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The thing about unsung heroes is that they’re, well, unsung.

Unsung heroes don’t get held up as role models, they don’t appear on the front pages of magazines and they’re generally not on the television.

Unsung heroes are not catapulted to the levels of stardom and wealth beyond what the rest of us can imagine; they just do their stuff and are just heroes. day after day.

I was told that it was International Woman’s Day last week, although I must have missed that in the news. I was so detached from the news last week that I even missed the whole Bradley Wiggins thing, and I’m a cyclist.

So, I was unsure what International Woman’s Day consisted of and why it was even necessary to have an International Woman’s Day, so my response, as always is to these things was “when is International Man’s Day?”.

It turns out it is on the 19^th November.

The standard response to that sort of facetious comment that I make is generally “every other day of the year is International Man’s day”. But that doesn’t cut it, not for me anyway. You can’t fight discrimination with discrimination, that’s a nonsense idea that just doesn’t work.

You can’t fight racism by being a racist and you certainly can’t fight religious bigotry by being a religious bigot.

I have significant experience of religious bigotry and consider myself well qualified (in life at least) to comment on that.

Segregation doesn’t work and segregation exists in many forms, not just physical forms.

Humans will instinctively collect in tribes in which they’re comfortable, those tribes may be made up of people of different beliefs whether it be religious, cultural, lifestyle, different skin colours or many others.

Having an ‘International bald, slightly fat round the middle, aging Cyclist and Dentist Day’ creates discrimination on that day of the year for one small group of the population, membership number 1-ish.

I don’t think that’s a productive way to try and bring about and integrate society; one in which we can all work together for real progress in areas greater than ourselves.

Please don’t miss understand me in this little piece of writing. I think some of the atrocities carried out on females around the world are utterly abhorrent. Some of the cultural behaviours of many people are utterly unacceptable but not everybody is Harvey Weinstein.

Harvey Weinstein was catapulted to a level of fame and power. It’s clear he abused that but was also allowed to continue to abuse it in the same way that Lance Armstrong abused his power in cycling and in the same way that Jimmy Savile abused power over children.

People knew that was going on, people knew all of those things were going on and what happened was…

“Bad things happened because good men (people) did nothing”.

I choose to believe that the world is actually full of unsung heroes. People who are doing the ironing and the washing up, trying their best to inspire and raise their children in really difficult circumstances.

Most people are working for the man and would actually like a way to not work for the man, but while they’re doing that they’re just getting on and trying their best to create a little bit of a better place for the people that come after them.

So, we can have International Womans Day, or International Three-legged Badger Day, or International any day you want, but actually what we have to do is inspire the unsung heroes to speak out and speak up and effect the change to move towards society that it better.

Unsung heroes aren’t women and aren’t men, they aren’t gay and they aren’t black, white or pink. 

Unsung heroes are everywhere, and they’re everybody.

We react to positive role models and inspiration from people who are trying to do the right thing.

We need more people like that.

Blog post number: 1581