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It's International Women's Day, which of course now means that I am duty bound to go on Twitter, search for International Men's (and Mens, Mens', Man's, Mans and Mans' and National Mens, Mens', Man's, Mans and Mans') Day and try to let all the people asking when International Men's Day is that it's on November 19th. It's my job. My only job. Like Father Christmas I come but once a year.
If you don't know what I am talking about then it's probably easiest to watch this short routine on the subject.
Usually I have something else to do, but today my diary was pretty empty, which made it all the harder. There were no enforced breaks, just the ones I took because my brain was starting to lightly simmer in my skull. I'd actually started a bit early, getting some practice in before midnight last night, but I woke early (I think because of the large whisky I drank last thing at night rather than because of the baby) and was able to crack on from 6am. It would probably have been easier if I had drunk whisky all day.
It actually started quite quietly and encouragingly most of the International Men's Day timeline was from people explaining there was already an International Men's Day or by people ironically joking about the idiots who didn't realise. This is why a bot can not do the job of a human. You have to be able to detect irony. I am an expert at irony, probably the world's greatest expert (I am not, but that ironic statement, ironically does enough to actually make me that) and even I was unable to be 100% sure about some of the tweets and retweeted a couple that I knew were probably jokes because they were quite funny. But there were still plenty of men (and dispiritingly quite a large amount of women) who assumed that there would never be an International Men's Day and sarcastically berated the world for its political correctness gone mad, even though there is an International Men's Day and it would have taken them less time to google and check that than it would have done for them to tweet their certainty that there wasn't.
As always I went through the seven stages of grief within this 24 hour period (though I probably only made it to about 20 hours from my original tweets, with a greedy six hours of sleep - plus I fell asleep at my keyboard, my hands still on the keys, a bit like that mummified sailor - apologies meninists “dandified†sailor). Though there was some euphoria in there too and to begin with I probably enjoyed it. It's fun taking the piss out of idiots. I get criticised from both sides on this quest, from ridiculous people who think I am mocking International Men's Day (I think it's a bit stupid and unnecessary, but if your motivation is to highlight men's high suicide rates rather than just annoyance that women have a day and you don't then I don't have a problem with it - but how many of you can put your hand on your heart and declare that that is 100% your motivation?) and from others who think I am making international women's day about myself (and given I am a man allegedly that is a bad thing).
But I am very much just mocking idiocy with this (something I am happy to do when it involves idiotic feminists as well as idiotic meninists - though there are way more idiots in the latter camp, because it basically starts from a childish and warped perspective of the world) and my goal is not to draw attention to myself, so much as to try and distract and ridicule the men who are trying to make it about themselves by asking that infernal question. And if I wanted PR then I could stop after about an hour - it's the fact that I hardly ever stop that is the point. I put myself through an extremely horrible experience in order to make a point that is that men should back the fuck away. It takes a man to do that job, I think (not in the way I joke in the above routine, but if a woman did it then the people I was challenging would have a different response).
But the political agenda isn't even the main motivation. I think it's funny to point up the ignorance of idiots, whilst creating a self-defeating and impossible task for myself. I am a victim of my own pedantry and my desire to get the world to a place where no one ever asks that question and has to start looking for inequality in the right places. As someone pointed out in my mass of Twitter replies, you have an international workers day and not an international fatcat capitalists day for a reason. To have one for both wouldn't be promoting equality. I am all for supporting men and tackling male suicides (which is why I do work with CALM) and I like men (though after March 8th it takes me a little while to get back to full support for them), but you don't have to do any of those things in direct response to International Women's Day and it's interesting that nearly all the people who want a day for men do nothing about it (or any of the serious issues) on November 19th or are interested in publicising it. Some blame the media for not promoting it, but I'd say it's pretty clear that most men aren't interested in such a day and the ones that claim to be are in fact only interested in the babyish concern of why women have a day and they “don't†(I mean they do, so you know….).
Why is there an AIDS day and not a non-AIDS day?
And so on.
Hopefully the slow chipping away via ridicule from me and the many other people who had noticed this moronic trend on social media (and elsewhere) will stop people asking about male equality (which ultimately is the same as female equality anyway if you think about it). For half of today I thought it might actually be working, but then America woke up and if anything were more ignorant than ever (who'd have thought that looking at their current political situation?).
I could do nothing more than quickly type “nov 19†to as many of them as I could as they whizzed by. It made me tired, it made me depressed and by the end of the day my fingers were bloody stumps. But then I remembered I had an episode of the Walking Dead recorded and washed it, wishing I only had to deal with a seemingly infinite number of mindless zombies...
Ultimately I am promoting the idea of International Men's Day, in the hope that the kind of people who profess to want one will let women have a day to celebrate themselves and fight for better rights around the world. I just got this tweet “If you think women have it tougher than men in the UK try & get access to/custody of your kids with a penis between your legs.†Which is interesting partly because I'd never said I thought women had a tougher time, just answered people's question about Men's Day, but mainly because supporting International Women's Day doesn't mean you are abandoning men. It's possible to do both. But there's a mindset that this is a war and you have to take a side. Of course there are aspects where men have it harder, but supporting equality is beneficial to them. I replied "men and women both have their battles. And they both have their days. Fighting their fight doesn't stop you fighting yours."
It's nice to be able to express a thought in more than a two word date. But as well as being a total mindfuck of a way to spend a day (and I thought it might drive me over the edge at times) just answering the same question posed by thousands of people who think they are being clever and original, gives you an incite into the mindset of all kinds of different people.
But I am glad to say that the vast majority of responses I got were supportive and understood what I was doing and why I was putting myself through something that was clearly self-defeating and impossible.
See you again next March 8th (and to a lesser extent on November 19th.
And if you want to trawl through it, it has been storified as usual by the insane Andy Mch (I mean what kind of person would be so obsessed as to catalogue that number of tweets - oh).
The As It Occurs To Me Kickstarter has got off to a great start with over £10,000 pledged on day one. But there's a long way to go.
