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.
Nebraska was the first American state to declare marital rape illegal (in 1976). Before then, the marriage contract was legally understood as automatic consent, which could never be withdrawn.
Unfortunately NWO doesn’t understand consent, so what you just said will be wasted on him.
NWO, I know you frown upon Wikipedia, but seriously.
If one spouse doesn’t have the right to say no, then the other spouse has the right to rape them. It’s a pretty binary situation.
NWO: Please explain to me how consenting adults doing things in private is any of your fucking business (or mine). Are you somehow being forced to watch gay porn? Read slash? Attend Pride parades? No? Then stfu already.
@Quackers
I’m sure your ancestors would be happy to know you found all the men in you long lineage to be rapists who kept women as incubators. Did the few years between the time women and men were each given the unversal right to vote in all of history really mean oppression? Since women in the wyoming territories were given the right to vote before men were universally given the right to vote does that make those women oppressors? Those bitches!
Poor little coddled women of history. How harsh it must’ve been. Picture all the modern coniences you have today as not yet existing. Now tell me, could women compete with men as loggers, carpenters, stonemasons, shipbuilders? I don’t think so my pampered little princess. They also didn’t die from all those nasty jobs. And the elite owmen did rule just as the elite men ruled. Issabella sat at the table with ferdinand and the pope when they divied up the new world.
Make no mistake, there is no moment in time where women didn’t have it easier. You seem to think before a 100 years ago thruout history big daddy was there to lower the UPS shipping weight to 40lbs so women could compete equally.
Little snowflake Quackers thinks a 100 years ago people were hopping in their air-condition nissans, firing up lady gaga on their satilite radio and off to the office for a breezy day of paperwork. Nuh-uh princess.
Fact: the military law code only agreed that a man could rape his wife in 2007. 2007, NWOSlave!
I’ll second Spear’s request for a peer-reviewed scientific study suggesting significant non-cultural personality differences between men and women as expressed through clothing choices, media consumption, and emotional display. Particularly since, as recently as ancient Rome, trousers were considered unmanly and real men wore tunics which had what we would today consider a skirt.
I’m actually a sex differences agnostic: I believe part is biological and part is societal, but the exact details we need to wait for the neuroscience for.
Spearhafoc,
I am posting in sincere admiration of your responses to NWO – his latest reply to me clearly shows he’s a visitor from another dimension where history proceeded on completely different lines. And the photos of Christina Hendricks… umm, if you keep going, I think I’ll have to go and lie down. >:)
@KathleenB
When gayness is promoted in schools, the government and the media it becomes my business.
It’s true, La Hendricks does often fall down on the red carpet. I presume she wants to be as far removed from the character of Joan Holloway (difficult; Joanie is iconic) as possible when appearing as herself. But her choices often do her a disservice. Still, she’s so ridiculously beautiful. I don’t always approve of her choices but I can’t really say she looks bad.
Obviously, NWO doesn’t understand consent. He thinks that when he’s aroused by a woman, that woman is sexually assaulting him. He referred to the Jerry Sandusky scandal as that “…penn state thing…”. There are any number of concepts that NWO lacks the intelligence, moral core, and basic sense of human decency to understand. Consent is but one in a long list.
I notice NWOslave is ignoring the marital rape issue. How is that not oppression?
Oh, right, I forgot how extremely high infant mortality and the likelihood of dying in childbirth through most of human history means women had it easy. Keeping a house, tending crops all that shit was just like sitting around all day eating bonbons. Good thing you’re around to educate us, NWO.
Yeah, men worked in mines and factories and farmed and hunted. Women did those things, too, in addition to bearing and raising kids, and keeping the house.
@ozymandias42
No, you’re a promoter of men acting like women. I’ve seen your blog that, hahahaha, promotes teh menz.
NWO: No, it does not. Just because you don’t like something doesn’t make it automatically bad. I can’t stand Indian food (naan being the notable exception), but that doesn’t mean that I have the right to tell people not to eat it.
Also, promoting tolerance =/= promoting being gay.
If schools turn kids gay, then why are there numerous straight men that come out of the educational system? Straight men like me, for example.
I see we’ve entered the Nasty Sarcasm point in The NWO Show.
Nobinayamu: Oh, no disagreement, she is drop-dead gorgeous. I get wanting to not always be associated with Joanie, but one of her best looks recently was that sparkly red cardigan with the matte red pencil skirt. Some of those retro elements just work on her.
Do I act like a woman, NWOslave? I certainly don’t dress like one. I wear suits most of the time.
Er, not that women can’t also wear suits.
She’s been rocking a few of those Vivienne Westwoods lately.
Homosexuality is not being promoted. Not being outlawed and condemned is not the same thing as being promoted.
And, seriously, what the fuck is it with you and Nissans? Seriously, I realize that your life is a tragic misery of thwarted desire, dreams deferred, self-inflicted loneliness and despair… but the Nissan is hardly a hallmark of luxury. I mean, yeah, if you go for the Infiniti series. But it’s mostly a low to mid-range series of automobiles known for reliability and decent gas mileage. I drive a no-frills Sentra. My car note is under $200 a month. The thing (knock-wood) has never given me a lick of trouble and requires nothing but general maintenance.
@KathleenB
“Yeah, men worked in mines and factories and farmed and hunted. Women did those things, too, in addition to bearing and raising kids, and keeping the house.”
Well of women did all those things, what the hell were the men up to? Hangin out playin hounds and jackals at the local saloon?
Gee, did men oppress women with the dangers of childbirth? What a foul bunch they must’ve been back in the day. Let it be known far and wide, men oppressed women thuout history because of childbirth. How else did men oppress women in the past? Poor women, men didn’t even let them die in staggering numbers as stonemasons and loggers and seafarers. Oh how evil men are.
Ooh, I love that peachy dress on her.
How is encouraging people to not bully or brutalize gay kids (or adults, for that matter) a bad thing? If people are having sex that doesn’t involve you, doesn’t impact you, doesn’t intersect in your sex life in any way, how is it your business?
Big fan of Ms. Hendricks in Firefly. Love the space cowgirl look on her. 🙂
Are you even slightly aware of how often women died in childbirth before modern medicine? Oh, how silly of me. You’re not aware of anything that happens outside of your fevered imagination.
Big fan of Ms. Hendricks in Firefly. Love the space cowgirl look on her. 🙂
The first time I watched “Our Mrs. Reynolds” was in a large group of geeks, and the two universal consensuses of the room were that absolutely everyone present who was sexually attracted to women wanted to sex her up, and absolutely everyone present who was herself a woman wanted to steal and inhabit her body (and then spend all day staring at herself in the mirror going, “Look at my SKIN! It is THE BEST SKIN”).
(I’m only in the second group, but if I were ever to go bi, it would probably be for Christina Hendricks. :-p )