Ever since lockdown began, I've noticed people sharing their progress on various projects & interests - be it sporting, painting, cooking, etc. Because nobody asked, I thought I'd share a bit about my own little lockdown project: finally trying to address the feelings and symptoms of anxiety I've been experiencing for a while. 

My strategy for doing this has been to put myself on a self-run 'course' (I even gave it a title - if not a very original one - 'Managing Anxiety 101') consisting of content drawn from a variety of platforms (books, videos, social media, etc.). Since I spent most of the lockdown trying to combine a job with 24/7 childcare, I haven't been able to invest massively in terms of time or concentration, which is why it's a pretty lightweight 'curriculum' (much as I'd love to get stuck into the works of Jung or Kierkegaard, it's just not realistic for me at the moment) and it's very much still a work in progress, so I may come back to this list and update it.  

Managing any mental health issue is a long journey and there are no quick fixes of course, but just starting to proactively work on it has already helped me a lot. So here's a brief compendium of some of the resources I've found useful so far, and some of my reflections, in the hope that it might be of some interest or value to anyone experiencing similar issues, or who knows someone who is. 

The Chimp Paradox, by Dr. Steve Peters

If, like me, you're allergic to anything that smacks of new-agey spiritual mumbo jumbo and prefer an approach rooted in cold, hard clinical science - I'd recommend this. It boils down the workings of the brain to a super simplified model (basically imagining there's a chimp in there with you - though there is a bit more to it than that) and applies it to a broad range of areas in life. It's pretty general, and not specifically aimed at coping with anxiety, so I imagine it could help with other issues as well. The metaphor feels a little forced at times (like when you're given the choice between arm-wrestling your chimp or feeding it bananas) but for me that's part of the book's colour and charm. The general idea might sound a bit comical and cartoonish, but for someone in the early stages of addressing mental distress - the process of identifying the negative, critical & destructive voice in your head and envisioning it as a distinct entity with its own traits, objectives & motivations (which may have gone a bit haywire but are basically perfectly legitimate) can be a real breakthrough, as it was in my case. It also helps dissociate 'you' from your anxiety/depression/addiction or whatever it may be. At some point the book does deviate a bit too much into classic self-help territory for my taste, with it's very convoluted step by step plans for 'success' which make some rather fruitless attempts at reinventing the wheel. For me by far the most interesting was the mind model, but also the final chapters in which I finally learned - at the age of 33 - what 'doing your best' actually means (spoiler: it doesn't mean doing the best your could ever possibly manage. Was that obvious to everyone except me?). That was another breakthrough for me - because when you start trying to apply this approach to everything in your life - from the most significant to the most trivial of actions and decisions - you've made a significant step towards the kind of self-acceptance that can finally get the inner critic to shut up, or at least pipe down for a minute... 

Owning It, by Caroline Foran

I first discovered Foran through her podcast about anxiety (which shares the title of this book), which is also a great resource. The book calls itself 'Your Bullshit-Free Guide to Living with Anxiety' and, like the podcast, adopts a very informal, conversational tone, which makes it very accessible. It's short and not very big on detail - but it's great as a general introduction and also provides some useful practical tools. Foran also shares a lot of her own experiences with anxiety, adding to the personal feel of her content. Foran's formula for managing anxiety is very much based on practical understanding and techniques rooted in the present - especially Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, mindfulness, etc. She seems to take a dim view of the idea that exploring your past can yield vital insights about the roots of your current responses, which is where I would strongly disagree with her. Also, for a book that markets itself as 'bullshit-free' there is a slightly too much 'alternative' stuff in there for my taste - e.g. bio-energy, acupuncture - but each to their own. My only other note for her is she talks way WAY too fast (definitely an Irish thing) - I got the audiobook and found myself having to slow down the playback speed considerably (But I might well have a slower mental processor than most). Overall I'd probably say skip the book and go straight to the podcast, which explores a broad range of aspects of anxiety in much more depth through conversations Foran has with guests and experts (but still frequently comes back to basics, so you can pick it up anywhere). I'm going to go ahead and recommend particularly the episodes with neuroscientists, clinical psychologists & the like - who bring the heavy-duty brain theory and big words, because that's my jam, but there are also some interesting personal testimonials. Here it is on spotify.  and you can tip it through Patreon if so inclined.

Méditer Jour Apres Jour, by Christophe André

If you like the idea of mindfulness and meditation but struggle with actually practicing it, this book is likely to help (although I'm afraid I don't think it's available in any language other than French - though some of his other books are). What I really appreciate about his approach is that it engages all the senses - it uses illustration to brilliant effect and has accompanying audio. Even if you ignore the exercises, André's book is an immersive and moving read, and just allowing yourself to be transported to the scenes he evokes is incredibly calming. 

Online Resources

Therapy in a Nutshell. If videos are more your thing, I really recommend therapist Emma McAdams's series on anxiety management. It provides a solid overview of the brain science stuff, as well as a range of practical tools such as grounding and relaxation exercises (beyond the usual breathe-in-breathe-out stuff). If you're short of time I can't recommend this enough - it packs in such a lot of information - both theory & practice in such a concise, easily digestible format. It's also available as a course on Udemy but as far as I can see the whole thing is available for free on her youtube channel as well. On her website there are a number of other courses available, dealing with a broad range of mental health issues. 

- Calm (the app). So far I've resisted purchasing membership which means that 99% of the content of this app is inaccessible to me, but I thought I'd mention it anyway since I've found some of the free guided meditations and stories to be very effective for relieving immediate stress and panic, and I say that as someone with a strong scepticism of guided meditations. In fact, it was only by listening to one of their free 'sleep stories' that I was able to calm down sufficiently to fall asleep, the night they shut down the schools back in March (largely thanks to the soothing, soporific quality of Stephen Fry's narration).

- TikTok. There are a huge number of therapists and coaches on tiktok (mostly younger ones, unsurprisingly) and some of the content is actually worthwhile. Granted, it's pretty superficial stuff, but if you're short on time and would just like some food for thought or quick tips to help you out in times of stress, it's not a bad place to start. Also a good place to find evidence that others are going through similar experiences to your own - but beware of falling down dark rabbit-holes (at one point I somehow ended up on a loop of 'young teens with post-traumatic mental disorders' and it was pretty bleak stuff) or getting side-tracked by talk of chakras, third eyes and spiritual awakenings (unless that's your thing of course.)  

Honourable mentions

Here's a couple of things I read/watched a few years ago and therefore don't count as part of the current 'syllabus' but which were helpful at the time. 

- Art as Therapy by Alain de Botton - which uses the visual in a similar manner as André, but with more emphasis on actual artworks and without the meditation stuff. 

- Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig - this is no work of Shakespeare and reads a bit like someone's notebook but it's designed to be accessible and comforting to even someone feeling at their very lowest and it that sense it succeeds. 

- The School of Life. My 'Alain de Botton is THE guru and is right about everything' phase is a few years behind me now, so I now take this content with a sizeable pinch of salt because once you've watched enough of them, you start to identify that some of the theories are rather over-simplistic. But of course to deal with vast emotional topics in the space of a short video necessarily requires quite some simplifying. If you're a fan of animation like me, you'll also enjoy the visual side of this content - they work with a range of animators so each video has its own style which is refreshing. 

What I didn't find helpful: Most Ted Talks, instagram therapists who share 'inspirational quotes' as the bulk of their content (I'm rather horrified at how many apparently qualified professionals are doing this) and use the hashtag #truthbomb. I would also advise steering clear of any self-help books which claim to give you any kind of results in a specified number of days (e.g. '21 days to resilience' etc.). Also particularly unhelpful is anything that starts explaining to you all the terrible thinga stress does to your body (Plenty of well-meaning resources for dealing with Covid-related stress/anxiety seem to do this, completely unaware of how utterly stupid it is to give already stressed-out people one more thing to stress about.) 

If you're short of time and sometimes motivation, a way that is helping me stay on track and keep the momentum going is by treating this like an academic course and therefore going through some formalities to feel that I am actively 'working' on it. For me that involves making copious notes, reviewing them regularly (ish), trying to do practical exercises throughout the day, actively monitoring my thoughts and feelings, and keeping a log of my progress - but everyone is different and this was just what was helpful for me. Note-taking is particularly valuable because it helps me to understand what I'm reading/listening to, makes it more likely I'll remember it, helps me structure my thoughts, and provides space for reflection. It also means you end up creating a resource made up entirely of things that resonated with you, which you can go back to at any time. The benefit of a self-administered course is you can tailor it entirely - from the reading list to the homework - according to your own needs and preferences. 

Health warning: I embarked on this project partly in a bid to avoid having therapy, working on the assumption that each therapist has their own ideas and theories which they will simply project onto you, so if you just familiarise yourself with those notions you can apply them to yourself without the need for a therapist. This is, of course, an outrageous underestimation of what therapy is about and how therapists work to help you get to the root of your issues. I've since accepted that there is only so much you can do by yourself and I strongly adhere to the idea that everyone can benefit from therapy (I just have difficulty applying that principle in my own case, for some reason). 

That being said, there are a lot of things you can do for yourself - such as understanding what anxiety is, where it comes from, how it affects you, and familiarising yourself with various techniques for coping with it, both reactively and proactively. But anyone who suffers from a persistent mental health issue that interferes with living their day-to-day life or seriously impacts their mood and wellbeing will eventually find there is a limit to what they can do to self-treat and self-medicate, and that's the moment to seek external help, which is what I'm now doing as a next step on this path.      

Ok that's it. Would be very happy to hear any further recommendations, or ardent disagreement with any of the above. 

Conclusions

I've been quiet so far.

Reading, listening, hearing all sides of the debate and waiting for that little voice to suddenly cry out in agreement or objection.

And it's starting to. Here are some of the things it's started to say:

1. It does not bring back the dead, nor does it help anyone to understand certainly, to divorce the incident from its context. This is not 'generic terrorist/fascist' attacks 'generic leftist/comrade'. There is context here. There is a background. There are complex dynamics and relations of power at work. Ignoring that serves no-one, it just deepens the incomprehension.

2. If you think this is just about the freedom to make fun of religion you're missing something here! If only it was! If only I could ignore the privileged position from which people like Caroline Fourest claim to be fighting the noble fight, given that many of her ideas seem to be so closely aligned with mine. Freedom of speech. Feminism. Atheism. But there are other, much bigger enemies. You're missing something, or pretending to.

3. The bitter irony of having people claiming to defend freedom of speech telling other people what they can & cannot say is overpowering. The fact that many of them happen to be middle class white men puts it over the edge of parody. The hypocrisy is overwhelming. It's so immense it threatens to swallow us all up into a parallel universe, one in which we calmly accept to stand side by side with people like Netenyahu and Davutoglu, in an unholy alliance. The moral compass has gone totally haywire.

4. Some lives clearly matter more than others. Muslims are killed everyday, in Nigeria, in Iraq, in Gaza - and no-one bats an eyelid in Europe. These are the images which fuel the anger that leads to radicalisation, drip by drip! Read your Olivier Roy.

I'm not justifying anything - I'm just trying to understand.

5. The tone of this entire debate is nauseatingly familiar. Manuel Valls talking about a war on terrorism - hmm, stop me if you've heard this one before. The September 11th of France? Such enlightening! Very nuance! Wow!

And now we're all going to pat each other on the back for sharing pictures of the prophet? World, get a grip.

I agree with so much of this.

"To the victims of military occupation; to the people in the houses that bore the brunt of “shock and awe” bombing in Iraq; to those whose bodies were disfigured by white phosphorous and depleted uranium; to the parents of children who disappeared into the torture cells of Abu Ghraib; to all of them – what but cruel mockery is the contention that Western “civilisation” fights its wars with the pen and not the sword?"

For the record - Olivier Roy's reaction.

And lastly - les guignols. Whose consistent response to the massacre of those who were no doubt their colleagues, was to keep doing their job, without being pompous or dogmatic. On the same day as the attack took place, they were already making satire about it. And that's a pretty fitting tribute.

Winehouse's lesson in dissonant pleasures

I had an argument with Katy Brand recently. Which is a bit surreal to write, given that she's been one of my heroes for some time now, combining as she does progressive thinking (as evidenced on her twitter feed and in her columns) and a genial comic talent (as demonstrated in gems such as this, this and this) - or perhaps more accurate to say - a producer of views that speak to me, and comedy which I find genuinely funny.

Then she wrote this, and I felt bitterly disappointed. Because surely someone like Brand should know better, than to consider this kind of deportment innocuous or even worthy of praise. I won't go into the reasons why - when they've already been put far so poetically here by Holly McNish, for the No More Page 3 campaign. 

So disappointed did I feel in fact, that even as someone who as a rule never comments on anything no matter how violently I disagree with it, I tweeted Holly's little slam poem at Brand by way of counter-argument, and then found myself caught up in a twitter dialogue (a very stressful affair as it turns out - succinctness is not my forte, especially the instantaneous variety).

I tried to understand where she was coming from - this idea that nudity can sometimes be liberating and rebellious, rather than objectifying and stale.

A friend recently reminded me that, when you develop a filter, a way of looking at the world - that is coloured by ideological and political considerations or convictions - be it feminism, post-colonialism, anti-racism, anti-transphobia or whatever else - it becomes very difficult to switch it off. Whether its real life, politics, television, films, fiction, comedy, lyrics or music videos. It permeates your perception and reception of everything. And can often result in a certain cognitive dissonance.   

I was struck by this clip of Amy Winehouse, in which she mentions a song called "He hit me and it felt like a kiss." She points out that while many would be outraged by this kind of sentiment, and see it as sanitizing domestic violence, she knows exactly what those words mean.

Speaking for myself, I can't really say the same. This, I suppose, is partly because I've never been physically assaulted in a way that I felt somehow ambivalently about, and partly because of a conviction, or filter, I've acquired which considers domestic violence, and indeed all violence, to be abhorrent and deserving of unmitigated condemnation.  

But, with a bit of imagination and honesty, I can fathom of a circumstance in which the lyric would ring true. Even if I haven't lived it myself, I'm aware of the fundamentally irrational nature of human emotions, of the often self-destructive tendencies we adopt both alone and in relationships, and of the somewhat unstable line between pain that is completely unwelcome, and another kind.

This is where the dissonance creeps in. Is it reconcilable, then, to believe that nudity is part of an endemic and corrosive phenomenon of objectification that fuels suicides and eating disorders among teenage girls, and at the same time to enjoy a Beyonce concert - perhaps for the artistic value, perhaps because there is something aesthetically appealing about such displays and sexualized performances, for both women and men, whether you want to describe it as confidence, sexiness, or anything else.

Or is it inconsistent, then, to listen to violent misogynistic rap - as I did when I was at too tender an age to be as painfully aware as I am now of the prevalence of violence, rape and abuse, or the pernicious, all-encompassing nature of male-dominated power relations and structures. As I still do, in fact. 

To return to the original subject of discord - Ms. Cyrus's performance at the VMAs - I have to say that even if it were possible for me to flick the chip off my shoulder, even if Holly’s words were not ringing in my ears as I watched it - I don't think I would appreciate the performance much more.

Even though we do see it everywhere and seem to have become more or less desensitised to it entirely, somehow it does still seem possible to use sex and nudity in a visually interesting rather then entirely gratuitous way, although there is seldom much real originality in this direction in the mainstream, or variation in the formula (and the key thing here is that the mainstream pop culture is what many of the youngest and most impressionable members of society encounter first, and even when we consciously decided to refine our tastes and blot it out - we remain helplessly accessible for it in many daily situations.)

Although she doesn't strike me as having the emotional depth and nuance of Winehouse, Katy Brand's icon Beyonce has not shied away from productions that seemed a bit bizarre and unusual, it has to be said. But there was also something tantalizing and aesthetically intriguing in it, if not exactly ground-breaking. 

While Cyrus, who decided to engage in a bit of underdressed cultural misappropriation next to a fully-clothed (and rather odious) male, fell completely flat, as far as I'm concerned. Much as I admire Brand, I still don't really buy her argument. If anything, Miley failed to do her justice.

As for Winehouse, who would have turned 30 tomorrow, at least Brand and I are both in agreement that there was much to be praised and celebrated there, not least the way her music spoke to our deepest and darkest natures, with an irresistible fluency that made it easy to throw off the weight of the normative, political and historical, in favour of the simply human. 

Steps and Stones

Ali Ismail Korkmaz is not unique. He was among 5 people who lost their lives during the Gezi Park protests. The fate of some others has yet to be determined, for example Berk Elvan – the 14-year-old who was hit in the head by a tear-gas canister while out buying bread on June 15, and has been in a coma ever since.

But the way Korkmaz was killed was uniquely horrifying. As the footage below this article shows – he was deliberately trapped by a number of individuals while running away from police and subsequently beaten. He was able to get up and go home in the aftermath of the attack, but when he woke up the next morning, he couldn’t speak. He later died of a brain haemorrhage, after a lengthy period in a coma.

As the same article discusses, about a week ago there was a coordinated and no doubt calculated outpouring of twitter-grief from key figures in Turkey’s ruling party, on the subject of Korkmaz’s death. This was rather astonishing, not least because Korkmaz died on July 10, and had entered a coma over a month earlier.

EU Minister Egemen Bağış, responsible for some of the most alarmingly loony statements during the protests, went in with the following: “I condemn the wild creatures who attacked 19-year-old Ali İsmail Korkmaz. It is impossible to understand or explain such cruel images.”

Is it really, though? Is it impossible to understand people behaving in this way when, as was later claimed by one of those arrested for the attack, the police allegedly asked unsympathetic bystanders to trap protesters so that they could beat them?

And even if this request was not explicitly made – is it so hard to fathom this taking place when the rhetoric against the protesters was so virulent – denouncing them as looters, trouble-makers & coup-plotters. And in a climate where violence was being incited and even condoned – as when a man attacking protesters with a machete was said to have been acting “within the framework of the law” by a senior government member.

Well, no. It's entirely logical.

But Bağış & the others' professions of shock and horror are not only offensive for their inconsistency and disingenuousness. The total & utter insincerity is made even starker by what has been happening since then – in terms of the witch hunts being carried out in schools & universities, where students have been told to denounce each other & their teachers, the crackdowns on all areas where protests are likely to take place such as football stadiums & universities, to pre-empt any further resistance & stifle any stirrings of organised dissent.

One night, around the same time as these statements were made, I walked through Gezi Park on my way home. I stopped at a patch of grass where some paving stones had been laid – five, to be precise – each one bearing the name of one of the victims who lost their lives during the protests (one of whom was a police officer).  

These symbolic headstones have been the object of a tug-of-war between the protesters and authorities, who appear to find them highly objectionable and a threat to the peace & order of the place – as they have removed & disposed of them each time they have appeared, and reappeared.

It's a battle of the symbols similar to that which is currently going on over the painting and repainting of steps – first in rainbow colours – then back to grey – and then back again to multi-colours. It strikes me as such a waste of time and energy, to attempt to police the symbolic in this way. So pointless to focus on something so innocuous as colours or memorials to the dead. So unedifying and unflattering in that it makes Turkey seem like far more of a security-mad police state than it actually is. And above all so futile – because the battle of symbols is one that can never be won. There will always be someone who shows up in the middle of the night to place the stones, or to paint the steps, even if they have to resort to using kerbstones because the larger paving stones are nowhere to be found, as was the case for two of the stones when I came across them that night. At least – I hope it cannot be won, and that someone will.  

I stood there for a while, and while I was standing some boys came over with some flowers they'd cut from the beds nearby – meticulously planted by municipality workers during the period when the park was shut down – and began to arrange them in various formations around the stones.

One of them asked me if I was Turkish. I said no and told him where I was from. When I directed the question at him he also said no, and told me he was Kurdish.

Then a man came over, perhaps the father of one, and we spoke briefly, him asking me the usual questions I so often get asked as a foreigner in this county. Among which - "Do you like living in Turkey," to which I answered, "yes, very much." An answer given mainly out of honesty, and partially out of diplomacy to please to asker. I needn't have bothered this time though, as he responded by saying, "I don't."

When I passed through Gezi Park again two nights ago, the stones were nowhere to be seen. 

Troll wack-a-mole is a losing game

With the latest discussion about the need for a “report abuse” button on twitter, the discussion about how to combat online bullying and abuse rumbles on.

A month or so ago these discussions were largely focused around misogynistic content on facebook.  Emer O'Toole described this kind of content as “an opportunity for feminists”. I would tend to regard it more as an unfortunate distraction.  

While I admire the noble attempts to get every last piece of violently misogynistic/pro-rape content off of facebook & twitter, I cant help feeling that it's a futile exercise which can only do further damage by drawing extra attention to this content. Personally, I had not encountered any of the groups mentioned in the above article & others similar to it, until their well-intentioned authors brought them to my attention. Of course, I imagined they were probably out there, but the internet is full of deeply disturbing content, and we cannot expect to police this in the same way as the images and messages we are exposed to in say, the public space in the form of advertising, or the mainstream media. 

The point is that the facebook or twitter censorship battle cannot be won. Anymore than the battle of the likes or comments can be won on youtube. At least, not without radically changing the nature of all these platforms.

There is no engaging with people determined to provoke. They are by nature irrational and uncooperative. Similar content is bound to reappear instantly. By either condemning them & demanding they be silenced, or by simply pointing others in their general direction, we are giving this online scourge the oxygen that it needs & seeks out in order to thrive and justify its own existence. We ought instead to make them feel as if they are in an echo chamber. And those who make direct, personal threats should be shamed and stigmatized, as was so effectively done to this lowlife, resulting in a most unedifying, and yet somehow not remotely satisfying, crawl-back.  

As for the ladies, I think our time would be better spent producing and focusing on our own content. 

The trolls* may be relentless, but if we multiply the counter-voices we can more than hold our own. I suppose this is what I'm trying to do right now. And this is exactly what Laura Bates, the creator of the everday sexism project, has done. The format is elegant and simple - not leaving any space for comments, arguments or trolls, simply giving a voice to girls (and sometimes men) to express something which in wider society is often invisible or taboo.

But Bates's ground-breaking exercise has also exposed her to a massive outpouring of misogyny - not only in the form of anecdotes, but also web content. I read recently that she had to undergo therapy after seeing close-up footage of a woman being beheaded with a knife. Exposing ourselves to this is both damaging (even though we may feel the damage has already been done) and pointless.

There is something slightly perverse about trawling social media for content that makes one's blood boil, purely to demand its removal. Not to claim of course, that I've never done so myself.

There are two options - troll them, the way male idiots so often troll feminist blogs and articles, or ignore it in favour of other content.

Of course it happens to stumble across this kind of content when one is not looking for it, but I think this is primarily an issue of concern when it comes to children. If I was a parent, even if facebook were to make solid assurances to remove all objectionable content, I'd still regard it as madness to allow my children to surf the internet without any restrictions in place. Young minds (especially female) can be deeply affected by this kind of thing, but perhaps the eventual encounter is inevitable. Loss of innocence is unfortantely, a sad reality hard to avoid forever. But for those of us who wish to continue to protect our own as far as possible, the answer is to just dismiss is as gratuitous provocation, and click away.

I am not saying that these groups are not extremely problematic and potentially harmful, but their reach is not comparable to the more normalized and insidious sexist discourses - such as those vehiculed by politicians, religious figures, or media and advertisers who objectify women all day every day, in public spaces that none of us can avoid. The more "real-world" feminist campaigns - like the banknote and anti-page 3 campaigns in the UK, or the pro-choice movement in Ireland, take on forms of sexism that are widely accepted and deeply entrenched in our societies. If we accept that there is a finite supply of resources and energy within the feminist movement, I'd far sooner see it put towards these efforts - that is, where a tangible goal can be fought for & eventually acheived. With online content that goal is always going to be elusive.

Many of those who engage in crude humour and make rape jokes know better in real life and would never dream of allowing this crude "humour" to manifest itself in their actual interactions, as with so much internet troll-itude. And we should not kid ourselves, the ones who film themselves beheading their girlfriends, even the most stringent facebook moderation can do nothing for.

Tanya Gold has it exactly right when she says, “I deplore rape jokes but I would not think of banning them. I would rather the comics who make them played to empty theatres – and eventually, the solitary mirror. Can our consciences not be our policemen? I have been a journalist for 15 years. I have learned to ignore – even welcome – the hatred. It comes from men who will never be on banknotes, and who publish anonymously..”

Rape threats, and other forms of online misogyny, are a pathetic and cowardly means of trying to assert power by those who evidently do not really have any. We should take this as a sign that things are moving in the right direction.

* I'm aware that points have been raised recently expressing that a distinction exists between a troll (someone who is deliberately and insincerely inflammatory, or who just strings someone else along in a debate for the sake of it) and someone sending violent threats directly to another person. I agree, but for lack of a better word, and because the misrepresentation of trolls is not high on my list of concerns, I'm lumping them together for now. 

Let's hear it for the boys.

I woke up on saturday to find my social media feeds awash with feminism. This is always heartening. But it was especially heartening this time in that there seemed to be so many men on the case. Essentially, the recent discussions have centered around the absolutely shocking abuse and relentless rape threats targeting Caroline Criado-Perez, who is also part of the everyday sexism project - a tumblr that is so depressing and so close to the bone that I'm barely able to read it, at least not without vowing to myself that I will never, ever bring a daughter into this world.

Each in their own way, Sunny Hundal, Owen Jones & Charlie Brooker have been giving boys (and girls) across the UK & beyond a masterclass in real-world feminism lately.

Hundal has been excellent in highlighting the problem of misogynistic abuse on social media & the internet in general on his blog and has been very vocal in campaigning for better safeguards on social media to report abuse.

Jones has too, and I was particularly impressed with this tweet of his from Sunday.

Turned down media requests about the twitter abuse situation because the debate really needs to be dominated by women. Come on producers!
— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) July 28, 2013

Feminism is, on the whole, not so popular with men. Nor is it with women for that matter, many of whom describe it as "extreme". But a uniquely aggressive brand of hostility (even among men I would regard as very politically progressive) is reserved for the suggestion that if men want to do women a favour they could stand to pipe down occasionally. This is often regarded as akin to censorship for men, and as patronizing to women.

But when you see panels on television and conferences everywhere that are entirely dominated by men, when you see the same male pundits over and over again, when you sit back in a room and observe how much the men are speaking versus the women (even when women are the majority) you start to think maybe things need a little nudge in the right direction. In the case of public appearances, perhaps it simply did not occur to the producers/organizers to ask a woman who may have equal (or superior) expertise and experience on an issue (especially if that issue concerns women directly!) and simply chose someone with a higher profile out of sheer lack of imagination.

In the case of sitting in a room and realising that women outnumber men 2 to 1 but are only speaking for 20% of the time, yes - here the ladies do need to take a measure of responsibility. It may well be (in fact it is) that we've been socialized into speaking more concisely than men and are more reluctant to come forward on the whole, especially if we doubt our knowledge on an issue, but we need to somehow override this default setting if the balance is ever to be rectified. It cannot just be a few confident and outspoken ladies doing all the legwork to fix the ratios. We all need to speak up, no matter how hard it might be.

But the men sitting in the same room also have a role to play. I've witnessed firsthand the rather disturbing outrage that the suggestion that men should sometimes hold back and listen a bit more is generally met with. But Jones shows us how it's done. Giving up a platform isn't some kind of dishonourable show of cowardice or self-censorship. If you really want to change things, sometimes it's necessary. In the case of suggesting a female colleague to speak in one's place on an issue because she would simply be a better choice - it's also just a fair and sensible thing to do.

Then there is Brooker, whose recent Guardian column not only draws attention to the plight of female writers, but also expresses why he himself does not wish to continue to occupy a platform when he feels he does not have something particularly valuable to contribute. This is not necessarily just about women of course. It's a sentiment which is admirable for a range of reasons. Realizing that you have enough profile, and taking a step back - is just a very decent and humble thing to do, whether or not that space is likely to be taken up by someone from any group less well represented than heterosexual white men.

This is what it means to check your (in this case male) privilege. But it's also just about showing empathy towards other human beings.

So - let's give the boys a hand.