You can’t make an omelette, without annoying some eggs

So….you may be aware that this week has been a bit of a week on Twitter for me.

It all started with this seemingly innocuous tweet:

Now, Mary Beard does not, in any way, need backup from me. She is a brilliant historian, the expert on Rome, and frankly can hold her end up on social media just fine. It’s one of many of those sorts of tweets that I do, though you can probably tell that I don’t use the word ‘mansplaining’ a lot as it obviously doesn’t get autocorrected when I mispell it. Aaron Banks, for the ones that don’t know, is the charming fellow who bankrolled UKIP, Leave.eu and now appears to be best buddies with Donald Trump. So, a little tweak on the nose from me wouldn’t do any damage, right?

So anyways, after crafting that 140 character witticism, I popped in the car and headed to the supermarket because, captain of industry that I am, I needed to get more more nappies from Aldi*. On getting there, I checked my phone. The tweet was at about 20 retweets now. That’s usually a pretty good haul for me. By the time I got to the checkout, it had passed 100 RTs. By the time I’d got to the next door Tesco, it was, to be fair, starting to kick off a bit. By the time I’d got to the checkout (about an hour after sending the tweet), it had soared passed 200 RTs, and my mentions looked like this. 

Now, one thing I just stress is that by and large, the tweet was being passed around the proMary Beard sector. I had lots of young female academics joining in the eye rolling and such. It was mostly, fine. 

And it didn’t stop all evening. I went to bed, assuming by the morning it would all be over. Hell no. Mara Wilson had RTd it to her 320,000 followers and OH GOD it was still going. And then OH HAI THANKS BUZZFEED and that brought a few more eggs wobbling in to give me their ten pennorth about why I was wrong, and, apparently, sexist. 

And still, it bloody goes. Here’s the latest stats. 

But I’d like to stress that, really, I never expected to be some weird champion of feminism. I mean, it’s lovely, I have a little girl, it’s good to stand up and say what I think is right in these cases but is not like I tubthump for that cause day in day out, to my shame, but I was nice to think that, maybe, that tweet had been right and thank maybe, in that one, I called it properly. 
So anyway, hooray for me. Top #content. But what’s it like?
Attack of the twats

The immediate reaction when a tweet goes viral is the pant shitting fear that THEY will come. The bottom feeders of the internet. And yes, they’re pretty quick off the mark. By the time I’d got to the magazines in Tesco, one delightful chap had racked up on my feed. And boy, was he shit. I’ve been had at for my weight since I was about 12. Step it up.

Now, point needs making – I was lucky. I am a white male. Had I been a female, I would have got it much worse. And it didn’t extend to death threats, to gaslighting, to DDOS attacks, and to all the other bullshit that any female who pops her head above the parapet gets. And the Trumpets didn’t get involved. 

I will admit that I got a certain feeling of enjoyment of depatching that particular ……bastard. 

 Attack of the smug twats

And then came the worst of them. White, older males, intent on a quasi lower-sixth debating club row with me. Which I could in no way win . It ended of course, with  the Bismarck of that cadre of internet dickhead, the Austrian School Economist. 

Why didn’t I just shut up?

This was a question that went around my own head, and I’m sure, around the heads of a lot of my friends, followers and family. The simple answer is this, and it’s the real point of this blog. I have a deep conviction, following the disappointing results of both Brexit and the US election, that the inability to fight back on all fronts was a key factor in those results. I cannot, and will not, fail to stand up for my convictions. When liberalism and progressivism seems to be failing on all fronts, when the mad, bad, rear-facing right is in the ascendency, I want to know, and to mark, that I didn’t and don’t agree with this. I did not vote for a right wing Tory government. I did not demand to divorce from the EU. I do not agree with swingeing cuts and privatisation of the public sector. I may well celebrate and support my national and regional heritage and traditions, but I do not agree with and ever-inward view of the world.

For abusive trolls, and indeed much of the online bellend-tariat, I see my social media spaces as an extension of my house. Yes, there’s free speech, and I’m happy to debate anyone on anything and admit when I’m wrong, but, hey, come into my house and call me a fat bitch and you’ll get what you deserve.

This, and other, experiences have also led me to realise that there are certain core moral beliefs that I have which are not up for debate, nor change. I won’t accept that the state is an institution of theft. I don’t believe that that those who work for the state are parasites. I will not agree that immigration is an entirely thing; that the EU is a corrupt financial drain on the economy; that the private sector can do public services better; the political correctness has gone mad; the YOU can’t celebrate Christmas anymore cos of the loony bloody left; that we should spend the foreign aid budget on the armed forces; that you can’t get a BLOODY parking space these days because of all the foreign types; that use of correct gender pronouns is just ANOTHER thing the PC brigade are foisting on us; that being gay is a sodding lifestyle choice and oooh, you’ve got the watch your back haven’t you?;  that you get those Asian families with their funny smells and well, it could be a man under one of those things couldn’t it?; that the youth of today are all soft little snowflakes getting all precious over things; that we won and you lost and you should JUST GET OVER IT and we should just put BLOODY LANDMINES in the Channel Tunnel and why can’t we just go back to when I could call Germans krauts and WE WON THAT WAR and there’s no way that that lad is just 16 just X-RAY HIS TEETH WHY CAN’T WE JUST USE THE X-RAY ON THEM, BLOODY REMOANERS.

I won’t. There is a fundamental chasm between those people and me, and there is no bridge, no platform in the middle on which we can meet and parlay with each other, no stage I can share with an angry egg avatar where I will, through hours of debate, find anything to agree on. 

But, though there’s no bridge – I can still successfully call them a bollocks from here

*and seriously, if you have young kids, get their nappies from Aldi. They’re way cheaper and fit better than many other brands, fact fans