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Tom Matlack
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Tom Matlack is a former venture capitalist turned writer and advocate for men as well as the divorced and remarried father of three. He co-founded The Good Men Project to foster a nationwide discussion on manhood through the forthcoming anthology of first person stories about defining moments as fathers, sons, husbands and workers.
 
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Blog Entries by Tom Matlack

A White Man in a Black Country

Posted August 7, 2011 | 09:25 PM (EST)

I traveled to Kenya and learned some things about himself and our conceptions of race.

I traveled to Kenya with my wife Elena and six year-old son Cole. A minority for the first time in my life,...

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Why Are Good Men Still Dying in Afghanistan?

19 Comments | Posted August 7, 2011 | 04:35 PM (EST)

I had just finished the harrowing account of just how we got bin Laden in the New Yorker -- including a Navy Seal who tackled two people he had reason to believe had suicide bomb vests on to save the...

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Addicts are Superhuman

5 Comments | Posted August 7, 2011 | 09:13 AM (EST)

Is addiction a "special gift" that, if harnessed, can be used for good rather than evil?

A while ago, I wrote about Amy Winehouse's tragic death and wondered out loud about what role her art and addiction played in her demise, along with a long list of other great artists...

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Does Buying Sex Make You a Criminal?

3 Comments | Posted July 25, 2011 | 10:41 AM (EST)

In a study of 202 men conducted in the Boston area by clinical psychologist Melissa Farley and the non-profit group Prostitution Research and Education, men who pay for sex were found to be more likely to commit...
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Stillness

Posted July 11, 2011 | 11:13 AM (EST)

What happens when we stop everything?

A couple of hours after I got to Paradise Valley, Montana I handed my laptop and iPhone over to Stacy, the ranch guest manager. I had already snuck upstairs in the lodge to login on the ranch's improved satellite Internet to put together a...

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The Curious Case of the Promiscuous Politcian

3 Comments | Posted July 5, 2011 | 03:35 PM (EST)


Are we to blame for all the horndog male politicians?


For months now, I've been carrying the mantle for the good men falsely accused of being bad. I still believe that we focus far too much energy on celebrity misdeeds and not enough on the...

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Why Gaga & Chelsea Are Good for Men

14 Comments | Posted July 5, 2011 | 10:34 AM (EST)

Sometimes pop culture actually gets it right. By that I mean cultural icons can tap into something so foreign, so crazy, so insane that it actually wakes us up to a deeper truth about ourselves through our cult worship of the stars themselves. We don't quite know what is happening...

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What the Heck is a "Good" Man Anyhow?

23 Comments | Posted June 29, 2011 | 05:45 PM (EST)

The fact that goodness is elusory makes it all the more important to talk about.

There have been many times I wished we had left the "good" out of our title. "The Man Project" would have worked just fine. Or even "dudes," or "why," to play off our genetic code.

...
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Is It Safe to Come Out of the Cave?

3 Comments | Posted June 27, 2011 | 10:13 AM (EST)

After years of hating people, Tom Matlack is ready to start connecting.

I often find myself in rooms full of a veritable sea of people these days. My wife is a...
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The Paradox of Success

Posted June 20, 2011 | 07:52 PM (EST)


I spoke to Pine Street Inn's job training graduates about falling down and getting back up.


Pine Street Inn began serving the homeless in 1969, providing a safe place for 200 men struggling...

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Should Women Really "Go Ugly"?

418 Comments | Posted June 20, 2011 | 01:00 PM (EST)

This post originally appeared on The Good Men Project

Vicki Larson and I have been having a fairly heated conversation about what ugly has to do, or not do, with a man being marrying material. Her Huffington Post column got huge attention for...

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Why Men Don't Need To Be Ugly To Be Good

259 Comments | Posted June 17, 2011 | 12:01 PM (EST)

One of the most popular posts on Huffington Post this week, "Hot or Not? Why Women Shouldn't Pick Attractive Husbands,"claims that smart, beautiful, and financially independent women should resist the temptation to marry attractive and masculine men because they are, by definition, going to fail to be good...

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Is Fake Really Better?

12 Comments | Posted June 16, 2011 | 06:41 PM (EST)

 



What does the rapid increase in breast augmentation say about all of us?


A few weeks ago we ran into a...

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Standing Up For Gays In A Boston Catholic Church

13 Comments | Posted June 14, 2011 | 05:51 PM (EST)

I went to my daughter's confirmation in the Catholic Church this morning and got a lot more than I expected. I found another personal hero, along with former Sing Sing inmate Julio Medina and photojournalist Michael Kamber.

I am not Catholic. I was born Quaker and have never...

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Playboy Shouldn't Be a Show

25 Comments | Posted June 14, 2011 | 12:42 PM (EST)

Perhaps the most important moment in gender politics in America occurred at a kitchen table in Chicago late in 1953. A young man named Hugh Hefner borrowed a thousand dollars from his mom to publish a magazine that was originally going to be called Stag Party. But apparently there was...

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NYT Calls Men "Lazy"

6 Comments | Posted June 13, 2011 | 02:36 PM (EST)

Here we go again:

"There's never enough time," the mother, Gloria Sheppard (Ally Walker), says. And increasingly on television, there's never enough time because men are lazy. Also, they are not that bright. And that's why women do almost all of the work at home, and the brunt of it...

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New Kids Are Real Men

Posted June 7, 2011 | 04:38 PM (EST)

Photo With Permission of Mass Eye & Ear

The first time I heard the New Kids in person was a few months ago at a Mass Eye & Ear fundraiser. They were there to help...

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Do Weiner's Tears Mean Anything?

11 Comments | Posted June 7, 2011 | 07:58 AM (EST)

It seems funny a guy named Weiner tried to DM an image of his erection to a young woman and mistakenly put it on his public tweet stream. He panicked, pulled it down and claimed to have been hacked when a conservative blogger got wind of the image of the...

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Has TV Made Cooking Macho?

18 Comments | Posted June 1, 2011 | 04:27 PM (EST)

This morning GMP contributor Ron Cowie emailed me the NYT review of Man with a Pan. I have to admit that I had spent the whole morning gobbling up the entire lengthy story, also in the Times, full of smut about celebrity bad boy chef Todd...

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My Name is Tom and I'm a Bruins Bandwagon Fan

15 Comments | Posted May 31, 2011 | 04:53 PM (EST)


Chara in the Penalty Box (Photo credit: Dan4th)

I went to LA to watch the Celtics win game 4 of the 2008 Finals.  I was in Fenway for the World Series in 2004. Bill Belichick went to my...

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