Hi guys. Do you feel like this is a scary time for men right now? Does it feel like you can’t look at the news anymore without seeing someone you’ve loved for years accused of bigotry and sexual misconduct? Is it like that Christmas with your uncle who lives in Canada now? Is Morgan Freeman still the narrator voice for your inner monologue and you don’t know what to do about it? Do you yearn for a more innocent time, and by innocent I mean never formally charged? Are you even afraid to explain how the term mansplaining is actually sexist? Shit times, guys. Shit times.
So I just wanted to tell you not to worry. Relax. Because, if you feel like there’s some sort of ‘conspiracy’ going on to ‘oppress men’, then I’m here to tell you that you can stop desperately tweeting at ladies, because you are absolutely 100% right about that.
It’s true. For years now I have been a member of an elite group of shadowy but powerful figures intent on bending governments to their will. Yes, of course the National Trust, because if there’s one thing subversive underground sects have in common it’s that they are ultimately subsumed by and perpetuate the class structures that they tried to overthrow, and also tea-towels with feminist quotes on them.
But there’s another one you are only dimly aware of. A secret society, you could say. It’s small, maybe about 51% of all the people on earth. It’s very secret! And hard to get into, so you’re going to need to know a guy. I’m joking of course! You’re going to need a badge that says ‘I HATE guys’ because that’s right! I’m talking about women!
You may have only heard rumours about ‘women’ and how they are winning right now, so here’s my handy guide to the dystopian hellscape currently heading your way:
Know Your Enemy
You may recognise women from funny things like ‘Women, Amirite?’ ‘Adorable British Single Women Who Say Fuck’, ‘That Woman On a Panel’ and ‘Meryl Streep’. But for a long time most of us were impossible to spot. We were masters of disguise. Some of us were unattractive to you! Like, the same age as you! Or older! Some of us had kids. And not the teenage kind that you might be able to date soon – the bad kind: small kids that make us unattractive to you. Hiding in plain sight, disguised beneath everyday objects like maternity leggings, or our own eyebrows, or the weight of society’s contradictory expectations, we were invisible.
So – what even IS a ‘woman’? It’s impossible to say. These are scary times. New, strange symbols have appeared on toilet doors, indecipherable to men who, after all, are naturally better at jobs like computer coding, or applied physics. How are they supposed to understand words like ‘non-binary’? Or ‘equal’? On top of all that, people literally tell you if they identify as a woman, it is very confusing. It’s like we’ve done it on purpose to upset Joey from Friends. Talking of which, there’s a woman on Top Gear sometimes now and she’s hands down the best thing on it, so I know, I know: the world is totally fucked. It’s like women are just trying to be men these days – which is why they are standing in the front row watching the top bantz between Matt LeBlanc and Chris Harris: it’s so they can realistically imagine what it’s like to have testicles disappearing into their own body cavity.
Anyway, for a while there, we went by suggested names, like ‘love’ or ‘fucking lesbian communist cunts’, but it turns out you can’t call women anything these days because it takes so long to cross stitch onto scatter cushions. So, we had a quick read through of some of your original ideas over at the House of Commons (which is overwhelmingly female now) and in the end we had a vote on it and just went with ‘women.’
Sneaky Ladies
So how have ‘women’ managed to gain the upper hand so completely? Well, the society has been subtly raising it’s profile through some low key stuff like several thousand years of getting dicked on, a few hundred years of trying not to get dicked on but still getting fairly comprehensively dicked on, and 9 minutes and 40 seconds of Oprah Winfrey at the Golden Globes. It’s been a ruthlessly efficient strategy, a master plan secretly passed down from mother to daughter for generations. Like the Illuminati, but with tits. The Illuminatitty. You can say what you like about those days but gosh darn it, women knew how to say no. No THANK YOU, I mean! We were sneaky back then. Professional under-cover operatives. Sleeper cells. And we did some good work back in the day. Our achievements included:
1. Controlling the post-industrial capitalist political complex
2. Killing men because they won’t have sex with us
3. Killing a couple of men a week, most of whom were having sex with us
4. Nespresso
Just kidding! Too obvious. What we actually did was infiltrate the media, the government and Hollywood, and carefully control them from behind the scenes. Our plan was to make their behaviour so utterly, insanely reprehensible that sooner or later the uprising that would end the patriarchy would be inevitable.
And lo, as in ancient times it was written: one day it would come to pass that sparkly-eyed lady-slapping anti-semite Mel Gibson would play the sparkly-eyed dad in an actual movie in 2017 and across the surface of the earth, women would stop what they were doing, throw down their phones and decide that they had had quite enough of everybody’s bullshit. Aha! It was us all along! You’re welcome, sugar tits!
And boy, were we efficient. Because if there’s one thing women’s magazines have shown us, it’s how to make a weekday crockpot dinner out of leftovers, and organise a bloodless coup with scented candles, More magazine’s position of the fortnight and fast-running inter-galactic lizard queen Tom Cruise. (No, YOU can’t handle the truth). So you could say this group punches above its weight, which is probably why we weigh ourselves constantly. It also doesn’t punch anyone. If you see people not punching anyone on a regular basis, they may be a member.
But although all the clues are there, it remains so hard to tell. So unfair! Nothing is safe. Not even the stuff you got up to in the nineties. I mean, who doesn’t watch kids these days experimenting with double denim, or sex with unconscious women and think ‘I remember that from the first time it was cool.’ Only to discover that the whole time we’ve been walking amongst you, recording your every move with state of the art spyware like human lady eyes that see and human lady brains that remember, uploading to the mothership via a coded Whatsapp group called ‘Karen’s Hen Do’.
I have comrades who have spent years deep undercover at advertising agencies, disguised variously as executive assistants, the blue sky in the blue sky thinking room, and a mood board (current mood: Fuck Your Noguchi Coffee Table). They have worked tirelessly to create a false sense of security within the enemy camp: cologne ads that encourage men to smell like Johnny Depp when he’s just buried something (not a body! OK, maybe a body. He’s Captain Jack Sparrow!), and feminine hygiene products that encourage women to smell like nothing at all, because of course, if there’s one thing guaranteed to pique our interest, it’s the idea that douches require their own aisle.
Other women are still out there, living lives as double agents that are so dangerous, we are not allowed to show their faces . Some of us are real life investigative journalists, but we don’t even take our glasses off later so that everyone can finally notice us because we are beautiful now. No wonder you’re worried guys! Nobody told you. We’ve been keeping it under our hats, our many expensive lady hats. If you see these at weddings, it’s because we are signalling to each other, and may attack at any moment.
Comms.
Like all secret societies made up of ruthless militants on the path to global dominance, we have an underground communications network and I know what you’re thinking – yes! It is BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour! John Humphrys on the Today programme is a decoy, gents! He’s paid by the BBC to interrupt people meaninglessly (so forceful!) and roll his eyes (it’s radio, John!) at the Windrush scandal or equal pay in his own organisation, because we want you to think that Serious Journalism sounds like the gentle self-deprecation of secure and unexamined white privilege in a country for old men.
But this is merely to detract attention from the blood sports going on on weekdays between 10 and 11am. Yes, I am talking about periods! And I am also talking about Jane Garvey tearing a government minister a new arsehole before segueing seamlessly into an item on high waisted underwear. If you want to know what Serious Journalism sounds like, it is not Paxman, Peston and Marr, or any other treatment for your lady area, it is the sound of a group of women luring a Deputy Prime Minister into a studio with the promise of quick and easy lemon drizzle cake and then circling him with a fishnet and trident like fucking Wonder Woman. Humphrys may have the breakfast slot for now, but you know what they eat on woman’s hour? Nick Clegg. For brunch.
Recent Successes:
Now, I know what you’re going to say – but what about Trump? And that’s a strong point: Trump was an unexpectedly successful strategy of ours. A pleasant surprise! Of course, many, many women voted for Trump, and you were right, guys – finally, we can reveal that they were in fact feminist double-agents hell bent on destroying capitalism and white supremacy. Thank you for your service, Kellyanne Conway! I mean, women already control Putin and the NRA, so it’s got our fingerprints all over it. There are unknowns, of course, and known unknowns, but also unknowing novice know-nothing no no’s that look like a one-man erectile dysfunction support group that just took Novichok for kicks. Covfefe.
Of course, in the future our defeated male minions won’t know who scorched the sky, but they will know that it was the women who finally ate dinner alone with feminazi Manchurian candidate Mike Pence, triggering him with the sentence ‘What’s your second cheapest bottle of rose?’ to administer a deadly nerve agent to the Commander in Chief. ‘Feminism has gone too far!’ people say. And of course what they are talking about when they say this is the women’s conspiracy to make Donald Trump the President of the United States of America, ushering in new age of female overlords
Stage Two: Control
So if I were you I’d take the blue pill, guys, because now it’s time for Stage Two in women’s unstoppable rise to tyranny. Time’s up on the sneaking around, quietly ruining lives. We’ve laid the groundwork and now we’re ready to ruin lives right out there in the open, like a feminist Woody Allen, and no one’s going to do shit about it, like a feminist Woody Allen. We got a memo late in 2016 – you might not have seen it, there were…emails. There were some internal structural changes (and I’m not just talking about pelvic mesh implants, guys. WINK!). The tipping point is here. We’ve been waiting for the right moment to begin openly terrorising men with our oppressive demands, and that moment is now. Here they are:
1. Not getting sexually assaulted!
2. Shared parental leave!
3. Reproductive rights!
4. Poldark!
5. Not getting sexually assaulted like in actual eighteenth century Poldark!
So now everyone is going to have to be polite on public transport and think hard about what they say to co-workers. It’s the apocalypse, guys. It’s here. They are even teaching this shit in schools now – terrifying. It’s like The Breakfast Club, but now breakfast is ‘eggs that are no longer blamed for being over easy’ with a side order of ‘not touching anyone’s genitals without permission’. Boooo!
I’m afraid all I can do now is pass on a few things to try to help you survive:
Men! How To Stay Safe – a Checklist:
1. Do you have an iPhone X? Check the packaging: it could be a 36 year old mother of two from Westbury-on-Trym.
2. Do NOT ask Alexa.
3. Are you receiving emails at work about a leaving card for Steve’s ‘paternity leave’? Are they from a woman? Are they in comic sans? This is no joke, guys. Steve isn’t coming back.
4. Are you at a tech conference? Is there someone wearing a badge, near her breasts? Look carefully. No, at the *badge*. Does it say ‘Hello, my name is: YOUR NEMESIS’? This could be code.
5. Are you watching a film? Is it about the most powerful, superhuman woman on Earth? Is she dating a white guy called Steve? You are being oppressed.
6. Are you watching Ghostbusters? Oh great, no that’s fi – wait. The lady Ghostbusters? That’s not Ghostbusters, that’s… *BALL*-busters, more like! Haaaa. That would have been a better name for it, bro. There, I said it. Hoooo! Well, anyway, look away, chaps, because the only ghost they catch in that film is the ghost of your boyhood innocence, crushed to death by lady jokes in a film made for children that you paid to go and see. It’s not even funny, dude. Women aren’t funny.
So that’s it dudebro’s. Now you know. If I were you, I would just keep your head down and lie low. Maybe that way, you won’t be overheard innocently referring to caring for your own children as ‘babysitting’ and be stoned to death, or drowned as witch, which is a new idea we just made up. Keep wearing your old band t-shirts, and pray you can name every band member that is currently on the sex offenders register, because there will be questions. Stick to cat-calling the under 12’s, who maybe don’t have phones with camera’s yet. Or better still, stick to trolling on the internet, and hope nobody finds you. Good luck guys! Good luck.
