting feminist lines because they’re trying to curry favor with women. Some feminist women seem to have similar suspicions that at least some guys who agree with them are faking it for such reasons. I wonder if some of the Hugo-bashing is motivated by people thinking a gender studies professor who admits to a past of sleeping with students just has to be that kind of “feminist” guy. I find this whole narrative fairly problematic, though unpacking all the details would probably be more than would fit in a comment. Just the fact that the narrative so often comes from anti-feminists is a good starting point for why I don’t like it, though.
So? “He’s not an MRA” is one of the smallest things you can expect of a person, never mind a person attempting to position himself as The Official Male Feminist.
His character is extremely relevant to a discussion about his character. And is anyone here arguing that sleeping with students, then giving yourself a million cookies for no longer sleeping with students (but constantly reminding everyone you still could if you wanted!) isn’t creepy? And not just “creepy” but really inappropriate and point-missing and not really helping the causes he tries to support.
. “Some feminist women seem to have similar suspicions that at least some guys who agree with them are faking it for such reasons.” –
No. I give feminist men the benefit of the doubt, I give Hugo the benefit of the doubt, but the more I read him the more qualms I have.
I think he’s got an ego and a bit of a self-righteous-mea-culpa syndrome that ties into it, plus some creepy notions of how female students relate to him. He’s still an okay feminist writer, but I think he comes off as trying too hard to curry favor and position himself high in the heirarchy of male feminists. If not LORD OF THE FEMINIST MEN.
I also think he has some serious class blindness issues (And general “Progressive-with-a-capital-P managerial liberal WASPyness,” but that is always going to jar on my particular socio-political sensibilities) All in all, he’s an okay male feminist writer, not one of my favorites. And I think he has an ego problem.
Is that so odd for me to think or hard to believe?
None of this means he’s some sort of slimy fraud. He doesn’t have to be insincere at all. Just flawed and human.
I can’t get over Hugo’s ‘tried to kill my girlfriend’ story
@Holly Pervocracy, this post is about Tom Matlack’s (frankly offensive) post. I do not know how it devolved to a discussion about Hugo…I know he was part of the Twittersplosion that resulted but cannot see how attacking his character is relevant to the core issue of Matlack’s MRA-channeling. As far as I know Hugo, however little you may like or believe him, has no MRA-like tendencies, and that’s what I thought this discussion was about. Hugo is a separate issue from Matlack, yes?
Or am I missing something?
Ruthie, discussions around here go all over the place with regularity. * Literally everywhere, and nobody is “attacking Hugo” – Did you read the thread? I think you’re the one being disengenuous at best, and declaring yourself Mod of David’s Blog at worst. The discussion turned to Hugo. Holly talked about Hugo. She wasn’t entirely positive. She is not smearing him or attacking him without reason. If David has a problem with our conversations getting off the main topic, he can tell us. (And bless him, he’d have a lot of work cut out for him if he did! ) You’re missing a LOT, if you’re being totally above board here.
* did you notice we were all talking about Susan Elgin and linguistics before you showed up to defend Hugo, for example? Don’t come in and tell the regulars how to comment on blogs they frequent. Come on. Pretty trolly, don’t you think?
Hugo attracts a lot of hate (from the MRAs… not other feminists) because his favorite topic is not women or women’s issues, but rather men’s failings. It seems like he’ll manage to twist men’s problems, women’s problems, and the world’s problems as all being men’s fault. It’s not overt, but if you read his work over a long period of time, it’s a pattern you’ll notice. Also, he just has a pompous writing style that calls to mind hardcore armchair theorizing, a perception that is not helped by the fact that he’s apparently spent his whole life in academia and never had another job.
Ruthie, excuse me, but who the fuck are you again? Subjects change really fast around here, no need to scold us or derail us with Hugo concern-trolling, we can derail ourselves just fine.