I'm in the United States. I honestly had never heard of International Men's Day until very recently. I believe it was November 19th last year. I'm not sure if that date changes or if it's always that exact date. Turns out, someone in the country if Trinidad thought up IMD and did some good things with it there. It honestly has not caught on in the United States, and I suspect it's the same story in many countries.

However, I love the idea of IMD. It seeks to celebrate the hard work and sacrifice that so many men do for their families. I cannot imagine anyone seeing this day as anything other than a positive. Men work so very hard to build good lives for their families. It only makes sense to celebrate that as a virtue.

Yet not every person sees it this way. I have encountered some people who, through some kind of twisted logic, have a problem with honoring men. To me that is just further evidence of society's sickness, its terrible bias against men. If you had a father who worked hard every day to make sure you were clothed, fed, and got a good education, that's something to be grateful for. Granted, not every father is good, but I don't see the fact that there are some bad fathers as a reason to not honor those who have done a good job.

The sad fact is, some people get hostile if anything at all contradicts their negative world view of men. Supposedly men are always so damn privileged that not a single one of us ever deserves any recognition. I find that to be a cynical philosophy. We would never let the fact that some women are bad mothers stop us from appreciating our mothers. Yet, any appreciation of a man's contributions to his family or to the workforce or to society in general is twisted into something negative.

What I want to know is how such a hateful and negative world view of men came to be. Many people spew the same hatred toward Father's Day as they do toward International Men's Day. There are many things that justify the existence of the men's rights movement. This general cynicism toward men is one of many. It's as if they think that any appreciation for men will somehow oppress women. It's as nonsensical as the feminist view that men have massive privileges and women don't.

Maybe some things are better in other countries. I can attest that in the United States the negative bias against men is extreme. It would seem that many feminists think that most men are ultra rich CEOs of huge corporations and on a fleet of personal yachts. It would seem those are the only men that they notice. The rest of us, those who work normal jobs with normal incomes are invisible. I believe that many women see us as less than human. Our presence doesn't count. It's the massive privilege of the wealthy elites that somehow proves this "male privilege" idea.

The people in Trinidad had the right idea. The hard work of so many men, many of them fathers, absolutely should be appreciated. I was shocked to learn that this simple and common sense idea triggers such hatred in so many.