Tom Matlack thinks about manliness as a diverse range of stories and perspectives.
What is the best part about masculinity?
The pure diversity of our manliness, in my view.
Maybe it was growing up in the chaos of a hippie college town in the ‘60s and ‘70s, but I have always sought out men that might teach me something about manhood from a different perspective.
I’m straight as an arrow, and yet a best friend in college and best friend in graduate school both came out to me before anyone else. I have frankly always loved certain gay men because of the humor and perspective they bring to my otherwise uptight manliness.
From a young age I’ve been fascinated by the experience of being a male of color. My very first best friend, Mark Green, in the third grade, was an amazing African-American hockey player. That interest has continued to this day here as part of GMP and in my personal life. I have always felt I had something to learn from men like Stephen Locke and Jackie Summers.
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So amidst this fascination with male diversity, the charge leveled at me that I am somehow a gender essentialist, believing in some particular set of male characteristics that I have identified and give me the right to speak for all men, is particularly hurtful.
I think there’s a fundamental disconnect in my meaning and perhaps in the way my critics interpret my words.
One of the places that my appreciation for maleness in all its shapes and colors, as well as for personal narrative, took shape was in the context of trying to get sober and save my life.
I have attended countless AA meetings, many for men only, as the goal was sobriety not dating. In those rooms I thirsted for true stories of men getting better. The reflex is to always say, “That guy doesn’t look like me. Why do I care what he says? He has no fucking idea what my life is like and how hard it is.”
Over time I learned to identify and not compare with the speaker, no matter how profound the superficial differences. What I found was that the outside has no bearing on a particular man’s inside story and how much it might help me stay sober another day.
For a time, I found it important to go to meetings where the sobriety was direct from the heart and the participants were specifically not Ivy League-educated finance dickheads like I was. Intellectuals have a harder time telling the truth when it comes to sobriety. My buddies in Southie who work construction, not so much. They spend less time trying to think through something that can only be accessed via the soul.
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A decade into sobriety, after I had gotten sick of being a venture capitalist and decided, foolishly, to try to become a writer, my focus became writing profiles of people, mostly men I just thought would be cool to hang out with and expand my understanding of manhood.
I have always loved the profiles in the New Yorker above perhaps any other writing form. The complete immersion in another person’s life is fascinating to me in a way like no other, so I became obsessed with pitching profile ideas to major magazines.
I got to do quite a few about men of remarkably different vocations and backgrounds: the Harvard-educated and African-American lead guitarist in Rage Against the Machine, the grandson of an immigrant garment district worker who, in part to honor him, created Mad Men, the Polish-born U.S. Olympic rowing coach, the Mexican curator of Shep Fairey’s art, the 30-year-old genius who became the leading stem cell researcher in the world, the Boston Celtics’ Russian masseur, a disgraced hedge fund manager, and many others.
In each case, the work was not work. I got to try to really understand what it meant to be man from a completely different point of view. In every case, I selected my subject because I felt he had something to teach me, was sure he would expand my understanding beyond my venture capital work life, and often just because he was damn cool. (Going backstage to hang with the band at a concert or in the locker room to interview NBA players is hardly “work” in my book.)
What I always sought in my profile work was to put the reader in the shoes of the subject—in other words, to first try to figure out a way to understand, myself, what it must be like to have the potential to cure any number of major illnesses with my research or to create a massively popular TV show. Once I could see my way to that, I tried to build a narrative framework to allow the reader to crawl inside that man’s skin as well, often by explaining his background, his motivations, or just the minute details of his day-to-day life.
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So again, what is good about masculinity? I say, the amazing variety of ways we express our manhood—but also our ability to relate, to find commonality under the surface, to identify with one another. Often, the most profound lessons come from those most unlike us, since they alone force us to shed the armor of our everyday existence and to look deeply into our own souls.
About Tom Matlack
“I think there’s a fundamental disconnect in my meaning and perhaps in the way my critics interpret my words.”
If they are bad interpreters, it is their responsibility to ask for and clarify meaning.
If they write a book based upon their errors, the fault lies with them, and the words are all theirs!
They can give such a book any title they choose, but it remains their work of fiction dedicated to themselves.
Critics are the worst authors. They care only for their own opinions, and nothing for truth. P^)
They write hagiographicaly, with them always in the role of the saint! P^/
Great article Tom. I especially liked how you mentioned he reverence you have for gay men. For too long, straight men and gay men have not been allowed by society to be friends, This I believe is caused by homophobia. I like you Tom am straight but love gay men as well. One of my good friends a work is gay. He is a great guy. I also enjoy the company of gay men. I am firm in my heterosexuality and see no reason to fear gay men. Straight men can learn a lot from some of the carefree and open minded attitudes that many gay men possess. It seems like in this society, many men and even some possibly some women feel threatened when a straight man and gay men have a good friendship. I always found it refreshing that with some of my gay friends the conversations were never about which women are the sexiest but about genuine issues such as integrity and being true to ones self. Tom I believe this is truly groundbreaking that a heterosexual online magazine would have an article whereby a straight man praises gay men. It is almost a taboo subject in our culture. I hope The Good Men Project will include more articles in the future about alliances between straight men and gay men.
I agree that friendships between gay men and straight men are a great thing, but isn’t just gay men teaching straight men new perspectives. Without straight men, I wouldn’t have learned the value of purely platonic male bonding.
Great essay, Tom! My ex had alcohol issues, too, but always denied the severity of it…Thank you for talking about going to AA…My ex was also squeamish around gay men…I never really understood what that was all about until 2 decades later (I think he was abused by a teacher in parochial school)….Thank you for becoming a writer and exploring horizons different from your own…My ex was such a tight-lipped, repressed ball of fury…he drove everyone crazy, especially me….Keep writing…fascinating stuff!
Good article Matlack. Glad to see you still standing tall after that vicious cordinated attack. I think your attackers thought you were a version of Hugo ( once upon a time I thought the same). You’re your own man . You’re no idealogue and I enjoy your stories. My one friend who “came out” to me is in every way(other than sexual preference) a man ,in many ways just like me and I do enjoy just hanging out with him.
Sorry for typos. Imeant to say my friend is a man and other than sexual preference, a lot like me. He is all man!
Sorry Tom, but I still think you’re a gender essentialist. I think you need to apologize to Jennifer Pozner and Amanda Marcotte.
I assume your objective in starting the Good Men Project was, ultimately, to provide a how-to resource for men. Hugo’s articles on feminist issues were not necessarily consistent with that objective. Indeed, I always thought they were somewhat misplaced, what with their often man-hating themes.
Tom, great post.
What intrigues me most about your piece is the mention of stories. I share your interest in the stories of others… all others. Sadly, in the midst of the pace of life and the effort to “get ahead” we have lost our connection with our own and others’ cultural tails. A curious irony exists (one in which I write about in a new book coming out this month, “Innovative Voices in Education-Engaging Diverse Learners”) in that we are more exposed to each other than ever before given the technology the world offers bringing us physically and communicative closer together, yet we are growing more distant as we build silo’s around ourselves in our quest to carve a little place for ourselves out of the world. We are multicultural (often considered a positive element of society… in Canada, one we brag about,) but to me, that is obvious in a global society… always has been that way. Proudly being multicultural isn’t good enough anymore; we need to become more intercultural. Our race, religion, gender, sexual preference, style, emotion, cognition… all of these and more make up our personal “culture,” and we wear them on our sleeves. They define us a part of a group, and as individuals at the same time. Whether we agree with the cultural perspectives of others is irrelevant as it applies to the importance of simply being aware of them and learning about them… seeking understanding as opposed to just acceptance or tolerance. We need to understand each other. Learning people’s stories is the time honored and absolute best way to do this.
Cheers to you. Big fan.
Sean
Hey Sean — love the idea of “intercultural” vs. “multicultural” and the fact that we need to see understanding as opposed to just acceptance or tolerance. Great visions of what the world could look like and totally in line with what we are doing here. Would you be willing to write more about that? Email me at lisa at goodmenproject dot com if interested.
Agree with Lisa Sean. Thanks so much for stopping by and look forward to hearing more!
Your article was great. But that’s not truly what makes you the man you are.
I want to also commend you for accepting my story. For too long, I’ve felt bouts of destitution because of a lack of support for the other half of my situation. There wasn’t a moment where I’d get so sad that doing even the simplest, pleasurable things were too much.
But when you accepted my articles, I finally felt there was a place to belong in the mainstream outside the usual supportive environments like Feminist Critics and JacobTK’s Blog Toy Soldiers.
That’s truly the mark of a great man. You don’t really need a writer’s touch or a publication to back that up all the time. Just accpetance and unconditional support is all to unify.
Thank you Tom.
Tom, I have posted here a few times and until today didn’t delve must into the whole twittergate controversy. Today I spent some (too much) time reading the twitter feeds and also the post by Hugo at his website about why he resigned from GMP.
What struck me as very very very odd about the whole controversy and the majority of the comments supporting hugo is they are from women. When I researched the more vocal supporters of hugo I found that most (if not all) of them would fall into the category of radical feminists. They also expressed alot about how they had such high hopes for GMP.
I got to tell you this worried me a fair amount. Did they believe that GMP was simply going to be a mouth piece for feminist issues under the guise of helping men. I sure got the impression that they did.
Of course when Hugo was writing for GMP they (IMHO) had that mouthpiece. Most of his articles were written in the style of denigrating men and of course dismissing any female responsibility in anything. Remember the accident rapist piece as a perfect example.
I have actually seen a shift in the focus of this site in the short time that Hugo has been gone.
One person posted on Hugo site something to the effect “I can’t believe that some posters here are shocked that a site about men, for men are posting good stuff about men and aren’t totally caught in what is good for women”.
I have to say this about this site, A pro feminist/Pro women website would never allow a person like Hugo to write articles for their readership if his articles constantly and always blamed women for something a man did wrong.
Keep up the good work.
“gender essentialist’ is one of those buzzwords that gets thrown around and I wonder if it really means anything.