International Men's Day

About

International Men's Day is an annual event held on the 19th of November. The purpose of the event is to promote basic humanitarian values focusing on the health and welfare of boys and men, while highlighting positive male role models, promoting gender equality and to condemn discrimination against boys and men. Over 70 countries participate in this event.

History

In February of 1991, men's rights advocate Thomas Oaster proposed the creation of an annual holiday to celebrate the contributions men have made to society. The following year, the first Internation Men's Day was held in Kansas City, Missouri on February 8th.

Online Presence

International Men's Day is somewhat widely discussed on the internet, particularly on the day itself. In 2015 there were over 87.5 thousand tweets using the hashtag #InternationalMensDay.^[2] The event has caused some debate over whether it should even exist.

On November 14th, 2014, the HE Be Interesting uploaded a music video highlighting the hashtag #ShowMenSomeLove in honor of International Men's Day (shown below).

On November 12th, 2018, Redditor grimview submitted an infographic for the upcoming International Men's Day, which contained statistics about men (shown below). Within one week, the post garnered more than 5,300 points (89% upvoted) and 280 comments on /r/MensRights.

On November 19th, the official YouTube channel for The Ellen Show posted a video in which host Ellen Degeneres celebrates International Men's Day by showing photographs of "Hollywood's hottest men" (shown below).

Google Doodle Controversy

On November 19th, Redditor Truth_WillSetYouFree submitted a post asking "What's up with Google not having a doodle for International Men's Day?" to /r/AskMen,^[4] to which user Hatcheling replied with a parody Google Doodle sketch featuring a drawing of a penis in the Google logo.^[3] That day, other posts criticizing Google for failing to recognize the holiday were submitted to /r/CringeAnarchy^[5] and /r/bakchodi.^[6]

Search Interest

External References