Chapter 9: Fitzroy Square

Jack felt nervous as he headed north from Tottenham Court Road underground station. It was a sunny day. The streets were quiet but there was a slowly growing group of men heading in the same direction that he was. There were police officers too, watching suspiciously. He still felty angry about the rejection letter to his work placement though. That had given him another reason to go along to the demo.

He’d suggested that he and Ashran should go together but Ash had said he had other things to do. Jack wasn’t sure if that was strictly true. He’d asked Ash about whether he’d managed to sort out a placement for work experience yet but he seemed to be having the same trouble as Jack.

The Post Office Tower signposted his route. Jack peered up at it, half wondering how long it would be until someone decided that it needed an SAID device of massive proportions.

Finding Fitzroy Square was easy enough. A group of perhaps fifty or so men were gathered together in one corner of the square around a ramshackle dais set up from some wooden pallets and crates. A few had raised placards calling for the restoration of male rights and an end to anti-male legislation. There was some chanting and cheering whenever it looked as though the meeting was going to start. Every so often their was an ear-splitting, electronic howl of feedback from an inefficient PA system as the organisers tried to get it ready.

Jack made his way over to the group, passing a couple of Male Control Force officers. The red epaulettes on their shoulders indicated they were with the public order division – ‘red flaps’ they were called by those that didn’t subscribe to their ideas of keeping public order. He couldn’t tell if they were naturally thick-set in build or if their body armour just made them look that way. He wasn’t going to stare too hard, though; they might reckon that didn’t fit with the Respect Agenda. Even so, he could see that they both wore an expression that said, “If anything kicks off here, we’re really going to enjoy ourselves.”

Jack found himself wondering about how legal the rally was. The MCF officers didn’t seem like they were about to start busting heads, so he guessed he was OK for a while at least. A voice crackled over the PA system calling for order from the dais in the middle of the crowd. Jack pushed his way towards him. “Welcome everybody,” the voice went on. “I’d like to introduce our speaker, “Spencer Hames.”

A tall, gangly looking man about Jack’s own age, dressed in a thick duffel coat over a denim shirt and jeans, stepped up to the microphone. He looked around the crowd waiting for them to quieten down. He tapped the microphone to make sure it was working and sent another howl of feedback across the crowd.

“I’m not going to say anything against the government,” Spencer Hames began. “But I will say some things about how men have reacted to the rules they’ve handed down. We’ve been too quick to say, ‘Yes Ma’am’ and too slow to say ‘Hold on, will this really improve things?’. We’ve been too ready to accept the way that men are portrayed by some zealots as helpless victims of their own sexual drives, incapable of making a rational decision.”

The men in the group were listening attentively. The two MCF officers didn’t look like they were going to try to stop the speech. In fact, they looked as though they were bored by the whole thing.

“It’s clear that we need to push back when confronted with unfair assumptions about what men are and how they can and should behave. It’s time to resist, reject and reverse. If we are enslaved by the rules we only have ourselves to blame.”

That got a cheer from the crowd but Jack wasn’t sure about the last statement. After all, it was pretty difficult to get around some of the regulations, especially all the financial stuff that the banks had seemed only too happy to put in place.

“What we’re saying is that its the job of everyone of you to make sure that arbitrary rules are challenged. Pass on the message; resist reject and reverse. Let the women in your life see that you think there’s another way, a better way, a more inclusive way. Show them that MDDM is a myth of their own making. Show them that Sexually-driven Attention Inadequacy Disorder is about as real as the idea that women couldn’t hold down a job because of their menstrual cycle. Start organising and stop victimising yourselves!”

“He doesn’t hold back, does he?” Jack remarked as much to himself as to the person standing next to him.

“No, he doesn’t.”

Jack was startled by the reply. It was a woman’s voice. He looked around and saw a girl in her twenties, in a battered khaki parka, grinning at him from under a shaggy urchin hair cut. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Jack was surprised to see a woman there. “Are you checking out the opposition?”

“No, not really. He’s a friend of mine. I’m studying politics. It seemed a good opportunity to see how a view contrary to the mainstream would go down.”

“There’s a lot of people nodding and cheering. Even so – and I might be being cynical - it seems to me like most of them will be sliding to the back of the queue if anyone suggests that they actually do anything.”