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.
Oh, they already have their counter argument for that. I saw it at the comments in the Twitter responses that David links to in his update. Most rape victims are male, and most rapists are women, per the CDC report.
” He does kind of make me want to break out the nail polish out of spite, though.”
Make it sparkly and in a really happy bright color for the extra level of fuck-you.
um…what? are you serious? that was their counter argument?
Why is it that MRAs don’t ever seem to understand that The Patriarchy isn’t All and Only Men?
What?
and that the patriarchy doesn’t always benefit men, ie with war
Arks, i have to admit that the dude you linked to is a pretty awesome dude.
MRAL, I also second the suggestion that you stop reading Hugo. He annoys me sometimes too, I have to admit, and so I don’t really read him any more. Problem solved!
I bet the women there care a lot.
Also, what a surprise, you’re a misogynist AND a racist! Peas in a pod, I swear…
Next up, homophobia! Yay!
Then maybe some classism for dessert.
Oh wait, we already had that in almost every comment thread.
Oooh! Oooh! Is transphobia next? Transphobia is my favorite! Someone call me a zie creature again! XD
Only if we can sing songs from Disney movies again. I want to find a way to repurpose “Whistle while you work”.
I just feel like he’s not a good fit for the GOOD Men Project, allegedly about men who are, well, good. Something like Jezebel, fine, I get that.
But I think you’re right. No more reading Hugo. I also am sorry for hate spamming him that one time.
Maybe I’m a little unfair to him. He just gives me this very very strong negative knee-jerk reaction. It’s the weirdest thing.
Points at comment upthread about Hugo.
You know, not to pile on poor Hugo, but I really hate the way he writes about his female students, particularly when he starts going on about how many of them have crushes on them. In theory he’s talking about social dynamics, which is fine, but it always ends up sounding like a really smarmy humblebrag. To a woman reading, especially one who’s pretty confident about all things sexual, it just sort of results in eyerolling and a “whatever, dude”, but I can see how it would be really irritating to male readers. It’s certainly in bad taste given that he used to shag some of his students.
Crushes on him, not on them. Typing fail.
I haven’t read many of Hugo’s articles, so I don’t really have an opinion. Some I liked, but some of them came across as pandering *shrugs* anyway, kudos to MRAL for expressing his distaste for Hugo without shouting MANGINA FUCK xD
Also unrelated, but this will probably piss Meller off since proper girls don’t do science! knowing how scandalized he’d get if he read it fills me with glee
http://online.wsj.com/article/AP27e6b4fd88bf44e49660ba127407d5f4.html
@ Quackers, yes, I definitely can’t be a proper girl with my dual major in Maths and Physics. What were they thinking? (What was I, for that matter)
I’ve only read a few of Schwyzer’s articles but I have to agree: he gives me a weird vibe that makes me ambivalent about what he writes, though I can’t point to particular disagreements. Probably what MRAL is reacting to.
@Xanthe
well clearly your brain is a male brain that was accidentally put into a female body, I mean how else would you explain it?
Re: the Hugo S. Discussion.
MRAL, I wanted to tell you about the irritation I felt about the persona Hugo projects on the internet several times, but was prevented by some of the tone of some of your posts. But now that you’re talking about his blog much more reasonably, and others are chiming in, me too.
I stumbled across his blog at some point some years ago–read for a while, commented once, read sporadically a bit more often, then stopped reading. I was shocked a few months ago when I checked it out, I think after you commented, and saw how much ‘fancier’ it was than the one I remember, with a bunch of links for speaking and fees and such. It had morphed into some sort of LOOK I AM MAJOR EXPERT HIRE ME AS A CONSULTANT look that made me zip away before even reading.
I always had some problems with his tone, and especially (in those early years), his apparent refusal/inability to work with feminists of color and womanists (even though he name dropped like crazy, one of his professors being one of the big name feminists of color–have forgotten which one), and the one I posted (in response to a claim of how FEMINIST he was, saying I didn’t see him as all that feminist, depending on how you define it, of course), I got swamped with denial and passive aggressive rage, so just stopped and walked away.
In total agreement with what others have said: as a teacher myself, I am especially hard on faculty having sex with students. I think their asses ought to be fired. And the way he presents all his earlier sins and feminism as sort of one mode of redemption makes me (as a queer pagan) sick to my stomach. But, as with others, I do not read.
The thing that bothers me most is the way in which he seems to be doing what other white men have done–positioning himself as someone to be hired to give speeches (esp. at universities) on the topic of feminism–Tim Wise (another white man) has done the same thing in regard to anti-racism work.
Nice middle class white male administrators much prefer to pay big consultant fees to nice white middle class male consultants to be experts on feminism and diversity issues — and I find myself judging a male ally who is making money off such gigs very hard (just as I have seen people of color judging Wise pretty damn hard).
Hugo spends too much time making it all about him for my taste.
But then there are a number of feminists whose blogs I don’t choose to read because of past problems–the good thing is that nobody is required to like Hugo to be a feminist!
Archy, over at that Twitter post linked in the update:
The line that MRAs have latched on to is this one: “Approximately 1 in 21 men (4.8%) reported having been made to penetrate someone else in his lifetime (Table 2.2).”
The argument continues to be that women do not have the right to fear or discuss rape, because bad things happen to men, too.
Have a mimosa for me. I wish Austin had one!
Ilithiana – A lot of the Schwyzer essays I’ve read seem to come down to “I’ve done some really gross things to young women and not actually made reparations to the women themselves, or in any way suffered consequences, but that just makes me a better feminist now.”
Also the whole “what feminism needs is a nice straight man to speak for them” attempts at making himself an Official Feminist Leader.