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.
Internet Atheism is always so helpful.
Why think critically about religious belief at all when you can say “they’re all Fred Phelps, right? Thank NOT-GOD BECAUSE GOD IS A SILLY SKY MAN FOR BABIES that I’m superior to every religious person!”?
I don’t have a problem with Atheism, but ultimately it’s a belief, and that doesn’t give you license to be a jerk about how no, it’s knowledge and rationality so believing in any God, in any form, is exactly like believing the Sun goes around the Earth.
/rant
Holly, also note that all Christianity holds exactly the same beliefs as modern American Evangelical Protestantism. Russian Orthodox? Catholic? Your religion is focused on “deliberately abasing oneself in public for having done wrong, then pretending one’s slate is wiped clean without having to work at it,” you just don’t know it yet. Niiiice.
The problem with Hugo’s writing is that he’s a narcissist, so everything ends up being about him, even when in theory he’s writing about something else.
The problem with his redemption narrative is that it’s all well and good to hit your own rock bottom, have a revelation, and then rebuild, and if you nearly took someone else with you then you can’t just brush that aside and go “and the important thing is that I learned from this”. That’s why his writing pisses so many people off. What about the person he almost killed? How does she feel about this narrative? Are we even going to acknowledge her, or is she just a prop in the Story of Hugo’s Redemption?
RE Christmas, I’m going to continue the tradition of the Holiday Jambalaya and the Holiday Watching of the Silly Movies. (It’s Pratchett this year.)
Not to mention! My post about Schwyzer contained no mention of my religion or lack thereof. I am, as it happens, Russian Orthodox. But nothing in my post suggested that. So belle read this:
as an implicit defense of religions that were not Protestant, as implied by this:
What did I have to do, preface the post with DISCLAIMER: ALL RELIGIONS ARE BULLSHIT before dissecting my problem with one of them?
Or maybe, since zie saw the need to explain to me how much Schwyzer’s behavior had in common with Protestantism, after having read my post on how much Schwyzer’s behavior had in common with Protestantism, zie thought I was somehow defending evangelical Protestantism. I don’t know.
Incidentally, “evan-genital” is a lovely takedown, almost Wildean in its grace. FYI though, “Xtian” isn’t actually a slur, because the “X” in words like “X-mas” is the Greek letter Chi, which is the first letter of the word “Christ” in Greek and thus a common abbreviation for “Christ,” dating at least as far back as a thousand years in writing and dating almost twice as far back in Greek iconography. .
Sorry: in English writing. It’s older in other literatures.
VoiP – It’s probably because you knew too much about a specific theology. I’ve heard Internet Atheists describe theology as like dissecting the details of the cut and color of the Emperor’s New Clothes–it’s totally irrelevant once you know none of it exists anyway! So why bother educating yourself?
Knowing evangelical Protestantism is a specific thing rather than generic “xtianity” is a sign that you’ve done far too much studying a topic that ought to be totally ignored because lol sky man.
sigh
religionsplaining
Haha, there’s like 150 comments over at Hugo’s blog about Goodmanprojectgate, about a fifth of them from his regular hater club. It never ceases to amaze me how some MRAs can work standard rhetoric into literally any sentence, on any topic.
Holly, oh so very much yes, sadly, which is why as a sort of a “godfearing non-theist” who was gonna do history of religion, I tend to just avoid talking about this stuff on the internets because seizures will happen. Oh, seizures.
Oh and David, for me Borderlands was one of those games that’s a ton of fun for a while, and then the curve drops off very sharply. It started to get repetitive about seven or eight hours in, when I was fighting through the fourth bandit outpost and it’s like, this is filler, and not enjoyable. Then I ran into the bandit boss- Sledge, I think?- and he was basically a massive damage sponge, and I quit. This was a while ago, and I haven’t been back.
Part of it is that I just am not as into video games as I used to be. Middle school, I was obsessed. I would play anything. I actually own Big Rigs Over the Road Racing.
Actual seizures? I ask because my boyfriend has epilepsy, and one of the things that precipitates seizures for him was reading Hegel XD. He got too angry at him XD
Hah! No, not actual seizures! (Though I am autistic and anger can, I admit, make me… do interesting things) LOL at the Hegel!
@Protagoras: What exactly should he have done that people who only read him on the internet can clearly see he hasn’t done?
My issues are less about his religion than about the way he has turned his position of being a “male feminist” into a money stream–so it’s what he IS doing, for profit, while making his sinful past a part of the rhetoric that is (as often happens with men in feminist circles) making it all about him, centering himself.
Here’s a perfect example of the man’s double standards, in microcosm:
http://www.hugoschwyzer.net/2010/11/24/no-refuge-how-webcams-and-cell-phones-ratchet-up-the-pressure-to-be-perfect/
vs.
http://hugoschwyzer.net/2009/12/28/perfection-of-the-life-and-the-work-the-tragic-hubris-of-urban-meyer/
Holy shit, he pushes my buttons. He makes me so ANGRY, haha. I’m taking a break.
Oh for fuck’s sake. As an Internet Atheist, I see no problems with discussing how a person’s religion affects their belief system and writing. (For instance, my thoughts on the kyriarchy are deeply shaped by the doctrine of original sin. Yay ex-Catholic!)
I do feel like defending PZ Myers’s bit about “talking about theology is like discussing the cut of the emperor’s cloak.” With a couple of the major arguments for the nonexistence of God (most notably, that nearly everything seems to be explicable without Him and there is very little good evidence for His existence), theology doesn’t really matter, because it’s hard to argue away “lack of evidence.” 🙂 For other arguments, like the problem of evil, theology seriously does matter, so I do think he generalizes the argument past where it’s actually applicable.
I do, however, support people believing whatever they want. Life is short. If believing in God makes you happy, and you aren’t hurting anyone else, it’s really none of my business.
Glad I refreshed before posting because Ozy totally ninja’ed me ;). I agree, the Courtier’s Reply makes a lot of sense in the specific context it was created for. But I don’t doubt people abuse it all the time as a bludgeon to use against religion, whether or not it has any relationship to the situation at hand, because atheists sure can be jerks on the Internet sometimes. See: belle’s Athplosion of Brilliant Insights above. Did you see the clever wordplay? It involved genitals! Priceless.
On an entirely separate note, I love love love Christmas :). I’m filled with so much Christmas spirit that mildly worried that I might burst into a fiery conflagration of tinsel and choral sheet music. I’m really excited to see all of my family and any friends who come in to town for their school breaks. Got to hang out with my bestie yesterday, and my parents (who moved away this summer) are coming into town this evening! I hope everybody has fun doing whatever you do this time of year.
If there’s a God, I sort of imagine him as a manic douchebag.
I envision God as the largest possible scale of the fractal consciousness of the universe; if atoms have their own life and cells have their own life and I have my own life, well, God is a few levels above my life. And just as I don’t care much if I lose a few atoms I don’t think God cares much if I live or die or win a football game. I take comfort from believing that I (and everyone and everything else in my life) am a tiny part of God, not that I have a personal relationship with a humanlike God.
…if that makes sense.
Also I’m still nominally Jewish but that doesn’t mean much besides a few holidays.
MRAL’s description of God is a lot like how I imagined God to be when I used to be a Christian. When I listened to hellfire and brimstone sermons, I’d imagine God as an angry tyrant. Now I don’t believe in any of that, but I still don’t think it’s right to bash religious people. I take a live and let live approach to it unless someone is using hir religion as an excuse to harm others.
As for Christmas, I still love it. I love Christmas songs, Christmas food, and all of the traditions. It’s more fun now that I have kids. It’s fun to help them make wish lists for Santa and take them out to look at Christmas lights.
ozy:
The Myers line is entirely apropos in actual debates about the topic; if there’s no god, what sort of a being it would be if it existed is a somewhat pointless discussion. But when talking about how a person’s philosophy and behavior are shaped by the person’s beliefs, the details of those beliefs actually matter.
So it’s a perfectly valid position to take (though similar to your situation, I’m an agnostic atheist/secularist, but the religion I don’t practice is Judaism, and that has implications for my moral sense and my understanding of how religion works), but wholly irrelevant to a discussion of the consequences of, e.g., Hugo’s Protestantism.
@Kendra, the bionic mommy
I think doing that kind of thing with your kids means a whole lot. I don’t have a lot of warm memories of my Dad pre-divorce – or really, many memories at all – but the one thing that stands out is every year, he would load me and my brother into the truck to drive by the light display that is put up on a street near his parents’ house. They had the house ever since he was 2 years old, and the light display has been there almost as long.
My grandparents are gone now, and my dad and his sister inherited the house, which they’re now renting to me! So I get to see that light display all of the time and think of my dad and the warm fuzzies I got as a young child.
/gross mushiness
Personally I’m an anti-Christian first, and an atheist second. As in, (anti-Christ)ian, not anti-(Christian). I’m opposed to the philosophy and the philosopher, not necessarily the people who hold to it.
I came to atheism via a previous detour into left-hand path paganism. A creed usually called Satanism but clearly only because of the trolling potential that the luminaries of the ‘movement’ saw in naming it that way.
I consider most Internet Atheists to be way too *deferrent* to Christianity’s values. If there’s one thing I have to agree with the fundies, it’s their insistence that Christian values are intrinsic to Western thought. They’re so insidiously tied into the entire Western civilization that most Western atheists just adhere to them without examining them. Most atheists will freely declare that they consider Christ’s teachings to be of value even in a secular society. I have no such illusion. I think Christian teachings are immoral (and I mean New Testament AND Old, not just that Old Testament teachings are immoral but were improved on by Christ). My main objection being to the idea that Jesus died for our sins. The sacrificial lamb theology is a monstrosity.
Bakunin wrote it best when he said that if God existed, it would have to be abolished. That’s basically my position on it. He also reserved most of his scorn to so-called freethinkers who actually spent most of their time discussing the irrelevant God question, when the reason for the masses’ worship is quite frankly that the conditions of the proletariat are abhorent and that hope, even a false one, is a human need. I have no love lost for atheists and skeptics who make anti-religious activism their big battlefield while either ignoring or actively working against (in the case of glibertarians) social justice. The root of religiosity lies in that perceived humanity of religion that the modern capitalist world severely lacks.
@Viscaria, that’s what I hope I’m doing for my own kids. It’s fun for me to show them lights and watch their eyes get big. My toddler calls it “Pwitty!” (pretty). I get to relive how fun Christmas was when I was a child, too. The one tradition we abandoned was this new fad “elf on the shelf”. My older child thought it was creepy so we sent that elf back to the North Pole, and by North Pole I mean the Target customer service desk.
Wow, I’d never heard of Elf on the Shelf. That really IS creepy.
I’m kinda with BlackBloc religionwise, except that I made up my own religion of new-agey paganish agnosticism. A simple philosophy, but it works for me. I think Christmas in North America (and possibly Europe) is more a cultural thing than a religious one, in that I have huge swaths of friends of different faiths (buddhist, sikh, muslim, jewish, xtian, pagan, none of the above) and we all celebrate Christmas.
Or rather, we all get together with loved ones and sparkle up the place, exchange gifts, eat huge amounts of wonderful food, and get all sloppy and sentimental on or about the winter solstice.
One particular thing that I find myself falling back on from my nominally Protestant upbringing is trying to explain to children that a dead beloved person (or animal) isn’t ever coming back because s/he lives in heaven now.