We are the hollow men

We are the stuffed men

Leaning together

Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

Our dried voices, when

We whisper together

Are quiet and meaningless

As wind in dry grass

Or rats’ feet over broken glass

In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,

Paralysed force, gesture without motion

Those who have crossed

With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom

Remember us — if at all — not as lost

Violent souls, but only

As the hollow men

The stuffed men. ~ T.S. Elliot

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]om Matlack, the paradoxically über-manly and obsequious male lap dog of the Good Men Project Magazine, has just qualified himself as perhaps the ultimate feminists suck-up, and in the process has exposed the racism, homophobia and sexism that the publication will gladly embrace, as long as it is woven into the standardized canard of masculine toxicity that is their bread and butter.

In Matlack’s latest offering, Eunuchs are not the Answer, he comes out of the gate puffed up and testosterone-charged with a scientific assessment of real manhood. He measures it in the firmness of a handshake. Though he did not give us a chart with the qualifying PSI’s or grip quotients, he does let us know that a lack of clutch factor is a lack of manliness. In fact, if you fall under a certain pressure, you “might as well be dead.”

I thought he was going to be subtle enough to avoid it, but he used the tried and true epithet of “limp-wristed” in the very next paragraph as the way to NOT make the manhood cut. Take that, gay men! Those light in the loafers, or men who shake hands like them, are scratched off the man-roster, courtesy of Tom Matlack.

Unsatisfied with excluding gay men, and anyone else with without a firm grip on matters masculine, he moves on to skin color; apparently another litmus test. He informs us that albino’s are indeed “macho, in their own way.”

In their own way? Just what is the manhood of albino’s, Mr. Matlack, that they embody it in their own way? Would you care to inform the world as to how their masculinity is different than that of other men, or indeed how pigmentation plays a role in maculinity at all?

And as long as you are throwing skin color into the mix, what about those black guys, Latino’s and Asians? Are they men, too, in their own way?

For those that think I am nit-picking, think again. Those words had undoubtedly been in Matlack’s face until he (and his editor) felt the piece was polished enough for posting. In those words he reveals a critical part of his underlying mentality about men, and about human beings in general.

His rejection of men whose handshakes might feel effeminate is just the punctuation to his main statement: Men are supposed to act and look like what Mr. Matlack imagines he sees in the mirror, and nothing else.

He has just informed us that he separates all of us on some level in his mind, not just by sex, but by skin color and sexuality. There is us and there is them, and Matlack’s us is the one reserved for the coveted title of man. Faggots, niggers, spics and all other non-hackers need not apply.

Unsatisfied with the thinly veiled insult to minorities and the more overt denigration of gay men, Tom turns his invective headlong into all men throughout history. I suppose it was necessary after his expressions of unacceptable bigotry that he redeem himself with a foray into the bigotry toward men that has always been an integral part of the GMP mission. He does so uncreatively, relying on claptrap that could be pulled from any women’s studies text.

“Men have pretty much cornered the market on true evil throughout history. …[W]hen it comes to raping and pillaging, us guys have done it all.”

Saying that might have freaked him out a little, because he later back peddles, lamely, with, “I don’t believe that means men and women are the same or that all men should pay for the sins of our misguided brothers.”

And then he comes back full circle with “From the very beginning, the point of the Good Men Project has been to highlight the countless ways men—as fathers, husbands, sons, and workers—display a uniquely male form of goodness.”

Not a bad mission for “us” misguided brothers responsible for all that raping and pillaging, I’d say. Or was that that we were not responsible for all that stuff? Or was it that we did it but we are not responsible? It hard to follow such a circuitous path, but it’s a hazard that comes with reviewing Tom’s work. It is hard to analyse his opinions without finding yourself slogging through the muddled and convoluted inner workings of an indecisive mind.

Most feminists are wrong about the same exact things each and every time. Critiquing them is easy because most of them have a by the numbers feminist worldview, and they vary from it rarely

But Tom is a man clearly confused, about men, about women, about history and about himself. He is the self-imagined embodiment of the virtues of traditional masculinity, eerily ensconced in an environment that seeks to denigrate the same. His wandering, contradictory and dissonant stabs at pleasing two masters implodes because he lacks the moral conviction to serve just one.

And the kicker is that he is wrong on both counts. Men don’t have the market cornered on evil, and measuring manhood with skin color and hand strength is an abominable act of ignorance.

One man, two conflicted and failed ideologies. And not a hint of the backbone to either choose one or reject both. Tom Matlack is to the understanding of manhood what Bernie Madhoff is to the understanding to corporate ethics.

He is a man trying to fill the role of sycophant while desperately angling to project masculine bravado; a quisling of pure steel. He is his own embarrassment; a hollow man, headpiece full of straw, whose only legacy is the sad attempt to draw others into his aimlessness and confusion. It’s not likely that anyone with a moral compass and a hint of insight will follow.