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.
Wow, my second paragraph is a muddle. :/
“@Ozymandias42: but but but but but…….I thought there were you know objective qualifications! Criteria! Abs! Rock hard jawline!! etc.”
You’re taking it the wrong way. You look at the quantity of sex (and what the women looks like), apply the label and then you justify with things like:
– is rich
– is pretty
– play the guitar
– can do magic tricks
– has abs
– …
Peeps, I think it’s time we started “The Book of Arks”.
Lesbian separatism was so widespread that it lowered the female population. This increased the sexual value of women and allowed women to become even more powerful as a result.
Professors are true Alpha males, because all of their female students worship them. A college class is actually a professor’s small harem.
Hugo reminds me of Terry Long, the husband of Donna Troy from 80s Teen Titans comics. He was a professor, an obvious author stand-in (for Marv Wolfman) and (unintentionally) creepy as hell.
There’s a whole Tumblr devoted to him being creepy. This one’s my favourite, but there are a few of him making suggestive remarks about Donna’s teammates while she’s standing right there.
Is that geeky enough for you?
Even after 4 years of college I never got the whole “professors are alpha males” thing. Most of them were several decades older than us, married, didn’t dress very well and made us do a lot of difficult equations and translations, none of which endears me to someone. XD
I have a sneaking suspicion that most of the students that Hugo thinks have crushes on him nowadays do not, and that he’s interpreting intellectual admiration, a wish for mentorship, etc, as having a sexual component*. Which is part of why I hate reading anything he writes about his students. I know it’s an ego thing and he just wants to still think he has his mojo, etc, but it’s creepy.
* It gets even more cringe-worthy when he starts going on about how they can’t help but sexualize him, being young women, but he is now to above all that and knows how to deal with it due to his past experience screwing students, so he is able to gently guide them and turn their sexual interest towards intellectual endevours.
I will sometimes read blog posts at The Good Men Project, but I avoid the comments section. There are way too many MRA’s there shouting down anyone who dares to disagree with them.
Arks, what do you mean by
?
Then again, I’m not sure I do want to understand what you meant by that. It’s probably more offensive than it already sounds.
Is the “repository of vaginas” like a giant warehouse where the Pussy Cartel stores the vagina stockpile so they can strategically control vagina prices?
That would be a really weird warehouse.
How is it controversial to call Schwyzer alpha?
Well, the main controversy is that everyone outside your extremely specific subculture doesn’t believe in your made-up hierarchy.
Adi: WTF? No professor I’ve ever met has control of student’s primary sexual characteristics. Nor should they – those who possess said characteristics control them. Maybe you should lay off the absinthe for a while…
I don’t think it’s that creepy when Schwyzer describes how some of his students have a crush on him. It’s not that uncommon for college students to be attracted to their favorite professors, especially if they are intelligent and have the same political views. What Hugo describes reminds me of the student on Indiana Jones who wrote “Love you” on her eyelids during her class. It’s just a harmless crush that gives a little ego boost to the professor.
Of course what Hugo used to do with students was very unethical and unprofessional, but he longer does that kind of stuff. While it is harmless for students or professors to fantasize about that kind of thing, it’s wrong to actually act out the fantasies.
Kladle, in that last scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark, every single box is full of vaginas.
It’s the specific way he does it that I find creepy, and how obviously he gets a kick out of it, in combination with his past behavior. I don’t think it’s even sexual really so much as pure power tripping.
Arks: Welllllll, there is an academic hierarchy, and community college teachers are pretty far down the ladder (I hasten to add that so are poor and small regional universities like mine–and some community college teachers around here get paid more than I do).
And I don’t consider that I have any sort of authority over my students genitals and anybody thinking/talking that way is a creeping creep dickbiscuit.
Arks will never equal the clam diver comment over on the rape thread.
However, all of your vaginas are belong to us.
Carry on.
Stoner: Amazingly enough, feminist discourse and communities involve criticism and critique, not just mindless phrase and echo chambers (despite what the MRA thinks).
Linds: I am a major Elgin fan, have read her books, and one student in my graduate course just did a stylistics anlysis on her paper–the issue of Laa’dan (the women’s language), and how it worked out in the trilogy is something I love to talk about.
Very sadly, I gather that she is currently not well (suffering from some form of senile dementia, or something), though these are primarily internet rumors.
But I ADORE ADORE ADORE all her work. (She has her Ph.D. in linguistics, and I”ve used some of her novels in courses with a linguistic focus–not a linguistics class because I don’t teach in that area, but composition/rhetoric/discourse analysis).
From Schwyzer’s interview with Clarisse Thorn at rolereboot:
Yup, it seems like he’s pretty much over the whole ‘unethically shagging his students’ thing. He’s moved past it, and now ‘it’s done’. So…that’s good to know. I’m glad all those students he messed with have left him a lucrative, redemptive legacy of scrupulousness.
Pillock.
What I want to know is why Clarisse didn’t call him out on that giant steaming pile of self-justifying bullshit.
(Actually I suspect I already know the answer, I’m just curious to see how she’d attempt to justify it.)
Gosh. I think I need to bake him the world’s tiniest cookie.
He also seems to be massively power-tripping on “oh yeah, I could… but I don’t, because I’m so virtuous… but I never forget for an instant that I could.”
Which makes his campaign to be The Official Male Feminist even more oogy.
He won’t eat it, Holly. He likes to be all self-flagellating about food too.
Wait. What? My college lecturers controlled my vagina?
Speaking of warehousing vaginas, David should add this one to his Glossary: SMV. It stands for “sexual market value,” another favored MRA concept. It’s based on “scientific fact,” ‘natch.
Ack, more from the interview:
You guys, he’s only the world’s foremost male feminist expert on men and feminism because his wonderful feminist mentors have INSISTED he promote himself confidently and without shame. He has absolved himself of all wrongdoing and now has a clean slate.
Didn’t mean for this to turn into a Schwyzerbashfest, by the way – I actually didn’t know much about him until I read this interview (I’d read one or two things by him and found them a bit smug, but reasoned that they weren’t aimed at me, as a woman, which is why I found them…not speaking to me).
Joanna – Yep! Obviously. And I think Hugo Schwyzer would… give a long weepy lecture about how he used to think that way, and he hurt oh so many people (how terrible for him), but now he is enlightened. Now he only controls vaginas for good.
In 4.5 years of college, I’ve only crushed hard on one professor and it was super awkward. (I don’t think he knew? Hopefully he just thought I had terrible social skills and that’s why I was always weird and stammery when I came to office hours.) Most of my professors, even if they’re cute, aren’t in the mental category of “someone whose sexuality I should concern myself with.”
However, there are lots of professors that I’ve been friendly with, joked around with, and been sociable with outside of class. Either because I just liked them as people or because I wanted to make sure they remembered my name when they were grading papers.
I really hope they didn’t all think that I was drooling for them. Jeez.