I have always been a person that thrives on dissent. When reasonable and considered it’s a good, human check and balance for what we choose to believe. It puts what we think under a microscope and lets us put the ideas of others to the test as well. And, importantly, it staves off the forces of conformity and groupthink that so often lead us to mindlessness, feminism and really confused websites.

With that in mind I welcomed, prompted rather, the exchange here with writers at the Good Men Project regarding the question of what makes a good man, and indeed if we are making an egregious mistake by even asking it.

I challenged Tom Matlack, Lisa Hickey and other GMP writers to answer one simple question, which I pose here again:

Please inform us of anything, one single quality, that you think constitutes a part of being a good man – that does not also apply to being a good woman.

Tom, Lisa and someone named Jackie Summers all took their shots at answering.

I can only think of one thing that near adequately characterizes the responses. For those of you old enough to have seen the movie Cat Ballou, summon from your memory the image of Lee Marvin, cross-eyed drunk and hanging half-off his equally shit-faced horse, clutching the saddle horn with one hand and trying to shoot the side of a barn with a gun he barely held in the other…and missing.

Yes, he actually missed the side of the barn, but he came closer to the target than any of these people did to directly and concisely answering one really simple…fucking…question.

First, let’s take Tom’s “answer,” if you really want to call it that. After playing patty-cake with his keyboard for a while, saying squat, he finally cuts to the fail:

My personal definition of being a good man means trying to make more good decisions on a daily basis than bad. It means showing up for my wife and kids even when it’s not easy. It means trying to help someone else out of generosity rather than greed. It means telling the deepest truth I am capable of. And it means forgiving myself when I fail.

Sometimes I want to cut a foot-long piece of razor wire, run one end though my lower lip, and then yank it back and forth like I was trying to start a friction fire, just to not have to feel how painful it is to deal with this kind of bullshit.

Tom? TOM!! You didn’t answer the question. Fuck sake man, you didn’t even try. Every word you said could equally apply to a woman – these days even the part about coming home to a wife.

I am sorry. Really I am. Because if I am going to make myself believe that you were trying to answer the question, then I have to assume you are not smart enough to understand what I was asking, or maybe not smart enough to read a complete sentence. But I never thought you were stupid, and still don’t. It appears, though, that you think I am.

Since Tom wouldn’t, couldn’t, answer the question, let’s take a look at what Jackie Summers, a “big scary black guy with bowling balls for shoulders and tree trunks for thighs,” had to say, assuming he didn’t damage his keyboard with his jack hammers for fingers.

He did no better job than Tom. Actually, it was worse because in addition to the scary-bad metaphors about his body he also forces us to stomach a redundant stream of 5th grade level platitudes and Peter Pan observations. So says Summers:

Bad men exist. This is undeniable. This is because bad people exist, and men are a subset of people. The world has always had bad men, because the world has always had bad people. Men who hurt. Men who maim. Men who kill. Good men exist. Also undeniable. This is because good people exist, and men are a subset of people.

The second time he said that “men are a subset of people,” my eyes started playing tricks on me. The article started to look like it was written in crayon. God knows it sounded like it.

I do understand, though, Jackie. I also have to repeat the fact that men are people all the time, usually to people like you, but that is a different story. Also, the simplified version of good and bad is so off the mark that it puts termites in your tree trunks. Men who kill and maim are only bad when they are not killing and maiming the right people, such as those with brown skin and oil deposits. The real good men are just future corpses. Really bad men are self-defined. Guess which group I’m in?

Relying on a Mr. Rogers approach getting his “points” across, Summers avoids the question entirely and cuts right to the core of the problem by demonstrating that the problem is, indeed, him.

Dig this from The Teach.

The world has always had good men, because the world has always had good people. Men who heal. Men who protect. Men who would sacrifice their lives and limbs for the greater good.

Ahhh, the “greater good.” The great, masculine meat grinder of history. I wonder again if it occurs to Jackie that frequently those men who sacrifice their “lives and limbs” are often the same ones doing the killing and maiming. But, I digress.

As I said, you won’t find an answer to my question within a light year of Summers’ article, or even any indication that he read the question. The theme, though, which he repeats with as much annoyance as he does the startling and edgy fact that “men are subset of people,” is simple; Men are expendable because “that’s how we all survive.”

He supports this by pointing out that in a dicey situation, his size, which he directly ties to his sex without actually saying so, make him the odds on choice for protecting any weak little women in his immediate area.

Welcome to the world of Jackie Summers, everyone. Please set your watches back 50,000 years, or at least back to the time before technology made self-protection an equal opportunity responsibility. By the way, Jackie, that was about the same time, at least according to all the patriarchy theorists, that “good” women were chattel and not much valued past their ability to close their mouths and open their legs at the same time. Such is the extent of the quazi-patriarchal pablum you have dished up to your readers; another reminder that it really is about chivalry, no matter how much you try to hide it behind what passes for postmodern enlightenment.

You, in virtual lockstep with GMP editorial slant, are simply an advocate for how best to exploit men in modern times.

I could write almost endlessly on the symbiotic relationship of old world chivalry and feminism, and how GMP has always been intellectually paralyzed by the dissonance that creates, but I’m already up to my waist in waste. So let’s get ‘er done before I have to start cutting that razor wire.

As I said, Tom didn’t answer the question at all. Jackie wrote as though the question never existed. That leaves Lisa Hickey, who actually answered the question, but apparently without the benefit of being aware of it. She says:

While there may be nothing inherently different in being a “good man” or a “good woman”, there are plenty of ways in which society tries to trick us into believing there are.

Gee, you mean like “The Good Men Project”? Jesus, where did I put those wire cutters? Lisa Hickey has just told us not only that there is nothing inherently different in being a “good man” or a “good woman,” but that anyone suggesting there is a difference is tricking us.

Irony’s a motherfucker, innet?

And that pretty much sums it up; a trio of chances, a triumvirate of abject failure. The only thing left is why.

Ms. Hickey came here and commented, somewhat to her credit, in response to this challenge and said:

I posted a response to Paul’s challenge as well. You may all hate The Good Men Project, but you can’t say we aren’t willing to engage.

Disregarding the accusation of hate for the time being, that is 100% correct, but keep in mind that Hugo Schwyzer “engaged” with Tom Matlack, as did Amanda Marcotte. I have engaged people like David Futrelle, who is loathe to hit a keystroke that would contribute to a word of truth. Simple engagement is not proof of integrity, but how you engage certainly can be.

What matters in this bad man’s opinion is engaging meaningfully; in dealing with questions and criticisms directly and honestly. Anyone can ask meaningful questions about the content of this site and our mission here. They can attempt to shoot holes in any of these articles, and they may be able to. Regardless of the possible findings, we will respond to those challenges head on. I have immense pride in that, and it is one of the reasons we have a very popular men’s website, with mostly male readers.

GMP’s failure to practice that same integrity is the explanation for their failure in this exchange. Men are not their target audience, just their target, and it shows.

Ms. Hickey, you said that you were not here to make friends or be liked by people, and so far that is working out very well. But it is not, at least in my case, because your ideas suck so badly. It is because your whole shtick does.

From engaging but not honestly, to auto-refreshing your site to artificially inflate your traffic position and advertising impressions, to running a men’s website that has trashed men more than understanding them, and encouraged men to sacrifice themselves more than solve their problems, all for the sake of a buck, you have literally begged for disdain. We may live in a shitty, relativist zeitgeist, but integrity is not so far out of style that lacking it can’t hurt you.

If it were not for the false advertising, it would not bother me so much. In your About Page, it says, “The Good Men Project is not so much a magazine as a social movement.”

How many phony page impressions does it take to make a movement?

Silly me, am I asking questions again?

I really do have hope that recent events at GMP are a good sign of times to come, that you really are, as you claim, embracing a policy that requires you to listen to your male readers, all of them, and react accordingly. Perhaps if you actually do that enough you will end up with interest from a male audience. Anything is possible.

But I also know that I have been reminded in this exchange that you have a great deal yet that you need to hear, not the least which is a lot of good people still respect honesty more than they do a slick angle.