Happy International Women's Day! The one day of the year we explicitly honour the contributions of women and girls and push for progress on gender inequality – and yet, somehow, some men still find a way to make it all about them. Today is pretty much International "When's International Men's Day?" Day.
It's a stupid question, obviously, not just because aside from every day basically being a celebration of men, there actually is an annual International Men's Day, which has happened on every 19th November since the 1990s.
Someone who's frankly bored of men asking if there's an International Men's Day is Richard Herring. Every year, the crusading comedian spends 8th March replying to as many such queries on Twitter as possible, and this year is no different.
Here's just a snippet of some of his golden rejoinders so far today at @Herring1967. Follow him, favourite him and retweet ASAP.
@cyclingbhoy asked: "Just wondering if there's an 'international men's day' if not one should start from next year,I don't like all this discrimination against us # InternationalWomenDay2018 # InternationalWomensDay."
Not wondering that hard. It’s November 19th. So that’s one less piece of discrimination against men in the world then. https://t.co/yIlWEjnT3M
— Richard K Herring (@Herring1967) March 8, 2018
"Wondering when is international men's day?" pondered @Dizzie56Rich.
Stop wondering and start googling. You have until November 19th to find out. https://t.co/9Z4oTu8jD5
— Richard K Herring (@Herring1967) March 8, 2018
@KevPalmer4 demanded: "So when do we get are International men's Day?????"
November 19th !!!!! https://t.co/N4fX2KN3cV
— Richard K Herring (@Herring1967) March 8, 2018
"When is International men's day? Asking for a mate," queries @darrenbrodie92.
People who ask this question will find it very hard to get a mate. The answer is November 19th. Stop asking questions like that and one day someone will mate with you. https://t.co/z1vQTrzd8b
— Richard K Herring (@Herring1967) March 8, 2018
"When shall we get an International Men's Day," wondered @mukhopadhyayt, adding a chin-stroke emoji for effect.
I reckon let’s just stick with the one we’ve got on November 19th. In the mean time let’s continue work on finding the cure for hand stuck to face syndrome https://t.co/IgeMIwO8Z1
— Richard K Herring (@Herring1967) March 8, 2018
The sarcastic @taekwondocopper certainly met his match. " Suppose I’ll get fired for asking when International Men’s Day is? # internationalwomensday2018."
Very brave of you to ask then, knowing that your boss would react in that way. If only you’d googled it you could have kept silent and kept your job. Anyone got some work for this guy? He’s a bit impetuous, but it’s only a problem if you hate easily answerable questions. https://t.co/DX9QwhGXwU
— Richard K Herring (@Herring1967) March 8, 2018
@KeithMatshe, who, no joke, calls himself "Mr_know_it_all" tweeted with seemingly no self-awareness: "When is International men's day."
Oh the delicious irony of your name
— Richard K Herring (@Herring1967) March 8, 2018
November 19th.
Now you do know it all. https://t.co/OTO3XWwwfl
"Which day is International Men’s day? I can’t seem to find it," mused @1funkster.
On a scale of 1 to 10 how hard would you say you had looked? https://t.co/KXqXWGFvUb
— Richard K Herring (@Herring1967) March 8, 2018
"When is International men’s day??" bellowed @Jamie_brown1. "Asking for a non sexist."
Does their non-sexism also mean they can’t use google - it’s november 19th. https://t.co/gO6hH7aj5d
— Richard K Herring (@Herring1967) March 7, 2018
The catchily named @T95196790, with impeccable grammar and punctuation to boot, asked: "So when is it International man day? Since we do everything or is that sexist."
It gets harder if you have to check all the men/man/mens/mans variants. But if a job’s worth doing… November 19th https://t.co/91iOMu6QFg
— Richard K Herring (@Herring1967) March 8, 2018
@Pete_r_Knox's passionate ignorance really got Herring fired up: "What the fuck is this # InternationalWomensDay bullshit? Why isn't there an international men's day? So much for equality, huh!"
I know it’s fucking ridiculous. It makes me mad. Also that Slavery month. When do the slave owners get recognised? Unless everyone gets a day what is the point in days? Oh hold on there is an international men’s day apparently, it’s november 19th. Still mad about slaves though https://t.co/BKBIS55rSU
— Richard K Herring (@Herring1967) March 8, 2018
Not only is Herring fighting the good fight, he's also raising money for the domestic violence charity Refuge. He's also surpassed his £50k on his JustGiving page at the time of writing and the figure keeps growing and growing – a seriously impressive feat for someone spending the day on social media.
If we could hit £50,000 by midday my cock would not only be hooped (as all men’s are on International Women’s Day) I might have a little tired cry. I can’t believe how well this is doing. https://t.co/XV522ImcQR
— Richard K Herring (@Herring1967) March 8, 2018
He does it, he explains, "so that everyone else can get on with celebrating International Women's Day and using it to raise awareness of the issues that affect women. And trying to achieve equality."
He's "not denigrating the people who use [International Men's Day] to raise awareness" – after all, he does more than most to raise awareness for the day, he explains, but he believes striving for equality will help both sexes.
"It's really just a bit of fun to point out how unoriginal people are being and also answer the question that they don't expect has an answer," he continues, adding that the number of people asking never seems to decrease, so it's a busy day for him.
"I thought this year it would be nice if we raised some money along the way, to turn stupid or negative comments by people who don't understand how to google into something that will be positive and helpful."
Donate to Refuge through Herring and follow him on Twitter.
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