I am not very fond of The Good Men Project (just as I wouldn’t be fond of a “Good Women Project” either), because it somewhat presents the issue of “goodness” in a dichotomy that allows people to never have to examine their behaviors (i.e. “obviously I am a good person, so naturally, I would never do anything deplorable”). Most of us are neither good nor bad, we just are to the best of our abilities. Sometimes we will do reprehensible stuff and other times we will overcome those behaviors and better ourselves. Also, this Good Men Project sometimes displays a kind of moralistic handwringing that I find rather off putting (OMG SEX WITH A STRIPPER!). Dude, leave your moralistic stances out of the idea of “goodness”. Those who do not subscribe to your particularly prescriptive Abrahamic inspired mandates are not necessarily bad. So, that’s my beef, in a nutshell, with the idea of a “Good Men Project”.
But just out of curiosity, I checked out their Submission guidelines (generally a good place to see who they aim towards and what kind of people they seek to attract). Well, it seems that Good Men ™ must be, at least college educated and certainly follow the Associated Press stylebook in order to contribute to the conversations. Not only that, if you don’t, expect violence on your submission:
If you put two spaces between sentences, your submission will be printed, shredded, and set on fire.
Oh, I see. If your education level, or your disabilities prevent you from following these tightly set rules, you deserve fire. Because apparently, that’s the sign of a “Good Man”. If they truly seek to dismantle the rhetoric of violence that permeates narratives of mainstream masculinities, maybe they could start with their own site.
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