Man-hating gender-traitor Tom Matlack tries to pinpoint the source of his betrayal.
“You first became a mangina when you began wearing narrow-fit, open-collar paisley shirts, silver bracelets, and that dagger-and-snake necklace,” my college roommate and best friend Brian Pass recently told me.
“You’re borderline mancunt,” Joel Stein, from Time magazine, added.
There’s been plenty of criticism of my recent piece “Cleavage or Soul?” for presenting a supposedly negative deconstruction 
of masculinity—to wit: “As far as I’m concerned, there should be a bow season for trash like you.”
Nothing a lethal projectile can’t solve, I always say.
The consensus among my critics can be summed up in this comment: “Tom. Men like me have an enemy all right. And the enemy is man-hating, white-knighting, mangina apologists like you.”
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What does that even mean? Did I get lost in some poor woman’s vagina? Have I become some chromosome-scrambled human Labradoodle? Being repeatedly called a word I didn’t even know existed, I set out to investigate.
As far as I can tell, the term mangina comes from an illusion wherein a man “tucks his stuff” (i.e., hides his genitalia between his legs), thereby giving his pubic region a feminine appearance. The Urban Dictionary traces the popularity of the term to one oft-parodied scene from The Silence of the Lambs.
But how does this relate to my manhood? Did I lose it somewhere between my legs? If I had been called a queer, pussy, feminist, or even a metrosexual I might have understood. But mangina? In desperation, I reached out to some friends.
Tom Miller is the general manager of the women’s relationship website YourTango. He must know about manginas, I figured. But he responded to my inquiry with a clip from a Will Ferrell movie (and the suggestion that I start using the “C word” more regularly, to get my street cred back):
Konstantin Selivanov is a champion boxer and ultimate fighter. Back in Russia he’d open the door to his house with a hand grenade in one hand, ready to pull the pin, because of repeated KGB death threats. He came to this country with $300 and spent his first months here sleeping on a concrete basement floor with his young wife. A decade later, we train twice a week in his gym. “I don’t know, man,” he told me between sets. “You lift a lot of weight and throw a heavy punch, but man, it’s all between you and your ’gina.”
I tracked down a urologist who spends the summers in my neighborhood, figuring he must have some doctorly insight. “Maybe it has to do with how early you showed up at my house to make sure you didn’t miss a minute of Sex and the City?” he mused. Fair enough.
A rapper buddy of mine called me out for attacking one of his favorite artists for stripping down in Esquire. “Why would I want to know the reality of Katy Perry? She’s interesting because I can project on her what I want her to be. I think you became a mangina when you decided to seek out and live in reality. Many people use fantasy to get through their day. In most long term relationships/marriages you must think and do things that you certainly don’t want to do, or admit you do, if you ever have any designs on getting laid.”
“You being a mangina explains why your hair smells like breast milk,” photographer Ron Cowie told me. Wow, really?
I had taken a few lumps, but I was no closer to a real answer.
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“Could it have been the scooter and the man purse? Or the designer jeans with the embroidered logo you wore into Sing Sing?” James Houghton, my venture capital partner of the last 11 years, asked me. Nah, I don’t think the murse has much to do with it.
“I don’t think I know a straight guy who is more proud of his junk (which is what I think straight guys call it these days) than you,” one business school friend told me. “But you do own that God-awful full-length white leather Gucci jacket with shoulder pads and ribbing that makes you look either Martian or like the late Michael Jackson.”
“In my eyes you were forever a mangina when you didn’t take a job on Wall Street and then didn’t come to my bachelor party at the strip club,” another business school pal complained.
“When I saw you wearing a pink girls’ sports watch, I thought either this guy is very secure or he’s a chick,” Todd Dagres (a founding investor in Twitter) told me, sounding confident that he had figured out this mangina thing. “But since then I’ve discovered that you just don’t give a shit what people think.” My heart sank in disappointment.
“I think the proper usage is to say one has a mangina, not that one is a mangina. As in, ‘Don’t get your mangina in a bunch,’” a hard-core gamer offered in passing. Thanks for the grammar lesson, but that’s not helpful.
Don Foote is a rock musician, my general contractor, and my go-to manhood guru. “Dude. You and your supposed critics are a lot closer than you let on. Thicken up your skin,” he said, trying to slap some sense into my mangina.
“The blamers and haters (male and female) can’t figure out why they are not happy, so they get stupid, and blame something outside themselves. Suck it up and admit that you are your own problem, and work on being happy—that’s what a man does. That’s what a woman does.”
Despite getting philosophical on me again, Don was onto something. But I wasn’t satisfied yet.
Paul Kix, a senior editor at Boston Magazine, finally came up with something concrete for me to consider. “You’re a business success in a male-dominated field, which would normally exclude you from an allegiance to manginas,” he said. “That said, your voice cracks when you’re angry—like a high-pitched crack, as if femininity itself were boring through to the surface.”
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Finally, I was getting warmer. I felt sure an answer was within reach, so I emailed my buddy Grant Gund (his dad owned the Cavaliers when they drafted LeBron James). He’s been in enough professional locker rooms to sniff out a mangina a mile away. The email that came back had no text—just a picture of me dressed up as Kiss lead singer Paul Stanley last Halloween.
I had no idea where Grant found the image, but I stared at my eye makeup and exposed nipples for a while. It was the long look in the mirror I had been waiting for, and it came with a revelation:
I am a mangina, I whispered to myself. I stood up from my desk and said it louder: I AM A MANGINA!
My 5-year-old came running into my study, Wii remote in hand, with a questioning look on his face. “Daddy?”
“Son, it’s all right. Daddy is very, very happy,” I reassured him, not wanting my newfound identity to frighten him.
Just to be sure, I checked with my friend Bennett, who I met my first week of college. He wore a sundress to orientation (or a kilt, I can’t remember) and we have been friends ever since. The guy has more guts than I ever will.
“If those guys come for you with a bow, just put it on your hair! I hope it’s a cute color!” he began from somewhere on the left coast, where he teaches acting. “From where I stand, you smell like chest hair and Old Spice. You are manlier than I can ever hope to achieve. I am a fag. I am a proud, wrists-arcing-through-the-air, pinky-raising, loafer-wearing, scarf-tying sissy. You, sir, are a father. You also scrog women. Right there you out-butch me.”
This self-proclaimed fag was trying to reassure me, but as I laughed, I confirmed what I had suspected all along: Being a mangina is loving guys like Bennett and all my other friends, because they show me that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to manhood. It means not entering into a misguided zero-sum battle of the sexes, or imagining that women are the enemy. If that is what my critics are talking about, they are definitely right. I am a mangina, and damn proud of it.
Just as I was embracing my inner mangina, I got an email from Peter Hunsinger, the publisher of GQ, with a confessional: “I am a mangina because I always clear my golf dates with my wife’s schedule before I book them.”
Then I recalled what a fellow writer, Micah Toub, recently wrote in the Globe and Mail:
“If that makes me a ‘mangina,’ then I’ll put that on a T-shirt and wear it,” he concluded.
Better make that three, my friend.
♦ ♦ ♦
Tom Matlack, together with James Houghton and Larry Bean, published an anthology of stories about defining moments in men’s lives — The Good Men Project: Real Stories from the Front Lines of Modern Manhood. It was how the The Good Men Project first began. Want to buy the book? Click here. Want to learn more? Here you go.
About Tom Matlack
I knew you had a mangina when you talked about loving your kids and your smart, hot wife. What kind of pussy would openly discuss their emotions? Grow a pair, will ya??
I liked your article about Esquire. It was not as much apologizing to women but saying to men, “wake the fuck up, the women are taking over”. The stats about college education are alarming. Not because women are empowered through education but because men as a gender have fallen behind as far as they have. Your work is a scary mirror to uneducated biased fucks who want to think we are still living in the 1950′s.
So, an 18 year old born in the nineties thinks we’re still living in the fifties? This is the typical age when kids might be going to college. What could that possibly have to do with Esquire? It’s such obvious nonsense and you people are cheering for it. What is the relationship?
When I saw you on Tyra I wouldn’t say you’re a full Mangina, but ….
Well I’d say he’s a full mangina
I know the type of guy that espouses crossbows and mangina comments. They are the honorless bullies. The ones to whom glory, war and greed are all that matters. And I’d argue that the honorless attitude is what nearly destroyed America during the financial crisis of 2008.
I’d further argue that if we replace glory, war and greed with duty, honor, and country, America would be a better place. (That’s a lot coming from a gay guy quoting MacAuthur!). If anything, the pieces
I’ve read of the Good Men Project are about how those more noble concepts fit into today’s word especially with respect to being a good dad.
That is a magnificently silly leap from crossbow to the financial crisis.
People are confused about equality. They think that if an oppressed group– be they women or ethnic minorities or unpopular religions– gets the same treatment as white cisgendered heterosexual christian males, then that must mean that white cisgendered heterosexual christian males suddenly have less power! Our hegemony is cracking! Oh no! When of course, it isn’t a zero sum game. When, in fact, when other people have their rights infringed, when egalitarianism isn’t the rule, then you don’t have rights, you have privileges.
Privileges are even easier to take away then rights– when you start stepping on the toes of a woman’s right to chose, or a Muslim’s right to build a YMCA, or whatever? That makes bodily autonomy & religious freedom weaker for everyone…even white cisgendered heterosexual christian males. & it doesn’t stop. When you build a pyramid, a hierarchy, it is hard to maintain it. You have to continually narrow your focus, you have to keep excluding, more & more. It isn’t enough to be a white cisgendered heterosexual christian males…now you have to own property. & now “christian” doesn’t include Catholics. & now you have to be the firstborn male. Etc.
The icing on the cake is that people want to believe that sexism & racism– even when the are soaking in it. Like Andy Gray & Richard Keys, the sportscasters who were in the middle of being sexist & then IMMEDIATELY complained about a female official who had said that racism existed in sports. If the world is equal than the advantages in my invisible backpack aren’t privileges, they are talents!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
Really? You think I’m misrepresenting the arguments of people who use the female gender (& anything associated with it) as a slur?
Fantastic, you’re following up 3 rambling paragraphs about imagined oppression and privilege with another, shorter strawman argument. Maybe you’ll understand this time. “people who use the female gender (& anything associated with it) as a slur?” That is nonsense. The insult is to people like Tom who are sycophants to some group that they have irrational admiration for. Brown-nosers don’t inspire a lot of respect.
George Carlin called it the pussification of the American male.
Which I have a problem with, because “pussification” implies women are inferior, no matter what. When you call a man a mangina, you are not only insulting that man, but all women as well, because for some reason, femininity is inferior, and masculinity is superior. There are no degrading male insults used on women, but even women insults are used on women, because women acting like women is just inferior. Yet, if a woman acts like a man (whatever that is), she is seen as empowered.
HELL yes! We gay men get that immediately! To apply the feminine to a man or just about ANYthing makes it scorn worthy somehow. Equally, to apply gayness to something does the same, often with a patina of immorality or disgust. To whit, “That’s gay.”
Bottom line, it’s hard to be happy, it’s hard to find lasting happiness in a long term relationship, sometimes it’s hard to get laid alot in a LTR. Woman and men are different, and the differences turn me on no end, and drive me crazy, but that’s what makes it fun. Life is much more nuanced than the “Maxim” model would suggest.
I like big tits as much as anybody, but at the end of the day, I know big tits are really meaningless- is that so hard to understand? Why blame the magazines and movies and porn for our “enslavement”- do we have no free will?
And no, I wouldn’t know if Jessica Simpson is sexier than Gwyneth Paltrow until I talked to both of them, because that is where sexiness really lives. DUH!!!
Just my opinion…..
I don’t know about the term, but the practice of “tucking genitalia” goes much farther back than 1991. I remember high school spring break — 1976 — some of my buddies (very masculine and not a hint of feminism within their DNA) “tucking their stuff” and stretching out on a bed before our girlfriends came into the room.
I guess I would have to say that my first indication of your “mangina-hood” came with your description of standing in a church parking lot, calling your mom, looking for a place to sleep after being tossed out by your wife for being a horrible, despicable, husband and a typical expression of a man. Certainly, you were not taking responsibility for your actions. You were attacking the very core of masculinity and “tucking your stuff” and running home to mommy.
As for the crow bars, I would offer a prophetic image — where the prophets of the Old Testament called for turning spears into plowshares (a call for peace), I would suggest that you turn to the attackers (pussies in camoflage, trying to be what they believe to be men) and suggest that they turn those crowbars into knitting needles.
Irony is wasted on fools.
In fact, they are projecting dark fears about themselves.
They secretly suspect that their macho is a poor cover.
They are pussies.
I say: show your big dick.
Irony isn’t everything. Impress us by saying something clear and logical.
I had been following Tom’s writing for a while, but even though we were in agreement on many topics, over time, my suspicion that Tom might be “tucking” started to grow the same way it would for a father who notices that little Johnny exhibits a real flair for shoes and hangs figure skating posters all over his room. But when Tom announced he was sticking with “The Good Men Project” as the name of his magazine, that’s when I knew without a doubt he kept “Jake the Snake” under wraps. To me, his over-use of the very docile sounding good hinted of “good boys” who always do what they’re told and continue this submissive behavior into adulthood. I guarantee, every unabashed “swinging Richard” out there doesn’t want to thought of in such bland terms as “good.” What red-blooded, American male goes to the vending machine and selects a Hershey’s Goodbar when he can get a PayDay or some other candy bar with nuts and the ability to really “satisfy” (if you know what I mean). I thought Tom could’ve at least toned down his “Emasculation Proclamation” by calling it “The Good Ol’ Men Project,” but going the route he did, made me realize Tom had transformed into his own ironic version of “Tucker Max.” In light of all the recent criticism directed at Tom, I guess it just goes to show that the logic of Kirk Lazarus’s Tropic Thunder advice to Tugg Speedman applies here too. Never go full Mangina.
This one is definitely going for republish. Nicely done. The Manginas I hang out with (and man, there are a lot of them) have the biggest cojones of any men I have ever met. You’re in good company Tom.
Thanks Boysen you are a gentleman and a scholar.
Can we make shirts that say “My Mangina is Bigger Than Yours”? I know Tom probably has the nicest one out there, but still. What’s so wrong with having a mangina? I think the bigger question of it all is in finding out when having a mangina became a problem in the first place? Defining masculinity is a difficult task. Defining an individual is a personal task. I like sweater vests and the fact that I can pick out matching clothes and hair clips for my daughter. I delight in knowing what kind of pads or tampons I need to stop by and get on my way home from work. I am thrilled with the fact that I can look at any other woman as just a person because sexy and beautiful to me is defined in my wife.
Tough and brawny don’t make a man. Huge muscles and the ability to kick an ass or two can be achieved by anyone, male or female. I say ‘Viva La Mangina”. Cheers to all the bros who proudly where their gina on their sleeve, a touch of fashion in their wardrobe, and a stick of reality in their pack of gum located in the murse.
The problem is that Tom has made absolutely no effort to argue or disagree with anything that was meant to be taken seriously. He has instead fixated on the colorful analogies and name calling that make comments sections fun but are just for entertainment. I have no problem with rowdy banter and satire and all that but you gotta have the occassional clear point. Tom does not.
I couldn’t have put it better myself. So refreshing to read plain english instead of the usual convoluted “look how I can recite PC mantras” dogma. I lectured in communication for ten years and all the study materials said the same thing, use plain english, keep it simple, have a cogent point and make it clear. Basically mangina means a kind of class traitor, a collaborator.
Tom suffers from numerous symptoms of the Mangina ailment. It’s hopeless, really. The first time I knew for sure—that is to say: unequivocally and without a trace of doubt– that Thomas Matlack is a Mangina was in October of 2009. He wanted to meet at a frou frou little French bistro on Newbury Street. French bistros—in fact, anything at all French– are for Manginas (Symptom 1). Once seated, I noticed all kinds of other frou frou, blue-jeaned, flip-flopp-wearing, murse-carrying Manginas gathering to sip tea and eat distinctively effeminate salad nicoises, which Tom ordered (Mangina symptom 2). Sitting across from Tom, I saw, for just an instant, that when he raised his glass, he did so with his pinky extended. (Mangina symptom 3). Also, he wouldn’t drink alcohol at lunch or dinner. (Mangina symptoms 4 and 5). I’m told when he rowed in college, he held his oar with the same pinky extended (Mangina symptom 6). It should be noted as well that Tom drives a British car—very Mangina (and hence Mangina symptom 7). If it’s not American-made, it’s Mangina. (I bet he holds the steering wheel with his pinky extended.) Last year I sat near him at the Boston Garden during a Celtics game, and when he cheers/screams, his voice cracks like a chic (Mangina symptom 8). Also, Tom reads a great deal; only chicks read (Mangina symptom 9). Perhaps most obvious, Tom spends a lot of time “counseling” in high security prisons and hanging out with bachelors at Sing Sing (Mangina symptom 10).
I knew you were a mangina when you argued the validity of Esquire’s list of hot chicks with a list of smart chicks. Here’s the Non-Mangina Equation for that Hot Chicks > Smart Chicks. (Just kidding of course
)
Do you remember the Wesleyan Psych Professor who claimed to be a
lesbian trapped in a man’s body? could he have gotten to you?
Wearing stockings on a crazy cold row on the icy connecticut river
men in tights is a major cause of Mangina
has Pfizer created a treatment yet?
You, Sir, are a father. Right there you classify as 1) unimpeachable… if you are raising humans, you deserve praise no matter what your characteristics and as 2) manly. Strength is shown more in the tasks you perform, like fathering, disciplining both young creatures as well as oneself, than in bravado or display of sacred talismans of masculine identity.
I can only recommend to your detractors that they focus their ire on me, a genuine gender-traitor, not you, guilty merely of wearing sweaters and standing up for 50% of the human race’s dignity while allowing the other 50% a choice about who they want to be.
So unless those warriors of the gruff and barking, of the Viking model of manhood are going to open up with the requisite salvos against us queens, they should really shut up. You are not the gender betrayer, I am. Lucky me!
My experience with you being a Mangina is that you have grown to a point in your life that you have continued the ability to care for the men in your life and ascended to care for the women that deserve respect from even the worst misogynist. I believe you have taken the anger and angst of your past and put them into the positives to help others grow from your previous misfortunes and current success. If it wasn’t for aman’s ability to perform the wonders of a Mangina, we would have to turn to books to teach our boys what a pussy appears to be before the legs of a woman get spread for the first time to revel the ever destructive power they will have over those of us with a desire to tap that thang for the rest of our lives.
Great job on the post, Tom!
If I wore graphic tees, I’d sport a MG for the cause.
The ‘open season’ guy (and all of his cronies) are probably scratching their heads right now… (yes, we all know you are still reading GMP, even after that fiasco. You weren’t fooling anyone.)
BTW – I hope you had the rest of the band with you on Halloween… based on their solo careers, I’m curious how well this costume went over, lol!
This article is so poorly written that I have no idea if it is satire, I have no idea what the point is, and I am super disappointed in the Good Men Project. Y’all usually have such a high standard of articles.
Please leave, then. You won’t be missed.
I’m glad some males are bracing their “mangina,” but as a woman I still find the term offensive, because not only is it meant to insult the individual man, but it’s also an insult against all women. Whenever men insult each other, they use female terms to insult them. Even when women or men insult other women, they use female terms. But there are no male terms used to insult others. “Grow a pair,” “pussy,” “mangina,” those are all direct stabs against women as well, as though femininity is inferior and masculinity is superior.
It’s all about context and the gender of the declarer.
Yes, I agree with you.
I think it would help if more precise language was used, such as “courage,” “empathy,” etc or whatever the trait is that the man is showing or not showing rather than putting everything in terms of vaginas and testicles.
If you draw a line between men and women and let each side only have some traits, each side loses.
Yes yes yes, Frankly, what are they doing insulting in the 1st place? That alone is cause for rethinking your approach to life.