Trigger Warning

OK, It seems that I officially have a 'Trigger'

I think that's the right word - I've been seeing the phrase 'Trigger Warning' used to label blogs and suchlike that have things like traumatic scenes or violence towards animals, children, women, the dispossessed, the poor, the huddled masses, immigrants - Any sort of 'group' really being portrayed as a victim for one reason or another that can cause feelings of anger or trauma in the reader. Maybe it's because of something you yourself went through, or someone close to you, or someone you've read about... Even if it's someone that doesn't exist and you've made them up in your head just so you can hang your righteous indignation on them like the last coathook at choir practice, doesn't matter, they're all valid: trigger.

Seems simple enough - You read something that gets your goat - you don't like it - you sound off about it and feel much better. It doesn't matter who you upset, you feel better and that's all that matters.

Except, no, it's actually not. It's not OK to spazz out and direct some stream of vilifying bollocks at someone who was simply voicing their opinion just because they used a word that you didn't like (Yes I'm oversimplifying it intentionally, I do that, do try and keep up) They didn't know... And to a point, it's not their problem. Maybe they've had a really crappy day, maybe something's happened to them recently and everything fell into place and it became obvious to them that it was [insert thing that happens to be your trigger]'s fault.

Who's fault is it?

Well, no-one's actually - maybe at the outside it could be argued that it's yours for being 'triggerable' I don't know, that seems unkind when you think about it - But life's often like that isn't it? We all like to think that we're special little snowflakes, all touched by the hand of the maker, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god. But we're really not - We're each about 2lbs (1Kg) of pinky-grey snot in a bone-box being carried around in a meat-suit controlled by a frankly unbelievable set of low-voltage electrical impulses that has no reason or right to work at all.

And yet we're still upset by The Daily Mail?

Before this veers off into the long, dry grass of existentialism, let's steer it back on the road towards something much more interesting and valid:

Me...

Because it was me that we were talking about - And this is still my Blog. What is my trigger you ask? Well, you probably don't ask, you've probably wandered off to catch a Pokemon and walked into a tree by now, but let's imagine someone is still listening.. reading... whatever... My trigger is 'Men'

Not 'men', the male of the species, owners of 'outie' reproductive organs, hunters, gatherers, wearers of polished shoes and tight, white, briefs and beard growers. But 'Men' with the horns and the pitchforks and the having everything that they do given to them on a platter, the ones who are threateningly tall, or scarily muscled or malevolently tattooed or in positions of power that have been provided solely so that they can look down upon everyone that isn't them and laugh and laugh and laugh, the obvious pedophiles, the members of 'clubs' that have ties.

You know, the ones that are usually stuck at the end of a sentence like, 'But that wouldn't have happened if I was a man. You get me?'

Men are the root of a lot of the world's evils, I'm not denying that in the slightest, significantly more rapists and murderers and despots and pedophiles and terrorists are men than are women in this day and age - I'm totally fine with that... Wait, no, I'm not totally fine with that in the slightest, it's a terrible thing to have to say about your own gender - But I'm fine with people saying it - because, ostensibly, it's true. If you dig deep enough into 99% of the worlds problems, you'll find an overweight middle-aged bloke pointing and saying 'I did that, comrade.'

I'll pause here to mention that's it's dead easy to say 'But what about Angela Merkel?' or 'I think you're forgetting Magdalena Solis!' but try and bear in mind that I said 'More', and not 'All'... 

And that brings me back around to my actual trigger - It's where the word 'Men' is taken to convey 'All men', whether it's meant that way or not. You can infer from what is said that the speaker, or the writer or whatever means that Men are murderers, Men are pedophiles, Men surf through their lives on a magical silver serving dish being permanently fellated by innumerable slaves whilst ignoring the more widespread female burden.

And I'm sure that some are, and I'm sure that some do...

But not all.

It's never all.

A traditionally Post-Feminist Dichotomy

Before continuing, I'd just like to let you know that I am wearing a NATO issue kevlar helmet and flak jacket, and throwing rocks at me isn't going to work, so you may as well not bother.

It's a deeply held belief amongst men that no matter how hard you try, you will never understand 'Women'.  I agree, to an extent, in fact I'd go further... I'd say that no matter how hard you try, you will never understand 'Other People'... But forget I said that last bit, because I'm lazy, and we're talking about women, and given the option between a cheap shot and a cogent argument, I'll take the banana skin and the comedy trombone noise every time.

I work in an office, a head office in fact, for a company that describes itself on its internal motivational posters as 'Lifestyle and Image Consultants', but everyone else just calls us hairdressers of course.  And if you've been reading this sorry excuse for a blog for any length of time, you'll know who 'we' are and will have some idea of the high calibre of our rank and file employees.

Hairdressing, traditionally, is the domain of the fairer sex.  In our office and in our salons there are at least ten women for every man (In a statistical sense at least, they don't apportion them out to us at the Christmas Party or anything... Well, they didn't at the last one I went to, although I did leave early.) The only place that this isn't the case is the management team, where it's pretty much a 50/50 split. Our MD is also a woman.

In fact, the only place where women are outnumbered by men is, you've guessed it, the IT department. The woman/man ratio in there currently sits at about 1/5 - I'll let you draw your own conclusions from that.

We also have a fair old selection of people (in fairness, mostly people of the male persuasion) whose sexuality is... erm... How does one put it delicately these days? Ah, not alligned with their more traditional biological gender role.  And they mostly tend to be of the sub-genus Extravagantisimous fabuloso, if one catches my drift.  Which, of course is both perfectly fine by me, and at the same time none of my business.  Some of my closest friends are in relationships where their dangly bits won't fit together without taking a long run-up. (Apart from the occasional accidental vacuum lock between females, obviously)

There's a pretty heavy 'Empowerment' vibe running through the entire business too, people are expected to lead from the front and so forth, manage risk, take responsibility for themselves and follow interminable new pop-management doctrines passed down to us by our colonial overlords on a weekly basis without sighing and having a bit of a scoff under their breath in the kitchen.

What I'm really saying is that 90% of the job roles are filled by people with feminine characteristics. And of that group of people, 90% are fully empowered, they perform their given duties with equal, if not greater efficacy than a more masculine person would, as you would expect in these modern times. Most of them are rightly proud of their achievements.

So, my question is... On the few times a year that we have a delivery of half a ton of new promotional material (leaflets, posters, cut-out boards etc.) which gets dumped on the ground floor and requires manhandling up the stairs to the main office, because there is no lift, where does everyone disappear to?  It's like the skirting board opens up and swallows them all.  Do they hide in the cupboards? Does this magical bodily synchronisation that they all keep banging on about kick in and they all trot to the toilet en masse? How do they all re-appear once they hear the sound of the last heavy box hitting the luxiourious axminster flooring like a flock of self-righteous starlings?

Believe it or not, I didn't get into IT for the myriad box-moving opportunities.  No! It was for the fame and constant glamour!

Men and Women, 100% equal?... Yeah, right up until the point where they encounter something heavy, or sticky, or smelly... Or an earwig.

Pah! If you didn't all smell so nice I'd have nothing to do with any of you.




Yes, I have used the word 'Traditional' rather a lot, that's to subconciously con you into thinking that I'm all modern and forward thinking... But I'm really not.

It's all your fault!

I just read a post on one of those 'Spotted' Pages on Facebook.  I don't know if your area is covered, but effectively it's a page where people can post things about people they've seen in the local area that they would 'Like to get to know better' - I presume that that's what they mean when they say 'I'm rite lyk to smash er back doorz in bruv.' anyway. Or when they find your choice of car or clothes unacceptable or they wish you would close your front curtains whilst you are excitedly banging your spotty buttocked, squealing girlfriend when they are peering through your windows whilst taking their kids to school and suchlike.

Anyway, going off on a tangent there... Don't know where that one would have ended up if I'd carried on with it *whew*.

The post was from someone thanking some kids who had handed her Grans purse into a local shop when they'd found it on the floor.  It still had all the money in it and everything.  Wonderful story, very uplifting - Proving that the youth of today deserves to be looked at as a disparate, loose grouping of individuals with their own special attributes and aspirations, rather than a huge septic mass of snapbacks and hoodies who cannot spell a three letter word never mind have an original thought without putting 'ey' or 'YGM' or something on the end of it.

Brilliant, great post, great event, warm and firm handshakes all around.

However, I started to notice a worrying trend in some of the replies.  Apart from the spelling (which genuinely caused me to try and mouth the words and see if I could figure out what they were trying to say) and the almost apocalyptic lack of punctuation (Really, a sentence that stretches over four lines? - you must have some well hench lungs if you can say all that without stopping to breathe) - Oh! Lookit me! I'm trying to sound like a skinny, spotty white-boy, who weighs 5 stone wringing wet, doesn't know how hats work, thinks 'flipping the bird' is the epitome of human pulchritude, wears a lot of knock-off high-nylon-content sportswear and really wants to have been born, as a heavily muscled black gentleman, in South-Central LA or Compton.

So, apart from them, I kept reading things like 'Ah! they've made their Mums proud.' and 'That's because of the way that their Mums have brought them up' and 'Bet their Mums are giving them extra-big cuddles tonight'

See the theme?

Give you a clue, it starts with the letter 'M' and rhymes with 'bum'

I'm a Dad, and even if I say so myself, a pretty good one.  I appreciate that traditionally, mothers have always been seen as the primary caregivers and I'm not trying to take anything away from them.  I'd say that at least 80-90% of Mums are great, brilliant, wonderful people who inspire their kids whilst teaching them the proper boundaries and don't say 'It's just kids being kids, innit' when Little Jay-Zee gets brought home by the police as they've found him keying cars whilst still being dressed in his primary school uniform at 02:30 in the A.M.

I like to think that I've done my bit, in-between being out of the house for twelve hours a day doing the whole work thing.  I've helped to teach my kids to think for themselves, to be proud of their achievements, to know the difference between right and wrong, the correct pressure to use when you're putting someone in a sleeper hold (DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME, there's a very real danger of brain-damage and/or death if you don't know what you're doing!) and, most importantly, respect for themselves and others.

Yet I still get looked at as if I'm either a paedophile, or some other kind of deviant if I happen to be seen outside with my own daughter - I understand from other Dads who have daughters in their late teens that they have a similar but slightly different problem, there's active tutting being directed at them on a fairly regular basis from the more mature (agewise) female members of society.  I know that that might sound a bit sexist, but invariably, it's the classic 'Little Old Lady' that's giving it large with the 'He's old enough to be her Dad' business.

So what do we do about it?

How do we change that?

How do we make people start saying 'I bet their parents are proud' Rather than 'I bet their Mums are proud'?

Buggered if I know - but it might be a start for blokes to start taking responsibility for their children, acting like Dads and not just like bloody spermatozoon cannons. Getting their girlfriends pregnant and then rinsing and repeating with the next one and the next one and the next, wandering through their poky housing estates like a sexually ambivalent typhoid Mary (or Typhoid Marlon perhaps, in this particular case) begatting all over the place without a care in the world and bringing hordes of pale, acne-ridden ginger kids into the world who go straight from their third or fourth-hand plastic coated cots to the dole-queue, not passing Go, but still collecting £200 every bloody fortnight.

Parent who have been together for a long time and have subsequently parted after having kids - I get it, things happen, life's not like it is in fairy tales.  This isn't directed at you.  Neither am I talking about people who've escaped from abusive relationships or people whose partners have died, or mature people who have made the conscious decision to have children but to raise them on their own.

I'm talking about those boys, because they don't deserve to be called men - The 'I'm not wearing a condom, you can't feel anything' brigade, the 'If you loved me you'd let me' types, the ones you see in the adverts who prey on girls with low self-esteem, the ones whose face you would literally never get tired of punching, the ones who grin vacantly at you and you know that no matter how you explain it to them, they will have no idea what you're saying or why they should even care.

The ones that have made women hate men.

The ones that misguided women who don't really understand the difference between feminism and misandry blame all the world's problems on.

The ones that have made women who don't know me mistrust me because I am what is currently known as 'a big bloke.' (people used to use the word imposing you know - Better ring to it I think)

The ones that have made all men into monsters.

The ones that, if there was any justice in the world, would still be contained in a crusty old sock, hidden under their Father's bed.

This is aimed at you...


You make me sick.