Have you ever read something that has made you feel genuinely uncomfortable? It could be a story, a news article, an awkward message on your phone – something that triggers a flurry of flushes through your limbs, you scalp, your heart…

The most recent time it happened to me was when I read Erich Maria Remarque’s, All Quiet on the Western Front. If you’re not familiar with the story, it’s a (semi-autobiographical) tale of a young German soldier’s experience in the First World War. In one particular chapter, the terrified narrator and his fellow ‘soldiers’ (little more than boys) are being driven back across ground on which they had previously fought by an unrelenting barrage of artillery fire. The makeshift coffins in which they had buried their dead comrades during the initial push are being disinterred by the explosions, forcing these harrowed youngsters to come face-to-face with both the remains of their former friends and their own mortality.

When I read this scene, I felt my pulse quicken, my mouth dry. I felt scared for them, sorry for them. I imagined the trauma they must have experienced in these moments – the literal shocks of the concussive blasts; the emotional shocks of seeing the bodies of their former friends ripped from their final resting place. It is a powerful piece of work (which I highly recommend - hit me up for a copy if you’d like to borrow it). 

I think the most affecting thing for me was being put in a position where I was forced to empathise with a person I wouldn’t have previously thought about – a German soldier?! But they were the bad guys!!

But the purest distillation of this feeling was when I first read the short story, Cat Person by Kristen Roupenian¹. A very different tale, focusing on an awkward (to say the least) relationship between the twenty-year-old narrator and an older man. She spends the story second-guessing his thoughts and worrying about hurting his feelings which culminates in a horrible bedroom encounter that, while being technically consensual, was unwanted. It’s toe-curlingly embarrassing, tense and really, really uncomfortable.

However, my sense of discomfort increased ten-fold when I saw the reaction to it online. The story was published in The New Yorker magazine in the December of 2017. This was the height of the #MeToo movement² – a shift in the prevailing culture where women united to call out sexual abuse, social pressure and the objectification of women, all catalysed by the high profile arrest and subsequent prosecution of Hollywood media mogul, Harvey Weinstein. On a more general level, it called for all men and boys to reflect on their own behaviour, to think about their interactions with women and girls, and to acknowledge the threat of male violence under which women live their lives.

And this made me feel uncomfortable.

And then guilty.

And then… defensive.

#notallmen!

Why should I feel bad? I’ve always tried to treat the women in my life with respect. I’ve never caused a woman to feel uncomfortable or put her in a difficult situation…

Have I?

All anger comes from fear: it’s that simple. The outpouring of frustration that burst forth from men on social media seemed rooted in the fact that most of us were taken off guard by the sheer scale of the difficulties that women and girls face day-to-day.  This wasn’t just an expose of the brutal crimes of the rich, famous and powerful like Weinstein; it was the guy in the pub, the kid on the bus, the lad in the classroom. We were put on the back foot, in a defensive position, and Roupenian’s story was an illustration of how our attitudes and behaviours have measurable, lasting effects on our girlfriends, friends, colleagues, mothers, sisters…

Yeah, we might not be the ones assaulting women, pressuring women, using derogatory language to describe women, etc. but I reckon, if we’re strong enough to be honest with ourselves, we’ve seen it and heard it… and let it slide. We don’t want to challenge the lads. We don’t want to break the Bro Code.

In her book, Men Who Hate Women³, author Laura Bates explains that “Crushing gender stereotypes are damaging to men as individuals, as well as the society in which they live.” We’re reacting to the stories of women’s struggles in the way we have been programmed. Society, and particularly the internet, has primed men and boys to see ourselves as the ‘heroes’ the ‘protectors’. And if women can’t see that, can’t tell the difference between the ‘Chad’ and the ‘Nice Guy’, the ‘man’ and the ‘bear’? Well, it serves them right. Right?

Wrong.

And that’s why it is #allmen who have a part to play in this, not as the perpetrators of this violence, this culture of fear, but as those brave enough to fight against it.

Look at it this way… 

In the early half of 20th Century, fascism was gaining traction in Spain, Italy and Nazi Germany. Minority groups were being attacked, their businesses looted, their families taken. The rest of Western Europe could have turned round and said… “Well, that wasn’t us! You can’t blame us! #notallwesterneuropeancountries!”

But they didn’t. They stood shoulder to shoulder with those fighting back against oppression, those fighting for the rights and the freedoms of all.

And that’s the lesson we need to take from this. When confronted with something uncomfortable, don’t try to dodge it or pass it off to someone else. Face it. Fight it.

So, the choice us ours: 

1. We can remain sheep pretending to be men. Like the fifty other guys in a group chat, all of whom ignored the fact that a member of the so-called ‘Cornell 7’⁴ was inviting the lads, lads, lads to join them in sexually assaulting a young woman in a frat house in New York. “Well, I didn’t go there. I didn’t join in. #notalllads”.

2. We can be Carl-Fredrik Arndt or Peter Jonsson, who tackled Brock Turner to the ground when they caught him assaulting an unconscious woman. They weren’t intimidated by the fact he was a rising star athlete at a prestigious university. They saw something wrong, something uncomfortable to deal with. And they dealt with it. Of their intervention, Arndt said, “It was instinct for us.” ⁵

That is exactly what it should be for all of us – instinct. Supporting our fellow human beings should be automatic, coded deep within our behaviour. It should not be learned, programmed into us by a society designed to protect those in positions of power.

Whether it is our age, our social standing or simply the fact that we are male, the hardest thing to do is face that challenge.

That is a responsibility that can only be shouldered by a real man. One day, let’s hope it can be borne by #allmen.

¹ The New Yorker, 4th December 2017: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/11/cat-person

² https://www.britannica.com/topic/Me-Too-movement

³ Bates, Laura, Men Who Hate Women… Simon & Schuster, 2020

⁴ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Cornell_University_rape_allegations

⁵ https://www.cbc.ca/news/trending/swedish-cyclists-stanford-brock-turner-sexual-assault-1.3622706

The origins of the word “gay” are ambiguous. From the moment it entered the common lexicon in the 14th Century it held a double meaning: "full of joy, merry; light-hearted, carefree;" but also "wanton, lewd, lascivious." According to the Dictionary of Etymology, its ultimate origin is disputed but it is believed to be a loan word, derived from one of the Romantic languages (either French or Italian), the original meaning corresponding to “pleasant” or “charming”.

It was not until the Victorian era that we saw its first forays into the negative. A “Gay House” was a brothel, “gay” now being a catch-all term for any whiff of promiscuity no matter the gender combination involved. The Victorians despised the act of sexual intercourse or indeed any outward display of emotion. Anyone who dared to actually profess any pride in their sexuality or (gasp) enjoyment of the act itself was to be derided and shunned for being “gay”.

By the 1920s, we see the first usage of the term to describe homosexual men. Young, newly homeless boys were often termed “gey cats” as they were commonly preyed upon by those (usually more senior) vagabonds who took advantage of them, sexually.

I never wanted to be a teacher.  I wanted to be a doctor - a paediatrician to be specific.  I loved all things medicine and first aid and I was excited to look after sick kids and their families.  Then, in S4 I failed my maths exam which meant that medical school was out of the picture.  Naturally, I was devastated, but thankfully a mixup with work experience meant I had a new career pathway.  After one day in a Primary School I knew that I wanted to be a teacher, so off I went to university and trained with a specialism in primary mathematics.  After I qualified I ended up in a small school that had a deaf pupil.  I’d never realised it before but I had always been surrounded by people who were deaf.  One of my close friends at school was deaf and her mum used British Sign Language (BSL) in the class with her.  Also, when I sang in the Gaelic choir, my Gaelic tutor was deaf.  I’d never thought of these people as different and never really reflected on how their education was different to mine.  During my time at that school, we did teacher training in BSL and I fell in love.  I ended up asking the tutor what the