The Good Men Project (GMP) recently ran an article by Suzanne Venker about the importance, indeed irreplaceability of fathers in the lives of children. Venker supported her contentions by pointing to the spectrum of psychological and social maladies which are inarguably much more likely to befall fatherless children than those whose nuclear family remains intact.
She also conveyed a deep sense of appreciation for her husband and his importance in her life and the life of their son. The tone of the article was upbeat, affirming and positive about the importance of men and masculinity, particularly in the lives of children.
Of course, GMP quickly realized their mistake and took the article down.
And now, if you click through a link to the article you will get the following message where the piece on fathers used to be:
Editor’s Note: We have removed the content of this article.
The content that formerly appeared here did not reflect The Good Men Project’s views or position and rest assured that we will work to ensure that a mistake like this won’t happen again.
I am not even going to pretend to be shocked by this. I won’t trot out the almost obligatory “WTF” or “wut.” I won’t use feigned surprise to speculate on what could possibly possess GMP management, on a website allegedly dedicated to the goodness of men. to decide that an article actually about the goodness of men did not reflect their views, and was, in fact, a mistake to publish.
I won’t do any of that because GMP is showing, which it rarely does, 100% complete and transparently pure honesty about what their message is really about.
Bookmark that page for posterity.
For those who don’t understand what GMP is up to, which is to say those of you who have never read it, you first have to wade through at least some of their bullshit. The first and most glaring of pile of said BS is that the Good Men Project is a publication that openly explores, from a diverse group of writers and thinkers, what it means to be a good man.
Hell, GMP is not for or about men at all, much less good ones.
No, if you want to understand what the Good Men Project is about you have to look past their blatantly misleading title, scrap their about page, which is hysterical when you know how fallacious it is, and pretty much ignore what anyone associated with the publication will tell you about their intent.
Just as it is in so many other things in life, to understand the real picture you have to follow the money, which is to say in this case follow the audience. If you want to know what the Good Men Project is about, all you have to know is who it is written for. You have to know who reads it. And that much is pretty easy to answer.
Let’s take a quick look at their demographics, supplied by alexa.com.
Funny what a little information, sans the spin, will do for achieving some clarity.
What are we to make of a publication, man-obsessed in appearance and content, but with the pesky little sticking point that it has almost no male readers?
The answer to that is in the content, both what is present on its pages, and what has been expediently torn from its archives when things got a little too real; when its female dominated and patently pro-feminist audience cried foul.
At GMP, amid a handful of milquetoast offerings that contain politely phrased and questionably sincere objections to the treatment of men in modern culture, you will find a deluge of feminist propaganda, manhood advice from women, pablum on how to have hot sex and features on assorted forms of victim politics.
If you check out the current numero uno Editor’s Pick, you find Dale Thomas Vaughn mindlessly pontificating about how feminism has cured war, pestilence, toe fungus and masculinity in just forty years. His only remaining question was where women would send men in the future and if facial hair and being white would be allowed.
The Good Men Project? Nah, it’s COSMO with a dick painted on the cover and the “sensibilities” of modern feminists flatly trumping anything real or positive about men.
It is a publication for women who hate men but are probably still looking for Prince Nutless to show up at the door and validate every psychotic thought in their ideology-addled heads forever after. And it is for a very small minority of men so spineless and obsequious that they will happily take the regular beatings that come with the occasional pat on the head and a “good boy.”
Sorry, but it has to be said: It is not the Good Men Project. It is the Good Boy Project. Management knows their bread and butter and won’t have it any other way.
The removal of Venker’s article was anything but surprising. Fathers are essential? Irreplaceable? Not to a hoard of entitled consumers, most of whom have already completely shortchanged their children by selfishly running their fathers far, far out of their lives. And you can bet they blazed a trail to write in and complain about being reminded of it. The avoidance of richly deserved shame can produce missionary zeal.
What Venker really reminded these women of is what they are not. She reminded them of the fatherly love that cannot reside in their hearts and the paternal human connection that cannot exist in their lives. I have no doubt that more than a few women who read that article were already witnessing the harsh consequences of their decisions playing out in the increasingly dysfunctional lives of their sons and daughters.
All that is enough for a death knell in a place like GMP, but Venker also committed the worst of all sins. She demonstrated to these women that indeed, not all women are like them. I lay dollars to doughnuts they hated her guts for it. They wanted her discredited and denounced. But most of all they wanted her gone so that they could return to the comfort of their bitterness and denial.
The promise by GMP that they would never, ever, ever make such a terrible mistake as to run that kind of article again said it all. And they are right. If they do not continue to support the delusions of the apoplectic losers that flock to their pages every day, they won’t have an audience at all.
