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.
Like I said, I don’t like Matlack handled the Twitter thing very well, but did he really call them “crazy”? He referred to the situation as “insane”, once, in a debate that was hundreds and hundreds of Tweets long. Kind of uncalled for but whatever. I almost certainly could find a dozen equivalent insults from women in that huge megathread.
This is what I mean when I say that the Prof holds men so a far higher standard than women. God damn he bothers me.
Okay, I’ll step off. This is what happens when I have too much time on my hands! I need school to keep myself occupied.
@Kendra and MRAL: Kendra, I agree–I liked Hugo’s post on his resignation (though am SOOOOOOOOOOO tired of the football helmet story) much more than I remember liking his posts in the past.
MRAL: The quote you give from Hugo is one that I and many feminists would agree with–and Matlock’s post was not just about men, but about the relationships between men and women, saying some fairly typical stereotypical and ugly cliches about women–so it was not just about men. I never cared enough about the GMP to read over there (and anyplace that talks about its brand is a place I will never bother reading), and so I don’t know how feminist it aims to be–but Matlock’s post is downright sexist, and the fact that he did not realize it/began defending it sounds exactly like privilege in action–and I don’t see Hugo’s post as at all bitchy.
This is basic stuff–and not just around the gender axis. I am not going to argue with a black person about white racism–they know a lot more about it than I do, and I’m not aware of all that they will know, no matter how much reading and listening I’ve done (and I began working on my own racism twenty years ago by reading a lot of work by women of color about white feminist racism).
And equating insults from men to women as the same as from women to men is one of those fake rhetorical moves that ignores the differences in social power between people in different gender classes. I don’t see acknowledging men as a group/class (despite what any individual feels) has more social status and privilege as “holding men to a higher standard” nor does privilege as a concept in social justice work mean that bad things never happen to people in the privileged group.
MRAL: so, what do you think about the new HOBBIT trailer?
We don’t have to keep talking about Hugo.
I am all over happy.
Nah, just unplug and read a book or watch a movie. Shit, go read lolcats if you have to.
Look, putting it simply, I don’t think that you can ask men to do what women are unable, unwilling, or just don’t do, regardless of “power differentials”. It’s hypocritical. Most feminists don’t do this, but Hugo does.
And I think that women have unique insight into being women, and all the disadvantages and advantages or whatever that entails. Men have unique insight into being men, and likewise know things that non-men don’t. I think that female feminists( and Hugo) might do well to listen. I thought Amanda’s response to Matlack was fine, and I agreed with her for the most part… but it was telling how damn *defensive* she was near the beginning. “Oh, I’m friends with dudes, and I’ve talked to them, and here’s what they say…”
MRAL, subject change: what are you doing for the holidays?
Haha. Nothing much. I celebrate Christmas, but it’s like, the whole thing is so overdone that by the time the 25th actually gets here, I’m sick of it all. Scrooge represent.
MRAL has been seriously likeable since that post about exploiting homeless girls for sex. Chalk one positive outcome for fucking amoral PUA pricks writing vomit-inducing posts!
And by that, I mean since MRAL condemned that post. Not that MRAL wrote that post… Just in case it’s not clear by context.
…wait, what?
Are you going home or staying where you are? I’m not going home for break, since I have an incomplete I need to finish. I thought my mom might visit toward the beginning of January, but my dad’s been having some health problems and she doesn’t know if he’ll be recovered enough by Jan to live on his own for a week. Dealing with your parents aging is the worst.
My fathers’ side of the family has had kids late for a few generations. My grandfather was a young man in the twenties, which was when he came to the US — I have a great-uncle who died in World War One, which gives me a vertiginous feeling when I think about it — and my own father was born in 1944, about ten years after his sisters. So my aunts from that side of the family are as old as my grandmother on my mother’s side.
The other side of my dad fathering me late, of course, is that I’m going to lose him early.
http://www.hugoschwyzer.net/2011/01/03/what-you-need-to-remember-what-you-need-to-forget-on-self-acceptance-after-doing-something-truly-awful/
But don’t worry, he feels much better about himself now! I’m so glad he’s okay!
I tried to read Matlack’s posting reacting to his horrible mistreatment by feminist tweets and I honestly could not make it more than about a third of the way in.
If you’re going to be annoying, at least be concise!
I’m resigning from the GMP too.
Granted, I’m not actually part of the GMP, so that’s doesn’t actually mean anything.
I’m also resigning from Hugo Schwyzer!
And kitties!
(Ok, I take that last one back.)
MRAL, did you ever finish Borderlands? I have to say I enjoyed the heck out of that game.
Well this is probably going to do me no favours but I like Hugo’s writing it was a great source of comfort to me during a very confusing time in my life that I don’t really wish to get into here.
To know there was a guy out there writing really confidently on being a pro feminist man was pretty great actually. He had a funny relaxed and friendly tone that I really engaged with and his ability to be so raw and honest about his past misdeeds .
My interest in him waned greatly during the whole paternally episode but I still sometimes read his GMP articles.
I’m not sure how to feel about this, since I have been fucked up enough mentally in the past that I can see myself c. 5 years ago doing something like that. I never did, but it would have been possible.
And I did do some awful things, back in the day. While I’m doing better now, thanks to drugs and therapy, I don’t know how to think of myself or of my relationship with my boyfriend: on the one hand, I don’t think I’m an abuser any more, but on the other hand I’m not sure how it’s possible for my boyfriend to interact with me in a way that’s not implicitly marked by the way I’ve treated him in the past. He says he loves me, but I honestly don’t know whether it’s possible to get back from what I’ve done to him, and what he’s done to me.
On the other hand, my father also was abusive when I was growing up, terribly abusive, and then about five years ago he got on medication and last year he decided that he had to turn the way he behaves to other people around. So he’s helping my mom out financially quite a bit, for instance. He’s still not what you might call normal, but he’s better and I have a relationship of sorts with him. He’s fun to hang out with, even. I think I’ve forgiven him.
So I’m not sure what to think about this, about how Schwyzer should be treated now. I do think he’s going about this incorrectly — his narratives are about his own path, not about the amends he makes to the people he’s hurt — but at the same time I don’t want to say that he’s irredeemable.
For what it’s worth, I think the religious framework within which he’s working is doing him a disservice; he is, if I remember correctly, Protestant, which means that redemption is a private matter between his soul and God. First sin, then consciousness of sin, then forgiveness, then redemption. Looking at this from the outside, this narrative is weirdly contextless: redemption is contingent upon a private movement of the spirit towards God, and the links between that redemption and the things you actually do with your life are downplayed. (In fact, considering that humans are sinful by nature in this belief system, there is, properly speaking, no link between redemption and the things you do with your life: God’s grace is given in a non-contingent manner, and humans will never really be worthy of it. From one point of view, it barely matters what you do once you’re saved.) The redemption narrative as such is all that matters, but the substance of that narrative is a series of emotions: the way you know you’re having a redemption experience is because of the feelings you have during the experience. The effect is a laser-focus on one’s personal psychodrama, which is interpreted as a religious event: Schwyzer probably interprets his feeling of being OK with this experience as a sign of God’s forgiveness.
That last paragraph is just me noodling on, and I’m not sure how much sense I’m making.
VoiP – I don’t think Schwyzer is irredeemable because of what he did. I’m angered by the way he plays it off as a narrative about self-forgiveness, and the actual things that happened to the woman seem severely backgrounded by his own feelings, until it becomes little more than a tragic story of something he did to himself.
His narrative of redemption seems to have no components other than “then I got over it, thank God”–no real concern for the woman or for his neighbors except in the ways they relate to him.
(My own religious context probably matters here: I’m a Jew partnered with a Catholic and in both of our religions guilt is a lot more prominent and redemption a lot more hard-won.)
Still, I don’t think Schwyzer is The Worst Person Ever or anything like that. I completely agree with his takedown of Matlack. But the way his narratives of redemption always seem to skip straight to the “It’s okay, I forgave myself!”, and seem terribly light on really considering the impacts he’s had on other people, bothers me.
I don’t think he needs to go out and scourge himself some more, I don’t think he needs to be Banned From Feminism Forever, but I don’t personally like him.
For instance, one of the comments in that thread on Feministe began “Clarisse, why are you giving this animal a platform?” “Animal”? Oh hell no. (The comment went on to make some good points.)
OK, we crossed the streams. Holly, what you’re saying makes sense.
If your religion is based around feelings, forgiving yourself is the only way you can be sure God forgives you. Protestantism + pop psychology = he’s born again through himself.
VOIP, all of that made perfect sense to me. It was a very insightful analysis of what it means to turn one’s life around. I grew up attending a fundamentalist church and left it during my teen years. One of the things I did like about Christianity was that it said nobody is irredeemable. Just because someone fucks up badly in life, it’s never too late to change and become a better person. I remember when a preacher visited Jeffrey Dahmer in prison and baptized him. Some Christians were outraged that he would help such a terrible murderer, but according to the rules of Christianity, his crimes were no different than someone committing petty larceny.
Anyway, for Schwyzer, I am more inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt now that he has changed his life. In no way do I condone his past behaviors. It’s just that I think that he deserves a chance to prove his sincerity. In fact, I’m hopeful to see that someone with such a past can now be an ally.
See, this part is great. It’s how that plays out that’s important. You can’t just say “Now I’m better!” and then not do very much about it.
“Animal”? Oh, hell, YES. Mad the Swine got that right on the fucking money.
And, VoIP, apparently you’re criticizing Hugo for spouting the wrong kind of nonsense. All religion is bullshit, and xtianity’s emphasis on deliberately abasing oneself in public for having done wrong, then pretending one’s slate is wiped clean without having to work at it, is exactly what Hugo does. Not much different from “backsliding” evangenitals.
Not really big on either Christian redemption or attempted murder, but I don’t see where people are getting the idea that Hugo has merely forgiven himself and hasn’t otherwise done much about it. What exactly should he have done that people who only read him on the internet can clearly see he hasn’t done?
Where do you see me defending evangelicals in that post of mine that criticizes evangelical Protestantism in detail? The parallels between Schwyzer’s behavior and the standard evangelical psychodrama was my point.
As far as I can tell, he’s never apologized to the people he hurt, and not just the woman he tried to kill either. His discussions of his past revolve around him and his feelings about the wrong he’s done, not about how he, you know, hurt people.
Am I an animal? I used to be abusive, like Schwyzer. Unlike him, I’m trying as hard as I can to reform my life and I don’t expect to be forgiven, or to be respected as the King of How Not To Be Abusive. Which is the part that matters to you?