5217/18137
Over the last four or five International Women’s Days I have ploughed a crazy furrow through Twitter responding to all the idiot men (and unfortunately idiot women) who pose the question, “When’s International Men’s Day?†as if there would never be one. I let them know there is one and that it is on November 19th. It annoys a fair few meninists and the occasional feminist, but most people seem to enjoy and encourage (and tragically for me expect) this annual Sisyphean task. And to be fair I am happy to take on the mantle, because it’s silly and self-defeating and its relentlessness makes me as much of a victim of the joke as the idiots who think they are the first person to pose this question, or that they are making some brilliant swipe against political correctness and perceived inequality, without even considering that they should maybe check google first.
As usual it’s the only day that most of them will ever show any enthusiasm for International Men’s Day. If they put have the effort into the actual day as they do into wondering why they’re not allowed to have the day, then the day would be the biggest day in the calendar.
This year, a slight new variant came as people then added, but why isn’t it celebrated as much? As if they had no power to make that celebration happen. The only answers are because men don’t want to celebrate it, or men can’t be arsed to celebrate it or because there isn’t a woman around who is going to organise it. Someone blamed the media. To which I could only respond, “If only there were some men in the media who could do something about that.â€
It’s a silly sidebar to the proper day, but one with the genuine desire to eradicate this churlish desire to complain, rather than celebrate. I too, am ironically, forced to make the day about men (and some think myself) which is why some people dislike it. But the vast majority seem to get the subtle balance of the humour and the power of seeing the same question asked from all over the world and immediately answered, normally to a hasty deletion or lack of response or thanks as the questioner realises his point makes no sense and he doesn’t want to have to get into agreeing to commit to celebrating men or addressing their actual issues.
Last night someone offered to give a pound per response to Refuge -
http://www.refuge.org.uk/. I warned him that he might want to set a ceiling on that. But it did make me realise that I could make something good out of something stupid. Along with tweeting November 19th a lot (280 something times I think someone counted) I promoted the above website and this text service - text 'REFU40 £5' to 70070 to give Refuge £5. You can give any time and be helping out women and families in danger. Amazingly on the day they raised £12,413, when usually they get around £500. So thanks so much to everyone who contributed. How fucking lovely is that? From the dungheap of dumbass stupidity grows this beautiful flower of something actually good. Mind you, given the amount of shit, that's probably not surprising.
There was one point when I fancied some of the shrivel-dicked, baby-men I’d offended had gone out of their way to ask their friends to pose the question to make my life harder. But all I was thinking was every extra one of these means at least a pound more to Refuge. Stupidity is pretty hard to defeat as recent news stories show again and again. But today we won a battle. We used their own stupidity against them.
Maybe it was the fact that there was the extra incentive to continue, or maybe having dealt with a toddler and her childish tantrums, I didn’t find it as tough as usual this year, though sadly (especially once America woke up) there were more tweets asking that question than ever. At midnight approached I pretended to lose it a bit, but with a forcefulness that made me realise how much the barrage of ignorance was getting to me. It was nice to vent after a day of mildly sarcastic politeness. Read the whole thing at
www/twitter.com/Herring1967.
I’d like to cherry pick some of the best bits for you, but it would mean reliving the nightmare. And really you have to see the whole thing to understand it.
It had been a good day’s work, even though it stopped me doing the good day’s work that I should have been doing (given I have four scripts to rewrite), but at least I managed to do a gig in Haywards Heath, in a difficult to play high ceilinged hall, on a stage high above the audience. Judging by the responses to RHLSTP and AIOTM I don’t think it was a room full of Die Hard fans (or more pertinently my fans) but there were still 200 in and I think they liked it. No one has asked for 2x£15 back yet anyway.
RHLSTP RHMOL extra with Virginia Ironside (how cool is she?) is now up
It includes an unboxing of the prizes that go to this month's monthly badge monthly winner and some clips from the behind the scenes interviews that badgers can enjoy on their secret channel.
