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Happy International Men’s Day. I hope you enjoyed it. It’s hard for me to have as much fun as all the other men, celebrating their own greatness, because it’s one of my busiest days of the year. I am very much the Santa of IMD, putting in all the legwork so everyone else can stay in bed and enjoy their presents.
A few weeks ago, Target Ovarian Cancer asked me if I’d be happy to publicise their cause. They’d picked up on my main job (of letting people who don’t know when IMD is that it’s on November 19th) and thought it might be fun to combine my inevitable follow up job of letting people know when International Women’s Day is with something a bit less silly and thank all the men who have helped their partners through this disease. I liked it as an idea partly because it was about men and women working together and getting on with each other, which is how things work out for the vast majority of us.
So I wrote up my usual thoughts about people who ask when International Men’s Day is without realising that there is one. They are pretty much the target of the piece. You’d think it would be hard to get upset about that, as surely it’s clear to anyone that that’s a fairly dumb way to behave.
So what I thought would be a fairly inoffensive piece about mocking stupidity and raising awareness of charity (I mean, who could take exception to those things, only a stupid person who hated thinking of others right - they’d surely keep quiet) seemed to explode a bit on the Guardian website (check out the comments -they're amazing) and Twitter, with people wading in to wish that I was gassed or got cancer myself. The less crazy ones suggested that I was wrong to be dismissive about IMD and listed the same statistics about they ways that men are not equal to women. But if I am honest not many of these seemed to be sincere in their motives. Yes, more men commit suicide than women and that’s something we should be concerned about, but I don’t recall Twitter being as ablaze with concerned citizens during Suicide Prevention Week in September. The tone of the aggrieved people seems to me to be very much about anger that there’s an International Women’s Day at all, rather than any serious wish to have an International Men’s Day. But if the upshot of that is that people think seriously about the issues that affect men then that’s not a problem. I have never seen International Women’s Day as an anti-men thing. It’s not really anything to do with men, which is possibly what men find annoying. No one sensible minds the idea of men having a similar day or things that men’s lives are all perfect. IWD is just about creating debate and trying to affect change about the unfair things in society that affect women. As I say in the article the babyish responses of some men (and women) is a bit embarrassing. And the comments I saw about my article and on my Twitter and Facebook feed didn’t really do much to dismiss that feeling.
There are a lot of dumb people in the world (on both sides of this argument) but I was certainly introduced to a lot of the dumb people today. I have no illusions about my own level of dumbness, but that’s why I wrote a fairly stupid article about the whole thing. I am glad to say that the Target Ovarian Cancer people were happy with the response, which is the only reason I dusted off this old idea anyway. It was just a joke fellas.
I don’t really care about either day as I am pretty sure that in my lifetime either all women will be replaced by sex robots and birthing pods or all men will be genetically engineered into sperm aphids that get milked daily. And though I love both ideas I am kind of hoping the sperm aphids win out. Especially if they get milked by sex robots. How the sex robots and sperm aphids will laugh at us with our pathetic concerns about gender. Before milking and tweaking each other. Oh Brave New World that has such people in it.
Tonight’s gig in Corsham went well in front of a smallish audience (if some of the commentators were right and i wrote the article for self-publicity it didn’t seem to work today) which means now that only six of the first 8 gigs have sold out - so not sure of the indications this will have for the success of the tour in general. But here are all the dates, with added Cheddar on 18th April. Book ahead, probably, unless you’re in one of the places that is indifferent to me.
The 70-odd odd Corshamites who turned up were lovely though and the show continues to shape up. One more chance to catch it in 2015 (at a bargain price). It will continue to develop throughout the tour I am sure and I am enjoying doing it this way.
I am powerfully tired this week and only got through the drive by stuffing my face with buns and biscuits, which isn’t going to help me fit into my dinner jacket, but I thought it was better in the short term that I stayed awake and alive.
