"ARE WE ALL DATING THE SAME MEN?" – It’s brutal out there.

#womeninmalefields the latest uber-trend on tiktok, christmas and pigeon ladies | The Muse Letter No. 170

What is it with men? I keep thinking as I walk home in the December cold, lights everywhere, blinking and bright, if you paid attention and looked up from your phone once, you’d notice the aggressive cheer the city has fallen into. IT’S CHRISTMASssss. The end of the year and for some the dreaded ‘cuffing season’ but if you’ve been single for a while now, it’s hard to feel any sense of alertness like pigeons who can’t be arsed to move when a car is rolling their way. They will move eventually but, you know, come a little closer, let’s see how close we can get.

“So you write a blog.”, this guy cuts me off, who I just met at this networking event for TV and film people and he has that grin on his face, this familiar grin that wants to say look babe, i’ll show you the ropes and I stumble over his audacity to sum up my answer of what I do for a living as: blogging. And while I’m trying to convince this guy who I already hate, that I am not a blogger, I also hate my politeness in this moment, my soft intervention and smile of still engaging with him and explaining well, that I do write books and I have a Masters in Playwriting & Screenwriting yet agreeing that while one could call a Substack a blog, albeit it does not exactly describe what I do, that I would say I am writing personal essays, he still finalises my speech again with “yeah a blog”, and a nod this time.

So I do want to punch him in his smug visage as I walk home through the cold but I also know that he is not the first man to do this to me or anyone else. To want to take women from their high horses, to react with hostility instead of admiration, with harsh judgement instead of curiosity, something that is currently so apparent for all the internet to see in the uber-TikTok trend Women In Male Fields which seems to be a comedic answer to my initial question What is it with men?!