There was a news conference in Toronto this week to announce the unveiling of a men’s rights office. It will be run by a thin pale wary-looking male-victimhood guy who I always get mixed up with another scrawny depressed-looking men-imist, mainly because they tend to pose for photos against walls, cement and brick respectively, and glower at the camera.

Women always smile in photos. I guess men don’t because they’re victims of women and it’s so grim for them right now. Or maybe these two had bad divorces — but find me a good one — or can’t find girlfriends.

I would suggest that setting up a group like this is not a winning strategy on OkCupid: “Likes: two straws and a latte, walking by the lake, watching a little suicide video called The Disposable Man over and over again. Dislikes: misandry, male mockery and early death.”

I don’t know why men’s rights groups exist in North America or indeed anywhere, and they could have chosen a better moment than this one when women are suddenly coming forward about decades of rape and harassment by rich famous men, or campus sexual assault , or their failure to get into boardrooms, or get leave to have babies, etc.

My career has been a parade of sexual harassment, when I think of it, which I try very hard not to. The Jian Ghomeshi scandal has had so many triggers for me I could be reliving Lonesome Dove . Or The Shootist . In my mind, I like to go to the world’s worst therapist, who rolls his eyes and tells me, “Let’s not open that can of worms.”

Once a male editor told me: “I already have one woman on my staff, and she is quite enough.” That was on my first day.

Then there’s the other newsrooms, the fondling, the attempts at sexual extortion . . . I’m sorry, I’ll close that can, I’ll duct-tape it, I’ll solder that thing back up. The past is instructive, but the fact is, I’m not an extreme feminist, just a cheerful one, because I believe men and women have to get along.

I do think worrying about boys doing less well in school than girls is a lot of tosh, since no one ever worried that girls did less well in school. As for starting high school later in the day to cater to sleepy boy brains, the point of high school — indeed all school — is to force students to prepare for the alarms and deadlines of adult life. Stay with the tour, people.

I only wrote that last paragraph to illustrate how discussing the concept of “men’s rights” in a world rife with them invariably leads one off into sub-topics like education (unfair to boys?), female grooming (too arduous?) male grooming (should they?), suicide rates (would gun control help?) and soon everyone’s off-road and quarrelling.

Extremist male rights groups may be establishing themselves now after years of skirmishing with extreme feminists, which is like bald men fighting over a comb or scorpions in a can (which is now firmly resealed, thanks for asking), and that’s fine with me.

I am aghast at the abuse meted out on social media by extreme feminists like Toronto’s Steph Guthrie , who went after me after she disagreed on that digital battlefield, Twitter, over a relatively minor point: Should there be prominent feminists or only local collectives? I said yes to the first; she said yes to the second. “f--- Mallick forever,” she said, and created a hashtag to sic other feminists on me. (See correction below)



The result was most disheartening.

On the other hand, I was hugely entertained Thursday night when the news broke that a man and a woman — or a man and two women — had been having sex on the westbound King streetcar in rush hour. The TTC called the cops. So one of the busiest streets in the city shut down, the couple escaped, and the Twitter jokes flew free and wild.

Those of us at home were all thinking the same thing. We imagined the cold slushy unerotic streetcar, the dubious upholstery, the bad smells. But a woman and a man had the drive to make their project succeed.

It reminds me of two years ago when that half-dressed couple were caught having missionary sex on a TTC subway platform. The cellphone video is hilarious. They were so drunk that you could see their bodies relaxed and flat out on the speckled tiling we all know so well. “Put your clothes on and get the hell off the platform,” said the fed-up TTC guy standing over them in his nerdy luminescent green vest.

And the man looked up quizzically, his head tilted, clearly considering what was on offer. Should I stay or should I go? He stayed.

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In the times when the sour extremists throw muck at each other, I think of these scenes of harmless depravity. Yes, we men and women have a common purpose. Yes, we like each other. Yes, we’ll get a room.

Correction - November 24, 2014: This column mistakenly says created a hashtag. In fact, the hastag she referred to on Twitter was #canfem which has existed on Twiter since 2009 to collect tweets related to feminism.

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