7. It keeps angry men’s activists off the streets

Well that’s not entirely true. In fact, while the angriest of men’s rights activists defiantly refuse to support International Men’s Day in the UK because it is inclusive of everyone including feminists, you may encounter some men’s rights protestors on the street. The Men Do Complain campaign regularly uses the day to hit the streets and raise awareness of the rarely discussed issue of unnecessary male circumcision. And this year, there is a March for Family Law Reform and Father’s Equal Rights in London.

8. You can be a feminist and support IMD

Feminism has not had the happiest of relationships with IMD. It was supporters of International Women’s Day who first coined the bitchy riposte “everyday is International Men’s Day” and for over a decade leading male feminists like the three Michaels (Flood, Kaufman and Kimmel) have opposed the day and called on people to boycott it.

Yet in recent years, free-thinking feminists have broken ranks, like the University of Surrey’s Feminist Society, who ran an excellent event last year and the writer on men and masculinity, Joseph Gelfer, who called on fellow feminists to embrace IMD. Most significantly of all, when 200 old-school feminists successfully lobbied the University of York to cancel its celebrations last year, one of their students, Ruth Morris, gathered over 4,000 signatures agreeing with her that “true feminists should be fighting for gender equality or both men and women”.