A comedian is using your ridiculous International Men's Day questions to help domestic violence victims

"But when is International Men's Day?"

8 March marks International Women’s Day 2018. Or, as it might as well be called, International Men-Angrily-Asking-If-There’s-An-International-Men’s-Day Day.

Today’s events, which are intended to celebrate and commemorate the movement for women’s rights, have produced the same predictable yet depressing reaction from some men. As has become the custom, rather than supporting the cause, a minority have taken to their keyboards to ask why there is no male equivalent to IWD.

But there’s just one problem.

International Men’s Day has been running since 1992. This year’s celebrations, which will be held on 19 Novemberin more than 60 countries, revolve around the theme of “Positive Male Role Models”.

British comedian Richard Herring has become so sick of men distracting from IWD by asking for their own day of celebrations – which, remember, already exists – that he has taken matters into his own hands.

Herring is spending the entirety of IWD on Twitter, responding to men asking when International Men’s Day is. Aside from the obvious humour, he will be raising money for Refuge, a charity that supports more than 4,500 women and children every day that experience domestic violence.

What better way to put the focus back where it belongs?

On his Just Giving page, Herring further explains the method behind his madness:

Every International Women's Day, (8 March) for a few years now, I have gone on Twitter to search for people asking, "When's International Men's Day?" to let them know that that is on 19 November. Weirdly most of them only seem to care about this on International Women's Day and when 19 November comes along they do nothing.

I do this 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.

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. The answer is 19 November. But as the number of people asking never seems to decrease it's a busy day for me. 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.

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