My rather sweet Father’s Day joke got the men’s rights activists raging | Séamas O'Reilly

My phone began to buzz around 9pm. It was Father’s Day and my column that morning had been about my son’s thin grasp on the merits of the occasion . ‘My son is suspicious of the idea of Father’s Day’ began its headline. ‘Why would he want to celebrate the lesser of his two parents?’

It was – I thought – a fairly sweet piece about my son’s occasionally remarked preference for his mum, and initial reaction from readers was very positive. But, in the darker corners of the internet, weird men were frothing over my act of unforgivable treason. They pounced upon the concept of a ‘lesser parent’ – a term specifically relating to myself, as even the most cursory read of the headline or article would suggest. To them, however, I had maligned all dads, and men, as part of a sinister campaign of ‘misandry’, a word which was soon being thrown at me with wild abandon.

In the darker corners of the internet, weird men were frothing over my act of unforgivable treason

One man posted a photo of me with my son, saying ‘I’m surprised his kids aren’t black, through immaculate conception.’ This was particularly disturbing in its creepiness and racism, and also its garbled approach to Marian doctrine, in which the immaculate conception is Mary being conceived without sin herself, rather than the virgin birth of Christ. Talk about “returning to Christian values”. How about we return to the Wikipedia page for Catholicism and see how we get on from there.

‘Hi, I wrote this article,’ I replied to the biggest of these accounts, ‘and I’d like to make it clear that this was not a very obvious joke about my son preferring his mother to me. It was a direct attack on the concept of manhood itself, and I sincerely hope it will lead to the arrest and imprisonment of every man on earth.’

Somehow, this didn’t defuse things, so in more patient moments I explained that the headline was clearly a very mild joke at my own expense, but this was pointless. These people needed to be angry and any explanation would spoil that.

It eventually became clear that the original poster had been so unfamiliar with Irish naming conventions, he’d presumed I was a woman, which counts as one of the least surprising plot twists ever written. They were not interrogating social attitudes to fatherhood, but rather weaponising a wilful misreading of my words, so they could maintain the anger that lent structure to their true grievance: women. I’ve mentioned before that I occasionally see female colleagues getting abuse for making the very same parenting observations that I’m somehow allowed to make without much comment at all; victims of the broiling hatred that’s anywhere a woman has an opinion. It’s not enough to call this antisocial behaviour – it is misogyny and its force is so strong that it now had me in its cross-hairs.

There is a wider discussion to be had about how social media has created the perfect petri dish for these people to thrive but, for every freak in my mentions talking like the Zodiac killer representing himself in divorce court, there were about 20 people being funny, kind and savage in my defence. My main takeaway, as the storm subsided, was that normal people still outnumber the ghouls for now. As headlines go, I’ll take it.

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