I usually try to do something for International Men’s Day. Occasionally it’s an essay; sometimes it’s a graphic. The same messages keep coming back, though: not all men (with or without the formerly-ubiquitous hashtag) are bad, and what good men need to do is call out any everyday sexism whenever and wherever they see it.

I’ve also talked about how I have a problem with doing this, because I don’t ritualistically surround myself with misogynists, nor do I have a direct psychic link to every man in the world so I can’t just seek it out and deal with it. I’m also a little nervy about how people may react. I asked a man to stop following a lone woman the other day and, although he did, he gave me a very dangerous look afterwards.

I’ve never been that confident…

…but I’m being more brave about it as the years go by.

A couple of months ago I was in a training session at work. On screen we had a list of our most frequent clients, with as many details as the Data Protection Act would allow. I’m not sure about how much our company asks of our clients (although if I had my way everyone would give their pronoun choice on their first day with us), but this did include gender.

“So, as you can see here, most of these clients are male,” said the trainer, “but we have two female clients here: Q and R.”

Younger ILB might have been too scared to say anything.

“I’m not sure that’s accurate,” I said a little too loudly. “R isn’t female.”
“It says ‘female’ here,” someone said from the back. “There’s an F in that field, anyway.”
“But R isn’t,” I said patiently. “They identify as genderfluid. The boss sent out an e-mail about it the other day. Putting their gender down as female is a bit of an insult.”
“They were called [R’s deadname] last year,” said somebody else with a maddeningly patient air. “That’s a female name.” A few people nodded.
“That’s their DEADNAME!” I near-shouted, standing up. “You can’t call them that! We shouldn’t even be discussing this, because there’s nothing to discuss! You need to change that label, or if you don’t want to, give me access and I’ll do it!”

What really got me about all this wasn’t the mislabelling of our one openly NB client (which I was, sadly, expecting). It was more to do with the fact that nobody else in the room seemed to think that anything was wrong.

“Look,” said the trainer, clearly trying to take back control. “This system doesn’t have any other options. You have to choose M or F. We can’t enter data of any other kind, and that’s to do with the company who wrote the software.”
“Well, that’s their problem,” I said. “But we should have at least put a note in the ‘other’ field. I’ll write to the software company, too.”

And I angrily sat back down.

I never used to have a problem with being silently active. When the cadets came recruiting in our year 7 assembly I got up and walked out. I shouted at one of my favourite teachers once for killing an insect in class. I yelled “WRONG!” at a Christian youth event when the preacher said Harry Potter books were satanic. When another Christian event called for us to “attack and destroy the false religion of Islam” I walked out into the dark field behind the venue and called H because I needed to tell someone I didn’t agree.

I even once told a young boy what he was doing was sexism, and he laughed because I’d said “sex”.

But that was all a long time ago. In the more recent years I have developed a fear of fucking everything up. I was incredibly lucky to get this job and I really don’t want to do anything to risk my position.

However, in this situation I did it without thinking. It was automatic, and exactly what everyone should do; I saw an example of everyday sexism (or, more accurately, NB-phobia… is there a term for that? Or is ‘transphobia‘ more appropriate?) and confronted it. It may not have gone the way I wanted, exactly, but I did it.

Not because I thought I ought to, or even wanted to. I didn’t even think. I just did it.

To this day I don’t know how our client found out about it, but the big smile and nod to me the following time I saw them may not have been entirely unwarranted.

Every day we get a little better. Let’s keep working on it.

I have mixed feelings abut Starbucks, which (for those of you who have been living in a cave for the last few decades) is a ubiquitous coffee shop chain (actually, it probably exists in said cave). It’s everywhere, but until I was about 16 or so, there wasn’t one in my local town. Opening one was A Big Deal, and although I never actually went there – I tried to organise a trip for my birthday but nothing came of it – I was fascinated.

Strange? Maybe. I didn’t really drink a lot of coffee until I went to university (I’ve always been more of a tea drinker), but even then, the idea of going to a coffee shop kind of eluded me. Even if some of my sexual fantasies included going into Starbucks, I never actually managed to enter the shop…

…until I was 18, and applying for a job.

I still don’t know why I applied for a job at a place I’d never actually been to. I’d decided at this point that I liked coffee, which helps. But I was in the middle of my A-Levels, very nearly finished, spent pretty much every weekend travelling to Birmingham, and was going on to university in a few months. It wasn’t a good time to apply. Why I got an actual interview I’ll never know.

To my credit, though, the interview went relatively well – I’d have to tie my long, wild rockstar hair back (but that was fine) and cover up any tattoos (but I don’t have any!), and although I didn’t actually get the job in the end, the friendly manager assured me that it was purely because they were only looking for somebody full-time, and I didn’t quite fit the bill there.

Is what she said.

A week earlier, I had been sitting in Starbucks for the first time ever answering questions. It hadn’t been going badly and, although I’d never really had many job interviews, I had a good enough feeling so far.

“Can you tell me about a time you’ve used your initiative recently?” she finished with.

I mentally flicked through things I’d done at school and home and came up completely blank. I could, of course, have said something – mention jazz band or being a library monitor (I was a prefect; I could have said that!) – but I wanted something a little more interesting. It hit me like a ton of bricks…

…but how could I say it without rationalising why?

“Yes,” I said confidently. “Recently I booked a hotel room to find, when I got there, that they had forgotten my booking. After negotiating with the hôtelier, I got my reservation fee back and booked into the hotel next door. I got the room I wanted, rather than acquiescing and taking the only room the first one had available.”
“That’s impressive,” said the friendly manager, “for someone your age. Why didn’t you take the room in the first hotel?”
“Oh,” I said, before deciding to finish truthfully. “I wanted a double room. I had someone with me, you see. The first hotel only had twin rooms.”
“I see. Who was with you, if you don’t mine me asking?”
“My girlfriend. We wanted to escape life for a while.”

The friendly manager gave me a knowing smile and scribbled something like

wanted to have sex with girlfriend so changed hotels

on her notes.

“I think you’re going to enjoy working here,” she said primly, gently but firmly chivvying me out of the door. “You’ll hear back in a week.”

I didn’t get the job because they were looking for somebody full-time. That’s the reason and I’m very much sticking to that explanation.

TEAM AQUA GRUNT sent out POOCHYENA!
POOCHYENA used BITE!
What will WINGULL do?

I sat on the steps, shielded from the sun’s rays, a couple of metres from the left lion. Nottingham had been good to me for the past few days and, although I had nothing to do and nowhere to go, I could sit partially separated from the hustle and bustle of the Old Market Square and play Pokémon Sapphire.

I could get used to this, I reasoned.

Thinking back on it, I needed something to get used to. I knew Nottingham well, and was used to its intricacies, but I was not used to the activities I’d been partaking in all week. It had been too much effort for too little reward – and, since I’d been staying in hotels and eating in restaurants, too much money as well. I had also recently been called “wanker!” by somebody old and wise enough to know better.

Wiping away a tear, I carefully set aside my GBA and considered heading back to the hotel to see if they had another room. It wouldn’t have been affordable, perhaps, but maybe the pretty girl was still there. Old Market Square was lovely, but (unlike the action-packed morning I’d had the day beforehand, when an old man collapsed and I waited for the ambulance for half an hour…).

Maybe I could go to another restaurant.

My body screamed as I wrenched myself off the marble and started ambling towards The Cornerhouse. I passed a record shop in which a band had once played an intimate gig. A band which a girl I had a crush on liked. I didn’t know the band at all, but I knew she liked them.

And my thoughts ran away with that tiny memory.

What was she doing now? Where was she? Would I see her again? Was she having sex? Had she ever had sex? Would she ever have sex with me? How many people here, on this little street in Nottingham City Centre, have had sex? And how many of them have done so in the last 24 hours?

The last 12?
The last 6?
The last 3?

How many people on this street are on their way home from, or on their way to, the home (or hotel room) of someone with whom they were having sex? Maybe that confident-looking man on the other side of the street was having sex less than ten minutes ago and is still coming down from the feeling.

Last five minutes.
Three.

I wish I’d been having sex two minutes ago and was still coming down from the feeling, although unlike the confident-looking man, I probably wouldn’t be walking down the street. I might be cuddling her instead.

In all honesty, I would really like a cuddle.

By the time I got to The Cornerhouse, I was absolutely convinced that everyone I’d passed had been having beautiful sex for the entire year and, furthermore, I was the only one who had missed out on this. I felt like such an interloper, me being this physically repulsive, scruffy wanker who spent his time playing Pokémon and thinking about pretty girls, all at sea in this shining beacon of sexual energy called Nottingham, where I certainly didn’t belong even though I was living there at the time, because I sure as Hell wasn’t good enough.

Burning with shame, I found a Bella Italia which did sherbet lemons instead of after dinner mints. I took a couple and, to assuage any guilt, took a table and ordered myself some food.

The waitress who served me had definitely had sex in the last twenty-four hours.

I felt better after dinner, and walked out into the dusky city, now looking for somewhere else to spend the night.